中央银行到底有多少资本？（英）

Patrick Honohan,nonresident seniorfellow at the PetersonInstitute for InternationalEconomics, was governorof the Central Bank ofIreland and a member ofthe governing council ofthe European Central Bankfrom September 2009 toNovember 2015. He thanksJulieta Contreras, JosephGagnon, and MauriceObstfeld for helpfulsuggestions. recapitalization payments (Cecchetti and Hilscher 2024). Years ago, the flow ofdividends was boosted by profits generated from the early years of quantitativeeasing (QE), but (like eaten bread) these—and the wider benefits to economicactivity and price stability from QE policies—have already been forgotten.The circumstances have also attracted other lines of criticism fromcommentators. Some express concern about the impact of these developmentson the future effectiveness of central bank policy. Conventional wisdomamong financial economists is that, despite some tentative evidence thatundercapitalized central banks do not contain inflation as effectively as well-capitalized ones do, the net equity of a central bank is considered at best ofsecondary importance, although it is generally understood that if it becomes toonegative, the central bank’s theoretical ability to control inflation could be lost(Del Negro and Sims 2015). Central bankers themselves tend to fear a loss of defacto policy independence if their equity is too low or goes negative (Archer andMoser-Boehm 2013; Bailey 2024; Goncharov, Ioannidou, and Schmalz 2023).Although the losses are a legacy of the years of easy money and QE, itwould be a big mistake to regard them as a metric of the overall effectivenessof policies that were not designed to turn a profit but to avoid price deflationand achieve and cement economic recovery from the global financial crisis andthe pandemic. Still, the losses have resulted in a multiyear interruption in thepayment of surplus income to shareholder governments. In some cases, theyhave also resulted in indemnity or recapitalization payments from governmentsto the central bank—an unexpected move that governments have not welcomed.The losses have, in effect, been quasi-fiscal in nature and, as such, inevitablyattracted political attention. That attention has not been good for the reputationof central banks, making achievement of their policy goals more difficult. Indeed,each of the major loss-making central banks has been subject to recent criticismon this score.Comparing the experiences of different central banks is not straightforward,because of the lack of uniformity in their accounting practice. This papercompares the experiences of loss-making banks by measuring total central bankcapital on a marked-to-market basis across countries for the years 2022–24. Itshows that some central banks that report positive net equity are really underwater and some that report negative equity have sizable unrealized capital gains.2. MEASURING THE LOSSESThe Swiss National Bank (SNB) reported the largest lost, equivalent to17 percent of Swiss GDP in 2022. Having built sizable balance sheet reservesin previous years, it was nevertheless able to report a positive total equityposition every year.Despite heavy losses caused by sizable net interest payments, the US FederalReserve System also continued to report positive total equity. But there is acatch. The Fed does not use the same accounting conventions as the SNB. Ifit did, it would have reported a very substantial net negative equity of about$1.2 trillion (more than 4 percent of GDP) at end-2024. Thus, although (unlikethe SNB) the Fed is not allowed to build up reserves (beyond a very smallamount specified in legislation), it can run up what are, in effect, very substantialnegative reserves. The European Central Bank (ECB) reported negative capital and reservesfor 2024. They would have been positive had it used the same accountingconventions as the SNB. The same is true of several other Eurosystem nationalcentral banks, including the three largest: the Bundesbank, the Banque de France,and the Banca d’Italia.The fourth of the main affected central banks, the Bank of England, reportedpositive total equity. But its main accounts do not cover the losses incurred on itsasset purchase program.Despite recent increases in Japanese bond yields, capital gains on the goldholdings of the Bank of Japan, another big user of QE, have been sufficient tokeep its marked-to-market capital above zero.Four main reasons account for the differences in these banks’ experiences:•Use of fair value. The SNB values essentially all of its financial assets at fairvalue (market price). The Fed and the euro area use historic book value.•Use of revaluation accounts. The euro area central banks do not include thefull fair value of their gold and foreign exchange holdings in their reportedcapital and reserves. Instead they segregate the unrealized capital gains in arevaluation account. This practice is analogous to Fair Value through OtherComprehensive Income (FVTOCI) in the International Financia