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发表于 5-5-2008 01:18 PM
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发表于 5-5-2008 02:52 PM
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新闻。
Last Updated: May 2, 2008: 9:41 AM EDT
Buffett goes to Wharton
Why Warren Buffett views his job as similar to painting the Sistine Chapel.
By Nicholas Varchaver, senior editor
(Fortune) -- In a presentation he made to students at the Wharton School earlier this month and a subsequent interview with Fortune, Warren Buffett shared his thoughts on everything from the economy to the credit crisis and the Bear Stearns bailout.
In this Web exclusive, we present further excerpts from his talk with the students, in which the megabillionaire offers his insights on judging managers, buying businesses, what metrics - if any - he relies upon, and why he views his job as similar to painting the Sistine Chapel.
Q: You said before that one of the things you look for in businesses you're buying is good managers who are honest, capable, and hard-working. To me, that's a hard judgment to make if you haven't known him for long on a personal level. How do you go about figuring that out about somebody, and how long does it take you to make that evaluation?
WB: Well, almost always, we're buying businesses where the managers come with it, so I do have a record [I can judge]. If I had to pick out the five people in this group here who would be the best managers, I wouldn't know how to do it. I mean, you all have great IQs, you have great academic records. You've all shown the energy to get into school and push hard and all that. So you'd have all these attractive qualities.
Can I pick out the five best? I don't think I can do it. What I can do, when I've seen somebody run a business for 20 years, is decide whether they're going to keep behaving in the future as they have in the past, if I keep the conditions that caused them to behave that way in the past. So when I buy a business - it's the biggest question I ask myself if I decide it's a good business - is "Do they love the money, or do they love the business?" Now, if they love the business, we can do business. If they love the money, we can't.
Now, let's say they love the business, as our managers do. They sell me a business for a billion dollars and can hardly wait to get to work in the morning.
In that situation, I'm the only guy that can mess it up. I can take that out of them. I can't put it into them. But I say to myself, "Why do I go to work in the morning?" I've got enough money. I've got Social Security now, even. [Laughter] I'll make it, you know? The kids won't get much, but that's their problem. So I say, "Why do I go to work in the morning?"
Well, there are two reasons. I love painting my own painting. I come down to the office, I get on my back, and I start painting. And I think I'm in the Sistine Chapel. It's my painting. Now, if somebody says, "Use more red paint instead of blue. Paint a seascape instead of a landscape," I would hand them the brush in five seconds and I'd say-I'd say a few other things, too - but I'd say, "Do your own painting. I'll go paint what I want to paint." I get to do my own painting. And then I get applause - if I deserve it. And I like that. I like having the painting admired, and I like to get to paint my own painting. That's so much more important to me than getting my golf score down three strokes or beating somebody at shuffleboard or something. I mean, it is the ultimate pleasure.
Now, if that turns me on, why won't it turn on these people who have built their own businesses? They have spent their life creating a wonderful painting. Now, for one reason or another, maybe tax reasons, maybe sibling reasons, who knows what, they need to sell it, they need to monetize it.
They come to me, and they know that at Berkshire they're going to keep the brush, they're going to keep doing the painting, and I have to look at them and decide whether they are people that really care about their painting or care about the money. [One giveaway is] if they auction the business. We've never bought a business at an auction. Never. Anybody that wants to auction off their family or auction off the creation of a lifetime, that's not what we want.
I tell people you've got two choices. You've spent a lifetime building this business. Or maybe your father built the business and you carried it on. Maybe your grandfather. You've given up vacations sometimes. You worked on weekends and all these things to create this really incredible painting that you're bringing to me. Now, if they want to auction it, they're not for me.
I tell them they have two choices. They can sell it to us, and it'll be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We'll have a wing for their painting. People will come and admire it, which they do. And they will say, "That's one hell of a painter." And you get to keep painting. Or you can take this marvelous painting and you can sell it to a porn shop. [Laughter] And he'll take the thing and he'll make the boobs a little bigger, something like that. And put it in the window. And a guy will come over in a raincoat a few years later, and he'll buy it, post it in his window, and it'll become a piece of meat, basically. We get the ones who care about having in it the Metropolitan Museum.
I got a fax almost three years ago on a Wednesday from a fellow I'd never met about a company I'd never heard of. This fellow named Peter Liegl ran Forest River over in Elkhart, Indiana. He sent me a couple pages, and said, "This is the sort of thing it looks like you're generally interested in."
I called him up that day. I said, "Pete, send me the last few audits. FedEx it, and I'll call you tomorrow afternoon." Never met him, never heard of the company. (It's a recreational vehicle company.) So I got in on Thursday morning, and I called him that afternoon. I said, "Pete, here's what I'll do. And if it works for you, fine." I'd never met the guy, but I could still tell by just the way he presented it and his thinking on it. And he said, "Fine. I'll come over next week with my wife and daughter, who own the stock."
And they came over late in the afternoon. I said to him, "Pete, what kind of salary would you like"; this is a company that did a billion seven last year. That's not the way they teach you to do it in business school, but I don't want anybody working for me that has a compensation system they're unhappy with. These people don't need me. They've got all the money they need. I'm going to [invest] hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars [in their businesses]. And he said, "I don't know." And I said, "Well, just tell me because I want you to be happy. You have to run this thing." "Well," he took a little while, "Well," he said, "I looked at the proxy statement, you make $100,000. I wouldn't want to make more than you do." So that became his salary.
Then I said, "You should get paid for exceeding the figures [on which I'm basing the decision to buy the company]. So," I said, "I want you to have a percentage interest in future earnings above this level," which we worked out. But he offered $100,000 and I offered the percentage above that. He has run the business magnificently since then. I've never been to Elkhart, Indiana. I've never seen this place. I hope it's there. [Laughter] Pete may have some 11-year-old kid in there that says, "What figure shall we send Warren?" [Laughter] The guy has done a remarkable job.
If I told Pete whether he should build a new plant, whether he should bring out a new model, whether he should change dealer firms, he'd tell me to take a hike. You know, why shouldn't he tell me to take a hike? He doesn't need the job. As long as that thing is a lot of fun for him, he's going to keep running it. And he'll run it for a long time.
[I get offered all] kinds of deals from LBO operators. I would just love to bet against the projections of every one that they give me. They hand me these books, which I don't even want to look at, but they hand me the books, and of course they always just project like that [points upward like a graph that only increases]. I would just love to make a career out of betting against the figures presented in those books, but I don't get a chance to do that. If you ever get a chance to short investment banker books, that would be a great activity.
Q: When you purchase a subsidiary, you've mentioned that you allow them to reinvest capital if they're able to go above a certain hurdle rate. So I was wondering how you decide what the cost of capital should be on a risk-adjusted basis.
WB: Well, we don't think about cost of capital or risk-adjusted. I mean, we don't want to take any risk, and we don't. That doesn't mean we don't do things that are wrong and all that, but we are not doing anything that risks real losses.
You know, GEICO spends 800 million on advertising. I may spend $200 million that's wrong this year at GEICO or something. But I recognize the things that I can't further refine. What we do with capital is we just look for the best thing we can do at any given time. I mean, in the end, we're going to retain everything.
We don't want to do anything that doesn't create more than a dollar's worth of value for every dollar expended. And we'll do the best we can. And as I said earlier [regarding stock holdings], we would have sold the thing to do something that offered even better opportunity. We won't do that with businesses at Berkshire. That's a pledge I make to people. If they sell me the business, it's going to stay in the Metropolitan Museum forever. I may make a mistake.
If it's going to permanently lose money, I reserve the right to sell it, and if it has labor problems, I reserve the right to sell it. That's in the back of the annual report every year. They've been there for 20-plus years, those principles. But we believe in them. We follow through on them. So we won't dump a business that way. But about 200 million a week comes in to me every week. I like it, too. [Laughter] And it's my job to figure out how to allocate that.
The smaller capital expenditures, or even fairly large ones at the subsidiaries, they just do them themselves. They don't need me, because if some guy comes in to me and talks about something in the yarn plant or something in Georgia, what the hell do I know about it? I mean, they can always present it in a way that makes it look good. If I say the internal rate of return we demand is 15.83, it'll be 15.84. I mean, you just can bet on it. I've never seen a project that doesn't meet your hurdle rate, you know, if they really want to do it. We don't go through those charades. And it saves my time, saves their time.
If we get into bigger deals, then I get involved. Buying businesses of any size and things of that sort. But we just look for the most intelligent thing. And our cutoff point is where we don't think we're creating more than a dollar of value for every dollar we lay out. Marketable securities, to some extent we just look for the things we think have the best expectancy, but we're not buying - there isn't one security that I've got in the portfolio that I look at as-in terms of risky - in the sense of permanent capital loss. They can go down 50%.
Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, Fortune 500) stock itself has gone down 50% three times since I bought the first stock in at 7 3/8. In 1974 it got cut in half. In 1987 it got cut in half. In 1998, 2000 or so it got cut in half. So that doesn't make any difference. I mean, I just don't worry about it. I worry about permanent loss of capital. I worry about making the right businesses. I worry about keeping the managers happy. Everything else pretty much takes care of itself.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/ ... tversion=2008050209 |
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发表于 5-5-2008 02:56 PM
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新闻。
April 14, 2008: 10:23 AM EDT
What Warren thinks...
With Wall Street in chaos, Fortune naturally went to Omaha looking for wisdom. Warren Buffett talks about the economy, the credit crisis, Bear Stearns, and more.
By Nicholas Varchaver,
(Fortune Magazine) -- If Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, scheduled for May 3 this year, is known as the Woodstock of Capitalism, then perhaps this is the equivalent of Bob Dylan playing a private show in his own house: Some 15 times a year Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett invites a group of business students for an intensive day of learning. The students tour one or two of the company's businesses and then proceed to Berkshire (BRKA, Fortune 500) headquarters in downtown Omaha, where Buffett opens the floor to two hours of questions and answers. Later everyone repairs to one of his favorite restaurants, where he treats them to lunch and root beer floats. Finally, each student gets the chance to pose for a photo with Buffett.
In early April the megabillionaire hosted 150 students from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (which Buffett attended) and offered Fortune the rare opportunity to sit in as he expounded on everything from the Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500) bailout to the prognosis for the economy to whether he'd rather be CEO of GE (GE, Fortune 500) - or a paperboy. What follows are edited excerpts from his question-and-answer session with the students, his lunchtime chat with the Whartonites over chicken parmigiana at Piccolo Pete's, and an interview with Fortune in his office.
Buffett began by welcoming the students with an array of Coca-Cola products. ("Berkshire owns a little over 8% of Coke, so we get the profit on one out of 12 cans. I don't care whether you drink it, but just open the cans, if you will.") He then plunged into weightier matters:
Before we start in on questions, I would like to tell you about one thing going on recently. It may have some meaning to you if you're still being taught efficient-market theory, which was standard procedure 25 years ago. But we've had a recent illustration of why the theory is misguided. In the past seven or eight or nine weeks, Berkshire has built up a position in auction-rate securities [bonds whose interest rates are periodically reset at auction; for more, see box on page 74] of about $4 billion. And what we have seen there is really quite phenomenal. Every day we get bid lists. The fascinating thing is that on these bid lists, frequently the same credit will appear more than once.
Here's one from yesterday. We bid on this particular issue - this happens to be Citizens Insurance, which is a creature of the state of Florida. It was set up to take care of hurricane insurance, and it's backed by premium taxes, and if they have a big hurricane and the fund becomes inadequate, they raise the premium taxes. There's nothing wrong with the credit. So we bid on three different Citizens securities that day. We got one bid at an 11.33% interest rate. One that we didn't buy went for 9.87%, and one went for 6.0%. It's the same bond, the same time, the same dealer. And a big issue. This is not some little anomaly, as they like to say in academic circles every time they find something that disagrees with their theory.
So wild things happen in the markets. And the markets have not gotten more rational over the years. They've become more followed. But when people panic, when fear takes over, or when greed takes over, people react just as irrationally as they have in the past.
Do you think the U.S. financial markets are losing their competitive edge? And what's the right balance between confidence-inspiring standards and ...
... between regulation and the Wild West? Well, I don't think we're losing our edge. I mean, there are costs to Sarbanes-Oxley, some of which are wasted. But they're not huge relative to the $20 trillion in total market value. I think we've got fabulous capital markets in this country, and they get screwed up often enough to make them even more fabulous. I mean, you don't want a capital market that functions perfectly if you're in my business. People continue to do foolish things no matter what the regulation is, and they always will. There are significant limits to what regulation can accomplish. As a dramatic illustration, take two of the biggest accounting disasters in the past ten years: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We're talking billions and billions of dollars of misstatements at both places.
Now, these are two incredibly important institutions. I mean, they accounted for over 40% of the mortgage flow a few years back. Right now I think they're up to 70%. They're quasi-governmental in nature. So the government set up an organization called OFHEO. I'm not sure what all the letters stand for. [Note to Warren: They stand for Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.] But if you go to OFHEO's website, you'll find that its purpose was to just watch over these two companies. OFHEO had 200 employees. Their job was simply to look at two companies and say, "Are these guys behaving like they're supposed to?" And of course what happened were two of the greatest accounting misstatements in history while these 200 people had their jobs. It's incredible. I mean, two for two!
It's very, very, very hard to regulate people. If I were appointed a new regulator - if you gave me 100 of the smartest people you can imagine to work for me, and every day I got the positions from the biggest institutions, all their derivative positions, all their stock positions and currency positions, I wouldn't be able to tell you how they were doing. It's very, very hard to regulate when you get into very complex instruments where you've got hundreds of counterparties. The counterparty behavior and risk was a big part of why the Treasury and the Fed felt that they had to move in over a weekend at Bear Stearns. And I think they were right to do it, incidentally. Nobody knew what would be unleashed when you had thousands of counterparties with, I read someplace, contracts with a $14 trillion notional value. Those people would have tried to unwind all those contracts if there had been a bankruptcy. What that would have done to the markets, what that would have done to other counterparties in turn - it gets very, very complicated. So regulating is an important part of the system. The efficacy of it is really tough.
At Piccolo Pete's, where he has dined with everyone from Microsoft's Bill Gates to the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, Buffett sat at a table with 12 Whartonites and bantered over many topics.
How do you feel about the election?
Way before they both filed, I told Hillary that I would support her if she ran, and I told Barack I would support him if he ran. So I am now a political bigamist. But I feel either would be great. And actually, I feel that if a Republican wins, John McCain would be the one I would prefer. I think we've got three unusually good candidates this time.
They're all moderate in their approach.
Well, the one we don't know for sure about is Barack. On the other hand, he has the chance to be the most transformational too.
I know you had a paper route. Was that your first job?
Well, I worked for my grandfather, which was really tough, in the [family] grocery store. But if you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. It might be wonderful to be head of GE, and Jeff Immelt is a friend of mine. And he's a great guy. But think of all the things he has to do whether he wants to do them or not.
How do you get your ideas?
I just read. I read all day. I mean, we put $500 million in PetroChina. All I did was read the annual report. [Editor's note: Berkshire purchased the shares five years ago and sold them in 2007 for $4 billion.]
What advice would you give to someone who is not a professional investor? Where should they put their money?
Well, if they're not going to be an active investor - and very few should try to do that - then they should just stay with index funds. Any low-cost index fund. And they should buy it over time. They're not going to be able to pick the right price and the right time. What they want to do is avoid the wrong price and wrong stock. You just make sure you own a piece of American business, and you don't buy all at one time.
When Buffett said he was ready to pose for photographs, all 150 students stampeded out of the room within seconds and formed a massive line. For the next half hour, each one took his or her turn with Buffett, often in hammy poses (wrestling for his wallet was a favorite). Then, as he started to leave, a 77-year-old's version of A Hard Day's Night ensued, with a pack of 30 students trailing him to his gold Cadillac. Once free, he drove this Fortune writer back to his office and continued fielding questions.
How does the current turmoil stack up against past crises?
Well, that's hard to say. Every one has so many variables in it. But there's no question that this time there's extreme leveraging and in some cases the extreme prices of residential housing or buyouts. You've got $20 trillion of residential real estate and you've got $11 trillion of mortgages, and a lot of that does not have a problem, but a lot of it does. In 2006 you had $330 billion of cash taken out in mortgage refinancings in the United States. That's a hell of a lot - I mean, we talk about having $150 billion of stimulus now, but that was $330 billion of stimulus. And that's just from prime mortgages. That's not from subprime mortgages. So leveraging up was one hell of a stimulus for the economy.
If that was one hell of a stimulus, do you think the $150 billion government stimulus plan will make an impact?
Well, it's $150 billion more than we'd have otherwise. But it's not like we haven't had stimulus. And then the simultaneous, more or less, LBO boom, which was called private equity this time. The abuses keep coming back - and the terms got terrible and all that. You've got a banking system that's hung up with lots of that. You've got a mortgage industry that's deleveraging, and it's going to be painful.
The scenario you're describing suggests we're a long way from turning a corner.
