我最早并不常读Financial Times，因为FT的报道偏重金融和市场，而那时候的我，对和钱有关系的任何事情都毫不关心。工作五年后，我开始接触宏观经济政策，当年在稿子里把“保持人民币汇率稳定“几个字写下来都完全不知道是什么意思。又过了一段时间， 我去华盛顿轮岗，那时候我已经开始对金融有一点点感觉，但依然非常模糊，对于信息的重要与否全凭第六感，什么高大上我就去看什么，就这样写了人民币加入SDR篮子的稿子，认识了Eswar Prassad, 见到了伯南克（后来我才知道他的外号是Helicopter Ben) 并听他演讲证明自己的量化宽松政策（天知道我那时候真的连这四个字是什么意思都不知道。我连央行是干什么的都不知道）。
回国后我彻底开始从事时政报道——这个工作看上去是写人，写新闻，其实每一条消息背后都是一条条政策。很多没那么重要，但有些不仅重要，而且十分有趣。除了政策逻辑本身对我的吸引，在写作中，drive我去了解更多的，永远是人。从最早的M2是什么，到民间投资为什么重要，每一个制定这些政策的人都让我好奇不已。我因此开始关注央行，进而关注美国的央行（FED）。但最终吸引我去关注美国货币政策演变及美联储的角色的，还是伯南克那本《行动的勇气》。
2015年在华盛顿时，我就在一次IMF年会上请伯南克给我签过名（那本英文原版价格不菲，他不耐烦地画了一个圈）。 2019年，在工作中，我重新读了这本《行动的勇气》，这个时候我对货币政策已经有一些略微基础的了解，也因此为美联储当年拯救世界于一场大范围金融危机的果断决策叹服不已。伯南克这本书写得十分生动，但对一个从未接触过金融知识的人，阅读依然十分艰难，我处处做笔记，好在它拥有非常生动的语言和惊心动魄的故事，随着对宏观政策的接触越来越多，我对他笔下描述的那些艰难时刻的理解也越来越深。在这个过程中，我还幸运地拥有过讨论和启发，这让我感到开心极了。
这两天，由于实在不想看新闻，我又开始读Financial Times。FT有一个专栏，十年来一直是我的心头最爱，叫Lunch With the FT. 这个专栏的特色，就是FT的记者，请一些celebrity吃午餐（一般是明星，有影响力的人，以及退下来的著名官员） FT中文网会把专栏中的一些文章做翻译，但是翻译得很慢。昨天下午，我闲来无事，读了两篇，都是旧文了（分别写于2015年与2017年），采访对象恰好是伯南克，和后来的美联储副主席Stanley Fischer——为什么说“恰好”呢？因为伯南克在《行动的勇气》中叙述自己在波士顿的求学生涯时就提到过，Stanley Fischer是他在麻省理工经济系读博士时候的导师。伯南克对央行功能的理解，也深受Stanley的影响。
想想这样的两个人，多么幸福啊。他们都从事学术研究，有着在波士顿河边的深厚的师生情谊，并且，都有幸去进入美联储的决策层感受政策制定与运行的魅力。
这两篇文章语言好极了，加上之前伯南克那本回忆录，对这两篇采访中提及的许多观点和时代背景都印象深刻，故一起作为阅读笔记，写在这里：
Lunch with FT: Ben Bernanke
By Martin Wolf, Published on Nov. 10, 2015
回想起来，尤其看到日期，这篇文章发表时，我应该还没有离开华盛顿。然而，当年的我，还对FED完全没有一点感觉。作者Martin Wolf是金融时报首席经济评论员，这也是这篇采访格外精彩的原因吧. 两个人在芝加哥的McCormick&Schmick’s 餐厅吃饭。Martin这样形容Bernanke: He is always very much the deliberate and precise academic.
It was a happy chance that this scholar, known for his work on the Great Depression (伯南克的《大萧条》一书）, was chairman of the central banking system of the US during the biggest financial crisis since the early 1930s. His new boo, The Courage to Act, provides a fascinating account of the effort to save the world from another such catastrophe.
I ask him how long he took to recover after leaving the FED last year.
“About 24 hours,” he says, “Relief is a bit of a strong word but I am very happy to be a civilian again. I follow very closely on the economy and at the FED. But I no longer have these responsibilit to make those tough calls, It was a burden.
之前有人给Paul Volcker 送了一块木头，上面写着： 降息 (cut interest rate).
“One of the Federal Reserve’s key functions is to act quickly and proactively when the legislative process is too slow. And the Federal Reserve was originally set up primarily to address financial panics, not do monetary policy. So it’s part of the job description.
“While I think the Fed had some complicity, it wasn’t so much in monetary policy but, together with the other regulators, in not constraining the bad mortgage lending and excessive risk-taking that was permeating the system. This, together with the structural vulnerabilities in the funding markets, and so on, led to the panic.”
“Individually rational behaviour can be collectively irrational. And that’s why the regulators have to do what they can to constrain individual behaviour, so that it doesn’t lead to collectively irrational outcomes.”
Quoting Larry Summers: “If you never miss a plane, you’re spending too much time in airports.If you absolutely rule out any possibility of any kind of financial crisis, then probably you’re reducing risk too much, in terms of the growth and innovation in the economy.”
他们是否原本有可能避免雷曼(Lehman)在2008年9月倒闭?
“No,” he responds firmly. “It was completely unavoidable. Without a buyer, there was no one to guarantee their liabilities. So no one would lend to them. There was a complete run of all the creditors, all of the counterparties, all of the customers. And if we had lent them the money and somehow conjured up some fake collateral, in violation of the law, we would have ended up owning the firm, and it would have been a non-viable firm.
As Mervyn King [former governor of the Bank of England] said so beautifully：Banks live globally and die locally.
Under Bernanke’s chairmanship, the Fed, whatever its pre-crisis mistakes, helped save the US and the world from a disaster. Humanity should be grateful, I thought on leaving. Humanity, being human, mostly is not.
Stanley Fischer, Fed’s Vice Chair, on the risky businesses of bank reform
Published on August 28, 2017
Fischer in the 1970s was an enfant terrible, pushing the idea that activist central banks can stimulate economic activity. Those views proved enormously influential. Ben Bernanke was one of Fischer’s PhD students at Boston’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology; as Fed chair he would later blast trillions of dollars at the markets to battle the financial meltdown that started in 2007.
Human beings, says Fischer, borrowing from Milton Friedman, are not rational, but they are great at rationalising things.
When it became clear Fischer would go to the Fed in 2014, staffers in the US prepared for the arrival of a central banking demi-god. In the event, Yellen and her more hawkish deputy have sometimes been at loggerheads. “Although she looks like your grandmother, she is a lot tougher,” he says of Yellen, describing her as “stubborn with good reason”. When someone goes after her, “she goes right back”, Fischer adds. (当得知他将担任美联储副主席时，FED很多员工都期待这位央行之神一样的人的到来。不过他在担任副主席期间，和耶伦常有意见不和。Stanley形容耶伦说她很固执，不过有她明确的理由）。
评价可爱的科恩，他说他很喜欢科恩，虽然科恩不是经济学家：The chairman of an institution such as the Fed, one of the primary things he needs is the ability to judge the advice he is getting,”