More than a year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing financial market turbulence, we are at a critical crossroads. I think the post-crisis path will be bumpy, mainly because bail-out programmes have not been implemented in the right sequence. We can see the cart has been put before the horse: money has been pumped in continuously to cover the risks and ease the panic, but we are still far from cleaning up the balance sheets of western financial institutions.
雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)破產以及隨之而來的金融市場動蕩已經過去了一年多的時間,我們目前處在一個關鍵的十字路口。我認為,危機過后的道路將崎嶇不平,這主要是因為紓困計劃沒有按照正確的步驟實施。我們可以看到,有關方面本末倒置地將“車”放到了“馬”前:資金被不斷注入市場,以避免風險并緩解恐慌情緒,但西方金融機構的資產負債表卻遠未清理干凈。