美国经济的最后一块“创可贴”行将脱落，问题在于这会有多疼。到目前为止，债券市场已经有了很大反应。周二，美国10年期国债收益率猛增至2.3%，原因是美联储（Federal Reserve）主席本•伯南克表示，美联储将会停止通过购买债券来刺激经济的做法——不是马上结束，也不会戛然而止。他是这么说的没错。但伯南克指出，如果美国经济保持现状，他预计美联储将在今年晚些时候压缩债券购买规模；如果失业率降至7%，到明年年中，美联储就会完全停止购债。

    包括周二在内，美国10年期国债收益率在大约一个月时间里上升了0.8个百分点。这样的涨幅听起来或许不是很高，但10年期国债的价格因此下跌了8%。这样的损失对债券投资者来说并不常见。

    但有些人的预期要比这差得多。好几个响当当的名字，包括沃伦•巴菲特、杰米•戴蒙以及高盛（Goldman Sachs）首席执行官劳尔德•贝兰克梵和首席运营官加里•科恩，都已告诫我们，要当心正在上升的利率。其中大多数人所关注的焦点是美联储停止购债后会出现什么样的情况。因此，在这种氛围之下，伯南克示意购债大幕终将落下后，投资者纷纷逃离市场，并不令人意外。但问题在于，没有确凿证据表明美联储的行动会毁了债券市场，至少在投资者保持冷静的情况下不会这样。

    你可以说，美联储本身就是造成当前混乱局面的部分原因。去年美联储曾表示，失业率降到6.5%以前不会提高已经接近于零的短期利率。在何时结束量化宽松方面，美联储并没有制定目标。这在一定程度上让债券市场感到困惑。如果美联储能够明确它会在什么时候以怎样的节奏停止购债，利率就不会上升得这么快。周二，在量化宽松何时终结的问题上，美联储朝着确定指导方针的方向迈进了一步。但伯南克对7%的失业率目标进行了解释，他说美联储将根据经济前景来调整对购债计划的看法。摩根士丹利（Morgan Stanley）策略分析师文森特•莱因哈特指出：“没有始终如一的指导方针是个错误。”

    但有一批人担心债券市场必将遭遇厄运（我不得不说有时我也是其中一员），他们让美联储及其购债行为对债券市场的意义超过了实际水平。美联储持有的美国国债差一点儿不到2万亿美元（12.34万亿元人民币），和所有美国国债近16万亿美元（98.72万亿元人民币）的价值相比还不到20%。

    此外，大部分国债都不会经常流通。和伯南克领导下的美联储类似，银行、主权财富基金和其他大型投资者也持有同等规模的国债，而且他们都不太可能把这些国债脱手，甚至是在国债价格下跌的情况下。和他们一样，美联储也表示不打算抛售手中的国债。

    目前美联储每月购买850亿美元（5,244.5亿元人民币）债券。其中450亿美元（2,776.5亿元人民币）用于购买国债，占总金额的50%多一点儿，其余资金购买的是抵押债券。

    The last of the economy's Band-Aids are coming off. The question is how much it will hurt.

    So far the answer from the bond market has been quite a lot. The yield on 10-year Treasuries spiked to 2.3% on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke indicated that, yes, the bond stimulus will come to an end. Not immediately, or all at once. But Bernanke said if the economy remains on its current path he expects the Fed to curtail bond purchases later this year, and stop completely by mid-2014 if the unemployment rate hits 7%.

    With Tuesday's move, bond yields have risen 0.8 percentage points in about a month. That might not sound like a lot, but the move translated into a 8% drop in prices for the 10-year. Bond investors aren't used to those kind of losses.

    Some, though, are hunkering down for much worse. A stream of boldface names, includingWarren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, and Goldman Sachs' (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein and COO Gary Cohn, have told us to watch out for rising interest rates. Most of them have focused on what will happen when the Fed stops buying. With that much buildup, it's no surprise that investors have rushed for the gates now that Bernanke has signaled the final countdown. The problem is there's no real evidence the Fed's moves will blow up the bond market, at least not if investors keep their heads.

    You can blame the Fed itself for some of the frenzy. Last year, the Fed said it wouldn't raise short-term interest rates, which are near zero, until the unemployment rate hits 6.5%. There is no target for when the Fed will end its quantitative easing program. That's created some confusion in the bond market and caused interest rates to move up faster than if the Fed had laid out when they would stop buying bonds and how much at a time. The Fed came closer on Tuesday for setting down some guidance as to when QE would end, but Bernanke qualified his 7% target, saying the Fed would adjust its view on the program based on the economic outlook. "Not having consistent guidance has been a mistake," says Vincent Reinhart, a Morgan Stanley strategist and former top Fed economist.