I think so. I mean, it seems everybody says it'll be short and shallow, but it looks like it's just the opposite. You know, deleveraging by its nature takes a lot of time, a lot of pain. And the consequences kind of roll through in different ways. Now, I don't invest a dime based on macro forecasts, so I don't think people should sell stocks because of that. I also don't think they should buy stocks because of that.
Your OFHEO example implies you're not too optimistic about regulation.
Finance has gotten so complex, with so much interdependency. I argued with Alan Greenspan some about this at [Washington Post chairman] Don Graham's dinner. He would say that you've spread risk throughout the world by all these instruments, and now you didn't have it all concentrated in your banks. But what you've done is you've interconnected the solvency of institutions to a degree that probably nobody anticipated. And it's very hard to evaluate. If Bear Stearns had not had a derivatives book, my guess is the Fed wouldn't have had to do what it did.
Do you find it striking that banks keep looking into their investments and not knowing what they have?
I read a few prospectuses for residential-mortgage-backed securities - mortgages, thousands of mortgages backing them, and then those all tranched into maybe 30 slices. You create a CDO by taking one of the lower tranches of that one and 50 others like it. Now if you're going to understand that CDO, you've got 50-times-300 pages to read, it's 15,000. If you take one of the lower tranches of the CDO and take 50 of those and create a CDO squared, you're now up to 750,000 pages to read to understand one security. I mean, it can't be done. When you start buying tranches of other instruments, nobody knows what the hell they're doing. It's ridiculous. And of course, you took a lower tranche of a mortgage-backed security and did 100 of those and thought you were diversifying risk. Hell, they're all subject to the same thing. I mean, it may be a little different whether they're in California or Nebraska, but the idea that this is uncorrelated risk and therefore you can take the CDO and call the top 50% of it super-senior - it isn't super-senior or anything. It's a bunch of juniors all put together. And the juniors all correlate.
If big financial institutions don't seem to know what's in their portfolios, how will investors ever know when it's safe?
They can't, they can't. They've got to, in effect, try to read the DNA of the people running the companies. But I say that in any large financial organization, the CEO has to be the chief risk officer. I'm the chief risk officer at Berkshire. I think I know my limits in terms of how much I can sort of process. And the worst thing you can have is models and spreadsheets. I mean, at Salomon, they had all these models, and you know, they fell apart.
What should we say to investors now?
The answer is you don't want investors to think that what they read today is important in terms of their investment strategy. Their investment strategy should factor in that (a) if you knew what was going to happen in the economy, you still wouldn't necessarily know what was going to happen in the stock market. And (b) they can't pick stocks that are better than average. Stocks are a good thing to own over time. There's only two things you can do wrong: You can buy the wrong ones, and you can buy or sell them at the wrong time. And the truth is you never need to sell them, basically. But they could buy a cross section of American industry, and if a cross section of American industry doesn't work, certainly trying to pick the little beauties here and there isn't going to work either. Then they just have to worry about getting greedy. You know, I always say you should get greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. But that's too much to expect. Of course, you shouldn't get greedy when others get greedy and fearful when others get fearful. At a minimum, try to stay away from that.
By your rule, now seems like a good time to be greedy. People are pretty fearful.
You're right. They are going in that direction. That's why stocks are cheaper. Stocks are a better buy today than they were a year ago. Or three years ago.
But you're still bullish about the U.S. for the long term?
The American economy is going to do fine. But it won't do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don't believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway. But it stands to reason. I mean, we get more productive every year, you know. It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market.
Varchaver,
(Fortune Magazine) -- If Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, scheduled for May 3 this year, is known as the Woodstock of Capitalism, then perhaps this is the equivalent of Bob Dylan playing a private show in his own house: Some 15 times a year Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett invites a group of business students for an intensive day of learning. The students tour one or two of the company's businesses and then proceed to Berkshire (BRKA, Fortune 500) headquarters in downtown Omaha, where Buffett opens the floor to two hours of questions and answers. Later everyone repairs to one of his favorite restaurants, where he treats them to lunch and root beer floats. Finally, each student gets the chance to pose for a photo with Buffett.
In early April the megabillionaire hosted 150 students from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (which Buffett attended) and offered Fortune the rare opportunity to sit in as he expounded on everything from the Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500) bailout to the prognosis for the economy to whether he'd rather be CEO of GE (GE, Fortune 500) - or a paperboy. What follows are edited excerpts from his question-and-answer session with the students, his lunchtime chat with the Whartonites over chicken parmigiana at Piccolo Pete's, and an interview with Fortune in his office.
Buffett began by welcoming the students with an array of Coca-Cola products. ("Berkshire owns a little over 8% of Coke, so we get the profit on one out of 12 cans. I don't care whether you drink it, but just open the cans, if you will.") He then plunged into weightier matters:
Before we start in on questions, I would like to tell you about one thing going on recently. It may have some meaning to you if you're still being taught efficient-market theory, which was standard procedure 25 years ago. But we've had a recent illustration of why the theory is misguided. In the past seven or eight or nine weeks, Berkshire has built up a position in auction-rate securities [bonds whose interest rates are periodically reset at auction; for more, see box on page 74] of about $4 billion. And what we have seen there is really quite phenomenal. Every day we get bid lists. The fascinating thing is that on these bid lists, frequently the same credit will appear more than once.
Here's one from yesterday. We bid on this particular issue - this happens to be Citizens Insurance, which is a creature of the state of Florida. It was set up to take care of hurricane insurance, and it's backed by premium taxes, and if they have a big hurricane and the fund becomes inadequate, they raise the premium taxes. There's nothing wrong with the credit. So we bid on three different Citizens securities that day. We got one bid at an 11.33% interest rate. One that we didn't buy went for 9.87%, and one went for 6.0%. It's the same bond, the same time, the same dealer. And a big issue. This is not some little anomaly, as they like to say in academic circles every time they find something that disagrees with their theory.
So wild things happen in the markets. And the markets have not gotten more rational over the years. They've become more followed. But when people panic, when fear takes over, or when greed takes over, people react just as irrationally as they have in the past.
Do you think the U.S. financial markets are losing their competitive edge? And what's the right balance between confidence-inspiring standards and ...
... between regulation and the Wild West? Well, I don't think we're losing our edge. I mean, there are costs to Sarbanes-Oxley, some of which are wasted. But they're not huge relative to the $20 trillion in total market value. I think we've got fabulous capital markets in this country, and they get screwed up often enough to make them even more fabulous. I mean, you don't want a capital market that functions perfectly if you're in my business. People continue to do foolish things no matter what the regulation is, and they always will. There are significant limits to what regulation can accomplish. As a dramatic illustration, take two of the biggest accounting disasters in the past ten years: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We're talking billions and billions of dollars of misstatements at both places.
Now, these are two incredibly important institutions. I mean, they accounted for over 40% of the mortgage flow a few years back. Right now I think they're up to 70%. They're quasi-governmental in nature. So the government set up an organization called OFHEO. I'm not sure what all the letters stand for. [Note to Warren: They stand for Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.] But if you go to OFHEO's website, you'll find that its purpose was to just watch over these two companies. OFHEO had 200 employees. Their job was simply to look at two companies and say, "Are these guys behaving like they're supposed to?" And of course what happened were two of the greatest accounting misstatements in history while these 200 people had their jobs. It's incredible. I mean, two for two!
It's very, very, very hard to regulate people. If I were appointed a new regulator - if you gave me 100 of the smartest people you can imagine to work for me, and every day I got the positions from the biggest institutions, all their derivative positions, all their stock positions and currency positions, I wouldn't be able to tell you how they were doing. It's very, very hard to regulate when you get into very complex instruments where you've got hundreds of counterparties. The counterparty behavior and risk was a big part of why the Treasury and the Fed felt that they had to move in over a weekend at Bear Stearns. And I think they were right to do it, incidentally. Nobody knew what would be unleashed when you had thousands of counterparties with, I read someplace, contracts with a $14 trillion notional value. Those people would have tried to unwind all those contracts if there had been a bankruptcy. What that would have done to the markets, what that would have done to other counterparties in turn - it gets very, very complicated. So regulating is an important part of the system. The efficacy of it is really tough.
At Piccolo Pete's, where he has dined with everyone from Microsoft's Bill Gates to the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, Buffett sat at a table with 12 Whartonites and bantered over many topics.
How do you feel about the election?
Way before they both filed, I told Hillary that I would support her if she ran, and I told Barack I would support him if he ran. So I am now a political bigamist. But I feel either would be great. And actually, I feel that if a Republican wins, John McCain would be the one I would prefer. I think we've got three unusually good candidates this time.
They're all moderate in their approach.
Well, the one we don't know for sure about is Barack. On the other hand, he has the chance to be the most transformational too.
I know you had a paper route. Was that your first job?
