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Back in 2007, just before the global financial crisis, Chuck Prince, then the ill-starred head of Citigroup, famously told the FT that “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”
早在2007年，就在全球金融危机爆发之前，运气不好的时任花旗集团(Citigroup)负责人查克•普林斯(Chuck Prince)就曾对英国《金融时报》说过一句名言：“只要音乐还在播放，你就必须站起来跳舞。我们还在跳舞。”
Or in plain English: when an asset class is booming, competitive pressures force financiers to keep peddling deals — even if they fear the bubble will burst.
或者简单地说：当一个资产类别蓬勃发展时，竞争压力迫使金融家们继续兜售交易——即使他们担心泡沫会破裂。
It is a mantra that might haunt Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan, right now. In recent months, Dimon has repeatedly warned about risks lurking in private credit, which has recently had such a “meteoric rise”, to cite the Boston Federal Reserve, that it has been one of the fastest-growing finance sectors.
这是摩根大通(JPMorgan)总裁杰米•戴蒙(Jamie Dimon)目前可能绕不过去的箴言。近几个月来，戴蒙一再警告私人信贷中潜伏的风险，而引用波士顿联储的话说，私人信贷最近“飞速上升”，成为增长最快的金融部门之一。
Dimon has noted that while there are plenty of good deals, bad ones exist too — and credit ratings are so unreliable that the sector is creating a potential “recipe for a financial crisis”.
戴蒙指出，虽然有很多好的交易，但也有坏的交易——信用评级非常不可靠，该行业正在创造一个潜在的“金融危机的配方”。
“I’ve seen a couple of these deals that were rated by a rating agency. And . . . it shocked me what they got rated,” he observed. “It reminds me a little bit of mortgages [before the GFC].” Then this month he doubled down, suggesting we “may have seen peak private credit”.
“我见过几笔由评级机构评级的交易……他们的评级让我感到震惊。”他评论道，“这让我想起了（全球金融危机之前的）抵押贷款。”然后本月他加重语气，暗示我们“可能已经看到了私人信贷的顶峰”。
But this year JPMorgan has also raised its allocation to private credit from $10bn to $50bn The reason? Its rivals are rushing into this space, as US President Donald Trump seeks to open the asset class to pension funds and retail investors. The financial “dancing” is intensifying.
但今年摩根大通也将其对私人信贷的配置从100亿美元提高到500亿美元。原因是什么？随着美国总统唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)寻求向养老基金和散户投资者开放这一资产类别，竞争对手们正争相进入这一领域。金融“舞动”愈演愈烈。
So what should investors conclude? The first point to stress is that there are sound reasons why some investors might want to diversify their portfolios into private credit, since it has historically been a well-performing asset class with fairly stable returns (albeit high fees).
那么，投资者应该得出什么结论呢？首先要强调的是，一些投资者可能希望购入私人信贷、将投资组合多样化，这是有充分理由的，因为从历史上看，私人信贷是一个表现良好的资产类别，回报相当稳定（尽管费用很高）。
There are also good reasons why the sector exists. Post-crisis regulatory reforms have curbed bank lending in the past decades, and tariff uncertainties have damped lending again this year. However, a decade of ultra-loose monetary policy has left the system awash with liquidity, some of which has gone to private capital funds.
该行业存在的原因也很充分。金融危机后的监管改革抑制了过去十来年的银行贷款，关税的不确定性今年再次抑制了贷款。然而，十年的超宽松货币政策使该体系充斥着流动性，其中一些流向了私人资本基金。
It is thus no surprise that when Meta recently decided to raise finance for artificial intelligence investments it looked at private credit — even though it can easily issue bonds. “Push” and “pull” factors are both at work in this boom, which has driven the global sector to almost $2tn in size, of which roughly three-quarters is in North America.
因此，毫不奇怪，当Meta最近决定为人工智能投资筹集资金时，它考虑了私人信贷——尽管它可以轻松发行债券。“推”和“拉”的因素都在这场繁荣中发挥作用，促使全球行业的规模接近2万亿美元，其中大约四分之三在北美。
However, what concerns some observers is that the sheer speed of this rise evokes nasty historical comparisons. After all, history is full of examples of new(ish) financial products that have expanded at breakneck speed, delivered big profits for early smart-money players, but then produced large losses when retail money or unsophisticated institutional investors finally rushed in.
