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I N T E R E S T R A T E O B S E RVE R
利率观察者

The case of the fragile
易碎的案例

"Interest rates, where is thy sting?" posed the headline on this page two weeks ago, and now comes an answer. The trouble is hiding in not-quiteplain sight in the call reports of 4,623 American depository institutions.
“利率，你的刺在哪里？”两周前这一页的标题如是说，现在有了答案。问题隐藏在 4,623 家美国存款机构的通话报告中，不太明显地隐藏着。

What the regulatory filings show is a worrying overlay of risk. Interest rates pose one set of problems, commercial real estate another. It's a combination of vulnerabilities that presents a plausible threat to the safety of the banking system itself. The pace of monetary easing (if any), as well as the health of the income-producing property market, will tip the scales. Perhaps the analysis in progress will give the Federal Open Market Committee another reason to surrender to the current

inflation rate, rather than driving ahead to its arbitrarily targeted

.
监管文件显示的是一种令人担忧的风险叠加。利率构成了一组问题，商业房地产构成了另一组问题。这是一种脆弱性的组合，对银行体系安全构成了可能的威胁。货币宽松的步伐（如果有的话），以及收入产生的房地产市场的健康状况，将左右天平。也许正在进行的分析将给联邦公开市场委员会另一个理由，即放弃当前的通胀率，而不是继续推进到其任意设定的目标。

"Commercial Real Estate and Bank Systemic Risk," the title of a new working paper by Paul Kupiec, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., makes the case for concern in 61 closely argued and copiously documented pages.
《商业房地产与银行系统性风险》是美国企业研究所华盛顿高级研究员保罗·库皮克的一篇新工作论文的标题，该论文在 61 页中详细论证并有大量文献支持，提出了相关担忧。

Taken together, says Kupiec in summary, the bear market in commercial real estate, the zero-percent-to-5%plus moonshot in the federal funds rate and the high concentration of troubled CRE assets in too many bank portfolios have created "significant systemic risk."
总的来说，库皮埃克表示，商业房地产的熊市、联邦基金利率从零增长到 5%以上以及太多银行投资组合中存在的麻烦商业房地产资产的高度集中已经造成了“重大的系统性风险”。

A glance at the regulatory filings would suggest that little has changed in the banking system since the eve of the lockdown-cum-pandemic in 2019; loan performance rates and real estate concentration levels look much the same. However, Kupiec notes, "once bank unrecognized interest rate losses are taken into account, the mark-tomarket solvency of many banks-certainly, hundreds, but perhaps thousands of banks-will depend on what happens to CRE loan performance going forward. Even a modest bank CRE loan loss shock would render many banks market-value insolvent. If they failed, they would likely strain the FDIC's resolution and deposit insurance fund resources."
监管文件一瞥似乎表明自 2019 年封锁与大流行前夕以来，银行体系几乎没有发生变化；贷款绩效率和房地产集中水平看起来基本相同。然而，库皮克指出，“一旦考虑到银行未承认的利率损失，许多银行的按市值计算的偿付能力将取决于未来商业地产贷款绩效。即使是一次适度的银行商业地产贷款损失冲击也会使许多银行市值上无法偿付。如果它们破产，它们可能会给美国联邦存款保险公司的清算和存款保险基金资源带来压力。”

The words hardly jibe with new highs in stock prices and new lows in credit spreads. Can yesteryear's troubles-by now so thoroughly ventilated and, presumably, discounted-really darken the sunlit future toward which AI and the Dow Jones Industrial Average are beckoning?
这些话几乎与股价创新高和信贷利差创新低格格不入。去年的问题现在已经被充分讨论和折扣，可以合理地假设，这些问题真的会阴沉在人工智能和道琼斯工业平均指数引领的阳光明媚的未来吗？

Ben Mackovak, cofounder and managing member of Strategic Value Bank Partners, is a doubter. CRE values, excluding office towers, have appreciated over the past half decade, leaving "loan-to-values for CRE loans" in
本·马科瓦克是战略价值银行合作伙伴的联合创始人和管理成员，他是一个怀疑论者。在过去的半个世纪里，商业地产价值（不包括办公楼）已经上涨，使得“商业地产贷款的贷款价值比”处于不确定状态。

"I dreamt that somebody woon the election." a "pretty conservative place," he tells Grant's. The damage-controlling buffer of loan-loss reserves in the sum of

of the typical loan book adds another layer of protection. "So the insolvency thing? I don't see it. Maybe if everything in the banking system was office real estate, sure, I could make the case. But office, for the average bank, is not a huge part of what they do."
我梦见有人赢得了选举。他告诉格兰特，这是一个“相当保守的地方”。贷款损失准备金作为损失控制缓冲，相当于典型贷款总额的

到

，又增加了一层保护。“所以破产的事情？我看不到。也许如果银行系统中的一切都是办公地产，我可以理解。但对于普通银行来说，办公地产并不是他们业务的主要部分。”

Kupiec, age 66, has studied, regulated and written about banks for decades. Before taking up his duties at AEI, he was chairman of the Research Task Force of the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision (2010-13); associate director, and later director, of the Center for Financial Research at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (2004-13); and deputy chief of the Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation in the Department of Monetary and Financial Systems of the International Monetary Fund (2000-04). He has held senior analytical posts at Freddie Mac, J.P. Morgan, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Bank for International Settlements. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
库皮埃克，66 岁，几十年来一直研究、监管和撰写有关银行的文章。在加入 AEI 之前，他曾担任巴塞尔银行监管委员会研究工作组主席（2010-13 年）；美国联邦存款保险公司金融研究中心副主任，后任主任（2004-13 年）；国际货币基金组织货币与金融体系部银行监管与监督司副司长（2000-04 年）。他曾在房利美、摩根大通、美联储理事会和国际清算银行担任高级分析职位。他拥有宾夕法尼亚大学经济学博士学位。

Kupiec neither denies the complexity of the banking problem nor the contingent nature of the risk he is trying to quantify. He may hint at disaster, but he does not predict it. His point is rather that the real estate-heavy and interest rate-shocked banking system is susceptible to an exogenous jolt, such as another leg down in the value of commercial real estate collateral or a new inflationinduced spike in rates.
Kupiec 既不否认银行问题的复杂性，也不否认他试图量化的风险的偶发性质。他可能暗示灾难，但并不预测。他的观点更多的是，房地产重和利率冲击的银行体系容易受到外部冲击，比如商业房地产抵押品价值再次下跌或通胀引发的利率飙升。

Perhaps, Kupiec ventured in an in-
或许，库皮埃茨冒险进入了一个

terview last week, "the big wave of problems has yet to hit completely," though he's seen enough of life, and perhaps of the Fed, to allow for the chance of another kick to the can: "You know, if we're all lucky, it'll blow over, and it won't happen the way many people think it might."
上周接受采访时表示，“大问题的巨浪尚未完全到来”，尽管他已经看透了生活，也许对于美联储来说，还有可能再次推迟问题的爆发：“你知道，如果我们都很幸运的话，这场风波会很快过去，事情可能不会像很多人想象的那样发生。”

With all that said, the message of Kupiec's study is indisputably bearish. It shows, to start with, that many hundreds of banks are overextended in commercial real estate of whatever type. And it reveals that the post-2022 lurch higher in interest rates has impaired the capital that exists to absorb the potential losses of those at-risk assets. What the study mentions, but does not explore, are the risks to property owners that high refinancing costs will impose.
话虽如此，库皮埃克的研究信息无疑是悲观的。首先，它显示许多银行在各种商业房地产方面都过度扩张。而且，它揭示了 2022 年后利率大幅上升已经损害了用于吸收那些风险资产潜在损失的资本。研究提到但未深入探讨的是高再融资成本对房地产所有者造成的风险。

To be overextended in commercial real estate is no mere matter of opinion but a defined regulatory threshold: Divide CRE loans by core, or Tier-1, capital plus the allowance for loan and lease losses, says the regulatory handbook. A ratio greater than 3 warrants "additional examiner scrutiny."
在商业房地产方面过度扩张不仅仅是一种观点，而是一个明确定义的监管门槛：监管手册指出，将商业房地产贷款除以核心或一级资本加上贷款和租赁损失准备金。比率大于 3 需要“额外审查”。

If so, plenty of regulatory eyes ought to be scrutinizing. Taking Tier1 capital just as the banks report it, Kupiec relates, the December 2023 call reports show 1,285 banks with CRE concentration ratios greater than 3. However, when subjected to Kupiec's market-value adjustments, the number of institutions showing
如果是这样，许多监管机构应该进行严格审查。根据库皮克的说法，以银行报告的一级资本为例，2023 年 12 月的通话报告显示有 1,285 家银行的商业地产集中比率大于 3。然而，经过库皮克的市值调整后，显示出这种情况的机构数量可能更多。
CRE concentration of 3 and above leaps to 2,667 .
CRE 浓度从 3 跃升至 2,667。

Interest rate-related losses are the termites in the foundation of Tier-1 capital. To adjust that capital for the ravages of the post-2022 bond bear market, Kupiec subtracts unrealized losses on securities holdings and estimated losses on loan and lease portfolios. "After incorporating unrecognized interest rate losses into the CRE loan concentration measure," he reports, "the number of banks with market valueadjusted CRE concentration ratios above 3 swells to 2,916 institutions, including 19 banks with assets between

billion and

billion and 2 banks with assets greater than

billion."
利率相关的损失是一级资本基础中的白蚁。为了调整该资本以应对 2022 年后债券熊市的破坏，库皮克减去证券持有的未实现损失和贷款和租赁组合的估计损失。他报告说：“在将未认可的利率损失纳入商业地产贷款集中度测量后，具有市值调整的商业地产贷款集中度比率高于 3 的银行数量增至 2,916 家机构，其中包括 19 家资产介于

亿和

亿之间的银行，以及资产超过

亿的 2 家银行。”

