What you need to know about the private-credit meltdown 20260401

關於私人信貸崩潰你需要知道的事

Hi, this is Inside Economics. I'm Ratchner Shambog, the Economist Business Affairs Editor. Private credit has hit the headlines recently. A number of funds have seen a rush of clients trying to redeem their investments. One company Blue Owl has had to shut down one of its funds entirely. This is an asset class that's seen explosive growth and which, as a consequence, is often touted as the source of the next financial crisis. So what's actually going on and how worried should you be? With me to help make sense of it is Mike Bird, our Wall Street editor, who's visiting London. I'm Mike Rochner. And Henry is away, so we're very pleased to be joined by Josh Roberts, who covers capital markets for us. Hello Josh. Hi, Ratchner. Today we're going to look at three things.
嗨，這裡是《經濟學人內幕》。我是《經濟學人》商業事務編輯拉特納·尚博格。私人信貸最近成為頭條新聞。多家基金面臨客戶急於贖回投資的浪潮。藍貓頭鷹公司甚至不得不完全關閉旗下其中一支基金。這是一個經歷爆炸性成長的資產類別，因此常被吹捧為下一場金融危機的根源。那麼實際情況究竟如何？我們該有多擔憂？今天特別邀請到正在倫敦訪問的華爾街編輯麥克·伯德來幫我們解析。我是麥克·羅奇納。由於亨利有事缺席，我們很高興邀請到負責資本市場報導的喬許·羅伯茲加入。你好喬許。嗨，拉特納。今天我們將聚焦三個重點。

What private credit is? Just how much trouble the asset class is in? And last, I want to look at the wider consequences for the rise of private markets, the financial system and the economy as a whole. So if we start first then with what private credit actually is, Mike, you are a Wall Street editor. Explain it to us. This is, it's actually a surprisingly tough question. You ask two people, even two people working in private markets and you'll get three opinions as to what private credit actually means, I think the broadest version of this is its loans, lending by firms that aren't banks, alternative asset managers often, and lending that's not done in the bond market. So anything that comes between those two things is fair game as the broadest definition of private credit.
什麼是私人信貸？這個資產類別究竟陷入多大的困境？最後，我想探討私人市場崛起對金融體系和整體經濟帶來的更廣泛影響。那麼，我們先從私人信貸的本質談起，麥克，身為華爾街編輯，請為我們解釋一下。這其實是個出乎意料困難的問題。即使詢問兩位在私人市場工作的人，對於私人信貸的定義也可能得到三種不同見解。我認為最廣泛的定義是：由非銀行機構（通常是另類資產管理公司）提供的貸款，且這類借貸不在債券市場進行。因此，介於這兩者之間的任何借貸形式，都可視為廣義的私人信貸範疇。

It's typically bought by a third group, so it'll be bought by insurance companies, pension funds down the line. So the private market firms are originating this debt. There's a narrow definition that applies more cleanly to transactions done between private equity companies where a lot of the growth of private credit has come. But that's it. It's more illiquid than a lot of other forms of debt. It's not as traded as definitely as corporate bonds. It's not as traded as banks indicated loans. And it's also generally lent to mid-sized slightly riskier companies. And that difference in definition probably explains why thinking about the size of the market is really hard as well. I've seen estimates from $1.5 trillion to $3, something like $3 trillion, but what we do know is that this is grown very rapidly. Josh, so tell us about that. Yeah, so the big growth decade for private credit was the 2010s, and there were two factors driving that. One was the pool back in bank lending that we saw after the financial crisis due to the more stringent capital rules that regulators imposed on them after the financial crisis. Private credit institutions rushed into field that gap. But then a second thing happened, as Mike mentioned, a lot of this lending is to support buyouts done by private equity firms. And those boomed in the 2010s, so private credit both had this kind of benign regulatory environment for their growth and this boom that was happening that they could support. What's kind of interesting about that growth is you think of kind of bank lending and private credit lending as very separate. Actually, a lot of the same people, I was, I was, before I was a journalist, I was working with some of these private credit firms during the 2010s. And I remember being at a conference in about 2015, where we were talking about, the amazing growth of this kind of newly resurgent asset class. And somebody on stage said one sec, but I'm looking around the room. And I'm looking at all of the people who do the lending decisions for the private credit lenders and you know, you used to work at Lloyds and you used to work at HSBC and used to work at RBS. And there was this kind of sense that because regulation had changed, the lending had shifted from banks into private credit institutions. But that's because the people making these decisions had shifted. And we're kind of the same people as before. So it's kind of a way in which the financial system changed while still looking kind of the same from personal eyes. That's interesting. So does that mean that really a lot of what explains the growth of private credit then is regulatory arbitrage and there's not much kind of additional innovation here? I think there is that, but this private equity boom that as Mike mentioned, ended up kind of enveloping a lot of kind of small to mid-sized businesses, changed the flavor of it right. So a lot of private credit, it's, you know, 1.5, let's take 1.5 trillions I'll figure that that's not actually enormous. That's maybe kind of half the size of one of the big American tech giants. But it's very concentrated in sectors that people know well. So for example, high street firms are big borrowers from private credit. Increasingly care homes is another big borrower kind of dentistry.
這類債務通常由第三方購買，例如保險公司、養老基金等長期投資機構。私人市場公司負責發起這類債務。狹義而言，私人信貸更精確指向私募股權公司間的交易，這正是該市場多數成長的來源。其流動性遠低於其他債務形式，交易活躍度不及公司債券，也不如銀行指標貸款流通。這類信貸通常投放於中型且風險稍高的企業。定義差異或許能解釋為何市場規模難以精確估算——我曾看過 1.5 兆至 3 兆美元不等的預測數據，但能確定的是其成長極為迅猛。喬許，請為我們深入解析。是的，私人信貸在 2010 年代迎來爆發式成長，主要受兩大因素驅動：一是金融危機後監管機構實施更嚴格的資本規定，導致銀行放貸急遽收縮；二是私人信貸機構趁勢填補了這片市場空白。 但接著發生了第二件事，正如麥克提到的，這類貸款中有許多是用來支持私募股權公司進行的收購。而這些在 2010 年代蓬勃發展，因此私人信貸不僅享有這種有利於其成長的監管環境，還有他們能夠支持的繁榮景象。這種成長的有趣之處在於，你可能認為銀行貸款和私人信貸貸款是截然不同的。實際上，很多是同一批人，我在成為記者之前，在 2010 年代曾與一些私人信貸公司合作。我記得大約在 2015 年參加一個會議，我們討論著這種新興資產類別的驚人成長。台上有人說稍等一下，但我環顧房間四周。我看著所有為私人信貸機構做出貸款決策的人，你知道，你以前在勞埃德銀行工作，你以前在匯豐銀行工作，以前在蘇格蘭皇家銀行工作。當時有一種感覺，因為監管環境改變了，貸款業務已從銀行轉移到私人信貸機構。但這是因為做出這些決策的人已經轉移了。 我們基本上還是同一批人。所以這就像是金融體系已經改變，但從個人視角看來卻依然如故。這點很有意思。那麼這是否意味著，私人信貸的成長很大程度上其實是監管套利的結果，並沒有太多實質性的創新呢？我認為確實有這層因素，但正如麥克提到的，這波私募股權熱潮最終涵蓋了大量中小型企業，改變了整個市場的風貌。所以很多私人信貸的規模——比如說 1.5 兆美元吧，我得說這數字其實不算特別龐大，大概只相當於美國某家科技巨頭市值的一半。但它高度集中在人們熟悉的領域，例如商業街企業就是私人信貸的主要借款方，而護理機構和牙科診所也日益成為重要的借款群體。

