对于初涉PTE的新人来说，阅读在考试中的重要地位不言而喻。但是大家不能一开始就一头扎进茫茫PTE阅读题海，掌握PTE阅读的基本情况和一些必备的技巧缺一不可，只有站在一个高的起点，才能在之后的学习中按部就班，顺其自然地拿下高分!今天小编就为大家整理了这些，一起看看!
Sovereign credit-default swaps
Muffled signals
Jun 11th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
Credit derivatives on countries are behaving oddly
GOVERNMENTS in the rich world are announcing record-breaking deficits and their credit ratings are under threat. Yet the market that should be most worried is not. An index of credit-default-swap (CDS) spreads on the seven biggest rich economies maintained by Credit Derivatives Research (CDR), a research outfit, has widened in recent weeks, but still signals half the risk it did in February, before the full scale of the damage to public finances became clear (see chart). The trend holds true even for Britain, which is threatened with a credit-rating downgrade, and Ireland, which on June 8th suffered its second sovereign downgrade in three months.
Dave Klein at CDR admits to being puzzled by the trend. He reckons that investors associate sovereign-default risk with overall financial risk because governments now backstop so much of the system. When America bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the country’s two big mortgage agencies, its CDS spreads widened sharply. Conversely, a recovering economy means fewer bank failures, so government balance-sheets are less likely to be strained by bail-outs.
Sovereign CDSs are in any case harder to interpret than corporate CDSs. Rich-country defaults are extremely rare (emerging markets, less so) which makes it difficult for investors to estimate how much they would recover in bankruptcy, a key determinant in CDS pricing. Moreover, payouts on the swaps are triggered in different ways. A corporation generally has a grace period on its debt payments before a credit event is declared and protection is paid off. Governments have no such grace period. If America is 30 seconds late, a credit event is declared, says Mr Klein. Sovereign CDSs also tend be priced in dollars—except for swaps on America’s debt, which are priced in euros—so currency risk blurs things too.
Sovereign CDS volumes have held up better than other parts of the market. According to figures from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) the number of contracts and the notional value of derivatives on some 60 sovereign borrowers have generally held steady or grown a bit faster than the overall CDS market.
But most of this activity remains concentrated on emerging markets like Turkey, Brazil, Russia and Mexico. For rich countries, the amounts at stake are minuscule. DTCC puts the notional value of CDS contracts on American debt at $9 billion, barely 0.1% of the total amount of publicly held debt. The value of sovereign CDSs is just 6% of all CDSs, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Clues to the rickety state of public finances are better found elsewhere.
【中文翻译对照】
主权信用违约掉期
模糊的信号
2009年6月11日|华盛顿特区
摘自《经济学人》
主权信用衍生品市场表现奇异
发达国家的政府们正在不断宣布着打破纪录的赤字额，他们的信用评级也正面临着危险。然而理应最为人们所担心的(信用违约)市场却没有显示出相应风险。(尽管)一项由信用衍生品研究机构(CDR)提供的、基于七个最大最富有经济体的信用违约掉期利差在最近几周内有所扩大，但是在公共财政面临的全方位威胁一览无余之际，信用违约掉期利差仍然仅显示出相当于其今年二月时所显示的一半的风险。
(如图。即“仅从信用违约掉期利差的走势图中，并未显示出与利差走势相适应的公共财政风险”)这一趋势即使对英国和爱尔兰也是如此，英国正面领着信用评级遭降级的威胁，而爱尔兰在6月8日那天遭到其三个月中第二次主权信用降级。
信用衍生品研究机构(CDR)的Dave Klein承认他对这一趋势感到困惑。他认为由于政府如今对于金融系统做了如此多的增援支持，投资者会将主权违约风险和总体金融风险联系起来。当美国对国内最大的两家房屋抵押贷款机构房利美和房地美实行救市计划时，其信用违约掉期的利差迅速扩大。反之，经济复苏意味着更少的银行倒闭事件，因此政府的资产负债表被救市计划拖累的可能性也就越小。
主权信用违约掉期在任何情况下都比公司信用违约掉期更加难以解读。发达国家的违约事件极其罕见，而新兴市场则相反。这就让投资者难以估计信用违约掉期定价中的一项关键因素，即他们能从(发达国家中的)破产事件中回收多少钱。此外两种掉期的偿付有着不同的触发方式。对于公司的信用违约掉期而言，在申明该公司发生了违约事件并赔付补偿金之前，对其债务偿付都有一段宽限期。而对于政府债务而言则没有这段宽限期。(所以)Klein说，“即使美国晚了30秒钟还债，仍会申明其违约。”主权信用违约掉期通常用美元计价(美国债务的信用掉期除外，为欧元计价)。所以，外汇风险的加入会把情况搞得更加复杂。
主权信用违约掉期交易量的维持要好于市场中的其他产品，根据美国证券托管清算公司(Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation)提供的数字，基于大约60个主权国家借款的衍生品的合约数和名义价值基本上与信用违约掉期整体市场维持相对稳定，或增速略高于整体市场。
但是大部分这样的交易活动集中在诸如土耳其、巴西、俄罗斯、墨西哥等新兴市场。对于富国而言，在外交易的主权信用违约掉期数额则小的不值一提。据美国证券托管清算公司(DTCC)估算，美国债务签订的信用违约掉期合同的名义价值为90亿美元，仅仅只占公开交易债务总额的0.1%。而根据国际结算银行的统计，主权信用违约掉期的价值只占所有信用违约掉期的6%。所以，最好还是从别处找找关于公共财政已经摇摇欲坠的线索~~
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