For all the sound and fury over empty office buildings, the December 2023 call reports show little deterioration in banking vital signs compared with the 2019 reports, though how much comfort one can draw from that fact is debatable. There were in 2019, and there remain today, Kupiec finds, "literally hundreds of mostly smaller banks with supervisory CRE concentration ratios above 5 when a ratio of 3 or more triggers additional examiner scrutiny."
尽管对空置办公楼的喧嚣和怒火，2023 年 12 月的通话报告显示，与 2019 年的报告相比，银行的重要迹象几乎没有恶化，尽管从这一事实中能得到多少安慰是值得商榷的。Kupiec 发现，2019 年有，今天仍然存在着“几乎有数百家主要是较小的银行，监管商业地产集中比率超过 5，而当比率达到 3 或更高时会触发额外的审查员审查”。

What the call reports don't do is to make the rate-related adjustments that Kupiec has performed. The nearby graph displays some of the fruits of his labor. Drawing on the December 2023 data, it compares the officially calculated measure of capital adequacy with his own bespoke version.
呼叫报告没有做的是进行库皮埃克已经执行的与利率相关的调整。附近的图表显示了他劳动的一些成果。根据 2023 年 12 月的数据，它将官方计算的资本充足度指标与他自己定制的版本进行了比较。
Readers with experience in bank accounting will recall the distinction between securities "available for sale," on the one hand, and securities "held to maturity," on the other. They will remember that HTM securities are carried at amortized cost, meaning acquisition cost less deductions for impairment, principal repayments and the like.
有银行会计经验的读者会回忆起证券“可供出售”和证券“持有到期”之间的区别。他们会记得持有到期证券以摊销成本计量，即购买成本减去减值、本金偿还等。

They will recall, too, that "available for sale" securities are carried at fair value. Gains or losses in the AFS portfolio bypass the income statement and collect on the balance sheet under the heading of "accumulated other comprehensive income."
他们也会记得，“可供出售”证券按公允价值计量。 AFS 投资组合中的收益或损失将绕过损益表，汇总在资产负债表上的“累积其他综合收益”栏目下。

You'll hear it said that mark-tomarket losses in HTM portfolios don't matter because the bank will eventually receive par for its bonds, by which time office towers will have re-entered the bull market that the lockdowns so rudely interrupted. To this hopeful refrain, Kupiec responds that just because the mark-to-market losses are not recorded does not mean they don't exist. "Unrealized interest rate losses," he writes, "reduce the market value of a bank in prospective mergers as well as diminish a bank's ability to raise funds by selling assets or collateralizing loans." Besides, an unidentified number of banks has pledged "a large share of their securities to borrow using special Federal Reserve lending programs, the Fed discount window, from Federal Home Loan Banks or possible other lenders."
你会听到有人说，持有至到期投资组合中的按市值计算的损失并不重要，因为银行最终会收到其债券的面值，到那时写字楼将重新进入熊市，而封锁如此粗鲁地打断了。对于这种充满希望的说法，库皮克回应说，仅仅因为按市值计算的损失没有记录并不意味着它们不存在。他写道：“未实现的利率损失降低了银行在未来合并中的市场价值，同时也减少了银行通过出售资产或抵押贷款筹集资金的能力。”此外，有一些未知数量的银行已经承诺“将大部分证券用作借款，使用特别的联邦储备贷款计划、联邦储备贴现窗口、联邦住房贷款银行或其他可能的贷款人。”

The graph shows the sizable disparity between Tier-1 bank leverage ratios defined, in dark lines, by federal examiners and, in light ones, by Kupiec. To understand the difference, it helps to remember the standard gradations of capital adequacy. A "well-capitalized" bank is one that shows a ratio of Tier-1 capital to assets of

or more. An "adequately capitalized" institution presents a Tier-1 capital ratio of between

and

, an "undercapitalized" one of less than

and a "significantly undercapitalized" one of less than

.
图表显示了联邦审查员定义的一级银行杠杆比率（用深色线表示）与 Kupiec 定义的比率（用浅色线表示）之间的显著差异。要理解这种差异，有助于记住资本充足的标准分级。一个“资本充足”的银行是指一级资本与资产之比为

或更高。一个“资本充足”的机构呈现的一级资本比率在

和

之间，一个“资本不足”的机构比率低于

，而一个“显著资本不足”的机构比率低于

。

"According to reported regulatory Tier-1 leverage ratios," Kupiec reports,
根据报道的监管 Tier-1 杠杆比率，Kupiec 报告称，

as of Dec. 31, 2023, there was but a single bank with a Tier-1 leverage ratio under

. In contrast, after adjusting banks' reported Tier-1 capital balances for unrecognized interest rate-related losses in asset values, 1,036 banks have market
截至 2023 年 12 月 31 日，只有一家银行的一级杠杆比率低于

。相比之下，在调整银行报告的一级资本余额以反映资产价值未被认可的利率相关损失后，有 1,036 家银行。
value-adjusted Tier-1 leverage ratios at or under

, including 165 banks with negative Tier-1 capital on a marketvalue-adjusted basis....The magnitude and prevalence of unrecognized interest rate losses create the potential for substantial losses for the FDIC's deposit insurance fund should many of the banks with weak market value-adjusted Tier-1 leverage ratios fail as a consequence of CRE loan defaults.
价值调整后的一级杠杆比率在

以下，包括 165 家银行的一级资本为负的市场价值调整基础上... 未被认可的利率损失的规模和普遍性为 FDIC 存款保险基金带来了潜在的巨大损失，如果许多市场价值调整后的一级杠杆比率较弱的银行因商业房地产贷款违约而倒闭。

Examiners, as noted, measure a bank's commercial real estate concentration with reference to Tier-1 capital plus a loan loss reserve. As previously cited, the number of banks with CRE concentration ratios above 3 swelled to 2,667 from 1,285 after adjusting Tier-1 capital for unrealized interest rate losses.
审查员如前所述，通过参考一级资本加贷款损失准备金来衡量银行的商业房地产集中度。正如先前引用的，调整一级资本以考虑未实现的利率损失后，商业房地产集中度比率超过 3 的银行数量从 1,285 家增加到 2,667 家。

"These 2,667 banks," Kupiec points out, "manage

of the banking system's total assets and include 231 banks with zero or negative market value-adjusted Tier-1 capital." To be sure, he adds, the stricken 231 are small fry, collectively managing just

of the banking system's

trillion in assets. But that

stands for

billion and-for further perspective-the Federal Deposit Insurance Fund, as of year-end 2023, held assets of a mere

billion.
库皮埃克指出，这 2,667 家银行管理着银行系统总资产的

，其中包括 231 家银行的市值调整后的一级资本为零或负值。他补充说，受困的 231 家银行确实规模较小，共管理着银行系统

万亿资产中的

。但这

代表

亿美元，进一步来看，截至 2023 年年底，联邦存款保险基金仅持有

亿美元的资产。

Perhaps the April 26 failure of the long-troubled,

billion-asset Republic First Bankcorp is an augury. Conspicuous among those assets was

billion in commercial real estate loans; Tier-1 capital footed to

million. Kupiec estimates that, by the examiners' lights, Republic First's CRE concentration ratio summed to 5.2. Giving effect to interest rate-related losses, Kupiec reckons, Republic First's Tier-1 capital position was actually minus

million. (The largest bank headquartered in Philadelphia, Republic First was no relation to the West Coast-headquartered First Republic Bank, the failure of which last year made such a big splash.) The collapse of Republic First, the initial failure of the year, will cost the Deposit Insurance Fund

million.
也许长期陷入困境的总资产为

亿美元的共和第一银行公司在 4 月 26 日的失败是一个前兆。这些资产中最引人注目的是

亿美元的商业房地产贷款；一级资本达到

百万美元。库皮克估计，根据审计员的看法，共和第一银行的商业房地产集中比率达到 5.2。考虑到利率相关损失，库皮克认为，共和第一银行的一级资本实际上是负

百万美元。（作为费城总部的最大银行，共和第一银行与总部位于西海岸的第一共和银行无关，后者去年的失败引起了很大轰动。）共和第一银行的倒闭，也是今年的首次失败，将使存款保险基金损失

百万美元。

A subset of the aforementioned fragile

of American banks is the

that show market value-adjusted Tier-1 capital plus loan loss reserves of less than zero; if they are solvent, it's by regulatory courtesy. Another such subset is the

of
前述脆弱的美国银行中的一个子集是那些显示市场价值调整后的第一层资本加贷款损失准备金小于零的银行；如果它们是偿付能力充足的，那是出于监管的礼貌。另一个这样的子集是

banks that disclose CRE concentrations greater than 12 on a mark-tomarket basis. "Even a modest CRE loan default shock could cause these banks to fail," Kupiec comments, in which case "a large bank failure could tax the FDIC resolution and deposit insurance fund resources."
披露按市值计算的商业地产集中度超过 12 的银行。Kupiec 评论说，“即使是一次适度的商业地产贷款违约冲击也可能导致这些银行破产”，在这种情况下，“一家大型银行的倒闭可能会对 FDIC 的清算和存款保险基金资源造成负担”。

Using Kupiec's data and analysis, an investor can write his own adventure, or misadventure, as uninviting as that prospective journey might be. Consider, the author observes, that a

markdown in CRE loan values "would completely exhaust the market valueadjusted Tier-1 capital and [loan loss reserves] of: (i) 379 banks with assets under

billion holding

of all banking system assets; (ii) 246 banks with assets between

billion and

billion holding a total of

of all banking system assets; and (iii) 3 banks with assets between

billion and

billion holding

of the banking system's assets.
使用 Kupiec 的数据和分析，投资者可以撰写自己的冒险，或者不幸的是，即使那个潜在的旅程可能不那么吸引人。考虑到，作者观察到，商业地产贷款价值的

