《股票作手回忆录·第九章·1907大恐慌·做空封神》第16节
Well, sometime early in October the broker I was telling you about came to me and told me that brokers were getting so they didn’t go to the Money Post when they had money to loan. The reason was that members of a couple of well-known commission houses were on watch there, ready to snap up any offerings of money. Of course no lender who offered money publicly could refuse to lend to these firms. They were solvent and the collateral was good enough. But the trouble was that once these firms borrowed money on call there was no prospect of the lender getting that money back. They simply said they couldn’t pay it back and the lender would willy-nilly have to renew the loan. So any Stock Exchange house that had money to loan to its fellows used to send its men about the floor instead of to the Post, and they would whisper to good friends, “Want a hundred?” meaning, “Do you wish to borrow a hundred thousand dollars?” The money brokers who acted for the banks presently adopted the same plan, and it was a dismal sight to watch the Money Post. Think of it! Why, he also told me that it was a matter of Stock Exchange etiquette in those October days for the borrower to make his own rate of interest. You see, it fluctuated between 100 and 150 per cent per annum. I suppose by letting the borrower fix the rate the lender in some strange way didn’t feel so much like a usurer. But you bet he got as much as the rest. The lender naturally did not dream of not paying a high rate. He played fair and paid whatever the others did. What he needed was the money and was glad to get it.
注释摘要
这段文字为我们呈现了1907年金融危机全面爆发前，华尔街货币市场上一个极其吊诡且令人窒息的场景。要理解这一幕，我们得先回到那个时代的交易制度。文中的Money Post，即“货币交易站”，是当时纽约证券交易所大厅里一个专门用于短期资金拆借的物理位置。银行和经纪行会在这里公开喊价，向需要资金的券商提供以股票为抵押的活期贷款，也就是call loan。这在当时…