It's another big borrower. So even though it kind of, the actual lending activity, the financial institutions that are making it don't look kind of all that different, it's ended up being a kind of an industry that's quite focused on a few particular sectors. And that's maybe one of the sources of risk in it. This is to be clear what banks say. When you ask them about this, they say, "These are people we used to employ. This is an activity that we used to do." You know, other than broadly syndicated loans which are more traded, they say this used to be the bread and butter of our business. And we were drummed out of it by nasty post financial crisis regulation. And there's some, there's some truth to that. You know, they really had, they had it made more difficult. It takes up more capital, it takes up more of their balance sheet. It had to hold more liquid assets. They've never reasonable argument that they were drummed out of this. I think it's probably a little bit too far, so it's all regulatory arbitrage. But certainly banks complain endlessly about being squeezed out of making precisely these loans. And what's the appeal of private credit, do you think?
這又是一個大型借款人。所以儘管實際的放貸活動、進行放貸的金融機構看起來並沒有太大不同，但最終這個產業變得相當集中在幾個特定領域。這或許是其中一個風險來源。要澄清的是，銀行是這麼說的。當你問他們這件事時，他們會說：「這些人以前是我們雇用的。這是我們以前從事的業務。」你知道，除了交易更廣泛的聯合貸款之外，他們說這曾經是我們業務的麵包和奶油。而我們是被金融危機後那些討厭的規定趕出這個市場的。這其中確實有一些道理。你知道，他們確實面臨更多困難。這需要更多資本，佔用更多資產負債表。他們必須持有更多流動資產。他們被趕出這個市場的說法並非毫無根據。我認為可能有點過頭了，所以這全都是監管套利。但銀行確實無休止地抱怨被擠出這些精確的貸款業務。那麼你認為私人信貸的吸引力是什麼呢？

If you're an investor, if you're a buyer of these loans. But I'm in the returns to start with. You're talking about high single, double-digit returns, that's very nice. I think to go beyond that, one of the most appealing things and one of the slightly unintuitive things is people generally think of more liquid financial assets as being more valuable. You can get in, you can get out. That's not actually true for all types of investors. And if you go to the sort of conferences where people talk about these things, there's actually not a huge appetite to see things mark to market precisely because when things start to go badly, you have to reflect that pretty immediately on your balance sheet. You have to start talking to your own investors about the fact your assets are worthless. If they're not liquid, you just often don't have to do that. So there is actually a sort of illiquidity premium. I think especially companies like Life Insurance, they just don't want to recognize the fact that these assets might now be worthless and their face value worthless than they'd paid for them. So I think that has actually ironically driven quite a bit of the growth. The fact that it's private, thinly traded has been an advantage to some of the big investors.
如果你是投資者，如果你是這些貸款的買家。但我是從回報率開始談起。你提到的是高單位數、雙位數的回報率，這確實很吸引人。我認為除此之外，最吸引人的一點，也是有點反直覺的是：人們通常認為流動性更高的金融資產更有價值。你可以隨時進場，隨時出場。但對某些類型的投資者來說，這其實並非如此。如果你去參加那些討論這類議題的會議，會發現其實大家並不太希望資產按市價計價，正是因為當情況開始惡化時，你必須立即在資產負債表上反映出來。你得開始向自己的投資者說明，你的資產已經沒有價值了。但如果資產缺乏流動性，你往往就不需要這麼做。所以實際上存在一種「非流動性溢價」。我認為特別是像人壽保險公司這樣的企業，它們根本不想承認這些資產現在可能一文不值，甚至面值低於當初購買價格的事實。因此諷刺的是，我認為這實際上推動了相當大的成長。 對於一些大型投資者來說，其私密性與交易稀少的特性反而成為一種優勢。

That's really interesting and setting against an additional kind of force that you've seen recently is desired to open up private markets to retail investors now. And I'm curious about what you think about the kind of balance here. Because on the one hand, retail investors are used to being able to access their money very quickly, you know, they less used to tying up their money for a really long period of time. But on the other hand, they want access to these high-yielding assets as well. So how did the industry try to square that circle? Well, maybe I can talk a little bit about these types of funds and where we've seen the stress. Yes, yes, yes. Recently.
這確實很有意思，而且與近期出現的另一種趨勢形成對比——如今人們希望向散戶投資者開放私人市場。我很好奇你對這種平衡的看法。因為一方面，散戶投資者習慣於能夠快速動用資金，他們不太習慣將資金長期鎖定。但另一方面，他們也想接觸這些高收益資產。那麼這個行業如何嘗試解決這個矛盾呢？或許我可以談談這類基金以及我們在哪些地方看到了壓力。是的，是的，是的。最近的情況。

So you have seen these so-called semi-liquid funds emerging. And the basic idea is, yes, the assets are very illiquid, but there are certain types of investors that want to know they can get some of their money out if needs be. And for the most part, if it's only some of the money, then investors want back, that's fine. So you don't perhaps need a sort of fully closed fund where money goes in, investments are made, those investments are made good. All the loans mature and then the money goes back to investors. Okay, so what a lot of these vehicles do is say, we'll return up to 5% of the total capital invested every quarter. That's a sort of normal number that these semi-liquid funds have ended up at. They can sell a bit of the assets inside, you know, 5% is not also much. Maybe one investor wants 30% of their capital back, but the others don't want anything.
所以你已經看到這些所謂的半流動性基金出現。基本概念是：沒錯，資產流動性確實很低，但某些類型的投資者希望知道，必要時能夠取回部分資金。大多數情況下，如果只是部分資金需要贖回，那完全沒問題。因此你可能不需要完全封閉式的基金——那種資金投入後進行投資，待所有貸款到期、投資獲利後才將資金返還給投資者的模式。那麼，這類投資工具通常會設定每季度返還最多 5%的總投資資本，這是半流動性基金普遍採用的標準比例。他們可以出售部分內部資產，畢竟 5%的額度並不算多。也許某位投資者想取回 30%的資本，但其他投資者並無此需求。

It all sort of seems to work out. Now what you had late last year was a private credit fund called OBDC2 issued by a company called blue owl. Now you may not have heard of blue owl, it's not a household name, it is increasingly in the financial media now. It's a big alternative asset management company, it's grown from about 50 billion dollars under assets under management in 2021. So more like 300 billion today, so it's really, really aggressively expanded. Big player in private credit, this vehicle was seeing more exemptions than the fund wanted to satisfy. And it said, okay, no more exemptions. It tried to organize a tie up between that fund and another fund didn't really work. And earlier this year assets from three funds of blue owl, including OBDC2, were sold. So they said, we're selling $1.4 billion worth of assets.
一切似乎都順利解決了。現在，去年底出現了一個由藍貓頭鷹公司發行的私人信貸基金，名為 OBDC2。你可能沒聽過藍貓頭鷹，這不是家喻戶曉的名字，但現在在金融媒體上越來越常出現。它是一家大型另類資產管理公司，從 2021 年約 500 億美元的管理資產規模，成長到如今約 3000 億美元，擴張速度非常驚人。作為私人信貸領域的重要參與者，這個基金遇到的豁免請求超出了其願意滿足的範圍。於是它表示，不再提供任何豁免。它試圖將該基金與另一個基金進行合併，但並未成功。今年早些時候，包括 OBDC2 在內的藍貓頭鷹三檔基金資產被出售。他們宣布出售價值 14 億美元的資產。

We're going to redeem these investors, they're just going to be redeemed in chunks as we see fit. And as they said, as you said at the beginning of the episode, they closed the fund down. This has sort of accelerated the feeling of panic even though these assets were sold for effectively face value. It's just crystallizing a moment of concern about what's really going on. People are worried about asset quality, they're worried about the ability of other completely unrelated semi liquid vehicles to fulfill these investor requirements. And I think that's really fueled the problem. So it's that semi liquid vehicle. That's the really important one where they've tried to merge something liquid and something illiquid. And ended up with something that's maybe not satisfying for anyone.
我們將會贖回這些投資人，只是會按照我們認為合適的方式分批贖回。正如他們所說，也像你在節目開頭提到的，他們關閉了基金。這在某種程度上加劇了恐慌感，儘管這些資產實際上是以面值出售的。這只是讓大家對實際情況的擔憂具體化了。人們擔心資產質量，也擔心其他完全無關的半流動性工具能否滿足這些投資人的要求。我認為這確實加劇了問題。所以關鍵在於那種半流動性工具——他們試圖將流動性與非流動性結合，最終卻創造出可能無法讓任何人滿意的東西。