Well, I worked for my grandfather, which was really tough, in the [family] grocery store. But if you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. It might be wonderful to be head of GE, and Jeff Immelt is a friend of mine. And he's a great guy. But think of all the things he has to do whether he wants to do them or not.
How do you get your ideas?
I just read. I read all day. I mean, we put $500 million in PetroChina. All I did was read the annual report. [Editor's note: Berkshire purchased the shares five years ago and sold them in 2007 for $4 billion.]
What advice would you give to someone who is not a professional investor? Where should they put their money?
Well, if they're not going to be an active investor - and very few should try to do that - then they should just stay with index funds. Any low-cost index fund. And they should buy it over time. They're not going to be able to pick the right price and the right time. What they want to do is avoid the wrong price and wrong stock. You just make sure you own a piece of American business, and you don't buy all at one time.
When Buffett said he was ready to pose for photographs, all 150 students stampeded out of the room within seconds and formed a massive line. For the next half hour, each one took his or her turn with Buffett, often in hammy poses (wrestling for his wallet was a favorite). Then, as he started to leave, a 77-year-old's version of A Hard Day's Night ensued, with a pack of 30 students trailing him to his gold Cadillac. Once free, he drove this Fortune writer back to his office and continued fielding questions.
How does the current turmoil stack up against past crises?
Well, that's hard to say. Every one has so many variables in it. But there's no question that this time there's extreme leveraging and in some cases the extreme prices of residential housing or buyouts. You've got $20 trillion of residential real estate and you've got $11 trillion of mortgages, and a lot of that does not have a problem, but a lot of it does. In 2006 you had $330 billion of cash taken out in mortgage refinancings in the United States. That's a hell of a lot - I mean, we talk about having $150 billion of stimulus now, but that was $330 billion of stimulus. And that's just from prime mortgages. That's not from subprime mortgages. So leveraging up was one hell of a stimulus for the economy.
If that was one hell of a stimulus, do you think the $150 billion government stimulus plan will make an impact?
Well, it's $150 billion more than we'd have otherwise. But it's not like we haven't had stimulus. And then the simultaneous, more or less, LBO boom, which was called private equity this time. The abuses keep coming back - and the terms got terrible and all that. You've got a banking system that's hung up with lots of that. You've got a mortgage industry that's deleveraging, and it's going to be painful.
The scenario you're describing suggests we're a long way from turning a corner.
I think so. I mean, it seems everybody says it'll be short and shallow, but it looks like it's just the opposite. You know, deleveraging by its nature takes a lot of time, a lot of pain. And the consequences kind of roll through in different ways. Now, I don't invest a dime based on macro forecasts, so I don't think people should sell stocks because of that. I also don't think they should buy stocks because of that.
Your OFHEO example implies you're not too optimistic about regulation.
Finance has gotten so complex, with so much interdependency. I argued with Alan Greenspan some about this at [Washington Post chairman] Don Graham's dinner. He would say that you've spread risk throughout the world by all these instruments, and now you didn't have it all concentrated in your banks. But what you've done is you've interconnected the solvency of institutions to a degree that probably nobody anticipated. And it's very hard to evaluate. If Bear Stearns had not had a derivatives book, my guess is the Fed wouldn't have had to do what it did.
Do you find it striking that banks keep looking into their investments and not knowing what they have?
I read a few prospectuses for residential-mortgage-backed securities - mortgages, thousands of mortgages backing them, and then those all tranched into maybe 30 slices. You create a CDO by taking one of the lower tranches of that one and 50 others like it. Now if you're going to understand that CDO, you've got 50-times-300 pages to read, it's 15,000. If you take one of the lower tranches of the CDO and take 50 of those and create a CDO squared, you're now up to 750,000 pages to read to understand one security. I mean, it can't be done. When you start buying tranches of other instruments, nobody knows what the hell they're doing. It's ridiculous. And of course, you took a lower tranche of a mortgage-backed security and did 100 of those and thought you were diversifying risk. Hell, they're all subject to the same thing. I mean, it may be a little different whether they're in California or Nebraska, but the idea that this is uncorrelated risk and therefore you can take the CDO and call the top 50% of it super-senior - it isn't super-senior or anything. It's a bunch of juniors all put together. And the juniors all correlate.
If big financial institutions don't seem to know what's in their portfolios, how will investors ever know when it's safe?
They can't, they can't. They've got to, in effect, try to read the DNA of the people running the companies. But I say that in any large financial organization, the CEO has to be the chief risk officer. I'm the chief risk officer at Berkshire. I think I know my limits in terms of how much I can sort of process. And the worst thing you can have is models and spreadsheets. I mean, at Salomon, they had all these models, and you know, they fell apart.
What should we say to investors now?
The answer is you don't want investors to think that what they read today is important in terms of their investment strategy. Their investment strategy should factor in that (a) if you knew what was going to happen in the economy, you still wouldn't necessarily know what was going to happen in the stock market. And (b) they can't pick stocks that are better than average. Stocks are a good thing to own over time. There's only two things you can do wrong: You can buy the wrong ones, and you can buy or sell them at the wrong time. And the truth is you never need to sell them, basically. But they could buy a cross section of American industry, and if a cross section of American industry doesn't work, certainly trying to pick the little beauties here and there isn't going to work either. Then they just have to worry about getting greedy. You know, I always say you should get greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. But that's too much to expect. Of course, you shouldn't get greedy when others get greedy and fearful when others get fearful. At a minimum, try to stay away from that.
By your rule, now seems like a good time to be greedy. People are pretty fearful.
You're right. They are going in that direction. That's why stocks are cheaper. Stocks are a better buy today than they were a year ago. Or three years ago.
But you're still bullish about the U.S. for the long term?
The American economy is going to do fine. But it won't do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don't believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway. But it stands to reason. I mean, we get more productive every year, you know. It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market.
Varchaver,
(Fortune Magazine) -- If Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, scheduled for May 3 this year, is known as the Woodstock of Capitalism, then perhaps this is the equivalent of Bob Dylan playing a private show in his own house: Some 15 times a year Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett invites a group of business students for an intensive day of learning. The students tour one or two of the company's businesses and then proceed to Berkshire (BRKA, Fortune 500) headquarters in downtown Omaha, where Buffett opens the floor to two hours of questions and answers. Later everyone repairs to one of his favorite restaurants, where he treats them to lunch and root beer floats. Finally, each student gets the chance to pose for a photo with Buffett.
In early April the megabillionaire hosted 150 students from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (which Buffett attended) and offered Fortune the rare opportunity to sit in as he expounded on everything from the Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500) bailout to the prognosis for the economy to whether he'd rather be CEO of GE (GE, Fortune 500) - or a paperboy. What follows are edited excerpts from his question-and-answer session with the students, his lunchtime chat with the Whartonites over chicken parmigiana at Piccolo Pete's, and an interview with Fortune in his office.
Buffett began by welcoming the students with an array of Coca-Cola products. ("Berkshire owns a little over 8% of Coke, so we get the profit on one out of 12 cans. I don't care whether you drink it, but just open the cans, if you will.") He then plunged into weightier matters:
Before we start in on questions, I would like to tell you about one thing going on recently. It may have some meaning to you if you're still being taught efficient-market theory, which was standard procedure 25 years ago. But we've had a recent illustration of why the theory is misguided. In the past seven or eight or nine weeks, Berkshire has built up a position in auction-rate securities [bonds whose interest rates are periodically reset at auction; for more, see box on page 74] of about $4 billion. And what we have seen there is really quite phenomenal. Every day we get bid lists. The fascinating thing is that on these bid lists, frequently the same credit will appear more than once.
Here's one from yesterday. We bid on this particular issue - this happens to be Citizens Insurance, which is a creature of the state of Florida. It was set up to take care of hurricane insurance, and it's backed by premium taxes, and if they have a big hurricane and the fund becomes inadequate, they raise the premium taxes. There's nothing wrong with the credit. So we bid on three different Citizens securities that day. We got one bid at an 11.33% interest rate. One that we didn't buy went for 9.87%, and one went for 6.0%. It's the same bond, the same time, the same dealer. And a big issue. This is not some little anomaly, as they like to say in academic circles every time they find something that disagrees with their theory.
So wild things happen in the markets. And the markets have not gotten more rational over the years. They've become more followed. But when people panic, when fear takes over, or when greed takes over, people react just as irrationally as they have in the past.
Do you think the U.S. financial markets are losing their competitive edge? And what's the right balance between confidence-inspiring standards and ...