折价“将完全耗尽市场价值调整后的第一层资本和[贷款损失准备金]：(i)资产低于

亿美元的 379 家银行，持有

的所有银行体系资产；(ii)资产介于

亿美元和

亿美元之间的 246 家银行，持有所有银行体系资产的

；以及(iii)资产介于

亿美元和

亿美元之间的 3 家银行，持有银行体系资产的

。

"All told," Kupiec proceeds, "a

across-the-board CRE loss rate would render 628 banks holding

of the banking system's total assets insolvent on a mark-to-market basis. If all of these banks failed with exactly zero market value-adjusted Tier-1 capital [plus loan loss balance], and should the FDIC receiverships incur only an

discount selling those assets [a

discount is more in keeping with the FDIC's decades-long experience], the losses would completely consume the current FDIC deposit-insurance fund balance." The 628 banks at risk of failure under the assumption of

across-the-board declines in CRE loan values, Kupiec adds, do not include the aforementioned 97 "that are already insolvent on a mark-to-market basis."
“总的来说，”库皮克继续说道，“一个全面的商业地产贷款损失率将导致 628 家银行持有银行体系总资产的

不足以偿还债务。如果所有这些银行的市场价值调整后的一级资本[加上贷款损失余额]恰好为零，并且如果美国联邦存款保险公司只承担

折扣出售这些资产[

折扣更符合美国联邦存款保险公司数十年的经验]，那么损失将完全消耗当前美国联邦存款保险公司存款保险基金余额。”库皮克补充说，在假设商业地产贷款价值全面下降的情况下，有 628 家银行面临破产风险，这些银行不包括前述的 97 家“在市场价值调整后已经破产的银行。”

In sum, the author winds up, "there is a real potential that CRE loan defaults could render a large number of banks market-value insolvent, raising the probability that they will fail. The risk is substantial and, should it materialize, could test the public's confidence in the banking system and its federal deposit-insurance safety net."
总的来说，作者总结道：“商业地产贷款违约可能导致大量银行市值不足，增加它们破产的可能性。风险巨大，一旦发生，可能会考验公众对银行体系及其联邦存款保险安全网的信心。”

Whatever a margin of safety might be, the banking system-or, at least, a worrisomely high portion of it-seems to be without one. FOMC, please copy.
无论安全边际是什么，银行系统——至少是其中令人担忧的高比例——似乎没有安全边际。FOMC，请注意。

No lump of coal
没有一块煤

Evan Lorenz writes: 埃文·洛伦兹写道：

Widows, orphans, environmentalists and mega-cap institutional investors, please turn the page: Grant's is bullish on little Hallador Energy Co. (HNRG on the Nasdaq), coal miner turned coal-fired power producer. It's our AI play.
寡妇、孤儿、环保主义者和大型机构投资者，请翻页：Grant's 对小型 Hallador Energy Co.（纳斯达克上的 HNRG）持乐观态度，这家煤矿公司已转型为燃煤发电厂。这是我们的人工智能投资。

Since the start of 2023, shares of the power producers NRG Energy, Inc. and Vistra Corp. have returned 175% and

, respectively, far outpacing
自 2023 年初以来，电力生产商 NRG Energy, Inc.和 Vistra Corp.的股票分别回报了 175%和

，远远超过
the

gain in the S&P 500 . As Mr. Market does not need to be reminded, the nation's fast-proliferating data centers have a ravening demand for electricity. That HNRG is down by

over the same period underscores both the risk and the opportunity in the analysis to follow.
标普 500 指数上涨

。正如市场先生所知，全国快速扩张的数据中心对电力有着巨大需求。HNRG 在同一时期下跌

，突显了随后分析中的风险和机遇。

Hallador continues to mine coal (Grant's, Nov. 29, 2013). What's different is the coal-fired power plant near Merom, Ind., pop. 208, which it acquired in 2022. This facility, Hallador's one and only generating station, has proven itself a critical

in the Mid-western power grid. Even so, HNRG changes hands at a lower multiple than the stocks of even the despised pure-play coal miners; the Hallador market cap registers just shy of

million.
哈拉多公司继续开采煤炭（《格兰特》杂志，2013 年 11 月 29 日）。不同的是，它在 2022 年收购了印第安纳州梅罗姆附近的燃煤发电厂，人口 208。这家设施是哈拉多公司唯一的发电站，在中西部电网中发挥着关键作用。尽管如此，HNRG 的股价倍数低于即使是备受鄙视的纯煤矿开采公司的股票；哈拉多的市值仅略低于 1000 万美元。

"Electrical demand basically hasn't grown for decades," a knowledgeable friend points out-in the 10 years through 2022, generation expanded at an anemic

per year. "Now it's projected to grow in the low-to-mid-single digits, which is just really onerous on the grid."
“几十年来，电力需求基本上没有增长，”一位知情的朋友指出——在截至 2022 年的 10 年里，发电量每年仅增长了微弱的

。 “现在预计增长率将在低至中等个位数，这对电网来说确实是一个巨大的负担。”

During that low-growth era, utilities prioritized greening over growing. In that spirit, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (MISO), which oversees electrical transmission in 15 states and the Canadian province of Manitoba, recently boasted that it had achieved a

drop in carbon emissions since 2005 across the market it serves.
在那个低增长时代，公用事业公司将绿色发展置于增长之上。本着这种精神，监管着 15 个州和加拿大曼尼托巴省电力输电的中部独立系统运营商（MISO）最近宣称，自 2005 年以来，其服务市场的碳排放量已经下降到

。

"Intermittency" is the familiar Achilles' heel of green generation. "You cannot turn on a solar panel," Brent Bilsland, Hallador's CEO, reminds me. "They go home every night. You can-not turn on a windmill." Coalpowered plants-"base load" assets, as they're known-are as dependable as they are controversial. Hostage to extreme tem-peratures and "wind droughts" (about one per year, on average, with some dead calms spanning four days), the Midwest would seem to be tailor-made for the fuel that nobody seems to want but many undoubtedly need.
“间歇性”是绿色发电的熟悉弱点。Hallador 的首席执行官布伦特·比尔斯兰德提醒我说：“你不能打开太阳能电池板。它们每天晚上都会关机。你不能打开风车。”以煤为动力的发电厂——众所周知的“基础负荷”资产——既可靠又备受争议。中西部地区受极端温度和“风干旱”（平均每年约一次，有些风平浪静长达四天）的困扰，看起来似乎是为那些似乎没有人想要但许多人无疑需要的燃料量身定制的。

In any case, MISO reports that, over the past 10 -plus years, surplus reserve margins-i.e., generating capacity that can be deployed at a moment's notice-have been "exhausted" through load growth and the retirement of such plants as the one at Merom. Since 2022, the power overseer says, it's been running near the "level of minimum
无论如何，MISO 报告称，在过去 10 多年中，剩余的储备裕度即可随时部署的发电能力已经通过负荷增长和梅罗姆等电厂的退役而“耗尽”。自 2022 年以来，电力监管机构表示，它一直在接近“最低水平”。

reserve margin requirements," i.e., the amount of excess generation over peak load: "While MISO has implemented several reforms to help avert near-term risk, more work is urgently needed to mitigate reliability concerns in the coming years. In fact, the region only averted a capacity shortfall in 2023 because some planned generation retirements were postponed and some additional capacity was made available to MISO.
储备裕度要求，即超过峰值负荷的多余发电量：“虽然 MISO 已经实施了几项改革以帮助避免近期风险，但迫切需要更多工作来减轻未来几年的可靠性担忧。事实上，该地区之所以在 2023 年避免了容量短缺，是因为一些计划中的发电退役被推迟，同时向 MISO 提供了一些额外的容量。

By 2028, MISO will suffer a 4.7 gigawatt (GW) shortage, according to projections by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., plans to add 12-plus GW of new generation, the equivalent of a dozen nuclear power plants, notwithstanding. The reason, says MISO, is "because the new resources that are being built have significantly lower accreditation values than the older resources"-in other words, they are less reliable. Anyway, the grid overseer notes, a backlog of uncompleted capacity additions is running at an average of 650 days behind schedule on account of regulatory hurdles and supply-chain problems.
到 2028 年，根据北美电力可靠性公司的预测，MISO 将面临 4.7 千兆瓦（GW）的短缺，计划增加 12 千兆瓦以上的新发电量，相当于十几座核电站。MISO 表示，原因是“由于正在建设的新资源的认证值明显低于老资源”-换句话说，它们不够可靠。不过，电网监管机构指出，由于监管障碍和供应链问题，未完成的容量增加积压问题平均延迟 650 天。

You'd think that electric utilities would be thrilled at the pickup in demand, but AEP Ohio, the Buckeye state operating unit of the American Electric Power Co., Inc., for one, can attest that it's possible to have too much of a good thing. The utility stopped servicing new data centers and crypto miners in March. It says it's in receipt of more than

of new power requests.
您可能会认为电力公司会对需求的增加感到高兴，但美国电力公司的 Buckeye 州运营部门 AEP Ohio 可以证明，拥有太多好事也是可能的。该公用事业公司在三月份停止为新的数据中心和加密挖矿者提供服务。它表示已经收到超过

的新电力请求。

What it now needs, AEP insists, is a special tariff structure to cover the costs to connect new customers: 10 year contracts with minimum powerpurchase guarantees and hefty "exit" fees on any who wish to terminate service early.
AEP 坚持认为，现在需要的是一种特殊的电价结构，以覆盖连接新客户的成本：与最低电力购买保证和对任何希望提前终止服务的人收取高额“退出”费用的 10 年合同。

Approval of this request by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio would substantially raise the fixed costs of data centers-the likes of Alphabet, Inc. and Amazon.com, Inc. had better hope their AI bets play out. As for the rest of us, surging demand for generation in the context of the relatively fixed supply of generation hardly seems calculated to produce lower power bills.
俄亥俄州公用事业委员会批准此请求将大幅提高数据中心的固定成本 - 像 Alphabet 公司和亚马逊公司这样的公司最好希望他们的人工智能投注能够成功。至于我们其他人，在相对固定的发电供应背景下对发电需求激增，似乎很难产生更低的电费账单。