And not a week seems to go by without more stories about redemptions from funds, Josh. Where else have we been seeing this? So OBDC2 is the really kind of noteworthy one. But, you know, news is trickling through all the tight. Absolutely. Yes. So after OBDC2, we've seen funds gated at much bigger firms at one that are kind of merging on household names, right? So Apollo Aries have limited withdrawals funds run by Morgan Stanley, have limited withdrawals and black rock as well. Blackstone went in a different direction. So blackstone also faced a wave of withdrawals, but they decided not to impose their 5% cap. They decided to wave that rule and basically give all the cash back to investors that they demanded, which ended up being about 7%. But in order to do that, their own executives stomped up the cash to give it back to investors.
而且似乎每週都有更多關於基金贖回的消息，喬許。我們還在哪些地方看到這種情況？OBDC2 確實是相當值得注意的一個案例。但你知道嗎，消息正一點一滴地從所有緊縮的管道中滲出。確實如此。是的。所以在 OBDC2 之後，我們看到規模更大的公司也開始限制基金贖回，其中一些甚至是家喻戶曉的品牌，對吧？像是阿波羅·阿里斯限制了贖回，摩根士丹利管理的基金也限制了贖回，貝萊德同樣如此。黑石集團則採取了不同的做法。黑石也面臨了一波贖回潮，但他們決定不實施 5%的上限規定。他們選擇暫停執行那條規則，基本上將投資者要求的所有現金返還，最終比例約為 7%。但為了做到這一點，他們的高層主管自掏腰包籌集現金返還給投資者。

I guess what we're seeing. It's kind of a, it's a knock on effect from the fact that people don't really know what went on at Blue Al. You know, maybe this was a kind of an idiosyncratic problem at one fund whose liquidity arrangements didn't quite work. But because we don't know, because we don't know whether it was that or a kind of more potentially widespread problem with this semi liquid model. That's what's making investors panic. And as we said, it's also this kind of mismatch of liquid and illiquid funds. There are some funds where you can redeem your cash at the fund stated net asset value, the BDCs. But there are some funds where you can just, where you can sell your shares just back to the market at a price at the market sets. And in the ones where you can just sell your shares back to the market, those are trading at a discount to the stated net asset values. So there's this sense that if you're being offered in one fund, you know, the ability to redeem at the net asset value.
我想我們現在看到的，可以說是某種連鎖反應，起因於人們其實並不清楚藍色 AI（Blue Al）究竟發生了什麼事。你知道的，也許這只是某個基金特有的問題，其流動性安排未能完全發揮作用。但正因為我們不知道，因為我們不確定這究竟是單一事件，還是這種半流動性模式可能潛藏著更廣泛的問題，才導致投資者陷入恐慌。正如我們所說，這也涉及流動性與非流動性基金之間的某種錯配。有些基金允許你按基金公布的資產淨值贖回現金，比如 BDCs（商業發展公司）。但另一些基金，你只能以市場決定的價格將股份賣回市場。而在那些只能將股份賣回市場的基金中，它們的交易價格往往低於公布的資產淨值。因此，這就產生了一種感覺：如果你在某個基金中享有按資產淨值贖回的權利……

But the market thinks that the underlying loans are worth less than that. Of course, I'm going to take the stated net asset value because that's above what they're trading elsewhere. It's sort of hard to tear, tease apart here, what's going on, whether bad loans have been made. And there's something about the business model that just does for these funds doesn't quite work. Or there's a sense of kind of panic setting in, you know, everybody else is wanting to redeem. Well, maybe I'd be a foolish for not wanting to redeem. Is there a way to kind of try and distinguish between these three or? That's a huge problem for the sector, right? Because that should never be a problem. Like you should always be able to determine, you know, was this a structural problem? Was this less going bad? Is it just everybody else panicking? Like usually in public markets, you can, you know, unless apart from kind of massive opaque corporations, you can usually make that decision. And here you can't. And that's so, so whether there is a structural problem or not, that is definitely a problem for the sector. And it does go back to sort of the point, right? They call it private credit for a reason. The opacity is not, uh, it's not a bug. It's a feature of the entire system. It's part of the point. The same thing that the life insurer doesn't want, which is, you know, sudden day-to-day revaluation of their assets is why it's difficult to tell what's happening in these funds. And it's when you get these sort of rippling, rumour type things, the lack of day-to-day financial information becomes more of a problem. Because maybe there isn't a problem. Maybe nothing is really going wrong. You know, if the asset quality is still good, but you're seeing these spiraling concerns, there's very limited room to resolve it. We've seen that in terms of the share prices of some of the biggest private asset management firms.
但市場認為，這些基礎貸款的價值低於帳面數字。當然，我會採用帳面淨資產價值，因為這高於它們在其他地方的交易價格。這裡的情況有點難以釐清——究竟是否出現了不良貸款？這些基金的商業模式本身似乎存在問題，或者某種恐慌情緒正在蔓延，你知道的，當其他人都想贖回時，或許不跟著贖回才是愚蠢的。有沒有辦法嘗試區分這三種情況呢？這對整個產業來說是個大問題，對吧？因為這本不該成為問題。理論上你應該始終能判斷：這是結構性問題？貸款品質惡化？還是純粹的群體恐慌？通常在公開市場中，除非遇到極度不透明的企業，否則你都能做出判斷。但在這裡卻不行。所以無論是否存在結構性問題，這本身已成為該產業的難題。這確實回歸到根本問題——他們稱之為「私募信貸」是有原因的。 這種不透明性並非缺陷，而是整個系統的設計特徵，這正是其核心意義所在。就像壽險公司不願見到資產每日突然重估一樣，這種特性使得我們難以看清這些基金的實際狀況。當市場出現漣漪效應般的傳聞時，缺乏每日財務資訊就會成為更嚴重的問題——因為或許根本不存在問題，或許一切運作正常。倘若資產質量依然良好，卻眼見市場憂慮螺旋式上升，解決問題的空間就變得極其有限。我們已從部分大型私募資產管理公司的股價表現中見證了這種現象。