... between regulation and the Wild West? Well, I don't think we're losing our edge. I mean, there are costs to Sarbanes-Oxley, some of which are wasted. But they're not huge relative to the $20 trillion in total market value. I think we've got fabulous capital markets in this country, and they get screwed up often enough to make them even more fabulous. I mean, you don't want a capital market that functions perfectly if you're in my business. People continue to do foolish things no matter what the regulation is, and they always will. There are significant limits to what regulation can accomplish. As a dramatic illustration, take two of the biggest accounting disasters in the past ten years: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We're talking billions and billions of dollars of misstatements at both places.
Now, these are two incredibly important institutions. I mean, they accounted for over 40% of the mortgage flow a few years back. Right now I think they're up to 70%. They're quasi-governmental in nature. So the government set up an organization called OFHEO. I'm not sure what all the letters stand for. [Note to Warren: They stand for Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.] But if you go to OFHEO's website, you'll find that its purpose was to just watch over these two companies. OFHEO had 200 employees. Their job was simply to look at two companies and say, "Are these guys behaving like they're supposed to?" And of course what happened were two of the greatest accounting misstatements in history while these 200 people had their jobs. It's incredible. I mean, two for two!
It's very, very, very hard to regulate people. If I were appointed a new regulator - if you gave me 100 of the smartest people you can imagine to work for me, and every day I got the positions from the biggest institutions, all their derivative positions, all their stock positions and currency positions, I wouldn't be able to tell you how they were doing. It's very, very hard to regulate when you get into very complex instruments where you've got hundreds of counterparties. The counterparty behavior and risk was a big part of why the Treasury and the Fed felt that they had to move in over a weekend at Bear Stearns. And I think they were right to do it, incidentally. Nobody knew what would be unleashed when you had thousands of counterparties with, I read someplace, contracts with a $14 trillion notional value. Those people would have tried to unwind all those contracts if there had been a bankruptcy. What that would have done to the markets, what that would have done to other counterparties in turn - it gets very, very complicated. So regulating is an important part of the system. The efficacy of it is really tough.
At Piccolo Pete's, where he has dined with everyone from Microsoft's Bill Gates to the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, Buffett sat at a table with 12 Whartonites and bantered over many topics.
How do you feel about the election?
Way before they both filed, I told Hillary that I would support her if she ran, and I told Barack I would support him if he ran. So I am now a political bigamist. But I feel either would be great. And actually, I feel that if a Republican wins, John McCain would be the one I would prefer. I think we've got three unusually good candidates this time.
They're all moderate in their approach.
Well, the one we don't know for sure about is Barack. On the other hand, he has the chance to be the most transformational too.
I know you had a paper route. Was that your first job?
Well, I worked for my grandfather, which was really tough, in the [family] grocery store. But if you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. It might be wonderful to be head of GE, and Jeff Immelt is a friend of mine. And he's a great guy. But think of all the things he has to do whether he wants to do them or not.
How do you get your ideas?
I just read. I read all day. I mean, we put $500 million in PetroChina. All I did was read the annual report. [Editor's note: Berkshire purchased the shares five years ago and sold them in 2007 for $4 billion.]
What advice would you give to someone who is not a professional investor? Where should they put their money?
Well, if they're not going to be an active investor - and very few should try to do that - then they should just stay with index funds. Any low-cost index fund. And they should buy it over time. They're not going to be able to pick the right price and the right time. What they want to do is avoid the wrong price and wrong stock. You just make sure you own a piece of American business, and you don't buy all at one time.
When Buffett said he was ready to pose for photographs, all 150 students stampeded out of the room within seconds and formed a massive line. For the next half hour, each one took his or her turn with Buffett, often in hammy poses (wrestling for his wallet was a favorite). Then, as he started to leave, a 77-year-old's version of A Hard Day's Night ensued, with a pack of 30 students trailing him to his gold Cadillac. Once free, he drove this Fortune writer back to his office and continued fielding questions.
How does the current turmoil stack up against past crises?
Well, that's hard to say. Every one has so many variables in it. But there's no question that this time there's extreme leveraging and in some cases the extreme prices of residential housing or buyouts. You've got $20 trillion of residential real estate and you've got $11 trillion of mortgages, and a lot of that does not have a problem, but a lot of it does. In 2006 you had $330 billion of cash taken out in mortgage refinancings in the United States. That's a hell of a lot - I mean, we talk about having $150 billion of stimulus now, but that was $330 billion of stimulus. And that's just from prime mortgages. That's not from subprime mortgages. So leveraging up was one hell of a stimulus for the economy.
If that was one hell of a stimulus, do you think the $150 billion government stimulus plan will make an impact?
Well, it's $150 billion more than we'd have otherwise. But it's not like we haven't had stimulus. And then the simultaneous, more or less, LBO boom, which was called private equity this time. The abuses keep coming back - and the terms got terrible and all that. You've got a banking system that's hung up with lots of that. You've got a mortgage industry that's deleveraging, and it's going to be painful.
The scenario you're describing suggests we're a long way from turning a corner.
I think so. I mean, it seems everybody says it'll be short and shallow, but it looks like it's just the opposite. You know, deleveraging by its nature takes a lot of time, a lot of pain. And the consequences kind of roll through in different ways. Now, I don't invest a dime based on macro forecasts, so I don't think people should sell stocks because of that. I also don't think they should buy stocks because of that.
Your OFHEO example implies you're not too optimistic about regulation.
Finance has gotten so complex, with so much interdependency. I argued with Alan Greenspan some about this at [Washington Post chairman] Don Graham's dinner. He would say that you've spread risk throughout the world by all these instruments, and now you didn't have it all concentrated in your banks. But what you've done is you've interconnected the solvency of institutions to a degree that probably nobody anticipated. And it's very hard to evaluate. If Bear Stearns had not had a derivatives book, my guess is the Fed wouldn't have had to do what it did.
Do you find it striking that banks keep looking into their investments and not knowing what they have?
I read a few prospectuses for residential-mortgage-backed securities - mortgages, thousands of mortgages backing them, and then those all tranched into maybe 30 slices. You create a CDO by taking one of the lower tranches of that one and 50 others like it. Now if you're going to understand that CDO, you've got 50-times-300 pages to read, it's 15,000. If you take one of the lower tranches of the CDO and take 50 of those and create a CDO squared, you're now up to 750,000 pages to read to understand one security. I mean, it can't be done. When you start buying tranches of other instruments, nobody knows what the hell they're doing. It's ridiculous. And of course, you took a lower tranche of a mortgage-backed security and did 100 of those and thought you were diversifying risk. Hell, they're all subject to the same thing. I mean, it may be a little different whether they're in California or Nebraska, but the idea that this is uncorrelated risk and therefore you can take the CDO and call the top 50% of it super-senior - it isn't super-senior or anything. It's a bunch of juniors all put together. And the juniors all correlate.
If big financial institutions don't seem to know what's in their portfolios, how will investors ever know when it's safe?
They can't, they can't. They've got to, in effect, try to read the DNA of the people running the companies. But I say that in any large financial organization, the CEO has to be the chief risk officer. I'm the chief risk officer at Berkshire. I think I know my limits in terms of how much I can sort of process. And the worst thing you can have is models and spreadsheets. I mean, at Salomon, they had all these models, and you know, they fell apart.
What should we say to investors now?
The answer is you don't want investors to think that what they read today is important in terms of their investment strategy. Their investment strategy should factor in that (a) if you knew what was going to happen in the economy, you still wouldn't necessarily know what was going to happen in the stock market. And (b) they can't pick stocks that are better than average. Stocks are a good thing to own over time. There's only two things you can do wrong: You can buy the wrong ones, and you can buy or sell them at the wrong time. And the truth is you never need to sell them, basically. But they could buy a cross section of American industry, and if a cross section of American industry doesn't work, certainly trying to pick the little beauties here and there isn't going to work either. Then they just have to worry about getting greedy. You know, I always say you should get greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. But that's too much to expect. Of course, you shouldn't get greedy when others get greedy and fearful when others get fearful. At a minimum, try to stay away from that.
By your rule, now seems like a good time to be greedy. People are pretty fearful.
You're right. They are going in that direction. That's why stocks are cheaper. Stocks are a better buy today than they were a year ago. Or three years ago.
But you're still bullish about the U.S. for the long term?
The American economy is going to do fine. But it won't do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don't believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway. But it stands to reason. I mean, we get more productive every year, you know. It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market. |
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发表于 5-5-2008 02:59 PM
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新闻。
The view from Omaha: devotees flock to hear world's richest man
If there is anything more satisfying than being rich, it must be basking in the glow of being proved right. The world's wealthiest man, Warren Buffett, was lauded by 31,000 devotees in his home town this weekend for eclipsing the biggest brains on Wall Street through his homespun approach to business.
