厄瓜多尔大战高盛：黄金掉期超级大赌局谁输谁赢？

    高盛（Goldman Sachs）本应警惕持有黄金的厄瓜多尔人。

    本月初，厄瓜多尔宣布与高盛进行了466,000根金条的掉期交易。以当前价格计算，这些黄金价值近6亿美元。作为回报，高盛支付给厄瓜多尔“高安全性和高流动性的金融工具”，可能是现金或类现金形式。

    而厄瓜多尔得以保有这些黄金。根据交易约定，从现在起三年后，双方将进行反向掉期。厄瓜多尔将拿回自己的黄金。而高盛将按2017年的金价，获得这466,000根金条的价款。

    一个国家与华尔街进行黄金掉期交易有很多原因。它可能急需现金，但不想表现出来。厄瓜多尔的赤字预计今年将达到50亿美元的创纪录水平。世界各国都在国库中存有大量黄金，以便证明自己的经济或货币拥有偿付能力。问题是，大量的黄金并不能为你的国民购买产品，也不能购买服务，至少不能直接购买。你需要现金来完成购买。

    你可以卖出黄金来获得现金。但出售黄金会让你的债权人、贸易伙伴和国民不安。 厄瓜多尔当然不想这么做。因此，厄瓜多尔只是将黄金进行掉期操作。这里看不出什么问题。

    但厄瓜多尔在谈到为何进行此项掉期交易时，给出的理由可不是这个。不是，这个国家表示，它这么做的原因是，它找到了一条赚钱的新途径。

    “黄金在国库里不产生任何回报，还产生储存费用。现在变成了可以创造利润的生产资产，”厄瓜多尔央行在宣布此项交易的一份声明中表示。“这些介入黄金市场的交易代表了央行一项全新的长期性策略的开始，即通过购买、出售和金融操作，积极参与黄金市场，创造新的金融投资机会。”

    听起来不错，当然，前提是你得了解华尔街近年来的掉期交易历史。美国很多城市至今仍然深陷2005年和2006年时与华尔街银行签订的利率掉期协议，这些协议在金融危机期间毁于一旦。底特律不得不支付数亿美元来解除它与大银行签订的这些灾难性掉期协议，加速推动了这个城市的破产。但华尔街最臭名昭著的掉期交易是高盛与希腊签署的交易，帮助这个负债累累的国家将债务问题掩盖了近10年。这笔交易最终让希腊人付出了近10亿美元，为高盛带来了巨额收入。

    这个惨痛的教训让很多政府对华尔街承诺的“金融操作”将创造新的投资“机会”产生了质疑。

    去年，手头有点紧的委内瑞拉考虑过进行一项类似的黄金掉期交易，交易对手也是高盛。但最终，委内瑞拉认定这是一笔糟糕的交易，选择了退出。

    但厄瓜多尔不这么认为。厄瓜多尔宣布这笔交易的当天，这个国家表示，它将从交易中获益1,600万至2,000万美元。华尔街，请接招吧。厄瓜多尔政府赢过一次。

    问题是，厄瓜多尔最终如何能在这笔黄金掉期交易中真正赚到这2,000万美元尚不十分清晰。黄金掉期与抵押贷款十分接近。高盛基本上是把钱借给厄瓜多尔三年，并将厄瓜多尔的黄金作为抵押品。通常，大家要为类似这样的贷款支付利息或费用。委内瑞拉表示，这笔18亿美元的黄金掉期交易七年的融资成本是8亿美元。基于此，厄瓜多尔可能会为这项掉期向高盛支付1亿多美元。除此之外，如果黄金价格在未来3年内上涨，厄瓜多尔最终可能需支付给高盛更多的钱。

    但有几种途径厄瓜多尔可以最终从这笔交易中赚到2,000万美元。厄瓜多尔可能赌未来3年金价下跌20%。另一种途径是，厄瓜多尔可以将此次掉期交易获得的现金投资于未来3年可以获得20%回报的其他投资，但鉴于普通债券的收益率仅为1.8%，这可绝对不是件容易的事。

    或者，厄瓜多尔再进行另外一项掉期交易，拿从高盛获得的现金换厄瓜多尔债券。当然，它还必须为此再给高盛付费。但这项掉期将获得美国3年期利率（约0.85%）与厄瓜多尔利率（7%或8%左右）之间的息差，3年将获得20%多一点的回报。

    那么，为什么其他人不做厄瓜多尔的掉期交易?我的意思是说，这是稳赚的钱。首先，高盛或其他银行做这些交易收取的费用必定很高。其次，如果厄瓜多尔违约，你会损失所有的钱，而且你仍旧还得偿付掉期。

    而且，厄瓜多尔近年来违约过，差不多算违约吧。5年前，厄瓜多尔忽悠它的债权人认为，它即将对自己的债务进行违约。它告诉银行和投资者称，它认为自己不能偿付约30亿美元的债券。正如大家能够预料到的一样，这些债券价格开始暴跌，厄瓜多尔当初借的1美元跌到了约0.30美元。

    这些债券价格暴跌后，厄瓜多尔开始买进，最终买进了90%的暴跌后债券。此举抹除了债务，为这个国家节约了近20亿美元，这也正是这些银行和投资者在这些债券上损失的钱。

    这可是厄瓜多尔的一笔好买卖。当然，前提是它以后再也不想借钱。如今，厄瓜多尔预计将出现创纪录的赤字，它不得不借钱。厄瓜多尔最近宣布计划发售约7亿美元的政府债券。

    鉴于厄瓜多尔近年来的行径，大家可以预料到银行和投资者都不太愿意购买这些债券。但可以说服投资者认可的一件事情是，它刚刚从高盛获得了大笔现金。

    当然，如果我是一名潜在的投资者，我可能要问的一个问题是，“对于这样一个国家，悍然押注6亿美元于金价、签订复杂的掉期协议且正在启动寻求‘新金融投资机会'计划、要把央行变成一个国家对冲基金，我真的愿意借钱给它吗？”我的意思是，这听起来风险有点高。

    当然，除非这个国家对冲基金知道如何在这项交易中打赢高盛。然后，我才会出手。（财富中文网）

    译者: 早稻米

    Goldman Sachs should have been wary of Ecuadorians bearing gold.