然而，一些观察人士担心的是，这种增长的速度引起了令人警惕的历史比较。毕竟，历史上充满了（较）新金融产品的案例，它们都以惊人的速度扩张，为早期的聪明钱玩家带来了巨大的利润，但在散户或不成熟的机构投资者最终涌入时产生巨大的损失。
That happened with derivatives, leveraged loans and ESG assets. So, too, with subprime mortgage products. (I will never forget watching suave Wall Street financiers selling subprime securities to badly dressed German and Japanese regional bank managers at a securitisation summit in June 2007; it was a good sign the bubble was about to burst.)
各种衍生品，杠杆贷款和环境、社会和治理(ESG)资产都是如此。次级抵押贷款产品也是如此。（我永远不会忘记在2007年6月的一次证券化峰会上，看到风度翩翩的华尔街金融家向衣着破旧的德国和日本地区银行经理出售次级证券；这是泡沫即将破裂的一个可靠预兆。）
And what makes these historical comparisons doubly unnerving is that private credit deals are typically bespoke and opaque, as their name suggests.
让这些历史比较更令人不安的是，私人信贷交易通常是定制的，不透明的，正如它们的名字所暗示的那样。
On a macro level, that leaves entities like the IMF and the Financial Stability Board worried about the threats of excessive, concealed leverage. On a micro level, it suggest there may be some ticking time bombs in the portfolios. And while patient capital (like sovereign wealth funds) can weather such shocks, retail investors and pensioners usually expect regular and reliable returns. Or to cite Dimon again: “There could be hell to pay . . . when the shit hits the fan” since “retail clients tend to circle the block and call their senators and congressmen” if losses erupt.
在宏观层面上，这让国际货币基金组织(IMF)和金融稳定委员会(FSB)等实体担心可能出现过度、隐蔽的杠杆。在微观层面上，这表明投资组合中可能存在一些定时炸弹。虽然耐心资本（如主权财富基金）可以抵御这种冲击，但散户投资者和养老金领取者通常期望定期和可靠的回报。或者再次引用戴蒙的话：“当灾难发生时……可能会有很大的麻烦”，因为如果亏损爆发，“散户往往会绕过街区，打电话给他们的参议员和众议员”。
Financiers at groups such as Morningstar think problems like these can be mitigated, for example by creating mechanisms to guarantee regular payouts and pooling credits to hedge risks. And the beauty of opening the sector to retail investors, they note, is that this process of “democratisation” could force it to become more transparent and credible — and cut fees.
晨星(Morningstar)等集团的金融家认为，这些问题可以得到缓解，例如通过建立机制来保证定期支付并汇集信贷来对冲风险。他们指出，向散户投资者开放该行业的好处在于，这一“民主化”过程可以迫使它变得更加透明和可信，并降低费用。
One hopes so: it is hard to argue against the idea that the “democratisation” of finance is a good thing — especially if it shares the returns more widely, and enables a sector to become more mature and transparent.
人们希望如此：很难反驳金融“民主化”是一件好事的观点，尤其是如果它能更广泛地分享回报，并使一个行业变得更加成熟和透明。
However, there is another lesson from history that Wall Street should heed: when other sectors have been forced to clean up their standards in the past, this has almost invariably occurred after, not before, a big crisis hits. Painful losses are what usually sparks reform.
然而，华尔街应该从历史中吸取另一个教训：过去，其他行业被迫清理标准几乎总是发生在大危机爆发之后，而不是之前。痛苦的损失通常会引发改革。
Maybe private credit can buck this trend — and reform itself before, not after, a bubble bursts. But this will probably only happen if institutions such as JPMorgan and BlackRock campaign for change. Don’t expect the Trump team to protect investors without such strong pressure; caveat emptor is now the mantra of the day. Anyone entering the private credit dance should be warned.
也许私人信贷可以扭转这一趋势——在泡沫破裂之前，而不是之后，进行自我改革。但这可能只有在摩根大通和贝莱德(BlackRock)这样的机构发起变革运动的情况下才会发生。不要指望特朗普团队在没有此类强大压力的情况下保护投资者；“买者自慎”(caveat emptor)现在是当下的箴言。任何加入私人信贷舞会的人都应该受到警告。