The problems that power-hungry AI presents go well beyond the grid. In 2020, Microsoft Corp. pledged that, by 2030 , it would remove more carbon than it emits. Yet the company acknowledged last week that emissions are

higher than they were four years ago, even as plans to build still more data centers move forward. It happens that increasingly dirty Microsoft is the biggest holding of the iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF, which manages

billion.
渴望权力的人工智能所带来的问题远不止于电网之外。2020 年，微软公司承诺到 2030 年将净排放碳量变为负值。然而，该公司上周承认排放量比四年前更高，尽管建设更多数据中心的计划仍在继续。恰巧，越来越“肮脏”的微软是 iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF 的最大持有者，该基金管理着数十亿美元。

Our 2013 article on Hallador made a bullish case but began with some cautionary facts. Thus, the company operated a single mine in Indiana that pro-
我们 2013 年关于 Hallador 的文章提出了一个看涨的观点，但是一开始就列举了一些警示性的事实。因此，该公司在印第安纳州经营着一座煤矿。
duced the kind of high-sulfur coal that causes acid rain. And the proportion of American power supplied by coal-fired plants had shrunk to

from

over the preceding decade.
美国已经减少了导致酸雨的高硫煤的使用。在过去的十年中，由燃煤电厂供应的美国电力比例已经从

减少到

。

But new, federally mandated scrubbers were rendering Hallador's coal suitable for burning at most generating stations. Besides, Hallador was the lowest-cost producer among publicly traded coal miners. This combination of facts, we reasoned, would allow the company to prosper even as coal slipped slowly away.
但是，新的联邦法规要求的洗涤器正在使哈拉多尔的煤适合在大多数发电站燃烧。此外，哈拉多尔是公开交易的煤矿企业中成本最低的生产商。我们推断，这些事实的结合将使该公司即使在煤炭逐渐减少的情况下也能蓬勃发展。

All was well as the share price nearly doubled in the next eight months, to

and change, but we bargained without the American shale revolution. The resulting collapse in gas prices similarly deflated coal prices, and Hallador, by September 2020, was trading at

a share.
在接下来的八个月里，股价几乎翻了一番，达到

多一点，一切都很顺利，但我们没有考虑到美国页岩革命。由此导致的天然气价格崩溃也同样使煤炭价格下跌，到 2020 年 9 月，Hallador 的股价已经跌至

美元。

In 2013, the U.S. Energy Information Administration made bold to predict that coal would deliver

of power generation by 2040, but neither did the EIA foresee the gas glut. In the 12 months ended February, coal accounted for just

of America's power mix versus

for natural gas and

for renewables.
2013 年，美国能源信息管理局大胆预测到煤炭将在 2040 年占发电量的

，但 EIA 也没有预料到天然气供应过剩的情况。截至 2 月份结束的 12 个月里，煤炭在美国的能源组合中仅占

，而天然气占

，可再生能源占

。

Hallador, profitable in 7 of the past 10 years (2019-21 were the loss-making exceptions), survived the devastation in coal by virtue of its low costs, a position enhanced by the company's 2014 purchase of a mine from utility Vectren Corp.
Hallador 在过去 10 年中有 7 年盈利（2019-21 年是亏损的例外），由于其低成本，Hallador 在煤炭领域的毁灭中幸存下来，这一地位得到了该公司 2014 年从公用事业 Vectren Corp 购买矿山的加强。

As the coal market sank into terminal decline, the Hallador front office looked for a different business model. In 2018, it invested in a project in Colorado to produce sand for the fracking industry. Little came of it.
随着煤炭市场陷入终极衰退，哈拉多尔前台寻找了不同的商业模式。2018 年，它投资了一个在科罗拉多的项目，生产用于水力压裂行业的沙子。但收效甚微。

The next opportunity involved the aforementioned environmentally marginalized coal-fired power plant in southwest Indiana. Hallador decided to buy it-this was in the fall of 2022 -and one might well have wondered why. The plant, built in 1982 and boasting

of capacity, was slated to close in 2023. It was a good thing it didn't. Except for the reprieve of the Merom property, the threatened 2023 Midwest power shortage actually would have come to pass (recall MISO's description of that close call).
下一个机会涉及印第安纳州西南部的前述环境边缘化的燃煤发电厂。 Hallador 决定购买它 - 这是在 2022 年秋天 - 也许人们会想知道为什么。这座发电厂建于 1982 年，容量为

，计划在 2023 年关闭。幸好它没有关闭。除了 Merom 物业的暂缓外，威胁的 2023 年中西部电力短缺实际上可能会发生（回想一下 MISO 对那次紧急情况的描述）。

Hallador paid no cash for its new asset but agreed to assume decommissioning and environmental-reme- diation expenses when the plant is closed for good as well as to sell electricity to the prior owner, Hoosier Energy, at concessionary prices (specifically, at a rate of

per megawatt hour for three-and-a-half years, less than the mid-

rate that Hallador has been contracting with other customers; the prices exclude payments that Merom receives for providing capacity to the grid).
Hallador 并未为其新资产支付现金，但同意在工厂永久关闭时承担退役和环境修复费用，并以优惠价格向先前所有者 Hoosier Energy 出售电力（具体而言，以每兆瓦时

的价格出售三年半，低于 Hallador 与其他客户签订的中间

价格；这些价格不包括 Merom 为向电网提供容量而收到的付款）。

While Hoosier had planned on shutting Merom last year, the plant can continue to operate until 2039, according to Hallador. This will require approximately

million in spending to comply with the EPA's latest effluentlimitation guidelines and, down the line, may require Merom to burn both gas and coal. "What I'm talking about is simply running a gas line into the plant and putting gas nozzles in the boiler," Bilsland tells me. "It's not a new plant. It's the same heat rate.
虽然胡奇尔去年计划关闭梅罗姆，但根据哈拉多尔的说法，该工厂可以继续运营直至 2039 年。这将需要大约

百万美元的支出来符合美国环保局最新的排放限制指南，并且未来可能需要梅罗姆同时燃烧天然气和煤。比尔斯兰告诉我说：“我所说的只是将天然气管线引入工厂，并在锅炉中安装天然气喷嘴。”“这不是一个新工厂。热效率是一样的。”

"As far as the turbine and generators go," the Hallador CEO continues, "these get rebuilt. Turbines get rebuilt every five years, generators every 10 . So it kills me when people say, 'Wow, it's a 40-year-old plant.' That's when it was built, but it constantly gets rebuilt, and there are improvements and new capital expenditures."
“就涡轮机和发电机而言，”Hallador 首席执行官继续说，“这些都会进行重建。涡轮机每五年进行一次重建，发电机每十年进行一次。所以当有人说‘哇，这是一个 40 年历史的工厂’时，我感到很痛心。那是它建成的时间，但它不断进行重建，还有改进和新的资本支出。”

Beyond 2039, Hallador will still own a

interconnection to the MISO network. "This is essentially the on/off ramp to the grid," is how Bilsland puts it. "If we were building an interstate, and I said you could own the land all around this intersection's on- and off-ramps, I think that would be something you would want to own. I'm confident that power will still be put on and taken off of the grid at the Merom node 100 years from now. The generation form will change. In fact, it may change two more times in 100 years, but there will still be a whole lot of power being put on or taken off the grid at that location."
2039 年之后，Hallador 仍将拥有与 MISO 网络的

互连。Bilsland 这样描述道：“这本质上是电网的进出口。”“如果我们正在建设一条州际公路，我说你可以拥有这个交叉口的进出口周围的所有土地，我认为那是你想要拥有的东西。我相信 100 年后，电力仍将在 Merom 节点接入和退出电网。发电形式会发生变化。事实上，100 年内可能会再变两次，但在那个位置仍将有大量电力被接入或退出电网。”

Rebuilding this kind of grid infrastructure is neither easy nor cheap. AEP Ohio, in making its case to lock in data-center customers to long-term, minimum-volume tariffs, argued that "[b]uilding electrical infrastructure required to serve this kind of load is not an immediate solution and can take years for planning, regulatory approvals, material acquisition, and construction. For instance, 120 miles of

line would take approximately 7-10 years to build and could cost hundreds of millions of dollars."
重建这种电网基础设施既不容易也不便宜。AEP Ohio 在向数据中心客户提出长期、最低容量关税的理由时表示：“建设用于服务这种负载的电力基础设施并非立即解决方案，需要数年的规划、监管批准、物资采购和建设。例如，建造 120 英里的输电线路大约需要 7-10 年的时间，并可能耗资数亿美元。”

Certainly, coal-fired power plants are not everyone's cup of tea. Iron Mountain, Inc.'s data centers, for example, source

of their power from renewables (Grant's, May 10). But other consumers decline to subordinate baseline dependability to renewability. Bilsland tells me that one prospective customer recently discussed locking up one gigawatt of power, essentially all of Merom's capacity.
当然，燃煤发电厂并不是每个人的菜。例如，铁山公司的数据中心从可再生能源中获得

的电力（Grant's，5 月 10 日）。但其他消费者拒绝将基准可靠性置于可再生能源之上。比尔斯兰告诉我，最近有一位潜在客户讨论锁定一吉瓦特的电力，基本上是梅罗姆全部产能的一半。

(Continued on page 8)
（请翻至第 8 页）

CREDIT CREATION 信用创造

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet
美联储资产负债表(in millions of dollars) （以百万美元计）

5 月 15 日

May 15

2024 年 5 月 8 日

May 8 ,

2024

5 月 17 日，

May 17,

The Fed buys and sells securities...
美联储购买和出售证券...

持有的证券直接持有按回购协议持有

Securities held outright

Held under repurchase agreements

并借出... 借款净额并扩大或收缩其其他资产

and lends...