    But what is also true is that stream of debt doom worriers (which I have to say at times hasincluded me) has made the Fed and its buying seem more important to the bond market than it may actually be. The Fed owns just under $2 trillion in Treasury bonds. That's less than 20% of the nearly $16 trillion in U.S. debt.

    Still, much of that is not traded regularly. Banks, sovereign wealth funds, and other large investors own a similarly big amount of U.S. bonds as Bernanke & Co. And they aren't likely to sell even if prices drop. The Fed, too, says it has no plans to sell off its own holdings.

    Currently, the Fed is adding $85 billion a month to its bond portfolio. Of that, slightly more than half, $45 billion, in going into Treasuries. The rest is going into mortgage bonds.

    这样的购买规模和供应水平相比情况如何呢？今年5月份，美国政府发行了1,840亿美元（1.135万亿元人民币）的1年期及多年期债券，4月份此类债券的发行量为2,820亿美元（1.74万亿元人民币）。因此，上述购债规模实际上并不会让美联储垄断市场，而且大多数国债在发行时依然获得了超额认购。

    美银美林（Bank of America Merrill Lynch）美国利率策略分析师山亚姆•拉贾恩说：“有些人被美联储挤出了市场，其他一些美国公债的真正买家会填补他们留下的位置。”

    没错，债券基金个人投资者一直在撤资。但这些共同基金在市场中所占的份额已经远低于上世纪90年代中期的水平。此外，今后几个月的债券发行规模可能下降。美国国会预算办公室（CBO）等机构最近预测，经济不断好转以及税收增多可能使美国本财年财政赤字从1.1万亿美元（6.787万亿元人民币）下降到6,500亿美元（4.01万亿元人民币）左右。如果情况确实如此，理论上美联储就可以将每个月的购债规模压缩到450亿美元（2,776.5亿元人民币），而购买债券的作用仍将保持不变。

    证券公司Advisors Asset Management首席执行官斯科特•科利尔认为：“在政府发债规模急剧下降的情况下，美联储减少债券购买量后仍有可能将利率保持在较低水平。”

    如果按债券市场每日成交量计算，美联储的重要性甚至会进一步下降。据估算，美国国债的日成交额为3,500亿美元（2.16万亿元人民币）。将美联储450亿美元的购买量除以每个月的交易日数，所得结果表明，美联储只占整个国债市场日成交量的0.4%。

    而且这是美联储突然全面停止购债所产生的影响，但出现这种情况的几率极小。更有可能出现的局面是，美联储逐步缩小购债规模，每次减少50-100亿美元（308.5-617亿元人民币）。这样的撤资步伐所产生的影响可能由国债和抵押债券市场共同承担。

    长期以来，投资咨询公司Cumberland Advisors首席货币经济学家鲍勃•艾森拜斯一直在观察美联储。他说：“我觉得量化宽松政策的终结就像是去看牙医。预期会比实际诊断结果更差。”（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie

    How does that compare to what's being sold? In May, Uncle Sam issued $184 billion in debt that won't come due for a year or more. In April, the Treasury sold $282 billion in similar debt. So the Fed is not exactly cornering the market with its bond purchases. And most Treasury bond auctions continue to be oversubscribed.

    "There are other natural buyers of U.S. government debt that will step in that have been crowded out by the Fed," says Shyam Rajan, a U.S. rate strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

    Yes, retail investors have been pulling their money out of bond funds. But those mutual funds are a much smaller portion of the market than they were back in the mid-1990s. What's more, the amount of new debt is likely to shrink in the coming months. The CBO and others recently predicted that an improving economy and higher tax revenue could cause the U.S. deficit to fall to around $650 billion this fiscal year, down from $1.1 trillion. If that's true, the Fed could theoretically cut its bond purchases back and still have the same impact that it is currently having by buying $45 billion a month.

    "With the government dramatically reducing amount of issuance, the reduced buying from the Fed could still have the power to keep rates low," says Scott Colyer of Advisors Asset Management.

    When you look at the daily trading volume for the bond market, the Fed's importance is even smaller. An estimated $350 billion of Treasury bonds are bought and sold each day. Spread the Fed's $45 billion in purchases over the course of the month, and that works out to just 0.4% of overall Treasury bond market activity on a daily basis.

    And that's if the Fed were to stop all of its purchases at once, which it isn't likely to do. More likely, the Fed would cut back bond purchases gradually, $5 to $10 billion at a time. That pullback could be spread between the Treasury and mortgage markets.

    "My anticipation is the that the end of QE will be like going to the dentist," says long-time fed watcher Bob Eisenbeis of Cumberland Advisors. "The anticipation is worse than that actual visit."