The so-called Sage of Omaha has warned for years that financial innovations such as derivatives, credit swaps and repackaged debt were a disaster waiting to happen.
Buffett favours a more straightforward perspective on investment. "If you're going to buy a farm somewhere near Omaha, you wouldn't get a different price set every day," Buffett told the annual meeting of his Berkshire Hathaway empire. "You'd look at the yield, the cost of the assets, the price of fertiliser. You'd decide what it was worth on the basis of what its earnings will be."
When Buffett wants to invest in a business, he has little time for hedging his way in through "long" or "short" options: "If we want to buy something, we'll just buy it. If we want to exit, we'll sell it. We won't get involved in these fancy techniques."
In a year that has proved catastrophic for Wall Street, the Nebraskan billionaire's fortune has increased by $10bn (£5bn) to $62bn. In Forbes's annual rankings, Buffett overtook Microsoft's Bill Gates and held off the Mexican telecoms magnate Carlos Slim to claim top spot as the richest individual on the planet. Shares in his insurance-based empire soared 29% last year as profits rose 20% to $13.2bn.
This has boosted Buffett's kudos as America's favourite capitalist. The number of people at Buffett's annual shareholder weekend was up 15% on last year's record turnout, in spite of storms pounding the midwest and throwing flight schedules into chaos. Some investors hastily rented cars with strangers to drive through the night from far-flung cities.
At Omaha's Qwest conference centre, Buffett posed patiently as an artist "speed-painted" him at six o'clock in the morning. Crowds flocked to stands promoting Buffett's NetJets private planes, Justin Brands cowboy boots and Dairy Queen cafes. On a hastily arranged Wrigley stand, staff handed out chewing gum to mark Buffett's co-purchase of the $22bn firm with Mars last week. Investors queued to buy Buffett watches, playing cards and T-shirts.
As the meeting began, the congregation roared with laughter at a film featuring Jamie Lee Curtis flirting with "all-you-can-eat Buffett". The country singer Jimmy Buffett even adapted his classic hit Margaritaville with a version entitled Berkshire Hathawayville.
Then, for six hours, Buffett, 77, and his right-hand man, Charlie Munger, 83, munched sweets and swigged Cherry Coke as they fielded non-stop questions with a mixture of banter, scholarly lecturing and philosophy. Many queries centred on the credit crunch and the ensuing financial slowdown in the US.
"There are these primeval urges in wanting to get rich and wanting to believe in the tooth fairy," said Buffett. "Some stupid things were done which won't be done again soon and won't be done the same again."
Mass destruction
He was scathing about the management of Wall Street banks after billions were written off investments in derivatives - which he described as "weapons of financial mass destruction".
"You need a guy at the top whose DNA is very, very much programmed against risk," said Buffett. "The big investment banks, a number of them, are almost too big to manage effectively from a risk standpoint."
Mortgage companies' haphazard lending to inappropriate, sub-prime customers came in for particular flack. Munger told the crowd that "bums were swept off skid row and given mortgages", adding: "The idea of turning the financial markets into gambling parlours so that the croupiers can make more money has never been very attractive to us."
Buffett feels that business schools have encouraged overly complicated financial engineering by spending too much time on "nonsense" such as the pricing of options rather than the fundamental attributes of companies.
The crowd lapped it up. Marv Johnson, a vet from Iowa, said: "He's disciplined, conservative and he doesn't believe in trends."
Many had travelled long distances. A Peruvian clothes company executive, Dante Albertini, had flown in from Lima to hear Buffett for the fourth year: "There are so many fakes in the world: he's authentic."
A note of dissent came from a group of native Americans who live on the Klamath river in California and Oregon. They protested that dams controlled by a Buffett-owned firm, PacifiCorp, are polluting waterways and killing wildlife. Buffett rejected their criticism, saying the issue was for regulators to resolve.
The Nebraskan billionaire's priorities for this year include looking at European opportunities. He is shortly to visit four countries in Europe and is particularly interested in Germany's plethora of family-owned companies: "We're more on the radar screen in the US than we are in Europe. We want to correct that."
Buffett has sought to take advantage of the financial turmoil; a new Berkshire Hathaway venture insuring municipal bonds has got off to a swift start, taking $400m in premiums in the first quarter. But Berkshire is not totally immune: the group's earnings fell 64% in the three months to March and its insurance arm wrote down $1.6bn in liabilities.