You know, it's not just blue owl, which is down sort of 40% year-to-date. You've got Apollo, you've got Aries. You know, this is a fairly consistent sell-off in some big, really buzzy names. You know, companies that are really at the top of the game here. So, yeah, it's a fairly broad-based concern. It's not just a couple of companies. There's also a kind of, it feels like there's a bitter irony here for retail investors who are getting in on this stuff. Because when you put this previously to private credit firms and you said, you know, you're quite an opaque market, how should investors deal with this. They would say, wait, hold on, our investors are big institutions. I send them every month a line-by-line report of everything that's in our portfolio. And then we have an hour-long meeting going through exactly what's happening at every company. So, you know, you say that this is a kind of opaque model, but my institutional investors have way more sight of what's going on in their portfolios than they might in a kind of listed portfolio. Great. The retail investors are not getting that because, I guess, well, you can do that and have your kind of hour-long meeting every month with a set of a dozen institutional investors. You can't, when it's kind of thousands of retail investors. And in a lot of these funds, they are not publishing these kind of line-by-line reports that would give their retail investors this disclosure. So, the bitter irony for retail investors is they're not getting the deal that the institutional investors were that made this asset class kind of attractive because they have the transparency as well as the returns. On the question of kind of whether the loans, whether the marks as they say in the industry are sort of right or not, how does software and AI fit into this?
你知道，不只是藍貓頭鷹，今年迄今下跌了約 40%。還有阿波羅、阿里斯。這是一場相當一致的拋售，涉及一些大型且備受矚目的公司。這些公司可說是業界頂尖的佼佼者。所以，是的，這是一個相當廣泛的擔憂，不僅僅是幾家公司而已。 對於正在涉足這領域的散戶投資者來說，這裡似乎存在一種苦澀的諷刺。因為當你之前向私人信貸公司提出這個問題時，你會說，你們的市場相當不透明，投資者應該如何應對？他們會回答，等等，我們的投資者都是大型機構。我每個月都會向他們發送一份詳細的投資組合報告，逐行列出所有內容。然後我們會進行一個小時的會議，詳細討論每家公司的情況。所以，你說這是一種不透明的模式，但我的機構投資者對其投資組合的了解，可能比他們在上市投資組合中還要多。很好。 零售投資人無法獲得這些資訊，因為，我想，嗯，你可以每月與十幾家機構投資人進行長達一小時的會議。但當面對數以千計的零售投資人時，這就不可行了。而且在許多這類基金中，他們並未發布那種能向零售投資人提供透明度的逐行報告。因此，對零售投資人來說，苦澀的諷刺在於，他們無法獲得機構投資人所享有的條件，而正是這些條件使這類資產類別具有吸引力——因為機構投資人既有透明度，又有回報。關於貸款估值（業內所稱的「標記」）是否正確的問題，軟體和人工智慧在這方面扮演什麼角色？

Because there are concerns about the loans that these vehicles have made to software companies, which are now very exposed to AI. And so, presumably, there's sort of concern and worries about the business model and wanting to access your money. But they may also be concerned that some of these loans might actually not be as valuable as the funds say they are. Yeah, and I think that's something that's actually compounded a worry that was already there. So, if you trace this back to the middle of last year sort of all the early autumn last year, we started getting rumblings about sort of credit quality among some highly leverage borrowers in the US. The cases that follow with first brands and trickle or they're both auto services companies. They borrow very extensively. Ironically, not extensively from private credit, right? These are mostly actually bank borrowers, but it started to cause the sudden defaults caused concerns about asset quality generally.
因為這些投資工具對軟體公司發放的貸款引發擔憂，這些公司目前高度暴露於人工智慧風險中。因此，人們對其商業模式感到疑慮，並希望取回資金。但他們可能也擔心，部分貸款的實際價值或許不如基金所宣稱的那樣高。是的，我認為這加劇了原本就存在的憂慮。若追溯至去年中秋時分，我們開始聽聞美國某些高槓桿借款人的信貸品質出現問題。隨後發生的 First Brands 與 Trickle 案例（兩者皆為汽車服務公司）就是例證。它們借貸規模龐大——諷刺的是，主要並非來自私人信貸領域，這些其實多屬銀行借款方，但突然違約事件已引發市場對整體資產品質的普遍擔憂。

So, you have that rumbling. And then late last year, really aggressively beginning of this year, people started to panic about software business models. And they started to say, if Claude Code can whip me up an app in moments, then do any of these companies have votes anymore. Do they have reasons for existing? I paid a lot of money for these assets, often which said they would grow very rapidly and produce a lot of money in the future. I don't know whether that's true anymore. So, you had this bottom up rethinking. Now, something like 20 to 30% of US private credit is software companies. Some people even go a little bit higher than that and think that if you use the expansive definition of software, it's even bigger. So, that sort of compounded things.
所以，你聽到了那陣隆隆聲。接著在去年底，確切來說是今年初，人們開始對軟體商業模式感到恐慌。他們開始質疑，如果 Claude Code 能在瞬間為我打造一個應用程式，那麼這些公司還有存在的價值嗎？它們還有存在的理由嗎？我為這些資產付出了大筆金錢，它們通常承諾會快速成長並在未來帶來豐厚收益。但現在我不確定這是否還能實現。於是，這種從下而上的反思開始了。目前，美國私人信貸中約有 20%至 30%是軟體公司。有些人甚至認為比例更高，如果採用更廣泛的軟體定義，這個比例還會更大。因此，這類情況加劇了問題的複雜性。

You had credit quality. Worries about the semi-liquid funds. And then, suddenly, something between a quarter and a third of the asset class within private credit funds. People are now reassessing the fundamental value of it entirely. So, I think it should be one thing after another hammering on to it. Yeah, the software issues are really big one. And just, if you're a regulator, presumably, you don't really know much about what's going on here. Is that? Yeah, I think they feel like they're in the same boat as some of the retail investors do, I guess. And that's another problem for the industry because you can't originally, it was great that private credit was growing for a regulated perspective.
你面臨了信用品質問題。對半流動性基金的擔憂。接著，突然間，私人信貸基金中約有四分之一到三分之一的資產類別出現狀況。人們現在正全面重新評估其根本價值。因此，我認為這應該是一連串打擊接踵而至。是的，軟體問題確實是個大問題。而且，如果你是監管機構，可能對這裡發生的事了解不多。是這樣嗎？是的，我想他們感覺自己與某些零售投資者處境相似。這對行業來說是另一個問題，因為從監管角度來看，私人信貸原本的成長是件好事。

Because after the financial crisis, they really wanted this risky lending out of the banks. Like, this was deliberate. This was not an unintended consequence of post financial crisis regulation. It was the intended consequence. You don't want really risky lending to be backed by deposits that people then might not be able to access, Alan, or than rock. It's better if that risky lending is backed by long-term commitments from institutional investors. So, in a way, there were worries about how quickly private credit was growing, because any asset class that grows quickly can lead to its own problems over its e-brings. But overall, I think regulators were fairly happy with this. That can't continue if these funds are offering products to retail investors.
因為在金融危機之後，他們確實希望將這種高風險貸款從銀行體系中移除。這其實是刻意的安排。這並非金融危機後監管措施的意外後果，而是預期中的結果。艾倫，你不會希望那些極度危險的貸款背後，是由民眾可能無法動用的存款——或者說基石——來支撐。如果這些高風險貸款是由機構投資者的長期承諾來支持，情況會好得多。所以，在某種程度上，人們對私人信貸的快速增長感到擔憂，因為任何快速增長的資產類別都可能隨著時間帶來自身的問題。但總體而言，我認為監管機構對此相當滿意。如果這些基金開始向散戶投資者提供產品，這種情況就無法持續下去。

And particularly, if then some of them are not honoring the promises that they had made. I just can't really see a world in which they do that and regulators continue to accept. The kind of relatively low level of transparency and display that they're currently, I think these firms need to accept that they're going to face a bit of a backlash and be forced to disclose more. I'm actually surprised that they don't offer retail investors that transparency. Because I would have assumed that that would have been the quit pro quo. You know, if you're widening out the accessibility of these funds then the kind of quit pro quo is you offer that transparency. And there's a kind of coordination problem here. But I am also surprised that investors or maybe the kind of wealth managers who represent them and get kind of the money of high net worth individuals into these funds, that was the kind of the van guard of the retail offering. I'm really surprised they haven't stopped and demanded it in order to put their money into it. I don't personally think investors should be putting their money into stuff where they don't have adequate disclosure to understand what's going on inside the portfolio. And yeah, I have to pinch myself a little bit that they didn't demand that. I think one of the things that's happening here is if you are a private wealth manager, two things. Some of your customers will have screamed at you to get them access to this stuff because it was making good returns and it didn't seem very volatile. And for a while it was the busiest area of finance.
特別是，如果其中一些公司未能履行他們所做的承諾。我實在無法想像他們這樣做，監管機構還能繼續接受。目前他們所展現的那種相對較低的透明度和公開程度，我認為這些公司需要接受他們將面臨一些反彈，並被迫披露更多資訊。我其實很驚訝他們沒有向散戶投資者提供這種透明度。因為我原本以為這會是交換條件。你知道，如果你擴大這些基金的可及性，那麼交換條件就是你提供那種透明度。這裡存在一種協調問題。但我也很驚訝投資者，或者代表他們並將高淨值人士的資金引入這些基金的那種財富管理經理，他們是散戶產品的先鋒。我真的很驚訝他們沒有停下來要求透明度，才把錢投入其中。我個人認為投資者不應該把錢投入那些他們沒有足夠披露資訊來了解投資組合內部情況的東西。 說真的，我還有點不敢相信他們沒提出那樣的要求。我認為目前的情況是，如果你是一位私人財富管理經理，會面臨兩件事：部分客戶會因為這類投資過去表現亮眼且波動性看似不高，而強烈要求你幫他們取得投資管道——有段時間這甚至是金融界最熱門的領域。

