巴克莱Libor操纵案为何惹众怒？

Why do people get angrier about some corporate scandals than others? Barclays’ attempted Libor manipulation was disgraceful, but GlaxoSmithKline’s behaviour was surely far worse.

为什么有些企业丑闻比另一些丑闻更加令人感到愤怒？巴克莱(Barclays)操纵伦敦银行间同业拆借利率(Libor)的企图的确可耻，但葛兰素史克(GSK)的行为无疑要恶劣得多。

Barclays traders tried to subvert the London interbank offered rate and Euribor, its continental European equivalent. Given that many financial contracts rely on these as benchmarks, this could have had serious consequences, although no one is quite sure who suffered.

巴克莱的交易员企图破坏Libor和Euribor（欧元区银行间同业拆借利率）。鉴于许多金融合约以这两种利率为基准利率，巴克莱的行为可能已然造成严重后果，尽管没人确切知道谁受到了影响。

By contrast the victims of GSK’s crimes are clear: the children whose doctors prescribed Paxil, an antidepressant, while GSK hid research that showed the drug caused suicidal feelings and behaviour in some minors who took it.

相比之下，GSK罪行的受害者是显而易见的：那些遵医嘱服用抗抑郁药帕罗西汀(Paxil)的儿童。研究显示，一些服用帕罗西汀的未成年人产生了自杀想法和自杀行为，但GSK却隐瞒了这一研究结果。

The details are startling. The US prosecutors alleged that GSK had taken doctors on luxury trips where a child psychiatrist extolled Paxil’s benefits. GSK had a journal article published that deliberately underplayed the dangers. It also attempted to mislead the Food and Drug Administration about how many adolescents had injured or attempted to kill themselves after taking Paxil in research trials.

此案的细节令人吃惊。美国检方指控称，GSK为推荐帕罗西汀的儿童精神科医生提供豪华旅游。GSK让人在期刊上刊文，刻意淡化该药的风险。它还企图误导美国食品药品监督管理局(FDA)，不让后者掌握到底有多少青少年在研究试验中因服用帕罗西汀而做出伤害自身的行为或企图自杀。

For these and charges related to other drugs, GSK this month pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $3bn to settle its criminal and civil liabilities.

面对上述指控及与其他药品相关的指控，GSK本月承认自己存在过失，并同意支付30亿美元了结相关的刑事和民事责任。

It was the biggest healthcare fraud settlement in US history and nearly seven times as much as Barclays had to pay for its Libor shenanigans. Yet there have been no televised parliamentary grillings of GSK’s bosses, its chief executive has not had to resign and there has been little public fuss.

这是美国历史上最大的一起医疗欺诈和解案，其和解金几乎相当于巴克莱Libor操纵案和解金的7倍。然而，国会并没有对GSK的老板们进行带电视直播的质询，GSK的首席执行官并没有被迫辞职，公众也没有过分关注此事。

Why not? One reason is that most of the misbehaviour took place until 2003, five years before Sir Andrew Witty was appointed GSK chief executive. He has overhauled the US operations, replaced managers and ended the link between sales staff’s incentives and prescription volumes.

这是为什么？原因之一是，GSK的多数不当行为发生在2003年之前，而在5年后的2010年，安德鲁·维迪爵士(Sir Andrew Witty)才被任命为GSK的首席执行官。维迪爵士大幅调整了美国业务，撤换了管理人员，公司对销售人员的奖励也不再与处方量挂钩。

Also, unlike banks, pharmaceutical companies have not brought the world to the edge of financial ruin.

此外，与银行不同，制药公司并未将世界拖到金融破产的边缘。

Yet other banking scandals have failed to rouse the same level of outrage as the Libor business, even though, once again, the victims were easily identified. At about the same time as the Libor revelations, the UK Financial Services Authority announced that Barclays, along with HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and the Royal Bank of Scotland, had mis-sold interest rate hedging products to small and medium-sized businesses.