Addressing concerns about his age, Buffett recently announced that he had identified four people who could succeed him. But he made it clear at the meeting that he was in no hurry to step aside. Gesturing to Munger, Buffett quipped: "With our average age of 80, we're only ageing at a rate of 1.25% per year. That's the lowest rate of ageing in corporate America. Some of these companies have chief executives who are 50: they're ageing at 2% per year."
Buffett-speak: Sayings of the Sage
On what he would do if he were elected president
"Change things so the super-rich pay a little more and the middle class pays a little less"
On the future of the planet
"The great problem for mankind is that the genie is out of the bottle on nuclear knowledge. More and more people are going to know how to do enormous damage to the rest of the world as the years go by"
On risk
"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing"
On timing
"We attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful"
On his appearance
"I buy expensive suits - they just look cheap on me"
On his disdain for the legal profession
"I've asked my lawyer to ensure my estate survives for quite some time after my death but that's like asking your teenage son to have a normal sex life"
On his pledge to hand much of his wealth to the Gates Foundation
"I've never given up anything in my life that's made a difference in the way I live"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/busine ... sting.globaleconomy |
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发表于 5-5-2008 04:28 PM
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发表于 5-5-2008 05:48 PM
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发表于 7-5-2008 11:14 AM
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伯克希尔08年股东大会精彩集锦
网易财经 2008-05-06
伯克希尔·哈撒韦5月3日召开了年度股东大会，按照惯例，巴菲特和他的黄金搭档芒格共同应对的长达五六个小时的问答环节，无疑是每年会议的高潮所在。
今年的股东大会，巴菲特和芒格被问及的问题主要包括如下几个：其一，已经造成了经济巨大骚乱的次贷危机将会如何演绎？会带来哪些影响？其二，关于伯克希尔公司去年底新开始的债券保险业务的更多细节。其三，已77岁高龄的巴菲特在该公司的接班人问题。
以下是5月3日股东大会的文字实录（倒序）
巴菲特谈到现在的房市危机说，他不记得他一生中曾发生过像现在的房地产市场给整个经济带来振荡的情形。（03: 25）
有人问为什么美国人不会存钱？巴菲特说，因为美国不需要像那样不太富的国家那样存钱。（03: 20）
一位九岁的男孩问巴菲特是否有意从亿万富翁Sam Zell手中购买芝加哥小牛棒球队，巴菲特说，棒球队是一个很好的投资，因为电视把体育场扩大了。他说他还是小男孩那个年纪时，就想过最终会买入一支棒球队，但现在不再这么想了。（03: 18）
巴菲特表示，我们正在寻找更好的方法，让我们在用煤的同时又不污染环境。美国中部已在进行风力发电，但同时仍依赖煤发电，未来对煤的依赖还会持续一些时间。他说，我们要求世界领袖人物和公司作出贡献，但美国在过去的能源使用方面并没有起到领袖的作用。芒格说，在支持用煤和反对用生化原料方面，同样存在环境保护的问题。他说，“许多人都不那样想，但我那样想。”（03: 11）
当被问到他是否因为西藏问题，鼓励可口可乐公司杯葛北京2008年奥运会时，巴菲特说，每一个国家都应参与奥运会。奥运会是一个很好的事情，过去对世界作出了贡献。芒格则说，中国尽管并非十全十美，但正在向正确方向迈进。巴菲特说，美国的方向也是对的，美国过去曾拒绝黑人和妇女投票，但后来改变了。（03: 00）
巴菲特说，他通常五分钟内就作出决策，如果是决策合适，很快就行动。他说，如果我们不能在五分钟内作决定，我们在五个月内也决定不了。因为只要是好东西，你很快就会知道。（02: 53）
问到Kraft公司的问题时，巴菲特说，他的绝大多数食品公司都有优良的资产，他用可口可乐公司为例说，很难买下它，因为该品牌发展了几十年。我们对那些并非某一领域的龙头老大更有兴趣。（02: 49）
在回答有关他的宗教信仰的问题时，巴菲特说，他是一个不可知论者。他只是不知道上帝是否存在，也不知道他能否找到答案。（02: 43）
午饭饭巴菲特重回会议主席台，他说他过去也犯了很多错误。但这些错误并非是通过努力可以避免的。（02: 38）
12:02 pm: 人群中有人叫着喊我听不懂。巴菲特没有理睬这一骚动，并停下来吃午饭。他承诺在此之后一小会将继续回答提问。灯光被点亮，在3个半小时后，人群开始向周围活动。留点时间让我也吃午饭。博客直播将在大约一小时后继续。（01: 25）
11:58 am: 你给孩子们在理财方面的忠告是什么？巴菲特回答称总体来说孩子们应当以他们的父母产榜样，如果他们的父母很有判断力，用他们自己的方式着眼于未来安排生活，那么孩子也会有判断力。他称在年青时有时候对于一些事情要合理花费，如去迪斯尼乐园将给你的家庭带来美好回忆。巴菲特称：“我并不提倡极端的节俭” 11:54 am 如果你仅刚开始起步，而且并不是一个全职的投资者，你将怎么使用你的第一个一百万进行投资？巴菲特的回答是：通过类似Vanguard公司一样的低成本的指数化证券投资基金。查理称如果你没有希望成为一个熟练投资者，你应当通过指数化证券投资基金。尽管查理称一些股票经济人是非常值得别人尊敬的人，但是查理和巴菲特还是警告防备那些通过告诉别人如何投资的人从中漁利。（01: 23）
11:49 am: 芒格表示，终有一天，世界都必须利用太阳作为能源的来源。耗尽碳基燃料的做法是“极度疯狂的”做法，因为地球上没有任何替代品。他表示，政府的能源政策并不是特别的合理。为最终实现繁荣的经济状况，我们将必须依赖于太阳能。芒格在这一问题上显得更为唯心一些，巴菲特的回答更为现实。（01: 19）
11:52 am: 提问者建议巴菲特和芒格每人担任一个任期的总裁，由巴菲特开始。巴菲特回答称，查理应该先担任总裁。巴菲特接着还说，如果担任总裁一职，他将对税收系统采取一些措施，以便让那些巨富有的人支付更多。（01: 19）
11:53 am: 对于乙醇问题，查理表示，将粮食转换成燃料是有史以来最为愚蠢的事情。他说他认为这样的做法即将走向灭亡。（01: 17）
11:45 am: 如果有一天石油用尽了会发生什么事情？第三次世界大战吗？巴菲特回答称不会用战争方式解决的。随着时间的流逝，生产会被逐渐的降低。与此同时，世界将会到达一个生产高峰期，然后会逐渐的走下坡路。在本世纪内，我们的石油生产仍然保持良好，而是一个多少的问题。石油对于全球来说并不是一个开关。关于能够获得多少石油，更多的在于政治方面的考虑。从短期来看，我们还不需要担心世界没有石油。（01: 07）
11:29 am: 对于继承人问题，巴菲特表示，目前已经有了3名首席执行官人选，他们都在不断的进步，并能作出比我更好的工作，如果届时需要立即作出决定的话，董事会也非常清楚选择谁来担任这一职务。就投资官问题，正如巴菲特之前所说，公司已经有4名候选人，他们目前的工作都非常出色，并且他们都对目前所处位置非常开心，但是“如果我死了他们明天就会上任”。4名候选人中没人关注赔偿问题，他们没人希望现在就站出来，因为他现在仍在作决定。“如果有一天我不再作决定了，董事会就会决定是否要让其中一个人、两个人、三个人、甚至是所有四人来作投资决定。”巴菲特表示，在他死后公司不会存在任何差距，相反还极有可能更具活力。这是我第一次听到巴菲特提出，在他停止他的工作后，仅仅让一人来决定伯克希尔公司投资责任的这一可能性。（01: 04）
11:41 am: 一个女性提问者称已婚夫妻间的财产是应当分开还是应当共同管理？对此，巴菲特表示最好要看下总体经济情况，不要将财产分别。他称：“不要将他们分别放在单独的罐子里”（00: 55）
11:36 am: 查理还补充称，许多人都说投资的秘密很多样化。查理说确实是这样。多样化是对那些不可知论者一类的投资者而言，而不是对专业人士而言。巴菲特补充称，不可知论者一类投资者并没有犯什么错，他们本应该多样化。（00: 55）
11:34 am: 巴菲特说，在过去许多年里，他有许多时候都有足够的信心让他的75%的净资产实践成一个想法。查理开玩笑称，巴菲特有的是实践让他的100%的净资产实践其想法。巴菲特称这种事情不会经常发生，但是在某些时候你能发现一些特别的机会，并能让自己75%的净资产实现自己的愿望。但是不要付出你500%的净资产!（00: 54）
11:22 am: 巴菲特说，我觉得我们目前有三个非常不错的总统候选人。不幸的是，迎合他人是行政过程之一。这次的三个人都非常精通经济学，尤其是其中的两个。不管谁在位执政，国家依然会保持旺盛发展势头。“你想买股票的那家公司可能是个疯子在掌管，因为这是迟早可能发生的。”一个国家也是如此。（00: 41）
11:18 am: 有人问，如果巴菲特只能小笔小笔的投资会怎么样？他回答说，这就意味着他会在债券、股票（包括海外股票）上拥有“数以千计的机会”。巴菲特称，实际上，多数机会都来自于那些小的股票交易。查理对此表示赞同。（00: 32）
11:14 am: 巴菲特称，他很高兴投资那些能赚外汇的公司，但是他并不任何这些外汇能够迅速让美元贬值。他表示，他感觉未来十年，美元将进一步贬值。他并没有正面提及具体数字。他说如果他从火星来，带着火星的货币，他可能不会把这些火星货币都兑换成美元。他表示，对于可口可乐这样能在美国范围之外赚钱的公司他很高兴投资。（00: 32）