And nobody wants to be the private wealth manager that says, "I don't know these guys." Right? I don't know anyone at Apollo or Aerys. I can't get you access to these things. So it was everyone sort of feeding at once that the alternative asset managers want to give the broadest access to the products. The private wealth managers want to seem frankly like they're in the know and to be offering the best possible products. And the customers want to access those things. I think the most interesting area of this now, which is why to some extent this comes at the worst possible time, is because these private markets firms have been trying for years and years, best part of the decade, maybe even slightly longer, to get into US retirement funds that they are currently locked out of.
沒有哪位私人財富管理經理會想說出「我不認識這些機構」這種話，對吧？畢竟誰都不願承認自己不認識阿波羅或艾瑞斯的人脈，也無法幫客戶取得這些投資機會。因此當時形成了一種集體效應：另類資產管理公司想盡可能擴大產品觸及面，私人財富經理則迫切要展現自己的業內專業度與頂級產品供應能力，而客戶又渴望參與這些投資。我認為現在最值得關注的是——某種程度上這也讓當前時機顯得格外棘手——這些私募市場機構花了多年時間，幾乎整個十年甚至更久，一直試圖打入目前仍無法進入的美國退休基金市場。

US retirement money is really big money, ten trillion or so dollars in 401k accounts at the end of last year. 401k accounts are employer-provided, direct, defined contribution schemes. And basically they have extremely tight rules around them as to what you can invest in. The idea is that you don't have some employer running off and investing in all sorts of extremely high fee rubbish, especially where there might be a conflicts of interest, they might your friends. So they've said, "Lofi, you know, high fiduciary standards." The private managers, the private market firms have been trying to get into this, right there saying, "We provide high risk-adjusted returns, yes, the fees are high, but we should be in this basket as well." And it looked like that was just about to happen, indeed it made still happen. So the Department of Labor in the US issued a rule on Monday trying to clarify the room that 401k providers have to invest in private markets.
美國退休金規模確實龐大，去年底 401(k)帳戶總額約達十兆美元。401(k)帳戶屬於雇主提供的直接確定提撥制計劃，基本上對投資標的有著極其嚴格的規範。其核心理念是防止雇主隨意投資各種高費用垃圾資產，特別是在可能涉及利益衝突（例如投資親友經營項目）的情況下。因此監管方強調：「必須遵循高受託責任標準」。私募管理機構與私人市場公司一直試圖進入這塊領域，他們主張：「我們提供經風險調整後的優渥回報，雖然費用較高，但理應被納入投資選項。」眼看此事即將成真（實際上仍可能實現），美國勞工部週一發布新規，試圖釐清 401(k)管理機構投資私人市場的權限範圍。

I think with everything that's been happening, the news over the last six months, there's a lot of 401k providers who you could have convinced last summer who are now going nowhere near it, because even if they think long-term private assets make sense for retirement investors, you know, they're not pulling their money out on a quarterly basis, they're going to look at this and say, not worth the risk, not worth the fuss, I don't want to be in the newspaper there. So this is a question I was going to ask you later, but as we're talking about this now, I mean, do you think this democratization is a good thing? Do you think the events of what we've seen over the past few months, does that tell us something about whether actually it's just going to be too hard to widen the access to these to private credit, or do you think it's do we have the same view on this? I hope you don't. I hope you don't. I'll be more interesting if you don't actually.
我認為，考慮到過去六個月發生的一切，許多 401k 計劃提供商在去年夏天可能還可以被說服，但現在他們完全避而遠之。因為即使他們認為長期來看，私人資產對退休投資者來說是合理的——畢竟他們不會每季度就撤資——他們看到這種情況也會說：不值得冒這個風險，不值得這麼麻煩，我可不想因此登上新聞。這其實是我稍後想問你的問題，但既然我們現在談到這裡，你認為這種民主化是好事嗎？過去幾個月的事件是否告訴我們，擴大私人信貸的普及度可能過於困難？還是說我們在這方面的看法一致？我希望你不這麼想。真的，如果你不這麼想，討論會更有趣。

I would like to put my money into private markets, meaning clearly it's okay. I would like more exposure to private markets, kind of just approaching this kind of a priori. I mean, but now, like it literally right now, would you be buying into private markets? This is it. It's the two. I mean, but to some extent, I almost want to buy it now. If they're not all lying, maybe there's a lot of value there. I think it's the two things clashing with one another. On the one hand, in my longest term investments, which are for retirement and potentially even beyond, those are the ones that make most sense to have private assets. To benefit from any pickup you get from liquidity, I do not need to access those. That's a perfect pairing and exactly what you said Josh about pairing after the financial crisis.
我想把錢投入私人市場，這顯然沒問題。我希望增加對私人市場的曝險，有點像是先驗性地看待這件事。但現在，就是字面上的現在，你會買進私人市場嗎？就是這兩點。我的意思是，但某種程度上，我現在幾乎想買進。如果他們沒有都在說謊，或許那裡存在很多價值。我認為是這兩件事相互衝突。一方面，在我最長期的投資中，那些是為了退休甚至可能更久以後的規劃，這些最適合持有私人資產。為了從流動性帶來的任何回升中獲益，我不需要動用這些資金。這是完美的搭配，也正是你喬許在金融危機後提到的搭配方式。

Trying to get people whose assets and liabilities were matched. It makes sense for an insurance company for a pension fund to have these assets because they've got long-term liabilities unlike a bank. That is true. It clashes with my concern, not just about what's happening in the market, but also the retail investors and retirement funds are being taken to some extent as the mugs here. Right? That the private credit funds have started to run out of steady, reliable buyers, the people who are absolutely piling in the 2010s, and they're scrambling around for someone to take the risk off their hands. I don't want to be nobody wants to be the last guy in the room who's taking the risk off someone's hands. So there's that concern. When I speak to people at private markets firm, they will occasionally concede. This is an impulse here, not from the top down, but they'll say, of course, I want the widest possible group of people to invest in the funds. I worry about that element of it.
試圖找到資產與負債相匹配的人。對保險公司或退休基金來說，持有這些資產是合理的，因為它們不像銀行那樣有長期負債。這點沒錯。但這與我的擔憂相衝突——我不僅擔心市場現狀，也擔心散戶投資者和退休基金在某種程度上被當成冤大頭。對吧？私人信貸基金已開始缺乏穩定可靠的買家，那些在 2010 年代瘋狂湧入的人，現在正四處尋找接手風險的對象。沒有人想成為最後一個接手風險的傻瓜。這就是我的憂慮。當我和私人市場公司的人交談時，他們偶爾會承認——這雖非自上而下的指令，但他們確實希望盡可能廣泛的群體投資這些基金。這正是我擔憂的部分。

