The biggest US banks pose a potentially devastating¹ threat to the economy and regulators should consider breaking them up, according to the new head of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.

明尼阿波利斯联邦储备银行(Minneapolis Federal Reserve)新任主席尼尔愠什卡利(Neel Kashkari)表示，美国大银行给美国经济构成潜在的毁灭性威胁，监管机构应考虑拆分这些大银行。

Neel Kashkari, one of the main architects of Wall Street’s 2008 bailout, said the largest lenders were “too big too fail”. In his first public comments since becoming the head of the Minneapolis Fed last month, he said efforts to regulate the big banks since the financial crisis had not gone far enough.

卡什卡利（见上图）是2008年华尔街纾困行动的主设计师之一。他表示，大银行“太大而不能倒”(too big to fail)。卡什卡利在上月就任明尼阿波利斯联储主席以来的首次公开演讲中表示，自金融危机以来，旨在监管大银行的努力做得还不够到位。

A break-up should be on the table, alongside a plan to turn the largest into public utilities by “forcing them to hold so much capital that they virtually can’t fail”, he said.

他说，应该将拆分提上议程，并讨论一项计划，通过“迫使它们持有使它们几乎不可能倒闭的足量资本金”，来把大银行改造为公用事业企业。

Taxing leverage³ throughout the financial system to “reduce systemic risks wherever they lie”, should be considered as well.

另外还应考虑在整个金融体系对杠杆征税，以“降低任何地方可能存在的系统性风险”。

Mr Kashkari said the largest financial institutions “continue to pose a significant, ongoing⁴ risk to our economy”. He unveiled a task force at the Minneapolis Fed designed to examine ways to make the financial system safer. “Now is the right time for Congress to consider going further than Dodd-Frank with bold, transformational solutions to solve this problem once and for all.”

卡什卡利表示，大型金融机构“继续对我们的经济构成重大、持续的风险”。他透露，明尼阿波利斯联储成立了一个特别工作组，研究提高金融体系安全性的方法。“美国国会是时候考虑实施比《多德-弗兰克法案》(Dodd-Frank Act)更进一步的举措、采用大胆的变革性方案、一劳永逸地解决这个问题了。”

Having started his career as an aerospace⁵ engineer, the former Goldman Sachs executive is best known for overseeing the $700bn troubled asset relief programme, which was designed to stabilise the financial system by hoovering up swaths of toxic⁶ assets from banks.

卡什卡利最早曾是一名航空航天工程师，在高盛(Goldman Sachs)担任过高管，他最为人所知的是曾经负责过“问题资产救助计划”(Tarp)。这项7000亿美元的计划旨在通过清除银行的大量有毒资产来稳定金融体系。

Mr Kashkari’s remarks come as the debate over how to avoid a repeat of the Wall Street collapse⁷ becomes a main flashpoint in the race for the White House. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who is threatening to derail Hillary Clinton’s attempt to be the Democrats⁸’ nominee⁹, is calling for a break-up of the biggest institutions and has proposed a tax on financial transactions.

在卡什卡利发表上述言论之际，围绕如何避免金融危机重演的辩论成为美国总统大选的一大热点。佛蒙特州参议员伯尼儠德斯(Bernie Sanders)呼吁拆分大银行，并提议对金融交易征税。桑德斯有可能会让希拉里克林顿(Hillary Clinton)获得民主党总统候选人提名的希望落空。

Banks must be allowed to make mistakes, “even very big mistakes”, Mr Kashkari said. But when they do, they should not require taxpayer¹⁰ bailouts or trigger “widespread economic damage”.

卡什卡利说，必须允许银行犯错，“甚至是非常大的错误”。但是银行犯错之后，不应要求纳税人为它们纾困，也不应造成“大面积的经济破坏”。

“A very crude analogy is that of a nuclear reactor¹¹,” he said. “The cost to society of letting a reactor melt down is astronomical¹². Given that cost, governments will do whatever they can to stabilise the reactor before they lose control.”

他说：“一个非常粗糙的类比是核反应堆。让反应堆熔毁会给社会带来巨大成本。鉴于这种成本，各国政府会竭尽所能稳定反应堆，以防失去控制。”

The Minneapolis Fed will deliver a plan on how to end “too big to fail” by the end of the year. But on its own, the regional bank will not be able to implement¹³ its proposals.

明尼阿波利斯联储将在年底发布一份关于如何结束“太大而不能倒”现象的计划。但它无力单独实施这样的计划。

Mr Kashkari warned that if a bank ran into trouble at a time when the wider economy and financial system were healthy, policymakers should be able to avoid the failure cascading¹⁴ into crisis. But if one or more institutions struggled against a backdrop of weakness for the wider economy, regulators, “will be forced to bail² out failing institutions” as they were during the financial crisis.

卡什卡利警告称，如果一家银行在宏观经济良好、金融体系健康之时陷入困境，政策制定者应该能够避免这家银行的倒闭蔓延成危机。但如果一家或多家银行在宏观经济不景气时陷入困境，监管机构“将被迫为濒临破产的机构纾困”，就像金融危机期间所做的那样。

“We know markets make mistakes. That is unavoidable in an innovative¹⁵ economy. But these mistakes cannot be allowed to endanger the rest of the country,” he said.

他说：“我们知道市场会犯错，这在一个创新的经济中是不可避免的，但我们不能允许这些错误危及国家其他领域。”