“欧元就像一只大黄蜂，”前欧洲央行行长马里奥·德拉吉在2012年指出。“这是自然界的一个谜，因为它本不该飞，却真的飞起来了。”德拉吉作为央行行家胜过昆虫学家。在同一次演讲中，他承诺要“不惜一切代价保卫欧元”，这一承诺终结了欧元区动荡三年的危机急性阶段。
“THE EURO is like a bumblebee,” noted Mario Draghi, former boss of the European Central Bank (ECB), in 2012. “This is a mystery of nature because it shouldn’t fly but instead it does.”Mr Draghi was a better central banker than entomologist. In the same speech, he vowed to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro”, a pledge that ended the acute phase of the crisis that had roiled the currency union for three years.
法国政府债券近期抛售，伴随着街头抗议和财政赤字的巨大缺口，可能唤起人们对当时动荡的不快回忆。今年10月初，法国十年期国债收益率比同期德国国债高出1.6个百分点，为2011年以来最大差距。当欧元区借贷成本出现分化时，这提醒人们货币联盟存在空气动力学上的缺陷。
The recent sell-off of French government debt, amid protests in the streets and a yawning hole in the budget, might bring back unhappy memories of the tumult. In early October the yield on ten-year bonds was 1.6 percentage points above that on equivalent German bunds, the widest gap since 2011. When borrowing costs in the euro zone drift apart, it is a reminder of the currency union’s aerodynamic deficiencies.
欧洲目前尚未面临十五年前那种生存性的困境。但那次濒临死亡的经历，对那些考虑押注波动欧洲债券的投机者来说，仍有借鉴意义。许多交易员付出惨痛代价才明白，政治有时能战胜经济。即便理解了政治，也不一定能赚到钱。
Europe does not yet face the kind of existential distress of a decade and a half ago. But that near-death experience holds lessons for speculators thinking of betting against wobbly European bonds. Many traders learned the hard way that politics can win out over economics. And even understanding the politics is no guarantee of making money.
一些投资者在欧元危机的政治转折点上准备不足。德拉吉关键演讲前几天，美国投资巨头约翰·保罗森一直在告诉客户，他认为欧元区解体的概率有50%。结果欧元区并未解体，他旗下主要基金当年录得双位数损失。
Some investors were poorly positioned for the political turning point in the euro crisis. Days before Mr Draghi’s pivotal speech John Paulson, an American investment titan, was telling clients that he saw a 50% chance that the currency union would shatter. When it did not, his main funds booked double-digit losses that year.
保罗森并非个例。据数据提供商Sentix的数据显示，当时超过70%的投资者预计将有经济体在12个月内离开欧元区。实际上，希腊、爱尔兰和葡萄牙等问题国家愿意承受巨大经济痛苦以留在欧元区，而其他国家则放宽规则来帮助他们。那些在经济判断上正确的基金经理，却严重误判了政治形势。
Mr Paulson was not alone. At the time, more than 70% of investors expected an economy to leave the euro zone within 12 months, according to Sentix, a data provider. In the event, troubled countries such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal were willing to bear enormous economic pain to remain in the club, while the rest bent its rules to help them. Fund managers who were right about the economics badly misjudged the politics.
然而，政治远见可能还不够。交易界有一句俗语，称一些交易员即使知道明天的新闻也会亏钱。2023年，财富顾问公司Elm Wealth的维克多·哈加尼和詹姆斯·怀特证实了这句俗语的真实性。他们向118名金融和商业研究生提供了机会，让他们凭借次日《华尔街日报》头版的信息，对美国国债和股市进行投注。这些参与者只在52%的情况下正确猜测了资产的走势方向。
Yet political foresight may not have been enough. A piece of trading folklore states that some traders lose money even with knowledge of tomorrow’s news. In 2023 Victor Haghani and James White of Elm Wealth, an advisory firm, showed there was truth to the adage. They offered 118 graduate students in finance and business the opportunity to make bets on American Treasuries and the stock market with access to the front page of the next day’s Wall Street Journal. The players guessed which way assets would move only 52% of the time.
一些投资者在上次危机初期就确信欧元区将继续艰难前行，但在该集团找到解决方案之前，他们自己的翅膀就被剪断了。前新泽西州州长乔恩·科尔宾领导的MF Global因经纪商对欧洲主权债务的杠杆押注而陷入破产，这在很大程度上导致了其倒闭。在公司倒闭后的国会听证会上，科尔宾先生表示，他曾认为欧洲“将采取更有力的措施以避免破产或偿付能力危机”。他的逻辑最终被证明是正确的：这些债券从未发生违约。但在此期间它们作为抵押品的价值下降，足以让MF Global走向崩溃。
Some investors who were convinced early in the last crisis that the euro zone would keep bumbling along had their own wings clipped before the bloc landed on a fix. Jon Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey, led MF Global into bankruptcy, largely owing to the broker’s leveraged bets on European sovereign debt. In a congressional grilling after the firm’s collapse, Mr Corzine said he had thought Europe “would take much more forceful steps to avoid bankruptcy or insolvency”. His logic was eventually shown to be sound: none of the bonds ever defaulted. But the intervening decline in their value as collateral was enough to send MF Global to the wall.
如今的法国抛售迄今为止进行得井井有条，与2009年至2012年的混乱形成对比。它并未对法国的欧元区邻国造成太大影响。也没有迹象表明“死亡循环”将回归——即政府借款来救助陷入困境的银行，而银行因该借款导致其持有的政府债券价值大幅下跌而失败。过去一个月，欧洲银行股价有所下跌，但今年已上涨10%-15%，此前在今夏触及二十年来的高点。
Today’s French sell-off has so far been orderly, in contrast to the chaos of 2009-12. It has not infected the country’s euro-zone neighbours too much. And nothing suggests the return of the “doom loop”, where governments borrowed to bail out failing banks, and banks failed because that borrowing depressed the value of the government bonds they held in spades. Share prices of European banks are down in the past month but up by 10-15% this year, after hitting two-decade highs this summer.
不过，法国可能尚未经历这次有序过程的终极考验。2027年，总统大选可能演变为 Marine Le Pen 与 Jean-Luc Mélenchon 之间的对决。前者是承诺无法负担地阻止退休年龄上升的民粹主义右翼人士，后者则是威胁实施选择性债务违约的左翼人士。
France, though, may yet test this orderliness to destruction. In 2027 the presidential race could end in a contest between Marine Le Pen, a populist right-winger who promises, unaffordably, to stop the pension age from rising, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leftist who has threatened a selective debt default.
在这种情况下，精明的投资者或许会希望效仿大型对冲基金布雷文·霍华德（Brevan Howard）的联合创始人艾伦·霍华德（Alan Howard）。2011年12月，霍华德先生解释称，押注欧元区危机的结果是一场他“格外小心避免”的赌博。他指出，危机的解决最终将是“一项政治决策，而我们在理解这方面并没有真正的优势”。德拉吉先生关于大黄蜂的说法是错误的：科学家们确实了解它们的飞行原理。而欧元区动荡的轨迹则要难研究得多。
In such circumstances a wise investor may wish to emulate Alan Howard, co-founder of Brevan Howard, a big hedge fund. In December 2011 Mr Howard explained that betting on the outcome of the euro-zone crisis was a gamble he was “particularly careful to avoid”. Its resolution, he noted, would ultimately be “a political decision and we have no real edge in understanding”. Mr Draghi was wrong about bumblebees: scientists do understand their flight. The euro zone’s volatile trajectory makes for a much harder study.