Do you agree, Josh? Yeah, and I think there's a, we mustn't miss the bigger picture, which is that despite the worries we might all have about private markets at the moment, they represent the vast majority of, of, investable assets. I think, you know, even if you look at kind of really, like, big firms that are making more than $100 million in revenue every year, it's something like 85% of them are on listage. Now, some of them aren't available to be invested in by everybody, some of them are kind of big old family firms. But a lot of them increasingly are coming into private markets, and crucially, they involve some of the most exciting firms today, because a big trend over the past couple of decades is that firms list later in their life than they would have done. They don't come to public markets until they're much bigger.
你同意嗎，喬許？是的，我認為我們不能忽略更大的圖景：儘管目前大家可能對私募市場有所擔憂，但它們實際上佔了可投資資產的絕大部分。你看，即使是那些年營收超過一億美元的大型企業，大約有 85%都未公開上市。當然，其中有些並非所有人都能投資，有些是歷史悠久的家族企業。但越來越多這類企業正進入私募市場，關鍵在於，它們包含了當今一些最具潛力的公司——因為過去幾十年的一個重要趨勢是，企業比以往更晚才公開上市，往往要等到規模更大時才會進入公開市場。

We can see this with the IPOs that we might be having this year of massive firms, like SpaceX or Open AI. They're into the trillions of dollars of value before they hit public markets. Retailing investors can't access private markets or decide not to because there's been some blow up in them. They are missing out on a big chunk of the economy, and increasingly, they're publicly listed portfolios do not reflect the overall economy. Now, that's a problem that every retirement savers should want to fix for themselves, and it would be a terrible shame if the kind of jitters in private credit now kind of push that date further into the future when ordinary investors could access this stuff. So that's one consequence of the worries that we're seeing in these business development funds. The fact that retail investors may be put off from investing in something that actually would be useful for them as a long-term investment. What are the other consequences here? Maybe if we start first with the consequences for the private markets, firms themselves.
我們可以從今年可能進行首次公開募股（IPO）的大型企業看出這一點，例如 SpaceX 或 Open AI。這些公司在進入公開市場前，估值已達數兆美元。散戶投資者無法進入私人市場，或因私人市場曾發生一些崩盤事件而選擇不參與。他們錯失了經濟中很大一部分的成長機會，而且越來越明顯的是，他們公開上市的投資組合並未反映整體經濟的狀況。現在，這是每位退休儲蓄者都應該想為自己解決的問題，如果當前私人信貸市場的動盪進一步推遲普通投資者能夠接觸這些投資機會的時間，那將是非常可惜的事。因此，這是我們在這些業務發展基金中看到的擔憂所帶來的一個後果。散戶投資者可能會對某種實際上對他們長期投資有益的標的望而卻步。這裡還有哪些其他後果？或許我們可以先從對私人市場及公司本身的影響開始談起。

You've talked about the share price hit. What else could this have happened to them? The share price hit is already pretty big. They've already seen the consequences. I think the biggest one is just whether to democratization push actually works anymore. Whether they didn't come close enough to getting into 401k assets, the last thing you would want as a company like this. I think is someone like Senator Elizabeth Warren talking about you in public every day. You do not want your name to be used in Congress all the time, and I think the fear is that they're urging into that territory. You can see the perfect elements of the political story here. You've got the unsophisticated retail investors, the Wall Street vampires, funneling the last tale of their rubbish assets off into every pension in America.
你提到了股價受到的打擊。這對他們還可能造成什麼影響？股價打擊已經相當大了。他們已經看到了後果。我認為最大的問題在於，民主化推動是否真的還能奏效。他們是否未能足夠接近進入 401k 資產，這對像他們這樣的公司來說是最不願見到的。我認為，像參議員伊莉莎白·華倫這樣的人每天公開談論你，是你不希望發生的。你不希望自己的名字時常在國會被提及，而我認為他們的擔憂是正步入這一領域。你可以在這裡看到政治故事的完美元素：有不諳世事的散戶投資者、華爾街的吸血鬼，將他們垃圾資產的最後一筆交易輸送到美國的每一個養老金中。

You know, from that perspective, I think it's political nightmare waiting to happen. I would be worried about that more than anything else. I think some of them may be right, actually, that the asset quality, there's been too much panic over that. Now they sowed the seeds for themselves by making it so opaque. But even if that's true, you get the political focus, you lose the opportunities of democratization, and potentially in the future, you get a more unfriendly regulatory regime as well. That if I was them, it's what I would be concerned about. Dangerously friends who definitely do not usually take an interest in my work and financial markets, are apropos nothing bringing up the evil private equity firms now. And that is that is that these institutions do not want to be at the receiving end of that.
從這個角度來看，我認為這是一場等待發生的政治噩夢。與其他任何事相比，我更擔心這一點。實際上，我認為他們有些人可能是對的，關於資產質量，人們對此過度恐慌了。現在他們因為讓一切如此不透明而自食其果。但即使這是真的，一旦引起政治關注，你就失去了民主化的機會，並且未來可能還會面臨更不友善的監管制度。如果我是他們，這正是我會擔心的。那些通常對我的工作和金融市場毫無興趣的危險朋友們，現在卻無緣無故地提起邪惡的私募股權公司。而這些機構絕不希望成為眾矢之的。

If people who aren't usually interested in finance, know who they are and don't like them, that you don't like that. Yes, much better to stay in the shadows, I think rather than gain public notoriety. And what about the consequences for the banks? Because the banks have been lending to these private credit providers themselves. So how exposed are they here? Yeah, I mean, this is another irony as Mike was saying at the start, you know, banks like to talk about how private credit has kind of muscled in on business that used to be theirs, but that they can't have from regulation anymore. But you know, they've made out pretty well from the private credit boom. They offer all sorts of services to these to the private credit investors, whether that's, you know, auxiliary services like interest rate hedging, whether it's providing bridge loans that these firms themselves need in order to do this bit as normal. And they hive off bits of the private credit kind of stack that the banks then retain themselves and kind of, and kind of to some extent, secure a ties. So you know, they would be losing that business if they were the pullback in private credit. The wider kind of knock-on effect for banks is, you know, we've talked about private credit and bank loans or leverage loans and junk bonds, as if they're three different categories and they are. But there are blurred lines between these categories, you know, some junk bonds or even investment grade corporate bonds.
如果連平常對金融不感興趣的人都知道他們是誰，而且不喜歡他們，那你也不會喜歡這種情況。是的，我認為與其獲得公眾的惡名，不如繼續待在陰影中更好。那麼對銀行會有什麼後果呢？因為銀行本身也一直在貸款給這些私人信貸提供者。所以他們在這裡的風險有多大？是的，我的意思是，這又是另一個諷刺，就像麥克一開始說的，銀行喜歡談論私人信貸如何侵占了過去屬於他們的業務，但由於監管規定，他們現在無法從事這些業務。但你知道嗎，他們從私人信貸的繁榮中獲利頗豐。他們為這些私人信貸投資者提供各種服務，無論是像利率對沖這樣的輔助服務，還是提供這些公司本身需要的過渡貸款，以便正常運作。他們還會將私人信貸的一部分業務分拆出來，由銀行自己保留，並在某種程度上確保了聯繫。所以你知道，如果私人信貸出現退縮，他們將會失去這些業務。 對銀行業來說，更廣泛的連鎖效應在於——我們談論私募信貸、銀行貸款或槓桿貸款以及垃圾債券時，彷彿它們是三個截然不同的類別，事實上也確實如此。但這些類別之間存在模糊地帶，有些垃圾債券甚至投資級公司債也是如此。

