《股票作手回忆录·第九章·1907大恐慌·做空封神》第21节
“But we haven’t got any. We’re loaned up to the hilt,” the banks protested. “You’ve got your reserves,” snapped J. P. “But we’re already below the legal limit,” they howled. “Use them! That’s what reserves are for!” And the banks obeyed and invaded the reserves to the extent of about twenty million dollars. It saved the stock market. The bank panic didn’t come until the following week. He was a man, J. P. Morgan was. They don’t come much bigger. That was the day I remember most vividly of all the days of my life as a stock operator. It was the day when my winnings exceeded one million dollars. It marked the successful ending of my first deliberately planned trading campaign. What I had foreseen had come to pass. But more than all these things was this: a wild dream of mine had been realised. I had been king for a day! I’ll explain, of course. After I had been in New York a couple of years I used to cudgel my brains trying to determine the exact reason why I couldn’t beat in a Stock Exchange house in New York the game that I had beaten as a kid of fifteen in a bucket shop in Boston. I knew that some day I would find out what was wrong and I would stop being wrong. I would then have not alone the will to be right but the knowledge to insure my being right. And that would mean power.
注释摘要
这段对话是1907年金融恐慌中最具戏剧性的一幕，它发生时整个美国金融体系正站在悬崖边上。要理解摩根这句“动用储备金”为什么石破天惊，得先明白当时的银行制度。那年代美国还没有中央银行，也就是没有美联储，整个金融体系缺乏一个统一的最后贷款人。各家国民银行按规定必须保留一定比例的现金作为储备，这个比例由法律硬性规定，低于这条红线银行就违规了。所以银行经理喊“我们…