U.S. economy strong despite subprime problems, Bush says
布什说：美国经济依然强劲，尽管存在次级贷款的问题

U.S. President George W. Bush is not overly worried about the financial impact of the subprime mortgage problems, but on Friday announced measures to help individual homeowners facing foreclosure.

The subprime problems "are modest in relation to the size of our economy," he said. Financial markets are adjusting to the problems, and that will continue for some time, but the economy is not at risk.

    U.S. President George Bush, accompanied by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, right, and Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson, says subprime mortgage problems are 'modest' compared to the size of the U.S. economy. U.S. President George Bush, accompanied by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, right, and Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson, says subprime mortgage problems are 'modest' compared to the size of the U.S. economy.
美国总统在财长Henry Paulson和房屋部长Alphonso Jackson的陪同下说：次级贷款问题与美国总体经济比较而言并不严重。


The situation for individual homeowners with subprime mortgages who face foreclosure is different, so the government plans to help them.
利用次级贷款购买房屋的个人的情况不同，政府计划帮助他们。

As previously revealed by officials to certain media outlets on Thursday, the Federal Housing Administration will allow more people to get government-insured mortgages, Bush said.

He also encouraged lenders to renegotiate subprime mortgages with borrowers, encouraged Congress to pass a bill reforming the FHA and said lenders will have to disclose more about mortgages.

But there will be no help for lenders or borrowers who acted unwisely.
但是政府不会帮助那些不明智的贷方或借方。

"It's not the government's job to bail out speculators" or people who knowingly borrowed more than they could afford to buy houses.
解救投机者或那些借款超过自己承受能力的人并不是政府的责任。

Bush's address was the second talk Friday on the subprime problem.

Earlier in the morning, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. monetary regulator is prepared to take further action to backstop financial markets, but won't bail out investors who made bad bets.
今天早些时候，美联储主席Ben Bernanke说：美国货币管理机构准备采取进一步行动来支撑市场，但是不会帮助那些下错赌注的投资者。

After easing credit in mid-August in response to market pressures, "the Federal Reserve stands ready to take additional actions as needed to provide liquidity and promote the orderly functioning of markets," he said in the text of a speech.

But "it is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve — nor would it be appropriate — to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions."

Bernanke did not say what, if anything, the Fed plans to do. But given the turmoil in the U.S. housing and world financial markets, he said the data the Fed usually monitors is too old.

Analysts hope the Fed will cut its key interest rate on or before its next scheduled meeting, on Sept. 18. The rate is now at 5.25 per cent.

"Consequently, we will pay particularly close attention to the timeliest indicators," he said.
Markets open higher

Stock markets opened sharply higher Friday on hope that Bernanke and Bush would provide some relief to housing markets.

The markets held on to those gains through the day. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 119 points to end the week at 13,357, while the S&P/TSX composite index soared 216 points to close at 13,660.

The markets want relief from the problems caused by a sharp rise in foreclosures — more than 500,000 so far this year — after lenders made loans in past years to borrowers who were poor credit risks.

Bernanke acknowledged the depth of the problem. Slower residential construction has cut U.S. economic growth about three-quarters of a percentage point over the past 18 months, and there is a backlog of unsold homes, "suggesting that further declines in homebuilding are likely."

The foreclosures, concentrated among subprime borrowers renewing adjustable rate mortgages, have reduced the value of packages of mortgages sold to investors. Problems in the subprime market have triggered bankruptcies among mortgage lenders, and spilled over into stock and credit markets.

"Delinquencies among this class of mortgages are likely to rise further," Bernanke said.

Both Bush and Bernanke blamed part of the problem on lenders.

"Unfortunately, there have also been some excesses in the lending industry," Bush said. Bernanke said there has been "slippage in underwriting standards, reflected for example in high loan-to-value ratios and incomplete documentation."

Subprime mortgages are a particular problem because many borrowers were attracted by low initial interest rates later renewed at higher rates, and that has led to the increased foreclosures.

On the investment side, the subprime mortgages were packaged and sold to investors, but as foreclosures increased, they fell in value.

Subprime lending（或者Subprime loan），中文可译作“次级贷款”。次级贷款是银行或贷款机构提供给那些不具备资格享受Prime rate（优惠利率）贷款的客户的一种贷款。

不具备资格享受优惠利率的人通常或者是信用等级较低，或者是因为其它一些原因。比如在美国，一般都有个人的信用评级，以660分为及格线，大于660分的可以享受优惠利率，而低于660分的则无法享受。

由于次级贷款者的信用等级较低，贷款机构面临的贷款无法收回的风险相对也较大，因此，次级贷款者一般都会被收取更高的利息。然而，次级贷款的利率仍然比其它一些贷款方式的利率如通过信用卡贷款要低，所以次级贷款对需要贷款而信用等级较低的人来说仍算是合理的选择。

不同机构的次级贷款利率是不同的，对贷款者来说，经过对银行或贷款机构进行选择，可以寻找到相对较低的次级贷款利率。

2007年3月，美国的次级抵押贷款（Subprime Mortgage）违约率上升，不少大型的次级贷款机构濒临破产。因忧虑美国房地产市场和美国经济会先后受到次级贷款市场的不利影响，美国和世界其它地区金融市场出现普遍的下跌行情。

美国1995年-2001年次级贷款利率和优惠利率、国债收益率的比较

14th Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve

On leaving high school in 1971 he enrolled at Harvard University, where he spent his undergraduate years in Winthrop House and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in economics in 1975. He received a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. He taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1979 until 1985, was a visiting professor at New York University and went on to become a tenured professor at Princeton University in the Department of Economics. He chaired that department from 1996 until September 2002, when he went on public service leave. He resigned his position at Princeton July 1, 2005.[6] He has given several lectures at the London School of Economics on monetary theory and policy and has written three textbooks on macroeconomics, and one on microeconomics. He was the Director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the editor of the American Economic Review.

1971年高中毕业后考入哈佛大学，1975获经济学荣誉学位。1979年或MIT经济学博士学位。1979至1985年间在斯坦福大学商学院任教。纽约大学客座教授，然后成为普林斯顿大学经济系终生教授。1996年至2002年9月任系主任。
2005年7月1日辞去系主任职位。他在伦敦政治经济学院做过几次关于货币理论与政策的演讲。




拉丁文学位荣誉是许多欧美国家大学的传统，用来奖励特别优秀的学士、硕士或博士，有时也作为学位评分的标准，最常用的荣誉有：

Summa Cum Laude - 最优等
Magna Cum Laude - 极优等
Cum Laude - 优等