If you'll be low the top 10 one, you really don't trade very often. So it doesn't look that different from a direct loan made by a private credit fund. You know, it's originally made by the first investor and it probably doesn't trade for the rest of its life. Some of the bank loans that banks would underwrite and then syndicate off to other investors. They again don't trade very much. You know, they maybe have a fixed rate or a floating rate that's different to the private credit one, but they're kind of connected because these are all things that trade kind of not very frequently and are in the same kind of risk kind of on the same part of the risk spectrum in lending. So the kind of second order effect for banks is that if there are worries in private credit that raise the cost of capital there, they're likely to do it in these other markets.
如果你觀察排名前十的債券，會發現它們實際上交易頻率非常低。這與私募信貸基金提供的直接貸款看起來並無太大差異。這類債券最初由首位投資者持有，很可能在其存續期間都不會進行交易。而銀行承銷後再分銷給其他投資者的部分銀行貸款，同樣交易並不活躍。它們可能採用固定利率或浮動利率，這與私募信貸的條件有所不同，但彼此間仍存在關聯性——因為這些都屬於交易頻率較低的金融商品，且在信貸風險光譜上處於相似的位置。因此對銀行產生的次級效應在於：若私募信貸市場出現疑慮導致資金成本上升，這種影響很可能會蔓延至其他相關市場。

You know, these aren't markets where you can kind of do an easy arbitrage across them, but they are markets that kind of tug on each other because they're quite similar. So although private credits seem like it's own category, there are a likely to be spillover effects in other in other debt markets as well. And we know that it's not just banks, it's insurers, university endowments as well that have invested in private credit. So I mean, insurers I think are reasonably well exposed. I think it's like a third of their assets if I've got the proportion right. So that's potentially something to worry about as well. Like, absolutely, I think it's definitely worth some element of concern.
你知道，這些市場並非那種可以輕易進行套利的類型，但它們之間確實存在某種牽引力，因為它們相當類似。所以，儘管私人信貸看似自成一個類別，但很可能也會對其他債務市場產生溢出效應。而且我們知道，不僅是銀行，保險公司和大學捐贈基金也投資了私人信貸。我的意思是，我認為保險公司的曝險程度相當高。如果我沒記錯比例的話，這大概佔他們資產的三分之一左右。所以這也可能是值得擔憂的一點。絕對是的，我認為這確實值得某種程度的關注。

I think you have to go back to the first principles first, which is that this is a sensible thing for an insurer to own. But if the asset isn't doing well and also you don't know how badly it's doing, it can have a knock-on consequence for the products you have issued. And in insurers cases, life insurers, this would be a newities. Right? Now, the way it would work essentially, I'm the insurer. I have a private asset. I make money from that. Maybe I won't make money for a long time, but I'll make money eventually. I'll sell a product where someone gives me a big chunk of money, and I pay them a certain amount per year by going forward.
我認為首先必須回歸基本原則：對保險公司而言，持有這類資產本是合理的選擇。但若資產表現不佳，且你無法確切掌握其惡化程度，就可能對已發行的產品產生連鎖影響。以保險業（特別是壽險公司）的情況來說，這將涉及年金產品。對吧？運作模式本質上是這樣：身為保險公司，我持有一項私募資產並從中獲利——或許短期內無法獲利，但最終仍會產生收益。我同時銷售一種產品，客戶投入大筆資金，而我則承諾在未來每年支付固定金額給他們。

And it's very popular to sell these to pension funds, for example, individual investors by them as well. That is then tied to the returns from the private asset. You might not consider it linked when you're purchasing it in the first place, but you are now part of the chain of risk. So yeah, I think the life insurance element to me is more important than the banking one. This is a really, really big vein. I think we're really prying to think of banking exposures, because the idea of bank fragility and bank blow-ups and bank runs, always on the top of the people's minds when they're thinking about finance.
舉例來說，這些商品非常受退休基金歡迎，個人投資者也同樣會購買。這類商品隨後便與私募資產的報酬率掛鉤。起初購買時你可能不會意識到其中的關聯性，但實際上你已成為風險鏈條中的一環。因此對我而言，人壽保險環節的重要性確實超過銀行環節。這確實是個非常龐大的資金脈絡。我認為我們正試圖釐清銀行業的風險敞口，因為每當人們思考金融問題時，銀行脆弱性、銀行倒閉與擠兌現象總是盤踞在腦海中最顯著的位置。

But the insurance arm, I think here, might be bigger. Yeah, and the big public pension plans as well. There are the other massive investors into private credit, where I think exposure to some funds, nearly 25%. And the other kind of big chunks that those funds have are private infrastructure and private equity. And as we were saying, all of these things are linked. So yeah, the systemic risk goes well beyond banks. So that's really interesting. That brings me to a question from Alfred Hills, who asks whether there's a systemic risk here from private credit.
但我認為保險業環節的影響可能更為重大。此外大型公共退休金計畫也是關鍵因素。私募信貸領域還存在其他巨額投資者，據我所知某些基金的風險敞口已接近 25%。這類基金另外持有的重大資產類別還包括私募基礎建設與私募股權。正如我們先前討論的，所有這些環節都相互牽連。因此系統性風險確實遠超出銀行業範疇。這現象相當值得探討。這讓我想起阿爾弗雷德·希爾斯提出的問題：私募信貸是否會引發系統性風險？

I'll have the 2008 crisis, and how does the size of the problem compare to the subprime meltdown and say the Lehman story? And I have a bit of a be in my bonnet about this 2008 comparison, because I feel like it can be a little bit of a straight jacket when thinking about financial shocks. We find this, I think, as journalists, in particular, once sort of explaining that something could cause credit crunch, often the question is, well, how does it compare with 2008? But there have been a range of shocks over history. 2008 was a specific one and a big one.
我來談談 2008 年的危機，這個問題的規模與次貸風暴相比如何？又該如何看待雷曼兄弟事件？我對這種 2008 年的比較有點執念，因為我覺得在思考金融衝擊時，這可能有點像件束縛衣。特別是作為記者，我們常發現一旦解釋某件事可能引發信貸緊縮，往往會被問到：那和 2008 年相比如何？但歷史上曾出現過各種衝擊。2008 年是其中一個特定且重大的案例。

That does not mean to say something isn't like 2008. Does not mean you shouldn't worry at all. But what's the answer to Alfred's question? I think that's exactly right. And to some extent, because 2008 still frames the reference for that. It's like asking someone how was your day. And the previous year they'd been hit by high speed train or something. Yeah. It was always going to be relatively good relative to the day you were hit by a train. It's maybe never going to be as bad as that.
這並不代表某件事不像 2008 年那樣嚴重，也不意味著你完全不用擔心。但阿爾弗雷德的問題該如何回答呢？我認為這完全正確。某種程度上，因為 2008 年至今仍是我們衡量這類事件的參考基準。就像問某人今天過得如何，而他們前一年曾被高速列車撞過之類的。是的，相較於被火車撞的那天，今天總是相對好得多。也許永遠不會像那天那麼糟糕。

Two key points to me. One is that these assets aren't perceived as safe. And they never have been. Everyone knows their risky. Now, maybe they're riskyer than people thought they were. But actually when it comes to the most severe financial crises, in my view, it's the assets people think are safe. That are the problem, not the assets people think are risky. If you think a mortgage bond is safe, you're willing to leverage. And that's exactly up against it.
對我來說有兩個關鍵點。其一，這些資產從未被視為安全，也從來就不安全。大家都知道它們有風險。現在，或許它們比人們想像的更具風險。但實際上，在我看來，最嚴重的金融危機往往出在那些人們認為安全的資產上，而非那些公認有風險的資產。如果你認為抵押貸款債券很安全，你就會願意加槓桿操作，而這恰恰是問題所在。

That was one of the problems in 2008. In the euro crisis, people thought Portuguese government debt was the same as German government debt. It wasn't. And it's when the thing that you thought you were being conservative about becomes extremely risky. Nobody thinks that about private credit, right? And so the leverage ratios involved a nowhere near where they were. The other side of that is that you won't see this all coming one blow up. The opacity of it, the slow burning made trouble. It may crop up for quite some time. So it may be that we're years down the line.
這正是 2008 年金融危機的問題之一。在歐元危機期間，人們以為葡萄牙政府債務和德國政府債務一樣安全，但事實並非如此。當你原本認為保守的投資標的突然變得極度危險時，危機就爆發了。但私人信貸領域沒人會這麼想，對吧？因此相關的槓桿比率遠不及當年水平。另一方面，你不會看到所有問題一次性爆發。其不透明性與緩慢燃燒的特性將造成困擾，問題可能會潛伏相當長的時間。所以我們可能要好幾年後才會看到全面影響。

