????即便政客嚴格遵照規則，但個別盲目信托的盲目性要更低一些。雖然參議院、眾議院和執行機構的章程在根本上沒有區別，但執行起來卻有很大差異。到了各州，這種差異更大。羅姆尼的資金由一名波士頓律師管理，而如果他當選美國總統，為了遵守聯邦法規，他必須重新辦理一個更嚴格的盲目信托。

????不過，除了法律和政治上的麻煩，讓大多數人對盲目信托望而卻步的最大因素則是財務要求。盲目信托只對少數政客有用。而且，必須是那些財力非常雄厚的政客。

????華盛頓特區富理達律師事務所（Foley & Lardner）的克里塔?米歇爾曾是里克?桑托勒姆的競選委員會委員，他說：“除非你在這類投資基金中投入了一筆巨款，需要進行持續性管理。否則，管理費可是不菲。”

????世達律所的格羅斯表示，通常，他會建議商界人士和其他富有的候選人考慮大眾型投資，比如共同基金或指數基金等。奧巴馬總統在經歷過早期的爭議之后，便采取了這種措施。2007年，時任參議員的奧巴馬，因為其信托在捐助人的公司投資了數萬美元而遭到指責。他的辦公室稱，這次投資是當時的顧問根據尚未敲定的盲目信托條款進行的，但此事仍登上了《紐約時報》（The New York Times）的頭版。

????美國最有錢的政客們都避開了盲目信托。比如，2008年，希拉里參加總統競選時，克林頓夫婦便把他們的信托全部變現，來避免出現利益沖突的指責。其他幾位未設立盲目信托的富豪政客包括加州眾議員達雷爾?伊薩、馬薩諸塞州參議員約翰?克里和眾議員少數黨領袖南希?佩洛西，不過這三人的投資組合不夠低調，不時就會有媒體跳出來對此指摘一番。

????格羅斯稱，和擁有密切管理信托的候選人相比，進行大眾投資的候選人“可以有同樣的表現，甚至表現更好”。如今，有各種各樣的指數基金可以提供更加激進、風險更高的投資選擇。政客可以借此實現大幅度的投資增長，又無需擔心盲目信托帶來的煩惱（和巨額費用）。

????不過，盲目信托確實有它存在的價值。對于資產不便變現的競選人來說，其他選擇少之又少。衛理律所的沃克稱：“對于所持有投資組合極其復雜的人來說，這可能是唯一的應對。”米特?羅姆尼的情況便是如此，他擁有很復雜的私募股權，還持有貝恩資本的股份，因此，他不可能把所有資金都用于購買美國長期國債，過早放棄投資所帶來的稅務影響就更不必說了。

????當然，這并不意味著只有成熟老練的投資者才可以設立盲目信托。任何人都可以選擇這種投資方式。未來，盲目信托可能日益普遍。隨著《證券法》（Stock Act）的通過，進一步加強了對財務披露的法律要求，并明確禁止內幕交易，而盲目信托不僅得到了倫理學家的認可，還具有保密性。因此，它未來可能會得到更多人的青睞。

????加州參議員芭芭拉?柏克瑟曾寫過一本名為《盲目信托》（Blind Trust）的驚悚小說。寫這本書的動機是因為一個不受她控制的信托進行了不良金融交易，致使她受到了不公正的指責。柏克瑟自己就設立了盲目信托，但同時也是負責管理盲目信托的參議院道德委員會的主席。對于這本書的寓意，羅姆尼和奧巴馬肯定非常熟悉：對待盲目信托要小心謹慎。并非只有政客們自己能看清盲目信托的真實面目，群眾同樣心知肚明。

????翻譯：劉進龍/汪皓

????Even when a politician follows the rules perfectly, some trusts are less blind than others. While the statutes are essentially the same for the Senate, the House and the Executive Branch, they're enforced differently. On the state level, there's even greater disparity. Romney's money is managed by a Boston attorney, and he would likely need to create a new, stricter blind trust in order to comply with federal regulations if elected.

????But besides the legal and political morass, perhaps the biggest deterrent is financial. Blind trusts are only really useful to a few politicians. And to be one of them, you must be really, really rich.

????"Unless you've got just a bajillion dollars in the kinds of investment funds that require constant management," says Cleta Mitchell of law firm Foley & Lardner in D.C., and former campaign council to Rick Santorum. "Then really the cost of managing that is a lot."

????Skadden Arps's Gross says that he typically advises businessmen and other wealthy candidates to consider plain vanilla investments like mutual funds or index funds. Notably, Obama went this route after his own early brushes with controversy. In 2007, the then-senator came under fire after his trust invested tens of thousands in donors' companies. His office said at the time that advisers had made the investments under the terms of a blind trust that had yet to be finalized, but the story still ran on the front page of The New York Times.

????Some of the country's wealthiest politicians have eschewed blind trusts altogether. Bill and Hillary Clinton liquidated theirs and left the holdings in cash to avoid perceptions of conflict of interest when Hilary ran for office in 2008. California Representative Darrell Issa, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are other examples of extremely well-endowed legislators without blind trusts, though none of the three have portfolios bland enough to avoid occasionally pointed question from the press.

????Candidates with vanilla holdings, says Gross, often "do just as well, and probably better," than those with closely managed trusts. Today's diversified index funds have more aggressive, riskier options, Gross says. That allows politicians to pursue serious investment growth without signing up for the hassle (and giant fees) that come with a blind trust.

????Blind trusts do serve a purpose, though. For some candidates with assets that can't be easily liquidated, there are few other options. "It may be the only response that someone who has extremely complicated holdings can take," Wiley Rein's Walker says. That might be true in Mitt Romney's case, where a complex bundle of private equity holdings and his stake in Bain Capital would make it extremely difficult for him to simply put everything in Treasury bonds -- to say nothing of the tax implications of prematurely bailing on his investments.

????That's not to say only a sophisticated investor can set up a blind trust. The option is open to anyone, and it's likely to become increasingly popular. With the passage of the Stock Act, which beefs up financial disclosure laws and explicitly bans insider trading, blind trusts may gain appeal for being both ethicist-approved and confidential.

????There's even a book about it: Blind Trust, a thriller written by California Senator Barbara Boxer, follows a protagonist unjustly blamed for untoward financial dealings in a trust she didn't control. Boxer, who has one of her own, is also the chair of the Senate ethics committee, which regulates them. The moral of the story is one both Romney and Obama are familiar with by now: Handle blind trusts with care. Not only can politicians often discern their contents, so can the public.