Borrowings-net

and expands or contracts its other assets

6,422

6,219

9,208

Maiden Lane, float and other assets
女士巷、浮动资产和其他资产

414,777

419,189

650,446

所有资产的总额为：美联储银行信贷

The grand total of all its assets is:

Federal Reserve Bank credit

7,310,252

7,318,178

外国央行也购买或货币化政府债券：外国央行持有的国债

Foreign central banks also buy,

or monetize, governments:

Foreign central-bank holdings of Treasury

and agencies 和机构

European Central Bank Balance Shetet (in millions of euros)
欧洲央行资产负债表（以百万欧元计）


Gold	$€$		$€$	$€$
Cash and securities 现金和证券
Loans	150,632		151,908
Other assets 其他资产
Total assets: 总资产:	$€$	$€$	$€$

Totals may not add due to rounding.
总数可能不一致，因为四舍五入的原因。

Movement of the Yield Curve
收益率曲线的运动

Commie ma 共产主义者吗

Evan Lorenz writes: 埃文·洛伦兹写道：

Credit contracted in the People's Republic in April, the first such monthlong shrinkage since 2005, as companies, municipalities and individuals repaid the equivalent of

billion more than they borrowed. And even that figure may overstate the amount of borrowed funds that are reaching the workaday Chinese economy. "Industrial loans," a still-growing category of debt, are often diverted to refinance overleveraged local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) rather than fund new factories, Rhodium Group analysts find.
4 月份，中国信贷出现收缩，这是自 2005 年以来的首次，因为企业、政府和个人偿还的金额比借款金额多了

亿。即使这个数字可能夸大了流向中国日常经济的借款资金量。瑞铂集团分析师发现，“工业贷款”这一仍在增长的债务类别经常被用于偿还过度杠杆化的地方政府融资工具（LGFVs），而不是用于资助新工厂。

The debt-fueled, fixed-asset investment model that drove China's growth continues to come unglued. In the four months through April, new-apartment sales registered a

decline measured over the year-ago period. Despite a

markdown from last year, mainland apartments are still extraordinarily pricey, offering investors a rental yield of just

, "about half that of Hong Kong and well below the almost 5% in New York," Bloomberg reports.
推动中国增长的债务驱动、固定资产投资模式继续解体。在四月份的四个月里，新公寓销售同比下降

。尽管较去年降价

，中国大陆的公寓仍然价格昂贵，仅提供

的租金收益率，彭博社报道称，“约为香港的一半，远低于纽约近 5%的水平”。

To prop up the residential real estate market, Beijing is urging local governments to buy unsold properties, but such encouragement is mostly rhetorical. Last week the People's Bank announced that it will offer

billion in loans (for up to five years at a

rate) to buy empty condos. It would take more than

trillion to clear the market, analysts at Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. estimate.
为了支撑住宅房地产市场，北京敦促地方政府购买未售出的房产，但这种鼓励大多是口头上的。上周，人民银行宣布将提供

亿元贷款（期限最长五年，利率为

）用于购买空置公寓。高盛集团分析师估计，需要超过

万亿元才能清理市场。

Unfortunately, local governments are up to their eyeballs in debt-in-
不幸的是，地方政府深陷债务-

CAUSE & EFFECT 因果关系

cro rejigger 克罗重新调整

cluding LGFVs, they are estimated to owe more than

trillion—and are dealing with cash-flow problems of their own. Four years ago, cities and provinces derived about a third of their revenues from land sales to property developers. Such transactions fell by

in April, to

billion, the lowest level since May 2016. To make up the shortfall, cities are jacking up the rates they charge consumers for gas, water, electricity and other basic services.
包括地方政府融资平台公司，据估计欠款超过

万亿美元，并且正在应对自身的现金流问题。四年前，城市和省份约三分之一的收入来自土地销售给房地产开发商。这类交易在四月份下降

，至

亿美元，为 2016 年 5 月以来的最低水平。为弥补收入不足，城市正在提高对消费者收取的天然气、水、电力和其他基本服务的费率。

Not surprisingly, consumers are losing a little of their vim. Last month, retail sales edged up by

over the year-earlier reading, the weakest growth since China ended its Covid lockdowns in December 2022. On Tuesday, the front page of the People's Bank of China-backed Financial News advocated for policies to boost consumer borrowing.
毫不奇怪，消费者的热情有所减退。上个月，零售销售同比增长

，为中国于 2022 年 12 月结束新冠封锁以来最疲弱的增长。周二，由中国人民银行支持的《金融新闻》头版呼吁出台政策以促进消费者借贷。

However, consumers may be taking cues from the labor market rather than the PBoC's newspaper. China stopped publishing its youth (ages 16-24) unemployment rate last June when the series reached a record high of

. The situation is still deteriorating to judge from the fact that Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang ordered government officials to make "all efforts" to help graduates find jobs last week.
然而，消费者可能更多地从劳动力市场而不是中国人民银行的报纸中获取线索。去年六月，中国停止发布 16-24 岁青年失业率，当时该系列达到了

的历史最高水平。从上周副总理丁学祥要求政府官员“全力以赴”帮助毕业生找工作的事实来看，情况仍在恶化。

China frequently discontinues data series when they show inconvenient developments. With that in mind, it is somewhat alarming that mandarins erased seven brokerage reports on the nation's declining credit demand last week.
中国经常在数据显示不便利的发展时中断数据系列。考虑到这一点，上周官员擦除了七份关于国家信贷需求下降的经纪报告，这有点令人担忧。

AnNUalized Rates of GROWth (latest data, weekly or monthly, in percent)
增长的年化率（最新数据，每周或每月，以百分比表示）

Reflation/Deflation Watch
通货膨胀/通货紧缩观察

FTSE Xinhua 600 Banks Index
富时新华 600 银行指数

Moody's Industrial Metals Index Silver
穆迪工业金属指数银

Oil

Soybeans 大豆

Rogers Int 1 Commodity Index
罗杰斯国际商品指数

Gold (London p.m. fix)
黄金（伦敦下午定价）

CRB raw industrial spot index
CRB 原始工业现货指数

ECRI Future Inflation Gauge
ECRI 未来通胀指数

Factory capacity utilization rate CUSIP requests
工厂产能利用率 CUSIP 请求

Fed's reverse repo facility (billions)
美联储的逆回购设施（数十亿）

Grant's High Beta Index
格兰特的高贝塔指数

*Index

as of 12/30/2022
*截至 2022 年 12 月 30 日的指数

3 months 3 个月	6 months 6 个月	12 month 12 个月

-0.7	-4.2	-0.7
-15.5	-11.7	-14.8
0.4	-1.0	-0.6
3.6	3.2	1.1
61.9	35.5	18.2
3.2	1.9	0.8
-0.3	-3.0	-7.1
2.7	0.7	-1.5

Latest week 最近一周	Prior week 上周	Year ago 一年前







560.90	554.87	551.94
(Apr.) 112.7 （四月）112.7	(Mar.) 112.9 （三月）112.9	(Apr.) 113.4 （四月）113.4
(Apr.) 78.4 （四月）78.4	(Mar. 78.5	(Apr.) 79.8 （四月）79.8
(Apr.) 3,001 (四月) 3,001	(Mar.) 3,022 3,022	(Apr.) 2,257 （四月）2,257
449.37	486.43
513.90	479.60	258.50

Effectiveness of the Monetary Policy
货币政策的有效性

M-2 and the monetary base (left scale) vs. the money multiplier (right scale)
M-2 和货币基础（左刻度）与货币乘数（右刻度）

(Continued from page 5) （接上页第 5 页）
Hallador says it's looking forward to receiving responses later this month to the requests for proposals it sent to data-center and industrial power users (just in case more than one customer will finally be required to make a go of things). "We've had a fair amount of interest," Bilsland says. "We'll see if interest translates into a deal. You never really know. We're confident that people want the volume."
Hallador 表示期待本月晚些时候收到对数据中心和工业用电用户发出的提案请求的回应（以防最终需要多个客户来推动事情的发展）。Bilsland 说：“我们引起了相当多的兴趣。”“我们将看到兴趣是否能转化为交易。你真的永远不知道。我们有信心人们想要这个量。”

For now, the power-purchase agreement with Hoosier is an earnings and revenue depressant. Hallador has presold 1.6 million MWh of energy for the last nine months of 2024 at

per MWh and 1.9 MWh for next year at a rate of

(prices include payments for capacity). When that agreement expires in 2026, Merom's contract price will jump to

per MWh.
目前，与胡奇尔的购电协议是一种盈利和收入压力。哈拉多公司已经预售了 2024 年最后九个月的 160 万兆瓦时能源，每兆瓦时

美元，以及明年的 1.9 兆瓦时，价格为

美元（价格包括容量支付）。当该协议于 2026 年到期时，梅罗姆的合同价格将跳至每兆瓦时

美元。

On the first-quarter earnings call, Bilsland presented an outline for what Merom might earn after the Hoosier agreement ends. Hallador is targeting electrical sales of 6 million MWh per year, which works out to a

utilization of the Merom plant and compares with sales of 4.2 million MWh last year. At that level of utilization, costs per MWh work out to approximately

, so selling electricity at around

per MWh would result in operating income of

million per year.
在第一季度收益电话会议上，Bilsland 提出了 Hoosier 协议结束后 Merom 可能赚取的概要。Hallador 的目标是每年实现 600 万兆瓦时的电力销售，这相当于 Merom 发电厂的

利用率，与去年的 420 万兆瓦时销售相比。在这种利用率水平下，每兆瓦时的成本约为

，因此以每兆瓦时

的价格出售电力将导致每年运营收入

百万美元。

Costs have been running higher than normal at the company's coalmining unit. Some of this overrun is due to Hallador trimming production to a target of 4.5 million tons a year from 6.6 million last year. On the first- quarter call, management said that costs had declined to the mid-$30s per ton by March from

last year. Hallador has already secured buyers for 2.8 million tons of coal in 2026 at an average price of

. Assuming sales of 4 million tons in 2026, a cost of

per ton and an average price of

per ton would produce

million in operating income.
公司的煤矿部门的成本一直高于正常水平。其中一部分超支是由于 Hallador 将产量从去年的 660 万吨削减到每年 450 万吨的目标。在第一季度电话会议上，管理层表示，截至 3 月，成本已从去年的

