金融危機期間討論和決策記錄檔案前途未卜

As the 2007-2008 financial crisis set in, and the banking system teetered, Mervyn King reminded staff to keep records of discussions and decisions. In 2009, Lord King spoke of consulting the Bank’s historic papers and described archives at a time of panic as “the one place where you may learn something about how to deal with it”.

在2007年至2008年金融危機爆發、銀行體系瀕臨崩潰之際，英國央行行長默文•金(Mervyn King)提醒員工保留討論和決策記錄。2009年，默文·金談到參考英國央行的歷史文獻，並將恐慌時期的檔案稱爲“一個你可以學習如何應對危機的地方”。

But when historians come to write about the financial collapse, will the records be there to tell its story?

然而，當歷史學家開始撰寫有關金融危機的著作時，會有相關記錄透露事件真相嗎？

As the crisis nears its 10th anniversary – 10 years being the period for which companies typically retain records for legal purposes – some re­searchers worry that banks may destroy information that could shed light on its causes and how the effects spread. Valuable information might include records of loans and trades and internal audit and risk management reports.

隨着金融危機爆發接近10週年——基於法律目的，公司通常會將相關記錄保存10年——某些研究人員擔心，銀行或許會銷燬可能揭示危機緣由及其傳播方式的信息。有價值的信息可能包括貸款和交易記錄，以及內部審計和風險管理報告。

According to Vicki Lemieux, an associate professor in archival studies at the University of British Columbia, archivists typically select around 5 per cent of organisational records − such as board minutes, public statements and strategy papers − for long-term preservation. But, given the repercussions and public importance of the crisis, she says: “The decision on what records are retained shouldn’t be a technocratic function undertaken by archivists alone, without some wider social consultation.”

按照不列顛哥倫比亞大學(University of British Columbia)檔案學副教授維基•勒米厄(Vicki Lemieux)的說法，檔案保管人員通常選擇將組織內大約5%的記錄——比如董事會會議記錄、公開聲明和戰略文件——長期保存。但她表示，鑑於金融危機的巨大沖擊波和公共重要性，“決定保留何種記錄不應僅僅是檔案保管人員的技術官僚職能，沒有某種更廣泛的社會諮詢”。

It is not just academics who want to preserve the records. The European Association for Banking and Financial history, a network of financial institutions, hopes to persuade bank boards to preserve historically significant records.

不只是學者們想要保留這些記錄。金融機構網絡——歐洲銀行業和金融歷史協會（European Association for Banking and Financial History，簡稱EABH）也希望說服銀行董事會保留具有重大歷史意義的記錄。

“The first step is to ensure the important parts of the archive are kept. But, in due time [after closure periods of perhaps 30-50 years] we hope the banks will make them accessible to researchers,” says Ines van Dijk, a document specialist at the Dutch central bank, who sits on an EABH committee looking at legislation affecting finance archives.

丹麥央行的檔案專家伊奈斯•範戴克(Ines van Dijk)表示：“首先要確保保留重要的檔案。但是，在（或許30-50年封閉期之後的）適當時候，我們希望銀行把這些檔案向研究人員開放。”範戴克是EABH旗下一個委員會的成員，該委員會研究影響金融檔案的立法。

Bank failure is a threat to preserving records. Banks are not obliged to maintain archives acquired through take­overs, although some do, while archives orphaned by outright bankruptcies are even more at risk of destruction.

銀行倒閉對保存記錄造成威脅。銀行沒有義務保存通過收購獲得的檔案（雖然有些銀行也會保存），而因徹底破產而無人照看的檔案甚至更有可能遭到破壞。

In the UK, the fate of trading data and records locked down on Lehman’s London-controlled systems on September 15 2008 by PwC, administrator of Lehman Brothers International Europe, hangs in the balance. Tony Lomas, PwC’s lead administrator of LBIE, says “a famous educational institution” has asked to take custody of the data, once everything has been wound up. He has yet to decide whether to grant the request or instruct that at that time – possibly around 2020 – the data be stored for another six years, which is standard practice after complex administrations, and then be destroyed.

