华盛顿——

　　共和党本来有一些在11月美国总统和国会选举中胜出的杀手锏。美国人长期对政府持怀疑态度，具有抵制政府管得过多的传统——这可以追溯到建国岁月。这一传统体现在现时代就是美国人拒绝公共补贴，并且拥有厌恶“依赖”国家支持的文化。

　　但共和党总统候选人米特•罗姆尼及其他该党领导人在本次选举周期中把这张牌用的十分糟糕。罗姆尼显然认定许多美国人——所谓的47%——不用支付联邦所得税。他认为他们视自己为“受害者”，并且“依赖”政府。

　　但这显然存在两大错误。首先，这47%中的大多数缴纳着相当多的收入、物业和商品消费税。在这个中位家庭收入已降至20世纪90年代中期水平的国家，他们必须拼命工作才能活下去。

　　其次，在现代美国，真正的大规模补贴都流向了一小撮金融精英——即掌握着华尔街最大公司的少数特权阶层。

　　放眼历史，这一现象并不反常。在最新畅销经济史著作《国家衰落探源》（Why Nations Fail）中，达伦•阿西莫格鲁（Daron Acemoglu）和詹姆斯•罗宾逊（James Robinson）举了大量过去和现在的例子，在这些例子中，权势个人把持了国家，用手中的权力为自己攫取财富。

　　比如，在许多前工业化社会中，控制国家是保证财富的最佳手段。在许多自然资源禀赋丰富的国家，争夺政府控制权是极具吸引力的战略。

　　在世界许多地方，控制国家的传统方式是暴力。但在美国并非如此。美国政府官员通常也绝不会公然受贿（尽管也有一些显著例外）。

　　相反，特殊利益集团争相通过赞助竞选和其他方式的政治现金争夺影响力。他们还纯熟地大肆使用媒体宣传说服决策者和公众——符合他们的特殊利益的东西也是对美国有利的东西。

　　在现代美国政治游戏中，最成功的非华尔街大银行莫属，在2008年危机爆发前的三十年里，他们设法游说减轻监管，危机爆发后，他们又有效地扼杀了几乎所有方面的金融改革。

　　他们的成功给他们带来了极高的收益。2000—2008年，14家领先金融企业顶级高管的现金报酬（包括工资、奖金和已执行的股票期权）总数约为25亿美元，最多的五人就拿到了20亿美元。

　　但这些宇宙主宰者所赚到的钱与大规模政府援助脱不了干系。这些银行都“太大而不能倒”，从政府的支持和下跌担保中得益。它们可以承担更多风险——以更少的股东资本撬动更高负债率的业务。当一切顺利时，他们能获得更好的回报，当大势不顺时，他们可以获得政府支持——赢了归他们，输了归我们。

　　而损失是巨大的。据致力于推动更彻底金融改革的Better Market集团的最新2008年危机后果报告显示，美国经济因金融危机——由金融机构鲁莽的冒险行为引起——而蒙受的损失至少有12.8万亿美元。这笔损失中很大一部分转化为就业岗位的减少和处于收入分配底层47%的美国人的生活质量下降。

　　前犹他州州长、共和党总统候选人约恩•亨茨曼（Jon Huntsman）在寻求赢得党内提名以挑战总统奥巴马（以失败而告终）的过程中明确地提出了这一问题并一再强调。他指出，应该强迫银行破产从而降低对它们的补贴。让这些金融机构变得足够小、足够简单，从而让它们可以倒，然后让市场决定哪些银行倒闭或繁荣。

　　对于这个观点，所有保守派都应该团结在它周围。毕竟，全球巨型银行的产生并不是市场结果；这些银行是受政府赞助和补贴的单位，它们的繁荣是站在纳税人的肩膀上的。（如今的欧洲也是如此，和美国别无二致。）

　　罗姆尼提出补贴问题是对的，但他在描述过去四年美国所发生的事情时错得离谱。大规模、不透明且危险的补贴都是预算外的或有负债，它是由政府对太大而不能倒的金融机构的支持而产生的。这些补贴不会出现在任何年度拨款案中，政府也没有很好地计算其规模——这也是这些补贴对大银行如此具有吸引力、对其他人如此具有破坏力的部分原因。

　　罗姆尼只要和公众一样对面向全球大银行的补贴表示鄙夷，他的入主白宫大计可能现在就已经板上钉钉了。相反，跟在受着严重压迫的47%的美国人——他们正是银行鲁莽行为的最大受害者——后面亦步亦趋严重损害了他的11月大选获胜前景。