下降到每吨中等 30 美元左右。Hallador 已经在 2026 年以平均价格

为 2.8 百万吨煤炭找到了买家。假设 2026 年销售 400 万吨，每吨成本

，平均价格

，将产生

百万美元的营业收入。

Subtracting

million for corporate expenses, Hallador has a shot at generating

million in operating profit in 2026, which would value the company at 2.1 times enterprise value to that year's operating income. For comparison, coal miners Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. and Consol Energy, Inc. change hands at an average of 6.3 times this year's estimated operating income while power producers Vistra and NRG trade at 16.5 times this year's operating-income guesstimate.
减去

百万美元的企业费用后，Hallador 有望在 2026 年创造

百万美元的营业利润，这将使公司的估值为当年营业收入的 2.1 倍。作为对比，煤矿公司 Alliance Resource Partners, L.P.和 Consol Energy, Inc.今年的预估营业收入平均为 6.3 倍，而电力生产商 Vistra 和 NRG 今年的营业收入估算为 16.5 倍。

There are risks to the bull case, of course. "The power markets are starting to bake in much more attractive fundamentals," Lucas Pipes, who rates Hallador a hold for B. Riley Securities, Inc., tells me. "Nothing is ever done until it is done. You need to lock it in, and you need to execute." In other words, show me.
当然，看涨情绪存在风险。B. Riley Securities, Inc. 的 Lucas Pipes 告诉我：“电力市场开始反映出更有吸引力的基本面。”“任何事情都不是最终完成，直到真正完成。你需要锁定它，并且你需要执行。”换句话说，行动起来。

"As coal-fired generation is a shrinking industry, there are diseconomies of scale," Pipes continues. "I heard an anecdote over a year ago from another operator of a coal-fired plant out west. He said, concerning a specific part, 'There are only two individuals across the country who can fix it.... If they don't feel like it, this
“由于燃煤发电是一个日益萎缩的行业，规模经济不再存在，”派普斯继续说道。“我在一年多前听到了一个来自西部另一家燃煤发电厂的操作员的轶事。他提到了一个特定的零部件，说道‘全国范围内只有两个人能修理它……如果他们不想修，那这…”



sales
operating income 营业收入	38.5	65.0	30.4	-6.0	3.1
net income 净收入	21.0	44.8	18.1	-3.8	-6.2
earnings per share 每股收益	0.59	1.25	0.55	-0.12	-0.20
diluted shares 稀释股份	34.8	36.8	33.6	30.6	-30.4

cash	1.6	2.8	3.0	2.5	8.0
debt	89.8	106.9	101.7	107.8	-136.1
total assets 总资产	585.4	589.8	630.6	354.0	384.1

*12 months ended March 31, 2024.
2024 年 3 月 31 日结束的 12 个月。

source: company reports plant isn't running until they decide to show up.'"
公司报告称工厂在他们决定出现之前不会运转。

There is also the risk, observes paidup-subscriber John Niforatos, of Hallador's single generating station closing down or needing maintenance or having "to go offline for some reason." Niforatos, accepting that risk, says he holds a position in Hallador.
观察到付费订阅者约翰·尼福拉托斯（John Niforatos）指出，Hallador 的单一发电站关闭、需要维护或因“某种原因下线”的风险也存在。尼福拉托斯表示，他接受了这种风险，并持有 Hallador 的头寸。

As of March 31, unrated Hallador's balance sheet showed a net debt balance of

million, a sum equal to 1.6 times trailing Ebitda. In the 12 months ended March, operating income covered interest expense by 2.8 times.
截至 3 月 31 日，未评级的 Hallador 资产负债表显示净债务余额为

百万美元，相当于 1.6 倍的过去一年的息税折旧摊销前利润（Ebitda）。在截至 3 月的 12 个月中，营业收入覆盖利息支出的倍数为 2.8 倍。

Hallador is somewhat of a Wall Street orphan. Exactly one analyst covers the stock, the aforementioned Pipes. Short interest sums to

of the float, although holders of a

million Hallador convertible note might be hedging their equity exposure through short sales rather than expressing outright bearishness. Over the past 12 months, insiders have purchased 46,100 shares at a net cost of

. In aggregate, the C-suite owns

of shares outstanding; Bilsland personally owns

.
Hallador 在某种程度上是华尔街的孤儿。只有一位分析师关注这支股票，即上述的 Pipes。尽管空头利益总和占流通股的

，但持有

百万美元 Hallador 可转换票据的持有人可能通过做空销售来对冲其股权敞口，而不是表达明显的悲观情绪。在过去的 12 个月中，内部人士以净成本

购买了 46,100 股。总体而言，C 级管理层拥有

流通股份；Bilsland 个人拥有

。

To highlight the news that, starting last quarter, Hallador began to derive more revenue from power generation than from mining, management is doing a kind of inside-baseball rebranding; it's in the process of changing the corporate Standard Industrial Classification code to 4911 (electrical services) from 1220 (bituminous coal and lignite mining).
为了突出这一消息，从上个季度开始，哈拉多公司开始从发电业务中获得的收入超过了采矿业务，管理层正在进行一种内部品牌推广；正在将公司的标准工业分类代码从 1220（烟煤和褐煤开采）更改为 4911（电力服务）。

"It's exciting," Bilsland tells me. "We spent the past 19 years in a contracting market. Now we're entering a market that is expanding because, for the first time in 25 years, demand for electricity is growing in everything, from electric vehicles to AI to the onshoring of industry."
“这是令人兴奋的，”比尔兰告诉我。“过去 19 年我们处于一个萎缩的市场。现在我们进入了一个正在扩张的市场，因为在过去 25 年中，从电动汽车到人工智能再到工业本土化，对电力的需求首次出现增长。”

Mixed-up signals 混乱的信号

The Dow Jones Transportation Average hardly seemed to notice last week's splashy new high in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. By the rules of Dow Theory, it's no kind of bull market when a new high in the Industrials is not promptly confirmed by a new high in the Transports, and vice versa. So it may bode badly that the
道琼斯运输平均指数似乎几乎没有注意到上周道琼斯工业平均指数的新高。根据道氏理论的规则，当工业指数的新高没有得到运输指数的及时确认，反之亦然，这并不是一种牛市。因此，这可能预示着……

Transports remain stalled

below their 2021 all-time high. Of course, Charles H. Dow, cofounder of The Wall Street Journal and eponym of the theory, never contemplated a peacetime federal deficit equal to

of GDP or the balance sheet of the yetunimagined American central bank swelling to

trillion.
运输仍停滞在其 2021 年历史最高水平以下

。当然，沃尔街日报的联合创始人查尔斯·道（Charles H. Dow）从未想过和平时期的联邦赤字相当于 GDP 的

，或者尚未想象的美国中央银行的资产负债表膨胀到

万亿美元。

Confusion is the topic at hand, specifically the babble of once-trusty indices and indicators that can't seem to find common ground. In preview, we fall back on the Old Faithful of equity valuations to venture a guess as to future stock market returns, and we change our mind over a trio of truckingrelated equities.
混乱是当前的话题，具体来说是曾经可靠的指数和指标的喋喋不休，似乎无法达成共识。在预览中，我们回归到股票估值的老朋友，试图猜测未来股市回报，并在一系列与卡车相关的股票上改变主意。

Back to the nonconforming Dow indices. "In determining the trend," the late, great Richard Russell, proprietor of Dow Theory Letters, authoritatively laid it down, "it is a never-tobe-forgotten rule that the movements of both averages must be considered together. The movement of one average must always confirm the other (although not necessarily on the same day), and conclusions drawn from the action of one average unconfirmed by the other are usually deceptive. The confirmation principle is based on

ic. If there is to be a valid increase in manufacturing and production, there will also be an accompanying increase in shipping and transportation. Goods produced, if they are not to sit idly in the warehouses, must be distributed to their destinations."
回到不符合标准的道琼斯指数。已故的伟大人物理查德·拉塞尔（Richard Russell），《道琼斯理论通讯》的所有者，在确定趋势时，权威地指出：“永远不要忘记的规则是，必须同时考虑两个平均数的运动。一个平均数的运动必须始终证实另一个平均数（尽管不一定在同一天），从一个平均数的行动中得出的结论，如果另一个平均数未经证实，则通常是具有欺骗性的。确认原则基于

ic。如果制造和生产要有有效增长，那么航运和运输也会相应增加。生产的商品，如果不想闲置在仓库中，必须分配到它们的目的地。”

It's an intuitively appealing principle, but what propelled the transport index to its 2021 peak had little to do with the business cycle. Under pandemic house arrest, citizens spent their government-issued stimmie checks on a consumer-electronics buying binge. Compounding that surge in retail demand, Covid-era supply chains became snarled, including the ones through which 20 -foot-equivalent shipping containers had once efficiently moved. The dysfunction increased the utilization of America's trucking fleet and precipitated a surge in freight rates.
这是一个直观吸引人的原则，但推动运输指数达到 2021 年峰值的原因与商业周期关系不大。在疫情封锁期间，公民们将政府发放的刺激支票用于购买消费电子产品的狂潮。零售需求激增的同时，新冠时代的供应链也变得混乱，包括 20 英尺等效集装箱曾经高效运输的渠道。这种功能障碍增加了美国卡车队的利用率，并导致货运费率激增。

When the lockdowns ended, consumers decamped from their homes to purchase flights, hotel rooms, cruises-experiences! The collapse in the demand for merchandise relieved supply chains, released trucking capacity and toppled freight rates. And that
当封锁解除时，消费者离开家购买机票、酒店房间、邮轮等体验！商品需求的崩溃缓解了供应链，释放了卡车运力，导致货运费率下跌。

was the basis for our bearish call on truckers Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings, Inc. and Werner Enterprises, Inc., along with the engine-maker Cummins, Inc., in the issue of Grant's dated Nov. 11, 2022.
这是我们对卡车运输公司 Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings, Inc.和 Werner Enterprises, Inc.以及发动机制造商康明斯公司做出看跌预测的依据，刊登在 2022 年 11 月 11 日的 Grant's 杂志上。