然而，其他银行业丑闻也没有像Libor操纵案那样引起那么大的公愤，尽管在Libor操纵案中，人们又一次轻松地找到了受害者。几乎就在Libor操纵案曝光的同时，英国金融服务管理局(FSA)宣布，巴克莱、汇丰(HSBC)、劳埃德银行集团(Lloyds Banking Group)和苏格兰皇家银行(Royal Bank of Scotland)向中小企业不当销售利率对冲产品。

This followed the payment protection insurance scandal in the UK, which has been replicated in the US. Capital One Financialwas this month ordered to refund $140m to customers who had been charged for payment protection insurance without being asked if they wanted it, or misled into buying it as protection against disability or unemployment even though they were already disabled or unemployed and could not claim on it.

在此之前，英国爆发了支付保护险(payment protection insurance)丑闻，美国也爆发了同样的丑闻。美国第一资本金融公司(Capital One Financial)本月被勒令向客户退还1.4亿美元资金。这些客户中，有些人在不知情的情况下被第一资本金融代为购买了支付保护险，有些人受到第一资本金融误导、为防范残疾或失业购买了该险种（尽管他们当时已经处在残疾或失业状态、因而无权购买该险种）。

Why was there so much more outrage over Libor than over any of this? Is it because newspapers devoted more space to Libor than to other banking scandals or to mis-sold medicine? Partly (although they were all fully reported in this publication), but then news organisations provide their customers with what they feel will interest them.

Libor丑闻引起的公愤为何远比其他丑闻强烈？是因为与其他银行业丑闻或不当销售药品的丑闻相比，媒体对Libor丑闻的报道更多吗？一定程度上确实如此（尽管以上种种丑闻在英国《金融时报》中都得到了充分报道）。但资讯机构提供给客户的内容，恰恰是他们认为客户会感兴趣的内容。

One reason why people were so infuriated by the Libor affair was that it uncovered an insiders’ secret world. The same was true of two other UK scandals, over members of parliament’s expenses and tabloid journalists’ phone hacking.

Libor事件引起如此强烈公愤的原因之一是，它曝光了内部人士的秘密世界。英国的另两宗丑闻同样如此：一个是议员的报销问题，另一个是小报记者的电话窃听。

In all three cases, malpractice was flagrant. Barclays’ Libor malefactors shouted their instructions across the floor and it is clear that other banks were involved too. MPs claimed public money for items their constituents had to buy out of their own earnings and manipulated their housing arrangements to avoid the capital gains tax parliament had imposed on ordinary homeowners. Hundreds had their phones hacked.

在这三宗案件中，当事人都是明目张胆地从事不当行为。巴克莱操纵Libor的人员在交易大厅里大声叫嚷着他们的指令，其他银行显然也卷了进来。同样的开销，国会议员们可用公款报销，选民们却不得不用自身收入支付；国会制定的资本利得税，议员们可通过操纵自己的住房安排来避开，普通房屋业主却不得不承受。数百人的电话遭到窃听。

Insiders knew, and the public never suspected. It is bad enough discovering that people have ripped you off. Worse is the feeling that they were laughing at your naivety while they did so.

内部人士清楚这些事情，而公众从未去怀疑。发觉那些人欺骗你已经够郁闷的了；如果知道他们在欺骗你的同时还在嘲笑你的天真，那种感觉就更加不爽。

GSK’s crimes may have been serious, but, sad to say, medicine companies pushing unsuitable drugs, manipulating research results and treating doctors to lavish weekends is not new: reprehensible, but hardly a surprise. The same applies to banks’ mis-selling. They have been doing it for decades.

GSK的罪行可能很严重，但悲哀的是，制药公司强推不合适药品、操纵研究结果和款待医生周末去花天酒地的做法并不新鲜：这些做法应该受到谴责，但它们并不令人意外。银行的不当销售同样如此。它们几十年来都是这么做的。

Hidden corporate misbehaviour comes to seem normal to those engaged in it. Everyone else is doing it, management seems to encourage it and it takes a brave, or foolhardy, soul to ask: what would happen if the outside world knew what we were getting up to?

对那些卷入其中的人来说，不为人知的企业不当行为似乎是正常的。其他人都在这么做，管理层似乎也在鼓励这类行为。需要有一个勇敢或曰鲁莽的人站出来问一下：如果外界知道我们的勾当，会发生什么？