２００７年０８月１３日（月曜日）　 Helicopter Ben ?

　（16:55）キング牧師の言葉（have a dream）で始まるこの記事は、ウォール・ストリート・ジャーナルの文章としては最近でもっとも面白い、かつ重要な問題を孕んでいるものです。FRBが金利を下げるべきか、投資家の不注意や勉強不足はそれなりきに罰せられるべきか。

　１１日の土曜日のこのコーナーで、「モラル・ハザード」の問題を取り上げました。繰り返しませんが、今日のこの記事はまさにそれを取り上げている。もしかしたら、実体経済全体に打撃を与える問題かもしれない。しかし、安易に投資家を救ったら「あっ、救ってくれるんだ」といっそう投資、投機に投資家は走るかもしれない。

　まあFRBは、この数日間のマーケットの動向を見定めると同時に、市場で出回っている商品の構成や誰がそれらを買っているのかを徹底的に調べるのでしょう。なるべくモラル・ハザードを引き起こさないで市場を軟着陸させたい。

　しかし、実体経済に対して巨額な資金が動き回る今のマネー経済の中では、マネーの変調は決してほっておけない、と想像できる。なぜなら実体経済の規模より凄まじく大きいからです。マネーの世界の変調は、ほっておけば必ず実態経済に影響を与える。「影響を与える」とは成長率を下げ、そして雇用に打撃を与える、ということです。FRBは雇用維持の責務も負っている。

　この問題は難しいな。問題が起こったら直ちに救うというのでは、バブルからバブルを繋いで綱渡りをすることになる。あるエコノミストは、市場を救った上で関係者は議会の力によってパニッシュする方法を提唱していたいが、それも一つの考え方。しかしそれでも、そうした金融商品を売り出した側は罰せられても、買った投資家はしばしば救われ過ぎる。

　就任してまだ二年にならないバーナンキには最大の分かれ道でしょう。それにしても、この記事の中に出てくる「Helicopter Ben」には笑ったな。そう言えば聞いたことがあるような。まあ不当表示らしいのですが。

Fed Treads Moral Hazard
Step In and Cut Rates
Or Stand By and Watch:
Whither Helicopter Ben?

By E.S. BROWNING
August 13, 2007; Page C1

Wall Street has a dream: that the Federal Reserve will rescue financial markets with a sharp cut in interest rates.

Behind that dream lurks a problem, something financial people call moral hazard.

Moral hazard is an old economic concept with its roots in the insurance business. The idea goes like this: If you protect someone too well against an unwanted outcome, that person may behave recklessly. Someone who buys extensive liability insurance for his car may drive too fast because he feels financially protected.

These days, investors and economists use the term to refer to the market's longing for Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts. If investors believe the Fed will rescue them from their excesses, people will take greater risks and, ultimately, suffer greater consequences. Some grumble that the Fed created problems this way in 1998, 1999 and 2003.

If the Fed were to cut rates now, it certainly could help with the current market crisis. The cheaper money would reduce pressure on stock and bond markets by making it easier to buy beaten-down stocks, bonds and other securities world-wide. Wall Street is a powerful lobby in Washington, and its bleating for help can be hard to resist for politicians, whose campaigns often depend on financial contributions from Wall Street figures.

But if the Fed were to ride to the rescue, the skeptics worry, it would encourage people to speculate even more, creating an even bigger bubble later.

"You don't want to see the Fed bail out these guys who have made a lot of money. They have made their bed and you want to see them lie in it," says a veteran trader at a New York brokerage house. "Then again, you don't want to see the economy go into recession."

That, in a nutshell, is the choice the Fed's policy makers face today.

Earlier in his term as Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke was seen by a lot of investors as possibly too inclined to bail people out. Mr. Bernanke was dubbed "Helicopter Ben" because of a reference he once made to an economic theory that, if deflation threatens, the Fed's role is to dump money into the economy as if dropping it from a helicopter.

Mr. Bernanke wasn't advocating such a posture, and many felt the nickname was unfair. It has taken him months of steady insistence that he wasn't about to cut rates and fuel inflation for the gadflies to stop calling him that.