Profit margins for truckload carriers fell to a 14 -year low in the first quarter of this year, according to ACT Research. Consensus estimates for Knight's 2024 adjusted earnings per share have collapsed to

from a little over

in late 2022 while, over the same span, estimates for Werner have plunged to

per share from slightly over

. Since we had our bearish say, Knight's shares have returned negative

and Werner's negative

compared with a

levitation in the S&P 500 (all figures include reinvested dividends)
卡车整车运输商的利润率在今年第一季度降至 14 年来的最低水平，据 ACT 研究称。根据共识估计，Knight 公司 2024 年调整后的每股收益从 2022 年底的略高于

美元下降至

美元，与此同时，Werner 公司的估计每股收益也从略高于

美元下降至

美元。自从我们发表看跌言论以来，Knight 公司的股价下跌

，Werner 公司的股价下跌

，而标普 500 指数则上涨

（所有数字均包括再投资的股息）。

Would you suppose that a collapse in the profitability of Cummins's customers would lead to a decline in orders for heavy trucks and the Cummins engines inside them? So would—and so did—we. But orders scarcely flagged, and carriers have continued to spend on new equipment, "due to an expensive EPA mandate landing in 2027," as ACT president and senior analyst Kenny Vieth explains. So Cummins's shares have generated a positive

return since we said they wouldn't.
您是否认为康明斯客户盈利能力的下降会导致重型卡车订单减少，进而影响其中搭载康明斯发动机的订单？我们曾这样认为，事实也确实如此。但订单几乎没有下降，运输公司继续投资于新设备，“因为 ACT 总裁兼高级分析师肯尼·维斯解释说，昂贵的 EPA 法规将于 2027 年生效。”因此，自我们表示康明斯股票不会表现良好以来，康明斯的股票回报率已经为正

。

The cure for low trucking rates indeed turns out to be low trucking rates. "Data show that capacity is con- tracting," FreightWaves notes in its second-quarter report on carrier rates. "This trend suggests a market adjustment where demand should soon start to outpace available capacity, potentially signaling an end to the freight recession by as early as late 2024 or spring 2025."
低运输费率的解决方案确实是低运输费率。 FreightWaves 在其关于承运商费率的第二季度报告中指出：“数据显示，运力正在收缩。”“这一趋势表明市场正在调整，需求很快可能会开始超过可用运力，可能意味着货运衰退最早将在 2024 年底或 2025 年春季结束。”

The market is-or is meant to be-forward-looking, and the shares of Knight, Werner and Cummins are likely to rally before the improvement shows up in earnings. We therefore lift our anathema on those stocks.
市场是或应该是前瞻性的，Knight、Werner 和 Cummins 的股票可能会在盈利改善之前出现反弹。因此，我们解除对这些股票的禁忌。

Utilities are a time-honored investment safe haven, so it's odd to see the utility component of the S&P 500 rally by

this year, outpacing the blue-chip gauge itself by 3 percentage points. The normally staid electrical power sector is seeing turbocharged growth thanks to the "electrification of everything," in particular of artificial intelligence (see page 3).
公用事业是一个历史悠久的投资避风港，因此看到标普 500 指数中的公用事业部分今年上涨

，超过蓝筹指数本身 3 个百分点，这有点奇怪。通常稳重的电力行业由于“万物电气化”，特别是人工智能的推动，正在经历着增长的加速（见第 3 页）。

The inverted yield curve (of which more below) has long been warning about the recession that evidently hasn't materialized. Spreads on the ICE BofA U.S. High Yield Index, at 307 basis points, are historically tight to Treasurys. Over the past quarter century, they have been this compressed or more in only

of the minutes out of every investment hour.
倒挂的收益曲线（稍后详述）长期以来一直在警告尚未出现的衰退。美国 ICE BofA 高收益指数的利差为 307 个基点，与国债的历史差距很小。在过去的四分之一个世纪里，它们只有在每个投资小时中的

分钟中才会如此压缩或更多。

Reasoning from this fact alone, one might assume that credit performance is primo. It is not so. According to Moody's Investors Service, the
仅凭这一事实推理，人们可能会认为信用表现是最佳的。事实并非如此。根据穆迪投资者服务公司的数据，
"issuer-weighted spec-grade default rate stood around

[in the first quarter] on a 12 -month basis, the highest in three years, indicating ongoing challenges for many companies." The source of rising defaults and narrow spreads alike is the intense competition brought on by private credit funds.
“发行人加权的次级违约率在过去 12 个月中约为

，为三年来最高，表明许多公司仍面临持续挑战。” 上升违约率和狭窄利差的根源都是私人信贷基金带来的激烈竞争。"

Yet "Dr. Copper, the metal with the Ph.D. in economics," to borrow a line from John Mendelson, once of Morgan Stanley, is making new highs. So one might conjecture: no recession.
然而，“铜博士，经济学博士”的金句来自摩根士丹利的约翰·门德尔森，如今铜价正在创造新高。因此，人们可能会推测：没有衰退。

But wait. The yield curve, as measured by the difference between

year Treasury and 3-month bill yields, has been inverted for 572 days. Ergo, there must be a recession.
但是等等。按照

年期国债和 3 个月期票据收益率之间的差异来衡量，收益率曲线已经倒挂了 572 天。因此，必然会出现经济衰退。

The Bloomberg U.S. Economic Surprise Index, which measures how new economic data compare
彭博美国经济惊喜指数衡量新经济数据的比较情况

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source: The Bloomberg 彭博社

with consensus estimates, registers at negative 0.36, indicating a string of disappointing sightings. So, yes, possibly, a cyclical downturn is upon us. But tell that to the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model, which predicts real, annualized growth of

in the second quarter.
根据共识预测，登记为负 0.36，表明一连串令人失望的迹象。所以，是的，可能，一个周期性下行正在临近。但是告诉亚特兰大联邦储备银行的 GDPNow 模型，它预测第二季度的实际年化增长为

。

And tell it to the S&P 500, which is trading at 34.7 times its cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio, a level exceeded only during the everything bubble in 2021 and during the dotcom boom of the 1990s.
告诉标普 500 指数，它的循环调整市盈率为 34.7 倍，这一水平仅在 2021 年的一切泡沫和上世纪 90 年代的互联网热潮中超过。

Naturally, animal spirits are roaring-respondents to the May BofA Global Fund Manager Survey registered as the most bullish since November 2021. For the record, from Jan. 3, 2022 through Oct. 12, 2022, the S&P 500 logged a

decline, including reinvested dividends.
自然地，动物精神正在咆哮-根据 2021 年 11 月以来最乐观的 5 月美银美林全球基金经理调查的受访者。值得一提的是，从 2022 年 1 月 3 日到 2022 年 10 月 12 日，标普 500 指数录得

下跌，包括再投资的股息。

Small investors, too, are all in. According to the American Association of Individual Investors, mom-and-pop savers allocated

of their portfolios to stocks in April, only the

time in the past two decades that such commitments have topped

. The median, one-year forward return following such a high-water mark in the S&P 500 is a meager

over the prior 13 instances.
小投资者也都入市了。根据美国个人投资者协会的数据，四月份散户投资者将他们投资组合的

配置到股票上，这是过去二十年中仅有的

次，这种承诺超过了

。标普 500 指数在此类高点后的中位数一年期前瞻回报仅为

，在过去 13 次实例中表现平平。

The record is small consolation to the surviving bears. There was one fewer of this species on Sunday when Mike Wilson, chief U.S. equity strategist and CIO at Morgan Stanley, revised his former downbeat callthe S&P 500 would fall by

by year end, he had maintained-to a slightly upbeat one: The blue chips will rally by

through June 2025 , he says now.
记录对幸存的熊来说是微不足道的安慰。上周日，当摩根士丹利首席美国股票策略师兼首席投资官迈克·威尔逊将他之前悲观的预测修正为稍微乐观的时候，这个物种的数量减少了一个：他现在表示，标普 500 指数将在 2025 年 6 月之前上涨

。

"The problem today," colleague Evan Lorenz observes, "is not a looming recession (although one will occur eventually) or a financial crisis, but, with everyone fully invested, who will be the incremental buyer? Note, for example, that last week's meme-stock rally in the shares of retail favorites GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. fizzled after a scant two days. The sequel is never as good as the original."
同事埃文·洛伦兹观察到：“今天的问题不是迫在眉睫的经济衰退（尽管最终会发生），也不是金融危机，而是在所有人都已充分投资的情况下，谁将是增量买家？例如，上周零售热门股票 GameStop Corp.和 AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc.的股票狂欢在短短两天后就消退了。续集永远不如原著。”

No distress here 这里没有困扰

James Robertson, Jr. writes:
詹姆斯·罗伯逊二世写道：

Creditors of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX can expect the return of their money plus interest paid at the princely rate of

, according to a draft reorganization plan filed on May 7. That amounts to a recovery rate of between

and

for FTX's customers and lenders.
破产的加密货币交易所 FTX 的债权人可以期待在 5 月 7 日提交的重组计划草案中以

的高利率获得他们的资金及利息。这相当于 FTX 的客户和借款人的回收率在

和

之间。

Since Grant's first surveyed the opportunities in crypto salvage investing (see the issue dated March 10, 2023), the market price of FTX claims has climbed nearly fivefold, from 19 cents
自格兰特首次调查加密救助投资机会（请参阅 2023 年 3 月 10 日的问题）以来，FTX 索赔的市场价格已经猛涨了近五倍，从 19 美分
on the dollar to 109 , according to broker Cherokee Acquisition. Crime may not pay the criminal, but in this case it stands handsomely to compensate the victims.
根据经纪人切诺基收购的说法，每美元赔偿 109 美元。犯罪可能不会让罪犯得利，但在这种情况下，它将慷慨地赔偿受害者。