在英國，雷曼兄弟國際歐洲公司（Lehman Brothers International Europe，簡稱LBIE）破產管理人普華永道(PwC)在2008年9月15日凍結了雷曼倫敦總部控制的系統中的交易數據和記錄，這些數據如今命運難卜。普華永道的LBIE破產管理人託尼•洛瑪斯(Tony Lomas)表示，“一家著名的教育機構”提出在完成所有破產工作後接管這些數據。他還未決定是否同意這一請求，或是屆時（大約在2020年左右）指示再保存6年（這是複雜破產管理之後的標準做法）、然後銷燬。

Entrusting data from failed banks to third parties may be “fraught with some difficulty”, especially because of confidentiality issues, Mr Lomas says: “As a professional services firm, we’re very [careful] to comply with data protection law.” However, transparency advocates, such as Gudrun Johnsen, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Iceland, who worked on the official investigation into the Icelandic banking collapse, say substituting clients’ names with unique identification numbers would overcome the problem.

洛瑪斯表示，將破產銀行數據託付給第三方可能“有一些棘手的困難”，尤其是考慮到保密性問題，他說：“作爲一家專業服務機構，我們非常（認真地）遵守數據保護法。”然而，倡導透明度的人士——如曾經參與對冰島銀行業破產的官方調查的冰島大學(University of Iceland)金融學助理副教授古德龍•約翰遜(Gudrun Johnsen)——表示，用獨特身份號碼代替客戶姓名就能解決這個問題。

“Al­lowing researchers access to the operational data of failed banks or banks that received taxpayer-funded bailouts, could help regulators develop better methodologies for spotting vulnerabilities in the banking system such as risky lending patterns,” she says.

她表示：“允許研究人員獲得破產銀行或者那些接受納稅人資金紓困的銀行的運營數據，可能有助於監管機構開發出更好的方法來找出銀行體系的弱點，如高風險的放貸模式。”

In the US, Barclays, which acquired the US operations of Lehman Brothers, owns operational data from its collapse; other corporate records belong to the Lehman estate, the rump of Lehman that is being wound down in the US post bankruptcy, or sit with Harvard Business School, which holds much of the archive.

在美國，巴克萊(Barclays)收購了雷曼兄弟美國業務，因此現在擁有後者的運營數據；其他企業記錄屬於Lehman estate——雷曼破產後在美國正被清盤的遺留部門——或者在保管雷曼大量檔案的哈佛商學院(HBS)那裏。

Happenstance plays a role in how events are remembered. Re­searching the 1914 banking crisis for his book, Saving the City, historian Richard Roberts encountered holes in the official record. But the chance survival of the diary of Basil Blackett, a largely forgotten Treasury official, partly compensated with his “ringside view”, says Prof Roberts. “Every night, he’d scrawl, in pencil, in a school notebook what he’d done that day and who said what to whom.”

事件的記錄有着一定的偶然性。歷史學家理查德•羅伯茨(Richard Roberts)爲了寫作《拯救倫敦金融城》(Saving the City)而對1914年銀行業危機進行了研究，結果發現官方記錄不全。但羅伯茨教授表示，基本上已被世人遺忘的財政部官員巴茲爾•布萊克特(Basil Blackett)的日記偶然被保存下來，他的“近距離感受”在一定程度上彌補了官方記錄的不足。“每天晚上，他都用鉛筆在學生用的筆記本上隨手寫下自己當天做了什麼，以及誰向誰說了些什麼”。

Email correspondence may be today’s version of scribbled diaries. Hugo Bänziger, managing partner at the Swiss bank Lombard Odier, and chairman of EABH’S board of management, observes that disaster recovery systems capture every email and draft produced on employees’ PCs. This raises the possibility that data might survive indefinitely – the storage costs are minimal – potentially creating a historical gold mine. Whether historians will get to see the contents, however, is uncertain. “The directors of a company [will] decide whether to make the data available,” Mr Bänziger says.