　　西蒙•约翰逊是前IMF首席经济学家，领先经济学博客The Baseline Scenario联合创始人，MIT斯隆管理学院教授，彼得森国际经济学研究所高级研究员，与郭庾信合著有《燃烧的白宫：国父、国债以及为何这与你有关》　
 

Mitt and the Moochers  

By Simon Johnson

WASHINGTON, DC - The Republican Party has some potentially winning themes for America's presidential and congressional elections in November. Americans have long been skeptical of government, with a tradition of resistance to perceived government overreach that extends back to their country's founding years. This tradition has bequeathed to today's Americans a related rejection of public subsidies and a cultural aversion to "dependence" on state support.

But Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other leading members of his party have played these cards completely wrong in this election cycle. Romney is apparently taken with the idea that many Americans, the so-called 47%, do not pay federal income tax. He believes that they view themselves as "victims" and have become "dependent" on the government.

But this misses two obvious points. First, most of the 47% pay a great deal of tax on their earnings, property, and goods purchased. They also work hard to make a living in a country where median household income has declined to a level last seen in the mid-1990's.

Second, the really big subsidies in modern America flow to a part of its financial elite - the privileged few who are in charge of the biggest firms on Wall Street.

Seen in broad historical perspective, this is not such an unusual situation. In their recent bestselling economic history, Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson cite many past and current cases in which powerful individuals attain control over the state and use this power to enrich themselves.

In many pre-industrial societies, for example, control over the state was the best way to assure wealth. And, in many developing countries endowed with valuable natural resources, fighting to gain control of the government has proved a very attractive strategy. (I have worked with Acemoglu and Robinson on related issues, though I was not involved in writing the book.)

The traditional mechanism of state capture in much of the world is violence. But that is not true in the United States. Nor is it the case that US government officials are typically bribed in an open fashion (though there have been some prominent exceptions).

Instead, special interests compete for influence through campaign contributions and other forms of political donations. They also run large, sophisticated media campaigns aimed at persuading policymakers and the public that what is good for their special interest is good for the country.

No one has succeeded in the modern American political game like the biggest banks on Wall Street, which lobbied for deregulation during the three decades prior to the crisis of 2008, and then pushed back effectively against almost all dimensions of financial reform.

Their success has paid off handsomely. The top executives at 14 leading financial firms received cash compensation (as salary, bonus, and/or stock options exercised) totaling roughly $2.5 billion in 2000-2008 - with five individuals alone receiving $2 billion.

But these masters of the universe did not earn that money without massive government assistance. By being perceived as "too big to fail," their banks benefit from a government backstop or downside guarantee. They can take on more risk - running a more highly leveraged business with less shareholder capital. They get bigger returns when things go well and receive state support when fortune turns against them: heads they win, tails we lose.

And the losses are colossal. According to a recent report on the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, prepared by Better Markets, an advocacy group that pushes for stronger financial reforms, the cost to the US economy of the financial crisis - caused by financial institutions' reckless risk-taking - amounts to at least $12.8 trillion. A big part of this cost has come in the form of jobs lost and lives derailed for the bottom 47% of the American income distribution.

Former Utah Governor and Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman addressed this issue clearly and repeatedly as he sought - unsuccessfully - to win his party's nomination to challenge President Barack Obama. Force the banks to break up, he argued, in order to cut off their subsidies. Make these financial institutions small enough and simple enough to fail - then let the market decide which of them should sink or swim.

That is an argument around which all conservatives should be able to rally. After all, the emergence of global megabanks was not a market outcome; these banks are government-sponsored and subsidized enterprises, propped up by taxpayers. (This is as true in Europe today as it is in the US.)

Romney is right to raise the issue of subsidies, but he badly misstates what has happened in the US during the last four years. The big, nontransparent, and dangerous subsidies are off-budget, contingent liabilities generated by government support for too-big-to-fail financial institutions.  These subsidies do not appear in any annual appropriation, and they are not well measured by the government - which is part of what makes them so appealing to the big banks and so damaging to everyone else.

If only Romney had turned popular disdain for subsidies against the global megabanks, he would now be coasting into the White House. Instead, by going after the hard-pressed 47% of America - the very people who have been hurt the most by reckless bank behavior - his prospect of victory in November has been severely damaged.

Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, is co-founder of a  leading economics blog, The Baseline Scenario, a professor at MIT Sloan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-author, with James Kwak, of White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You.

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