Perhaps no one is in better spirits than CEO John J. Ray III, who turned an

billion hole in the company's books left over from Sam BankmanFried into an estimated surplus of around

billion. "In any bankruptcy," Ray told Bloomberg shortly after submitting the draft plan, "this is just an unbelievable result."
也许没有人比首席执行官约翰·J·雷三世更心情愉快了，他将公司账簿中由山姆·班克曼·弗里德留下的

亿美元漏洞转变为约

亿美元的预计盈余。雷在提交草案后不久告诉彭博社：“在任何破产案中，这只是一个令人难以置信的结果。”

One of the incredible reasons for FTX's rebound is the fact that the price of Solana, the exchange's largest cryptocurrency holding, rose by

from

when FTX filed for bankruptcy 18 months ago. The price of bitcoin rose by

.
FTX 反弹的一个令人难以置信的原因是，18 个月前 FTX 申请破产时，交易所持有的最大加密货币 Solana 的价格从

上涨到

。比特币的价格上涨了

。

Of course, a return of

is preferable to a

return, and some creditors are pushing back against the of crypto. It would take a majority of creditors to attempt to block the approval of the plan when it comes up for a vote in June.
当然，

的回报比

的回报更可取，一些债权人正在反对加密货币的使用。当计划在六月份投票时，需要大多数债权人尝试阻止计划的批准。

Another boon for the estate was an early investment in the AI company Anthropic PBC, which subsequently secured a

billion investment from Amazon.com, Inc. From an initial outlay of

million, FTX has sold twothirds of its position to two dozen buyers for

million so far.
该地产的另一个好处是早期投资于人工智能公司 Anthropic PBC，后来该公司从亚马逊公司获得了

亿美元的投资。FTX 最初投资

百万美元，到目前为止已经向二十四名买家出售了其持仓的三分之二，总额为

百万美元。

Another happy surprise was the plan to receive greenbacks instead
另一个令人高兴的惊喜是计划接收美元

source: Xclaim decision of the Internal Revenue Service and Commodity Futures Trading Commission to yield their place in the creditors' queue to the victimized customers. Not previously known for its big heart, the IRS has agreed to stay its claims on back taxes and fines until the majority of creditors and customers are repaid in full, including interest. Moreover, FTX will not pursue clawbacks from customers who withdrew funds in the days leading up to the bankruptcy.
美国国内税务局和商品期货交易委员会决定让位于受害客户的债权人队列。以前并不以慷慨著称的国内税务局已同意暂停对拖欠税款和罚款的索赔，直到大多数债权人和客户被全额偿还，包括利息。此外，FTX 不会追索在破产前几天提取资金的客户。

The all-pervading spirit of broth-
弥漫的高汤精神

source: The Bloomberg erly love is apparent, not least in the rate of interest to be paid. The plan proposes

basis points higher than the customary federal judgment rate, which is the yield on the oneyear Treasury bill. "Definitely juicier than the rate that would typically be applied to unsecured claims as postpetition interest in a solvent debtor case," Andrew Glantz, chief strategy officer at claims marketplace Xclaim, tells me. "Here, the debtors have gone out of their way to maintain that they are not, in fact, solvent. This enables the estate to avoid sending value to equity and preserves its ability to pursue certain claims."
彭博早期的爱情显而易见，尤其体现在要支付的利率上。该计划提议比惯例的联邦判决利率高

个基点，即一年期国债的收益率。"绝对比通常适用于无抵押债权作为破产后利息的利率更有吸引力，"债权市场 Xclaim 的首席战略官安德鲁·格兰茨告诉我。"在这里，债务人竭尽全力维持他们实际上并非偿债能力充足。这使得财产可以避免向股权发送价值，并保留其追索某些债权的能力。"

With payments expected later this year, customers and creditors with claims worth

or less can expect to receive 118 cents on the dollar, i.e., principal plus two years of interest. That class makes up

of the exchanges' creditors. Larger creditors, though they have to wait longer, may receive a cut of a "special remission fund" if government authorities agree to reduce their claims.
预计今年晚些时候付款，索赔金额为

美元或更少的客户和债权人可以期望收到每美元 118 美分，即本金加两年利息。这一类别占到

的交易所债权人。较大的债权人，尽管需要等待更长时间，如果政府当局同意减少他们的索赔，可能会获得“特别减免基金”的一部分。

Equity investors are not so lucky. The proposed plan allots exactly nothing to the likes of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Tom Brady. Holders of the FTX token FTT will also receive nothing. Bankman-Fried's token continues to trade and, somehow, commands a market cap of

million.
股权投资者就没那么幸运了。拟议的计划对安大略省教师养老金计划和汤姆·布雷迪等人一概不予分配。FTX 代币 FTT 的持有者也将一无所获。班克曼-弗里德的代币继续交易，并以

百万的市值获得了某种程度的认可。

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On Tuesday, Oct. I, join us in-person at the Plaza Hotel in New York City or remotely via live webinar to hear from our scintillating lineup of expert speakers:
在 10 月 1 日星期二，加入我们在纽约市广场酒店现场参加或通过直播网络研讨会远程参加，听取我们一系列专家演讲嘉宾的精彩演讲：

William A. Ackman 威廉·A·阿克曼

Pershing Square Capital Mgmt.
柏金广场资本管理。

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Equinox Partners Investment Management
春分合伙投资管理
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Simplify Asset Mgmt. 简化资产管理。

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Robotti & Co. Advisors
罗博蒂及合伙人顾问公司

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Saba Capital Mgmt. 萨巴资本管理。

I N T E R E S T R A T E O B S E R V E R
利率观察者

Commie macro rejigger 共产主义宏重组

Evan Lorenz writes: 埃文·洛伦兹写道：

Credit contracted in the People's Republic in April, the first such monthlong shrinkage since 2005, as companies, municipalities and individuals repaid the equivalent of

The debt-fueled, fixed-asset investment model that drove China's growth continues to come unglued. In the four months through April, new-apartment sales registered a

decline measured over the year-ago period. Despite a

markdown from last year, mainland apartments are still extraordinarily pricey, offering investors a rental yield of just

。尽管较去年降价

，中国大陆的公寓仍然价格昂贵，仅提供

的租金收益率，彭博社报道称，“约为香港的一半，远低于纽约近 5%的水平”。

billion in loans (for up to five years at a

rate) to buy empty condos. It would take more than

亿元贷款（期限最长五年，利率为

）用于购买空置公寓。高盛集团分析师估计，需要超过

万亿元才能清理市场。
Unfortunately, local governments are up to their eyeballs in debt-including LGFVs, they are estimated to owe more than

trillion-and are dealing with cash-flow problems of their own. Four years ago, cities and provinces derived about a third of their revenues from land sales to property developers. Such transactions fell by

in April, to

billion, the lowest level since May 2016. To make up the shortfall, cities are jacking up the rates they charge consumers for gas, water, electricity and other basic services.
不幸的是，地方政府背负着沉重的债务负担，包括地方政府融资平台，据估计欠款超过

万亿，他们自己也面临着现金流问题。四年前，城市和省份约三分之一的收入来自土地销售给房地产开发商。这类交易在四月份下降了

，至

亿，为 2016 年 5 月以来的最低水平。为弥补收入不足，城市正在提高对消费者收取的天然气、水、电力和其他基本服务的费率。

Not surprisingly, consumers are losing a little of their vim. Last month, retail sales edged up by

over the year-earlier reading, the weakest growth since China ended its Covid lockdowns in December 2022. On Tuesday, the front page of the People's
毫不奇怪，消费者的热情有所减退。上个月，零售销售同比增长

，为中国自 2022 年 12 月结束新冠封锁以来最疲弱的增长。周二，《人民日报》头版报道。
Bank of China-backed Financial Neres advocated for policies to boost consumer borrowing.
中国银行支持的金融公司 Neres 倡导制定政策以促进消费者借贷。

的历史最高水平。从上周副总理丁学祥要求政府官员“全力以赴”帮助毕业生找工作的事实来看，情况仍在恶化。

Grant's

and Grant's Interest Rate Observer

are registered trademarks of Grant's Financial Publishing, Inc. PLEASE do not post this on any website, forward it to anyone else, or make copies (print or electronic) for anyone else. Copyright

和 Grant's Interest Rate Observer

GRANTSS 授予

The case of the fragile 易碎 的案例

No lump of coal没有一块煤

Evan Lorenz writes: 埃文·洛伦兹写道：

CREDIT CREATION 信用创造

European Central Bank Balance Shetet (in millions of euros)欧洲央行资产负债表（以百万欧元计）

Commie ma 共产主义者吗

CAUSE & EFFECT 因果关系

cro rejigger 克罗重新调整

AnNUalized Rates of GROWth (latest data, weekly or monthly, in percent)增长的年化率（最新数据，每周或每月，以百分比表示）

Reflation/Deflation Watch通货膨胀/通货紧缩观察

Hallador Energy Co. at a glance all figures in except per share dataHallador Energy Co. 一览所有数字为 ，除每股数据外。

Mixed-up signals 混乱的信号

GRANTS 拨款

No distress here 这里没有困扰

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Sean Fieler 肖恩·费勒

I N T E R E S T R A T E O B S E R V E R利率观察者

Commie macro rejigger 共产主义宏重组

The case of the fragile
易碎的案例

No lump of coal
没有一块煤

European Central Bank Balance Shetet (in millions of euros)
欧洲央行资产负债表（以百万欧元计）

AnNUalized Rates of GROWth (latest data, weekly or monthly, in percent)
增长的年化率（最新数据，每周或每月，以百分比表示）

Reflation/Deflation Watch
通货膨胀/通货紧缩观察

Hallador Energy Co. at a glance all figures in except per share data
Hallador Energy Co. 一览所有数字为，除每股数据外。

Save when you register now for the...
立即注册，立即节省...

I N T E R E S T R A T E O B S E R V E R
利率观察者