    On Tuesday, Ecuador announced that it had swapped 466,000 bars of gold with Goldman. The gold is worth nearly $600 million, based on current prices. Goldman , in return, is giving the Ecuadorians “instruments of high security and liquidity,” which is likely cash or something close to it.

    And Ecuador gets to keep its gold. As part of the deal, three years from now, the two will reverse the swap. Ecuador gets its gold back. And Goldman gets the going price for 466,000 yellow bars in 2017.

    There are a number of reasons a country would do a gold swap with Wall Street. A nation could be desperate for cash, but doesn’t want to seem like it. Ecuador’s deficit is expected to reach a record $5 billion this year. Countries around the world keep piles of gold in their vaults to prove that their economies, and their currencies, are solvent. The problem is piles of gold won’t buy you goods and services for your countrymen, at least not directly. You need cash for that.

    You can get cash by selling your gold. But selling your gold will make your lenders, trading partners, and citizens nervous. And Ecuador really doesn’t want to do that. Instead, Ecuador is just swapping its gold. Nothing to see here.

    But that’s not the reason Ecuador says it is doing the swap. No, it says it’s doing it because it has found a new way to make money.

    “Gold that was not generating any returns in vaults, causing storage costs, now becomes a productive asset that will generate profits,” the Ecuadorian central bank said in a statement when it announced the deal. “These interventions in the gold market represent the beginning of a new and permanent strategy of active participation by the bank, through purchases, sales and financial operations, that will contribute to the creation of new financial investment opportunities.”

    Sounds good, unless of course you know anything about the recent history of Wall Street’s swap deals. Cities around the country have been trying to get out of interest rate swaps they signed with Wall Street banks back in 2005 and 2006 that blew up during the financial crisis. Detroit has had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to unwind the disastrous swaps it inked with big banks, helping propel that city into bankruptcy. But Wall Street’s most notorious swap deal is the one Goldman did with Greece, which helped that debt-strapped country hide its problems for nearly a decade. That deal ended up costing the Greeks about $1 billion and created a huge payday for Goldman.

    That fiasco led many governments to grow skeptical of “financial operations” that Wall Street promises will create new investment “opportunities.”

    Last year, Venezuela, also somewhat cash-strapped, considered doing a similar gold swap, also with Goldman. But that nation eventually concluded that it was a bad deal and backed out.

    Ecuador, though, thinks otherwise. On the day the country announced the deal, Ecuador also said it expects to make $16 million to $20 million on the trade. Take that, Wall Street. Main Street, albeit in Ecuador, wins for once.

    The problem is it’s not quite clear how Ecuador could actually end up making $20 million on its gold swap. A gold swap is pretty close to a collateralized loan. Goldman is essentially lending Ecuador money for three years, and taking its gold as collateral. Typically, you pay interest or a fee for a loan like that. Venezuela said its $1.8 billion gold swap was going to cost $800 million in financing over seven years. Based on that, Ecuador could be paying Goldman a little over $100 million for its swap. On top of that, Ecuador would end up owing Goldman even more money if the price of gold rises over the next three years.

    But there are a few ways Ecuador could end up making $20 million on the deal. Ecuador could be betting that the price of gold will fall 20% over the next three years. Another way would be for Ecuador to take the cash it gets from the swap and invest it elsewhere in something that will make 20% over the next three years, not an easy task given that the average bond is yielding just 1.8%.

    Or Ecuador could have done another swap, this time with the dollars it received from Goldman for Ecuadorian bonds. It would, of course, have to pay Goldman another fee for that. But that swap would pay the spread between U.S. three-year interest rates at about 0.85%, and Ecuadorian interest rates, which are around 7% or 8%, or a little over 20% during the three years.

    So, then, why isn’t everyone doing Ecuadorian swaps? I mean, it’s guaranteed money. For one, the fee that Goldman or anyone else charges to do these deals must be pretty high. Also, if Ecuador defaults, you lose all your money, and you still have to repay the swap.

    And Ecuador has recently defaulted, sort of. Five years ago, Ecuador tricked its lenders into thinking it was going to default on its debt. It told banks and investors that it didn’t think it would be able to repay about $3 billion in bonds. Those bonds, as you would expect, plunged in value to about $0.30 for every dollar Ecuador had borrowed.

    Once the bonds plunged in value, Ecuador started buying them, eventually snapping up 90% of the much cheaper bonds. The move wiped out the debt and saved the country nearly $2 billion, which was also how much the banks and investors lost on those bonds.

    This was a great trade for Ecuador. Unless, of course, it ever wanted to borrow again. Now that Ecuador is projecting a record deficit, it has to. Ecuador recently announced plans to sell about $700 million in government bonds.

    You would expect banks and investors to be reluctant to purchase those bonds, given Ecuador’s recent history. One thing, though, that could persuade investors to buy in is if Ecuador can show that it just got a bunch of cash from Goldman.

    Of course, one thing I might ask if I were a potential investor is, “Do I really want to be lending to a country that is making $600 million bets on the price of gold, writing complicated swaps, and generally embarking on a plan to pursue ‘new financial investment opportunities,’ essentially turning its central bank into a nationalized hedge fund?” I mean, that sounds kind of risky.

    Unless, of course, that nationalized hedge fund knows how to out-trade Goldman Sachs. Then I’m in.