And you realize some of these insurance products are maybe not as well backed, as you would have liked them to be. You can see the economic impacts, I think, trickle out for quite a bit further. It won't be a one moment explosion, like the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Yeah, it'll have a longer tail than that. Another kind of leg of the consequence of this for the wider economy. One is, you know, as Mike says, the consequence of much trickle out. Is what does this mean for the AI kind of the financing of AI? And so we have a question from Nicholas Sampson who puts it quite well, I think. You know, does the crunch facilitate a wind down in AI firms?
你會意識到，這些保險產品中的某些部分，可能並不如你所期望的那樣有充分的保障。我認為，經濟影響將會逐漸擴散，持續相當長一段時間。這不會像雷曼兄弟倒閉那樣瞬間爆發。是的，它的影響將會比那更為持久。這對更廣泛的經濟來說，是另一個層面的後果。其一，正如麥克所說，影響會逐漸擴散。這對人工智慧的融資意味著什麼？我們收到尼古拉斯·桑普森的一個問題，我覺得他提得相當好。這次的緊縮是否會促使人工智慧公司進行縮減？

Or do poorer results from AI firms bring about a crunch in private borrowing? So what drives what? At this stage in the cycle, what's the most likely next in sighting factor? It's a great question. I think the biggest overlap that you see is that the big tech companies and the big, you know, frontier model labs have up until fairly recently. Certainly the big tech companies not been particularly highly leveraged. Right, in fact, they were very limited in their leverage. They had great balance sheets. They're now having to spend a lot of money on investments for the future, mostly data centers, mostly AI build out stuff.
還是 AI 公司表現不佳導致私人借貸緊縮？那麼，究竟何者驅動何者？在當前週期階段，最可能出現的下一個觀察因素是什麼？這是個很好的問題。我認為最大的重疊點在於，大型科技公司以及那些尖端模型實驗室，直到最近為止——特別是大型科技公司——槓桿率並不算特別高。事實上，他們的槓桿程度非常有限，資產負債表狀況優良。但現在他們必須為未來投資投入大量資金，主要是數據中心與 AI 基礎建設。

A very large portion of that is going to be funded by their own income. Right, their own free cash flow. But the presumption was that some of it was going to be funded by private credit. Right, a fairly significant chunk by mostly estimate size. Or Morgan Stanley had an interesting piece of research that came out. Last year talking about how they had private credit contribute something like 800 billion to data center financing. If the industry is in real sort of disarray, if the individual companies in disarray, even if people think that investment is still safe, it may disrupt it. I would say that's the biggest sort of spillover between the two. And to add to what Josh was saying about the sort of interlinkages between high yield bank credit, private credit.
其中很大一部分將由他們自己的收入來資助。沒錯，就是他們自己的自由現金流。但假設是，其中一部分將由私人信貸來資助。對，根據大多數估計，這部分規模相當可觀。或者說，摩根士丹利發布了一份有趣的研究報告。去年談到他們如何讓私人信貸為數據中心融資貢獻了大約 8000 億美元。如果這個行業真的陷入某種混亂，如果個別公司陷入混亂，即使人們認為投資仍然是安全的，也可能會擾亂它。我會說這是兩者之間最大的某種溢出效應。並且要補充喬希所說的關於高收益銀行信貸、私人信貸之間的某種相互聯繫。

It's very difficult to imagine a circumstance in which you have lots of investors completely panicked and freaked out about one section of the market . But who are also absolutely raring to go about the rest? So in terms of the sentiment spillover, that's probably one of the biggest channels. And for all the kind of capital this sector is already sucked in. You know, it is a sector that is still probably if anything underserved by investors capital. You know, we need much AI is going to be much more capital intensive if it's going to fulfill the hopes that investors have had a bit. So pull back there, caused by something that's maybe not entirely AI specific would be a shame. I feel like I could see it happening either way. Either AI for whatever reason, you know, adoption slower or isn't as profitable.
很難想像會有這樣的情況：許多投資者對市場的某個部分感到極度恐慌和不安，但同時卻對其他部分充滿熱情、躍躍欲試。就情緒溢出效應而言，這可能是最主要的傳導途徑之一。儘管這個領域已經吸引了大量資金，但從某種程度上說，它可能仍然是投資者資金配置不足的領域。要知道，如果人工智慧要實現投資者寄予的期望，它將需要更加資本密集的投入。因此，如果因為某些可能不完全與人工智慧相關的因素而導致資金撤離，那將令人遺憾。我覺得無論如何，這種情況都有可能發生——無論是因為人工智慧的應用進展緩慢，或是盈利能力未達預期。

And that has a knock-on consequence for private credit. Or worries about private credit means AI doesn't get funded in the way it needs to. And it feels to me at this point that either scenario that Nicholas lays out is kind of plausible actually. That's a great point. And I often think about AI is now way beyond what it is as a technology or even as a financial opportunity. It's like the last leg of the stool if you could have a stool that stood on one leg. Right? It's the last thing to be excited about in US markets, right? You're worried about inflation. You're worried about foreign policy. You're worried about the structure of US institutions and their reliability in the long term. Now you're worried about software companies and you're worried about credit cockroaches and all of these risky firms. And AI is the thing that you can say no AI is still fine. AI is great. So I can definitely see it happening that way, right? You lose AI everything else starts to sort of crumble. Because it was, you know, a bucket that everyone had thrown all of their hopes and dreams into as well as an investment opportunity. And I think that's a really good place to end. So we've talked about what private credit is, the troubles that the private credit funds have faced and kind of question about whether democrat ization, the desirable is going to actually happen in the short run or not. And then the kind of financial consequences, you know, this isn't 2008 in any case 2008 probably isn't a great kind of standard to compare this to. You should probably look at sure as more than banks and there will be a kind of wider impact on the economy, I think, is where we've ended up. Thank you both very much for a really great discussion and thank you for watching. Do send your thoughts and questions to insider@economist.com and we'll see you again next month.
而這對私人信貸產生了連鎖反應。或者說，對私人信貸的擔憂意味著人工智慧無法以所需的方式獲得資金。在我看來，尼古拉斯提出的兩種情境實際上都有一定的可能性。這點說得很好。我常想，人工智慧現在已遠遠超越其作為一項技術甚至金融機會的範疇。它就像凳子最後一條腿——如果一張凳子能靠單腿站立的話，對吧？它是美國市場中最後一個令人興奮的事物，不是嗎？你擔心通膨，擔心外交政策，擔心美國機構的結構及其長期可靠性。現在你又擔心軟體公司，擔心信貸蟑螂和所有這些高風險企業。而人工智慧是你能說「不，人工智慧依然沒問題」的領域。人工智慧很棒。所以我絕對能預見事情會這樣發展，對吧？一旦失去人工智慧，其他一切就開始逐漸崩潰。因為它就像一個桶，每個人都把他們的希望、夢想以及投資機會全扔進去了。我想這是一個很好的收尾點。 我們已經討論了私人信貸是什麼、私人信貸基金面臨的困境，以及關於民主化是否會在短期內真正實現的問題。接著是金融後果方面，要知道，這無論如何都不是 2008 年的情況，2008 年可能不是一個很好的比較標準。你或許應該將此視為不僅僅是銀行的問題，我認為這將對經濟產生更廣泛的影響，這就是我們最終的結論。非常感謝兩位帶來如此精彩的討論，也感謝各位的觀看。請將您的想法和問題寄至 insider@economist.com，我們下個月再見。