電子郵件可能是當今版本的潦草日記。瑞士銀行隆奧(Lombard Odier)管理合夥人、EABH管理委員會主席胡戈•本齊格(Hugo Bänziger)發現，災難恢復系統捕獲了僱員電腦上的每份郵件和草稿。這帶來了無限期保存數據（存儲成本極低）的可能性，從而可能創造出一個歷史學意義上的金礦。然而，歷史學家們不一定能看到這些內容。本齊格表示：“公司董事將決定是否開放這些數據。”

Technology poses further challenges. Whereas yellowing manuscripts merely require careful handling, digital records need periodic software updates to re­main accessible, which is a cost.

技術構成了進一步的挑戰。泛黃的手稿只需輕拿輕放，而數字記錄需要定期升級軟件才能保持可檢索，這是一項成本。

At some institutions, such as BNP Paribas, HSBC and Barclays, archivists run oral history programmes to capture executives’ reflections on events. At HSBC, Prof Roberts and fellow historian David Kynaston interviewed the ex-chairman and current and former chief executive, among others, for a corporate history including the crisis period.

在法國巴黎銀行(BNP Paribas)、匯豐(HSBC)和巴克萊等一些機構，檔案保管員發起了口述歷史項目來捕捉高管們對事件的回顧。在匯豐，羅伯茨和另一名歷史學家戴維•基納斯頓(David Kynaston)爲編撰包括危機期間在內的企業歷史，採訪了前任董事長以及現任和前任首席執行官等人。

Christopher Kobrak, a finance professor at business school ESCP Europe, cautions that oral testimony, while useful, may be affected by fading memory and personal angles, for instance. But occasionally a conversation yields gold dust. Harold James, professor of international affairs at Princeton University, says that when he was researching the birth of the European Monetary Union, an Italian economist mentioned that he participated in exploratory discussions with the head of the Bundesbank in the early 1980s. The remark, which challenged the prevailing view that the drive for EMU originated in German reunification in 1990, prompted Prof James to hunt successfully for documentation. “The conversation really helped me.”

ESCP歐洲商學院(ESCP Europe)的金融學教授克里斯托弗•科布拉克(Christopher Kobrak)告誡稱，口述檔案雖然有用，但可能受到記憶褪色和個人視角的影響。但有時候一場談話會帶來不菲的價值。普林斯頓大學(Princeton University)國際事務教授哈羅德•詹姆斯(Harold James)表示，在他研究歐洲貨幣聯盟(EMU)起源的時候，一位意大利經濟學家提到，他在上世紀80年代初參與了與德國央行(Bundesbank)行長的探索性討論。這番言論挑戰了當時的主流觀點——建立歐洲貨幣聯盟的驅動力源於1990年兩德統一，它促使詹姆斯成功地找到了相關文獻。“那場談話真的幫了我”。

While financial crises will recur, advocates of learning from history argue that if bankers studied past calamities, they might spot the warning signs and be less susceptible to the “this time is different” fallacy, highlighted by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Likewise, policy makers would have precedents to help frame responses.

儘管還會爆發金融危機，但提倡以史爲鑑的人士辯稱，如果銀行家們研究過去的災難，他們或許會發現警示信號，而且不太容易受到經濟學家卡門•萊因哈特(Carmen Reinhart)和肯尼思•羅格夫(Kenneth Rogoff)強調的“這次不一樣”謬論的影響。同樣，政策制定者將在擬定應對方案時有例可循。

All of which may argue for preserving good records. As Ms Lemieux puts it: “Financial records are foundational”. Once gone, they are gone for good.

這一切都意味着有必要保存好記錄。正如勒米厄所言：“財務記錄是基礎性的。”這些記錄一旦沒了，那就永遠沒了。