11:12 am: “股市会给你便宜货，但是企业主们不会。”巴菲特买私人公司看中的是价格，而不是便宜货。查理则表示，如果你不熟悉一个人，仅仅为了卖出更高的价格而出售家族企业是非常疯狂的。（00: 32）
11:10 am: 巴菲特表示，我们从不鼓励人们售卖自己的生意，我们希望他们能坚持。我们收购的一些公司是因为他们受到外界压力被迫卖出。而在这种情况下， Berkshire能帮助这些企业维持下去。去欧洲和家族企业谈判，是为了让他们知道，如果需要他们还可以找Berkshire解决问题。（00: 31）
11:09 am:一名来自德国的提问者问了一个关于See's与德国巧克力制造商之间的问题。巴菲特让那个提问者把问题重复了一遍。他的问题是关于公平交易的利润和发展的问题。对此巴菲特重复了他的名言：持久的竞争优势、优秀的管理和合理的价格。（00: 31）
11:05 am: 一个来自费城的七年级学生提问称由于在学校里还有许多事情没有教，他应该读些什么东西。巴菲特称他是从读报纸开始的，然后才慢慢接触这个世界的。巴菲特称：“你将会发现自己真正感兴趣的东西。你学到的越多，你想学的也就越多。”查理开一笔的称这个年青学生已经学到了如何成功的秘诀。（00: 31）
11:02 am: 又有人提问卡拉马斯河坝的情况，有人问巴菲特如何处理污染问题，会场稍显的不平静。巴菲特则表示，在能源政策上，应当由州、国家政府来做出决策。（00: 08）
11:01 am:很容易对那些能向你兑现金的公司进行评估。通常财政报告不能表明任何问题，想要知道怎么回事就得参与其中。（00: 08）
10:57 am:说到他新的那家债券保险公司，巴菲特指出它非常值得注意，因为这个公司是在几个月的时间中在康涅狄格一间小办公室里建立起来的。（00: 03）
10:52 am: 通常的方式就是巴菲特先回答一个问题，然后转交给查理。查理有时回答，有时做个讽刺。他们两个自我感觉都还不错。（00: 03）
10:51 am 你是怎么将一个小生意做大的呢？巴菲特称要从容进行，不能突然进行。“没有任何的魔法。”巴菲特称：“我们花了很多年的时间做同一件事情，此外今后我们还要花上数年时间继续做这同一件事情。如果我们不是急性子，我们不会对此感到不高兴的。如果我们没有取得任何进展，我们才会不高兴。（00: 02）
10：46 am：巴菲特称现在的市政公债市场“非常混乱”。同一个发行公债在同一时间价格可能有不一样，而这样的事情只会发生在市场大变动之时，比如1998年长期的金融危机。而如果你这时有时间去仔细考虑，正是赚钱的大好机会。芒格表示，这样的混乱引发的机会通常都是非常短暂的，就像站在溪流边等着扎
鱼，一周可能才扎上一条，这种事不好做。（23: 57）
10:41 am: 巴菲特称本杰明－格雷厄姆实际上首创了对冲基金贸易的概念，包括“配对”贸易。当一个股票被在长时间买入时，经常会被在短时间内卖出。（23: 54）
10:41 am: 巴菲特称本杰明－格雷厄姆实际上首创了对冲基金贸易的概念，包括“配对”贸易。当一个股票被在长时间买入时，经常会被在短时间内卖入。（23: 54）
10:34 am:一名自称来自于克拉马斯河的妇女问巴菲特他是否熟悉大坝的财政状况。她说，去除大坝不仅不贵，而且最终对股东有利。巴菲特重申，他们不会做出最终决定，而将交由俄勒冈州的相关机构及其负责人来决定。（23: 46）
10:31 am: 巴菲特说他年轻时候公开说话时非常害羞。而他克服的办法就是强迫自己在公开场合讲话。和人保持良好的沟通交流是个非常重要的技能。最好能帮助其他一些也不善在公开场合演说的人，最好是年轻的时候就去改变。帮助那些内向的人克服这个毛病很值得。（23: 44）
10:24 am: 有人问，如果有机会选择别的职业，你会选哪个？巴菲特表示，他仍愿意做现在正在做的这个职业。他很庆幸自己很早就找到了钟爱的事业。最重要的就是做你自己爱做的事情。查理说：“最好还是能热爱对自己适合的职业，叫巴菲特去跳芭蕾估计他也不行。”（23: 44）
10:21 am: 当被问及他是如何保持身体和心理健康时，巴菲特称：“要均衡的进行饮食。当你做了你所喜欢做的事情，你可能就有点厌恶生活了。”（23: 44）
10:15 am: 一个自称为“本土美国人”的人提问称，由于一些克拉马斯河大坝问题，他来奥马哈时心情沉重。他要求他能够与巴菲特坐下来谈一下关于移走大坝的问题。巴菲特称他从来都没有禁止对大坝做任何讨论。巴菲特称去年他并不想失礼，这关系到伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司2006年的收购大坝实用控制权。大坝的实用控制权的执行人员称他们正在与当地部落一起协商，希望这个问题能够有一个可以接受的解决方案。（23: 43）
10:13 am: 如果谁希望我们公司能接近过去的股票表现，他应该卖掉我们的股票。他能大赚上一笔，但是不会比以前的多。也许买别的股票能比买Berkshire赚得更多。Berkshire也许很吸引人，但这并不是最好的投资机会。（23: 30）
10:10 am:如果我们买的普通股票长期收益率能稳定在10%，我们就很高兴了。显然，Berkshire将来在股票上的表现不会超过以前，因为公司越做越大了，即使加上2个5亿美元的投资对 Berkshire的影响也不会太大。（23: 30）
10:09 am:收购以色列金属加工企业Iscar就如同一个“梦”一般，各个方面都很完美。（23: 30）
10:08 am:原材料成本问题已经基本解决，虽然此前经历了大幅增加的一个困难时期，尤其是Berkshire的一些基础商业领域。而这些也都受到了来自房地产市场的影响。（23: 29）
10:02 am: 巴菲特说：“我们对我们的经营方式感到骄傲。”他表示不会给那些生意太多的指导。“我们不会拿名声换钱。”他还表示，Berkshire总部通常不要求汇报具体数字。（23: 27）
10:00 am: 巴菲特称他给慈善团体的钱并没有真正影响到他的生活。他羡慕那些钱不多，但是能够一直坚持给予别人钱财和时间的人。（23: 27）
9:56 am: Intelligent Investor. 芒格称：“将金融市场转变为一个赌场这种观念从来就没有影响过我们。”巴菲特称：“金融学校里的学生学习选择权定价技术是非常荒谬的，他们应当知道如果评估公司和股市。学校中的金融老师希望将他们知道的都教给学生，但是这对投资来说根本不起做用。”（23: 27）
人们期待着巴菲特会谈论的几个话题：一，美国投资者对中国股市的看法，二美国媒体对美国经济前景的争论，三，美国经济据说已经衰退，那一般美国人是否受影响，哪些行业受了影响。（23: 26）
这一数据是在美联储考虑是否提高官方利息0.25个百分点以保持经济扩张的第二天推出的。美联储可能会晚些时间做出停止利率下调的决定。（23: 25）
据美国商务部4月30日公布的初步数据，美国经济今年第一季度按年率计算增长0.6％，增速高于分析人士预期的0.2％，与去年第四季度相同。（23: 25）
9:54 am: 如何利用股票买卖来投资或者退出一个公开交易的公司？巴菲特回答说，通常就是直接买下股权。买入后可能会赚四至五倍，而实际情况往往是，“我们通常不会利用这个，因为你想买就买了。”（23: 17）
9:50 am: 巴菲特说，我们的工作不是选择好的经理人，而是留住他们。“我们的工作是让这些人拿到Berkshire的大股东权属证之后依然保持同样热情。更重要的是让他们热爱工作而不是热爱金钱。我们得看到他们眼中的激情，别用合同来制约他们，这也没什么效果。我们的经理人希望得到赏识，而他们也确实得到了。”众人鼓掌。（23: 16）
9:46 am: 巴菲特说：“我和查理也不知道股市将来会是什么样子。这不仅仅只是我们的游戏。”他们眼中有着无限的商机，而他们每次都选择了极富有价值的那个。查理说他没什么可以补充的，而巴菲特则说自己为了这个演讲已经准备很长时间。（23: 16）
9:45 am: 一旦伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司拥有了通用再保险公司(General Re)，巴菲特将对他们的有价证券总存量负全责。（23: 13）
9:39 am: 来自印度的孟买的投资者第一个问题是。他的问题是巴菲特如何开始投资的。巴菲特谈起了本杰明－格雷厄姆写的《做个智慧投资人》这个本书。巴菲特称不能误解格雷厄姆在书中所提的建议。（23: 13）
9:38 am: 巴菲特要求每名股东只能提一个问题（23: 12）
9:36 am: 巴菲特称他将和查理回答到3时30分，然后休息吃午饭。据巴菲特自己估计，今天到场的可能有3.1万人。（23: 11）
9:35 am:巴菲特走上台，又坐回了自己的位置。表演结束，他又重掌Berkshire Hathaway。不过他告诉露西，说她可以到他的珠宝店波仙珠宝(Borsheims)拿任何她想要的东西，而将由是查理芒格(Charlie Munger)来买单。（23: 06）
伯克希尔-哈撒韦股价周五收盘价格为133600美元，下跌300美元，跌幅为 0.2%。公司当季投资收益1.15亿美元，而未实际收益下降了40亿美元，截至季度末总未实现收益达到278亿美元。保险投资收入从7.48亿美元提高到8.02亿美元，非保险业务营收从8.94亿美元提高到9.5亿美元。（23: 06）
伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司在声明中表示：“伯克希尔的收入可能会由于会计规定出现较大的波动，原因是会计规定影响着衍生合同的报告情况。”（23: 06）
伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司一季度净利猛跌至9.4亿美元，或每股607美元，而去年同期净利达26亿美元，每股收益1682美元。除开实际投资损益，公司运营利益为每股1274美元，低于彭博社调查3位分析师得出的1430美元每股的平均估计值。（23: 05）
9:33 am: 查理 芒格(Charlie Munger)走上台坐下来，后面跟着的正是露西。她表示将带来一些变化，她说，她想改变这个分配的机制，观众鼓掌。露西还说，希望Berkshire每周都能够做出收益预期，此外，她允诺给每位导演提高每年900美元的报酬，导演们都起立鼓掌叫好。（23: 04）
9:32 am: CNBC的贝基（Becky）继续发布着假消息，说巴菲特和凯恩的扮演者苏珊·露西互换角色，露西将是Berkshire的新CEO。（23: 03）
伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司公布了第一季度财报。财报显示，由于一季度保险承销收入急剧下跌，公司一季度盈利大幅下跌，与去年同期相比下降了64%。（23: 03）
9:30 am: 放映结束，剧场灯光亮起来，人群中响起了掌声。（22: 58）
9:27 am: 现在放的是一些在Berkshire 的经理人照片。（22: 58）
对于具有上述特征的公司，他们倾向于买下整个公司，或者如果管理层是他们的合作伙伴的话，至少80%的股份。如果无法掌握控制权，他们也乐意通过股票市场，仅仅购买一小部分股权。（22: 58）
谈及投资对象的选择，巴菲特表示，芒格和他正在寻找具备如下条件的企业，只有具备这些条件的公司才能最让他们兴奋：属于我们了解的领域；有持续发展的潜质；有能力并值得信赖的管理层；合适的价格。（22: 58）
他同时指出，去年，他们做了一笔大抛售。2002、2003年公司以4.88亿美元购入中国石油(行情股吧)1.3%的股份，按当时价格，中石油的市值约370亿美元，而他和芒格认为它价值约1000亿美元。去年下半年，中石油市值涨到2750亿美元，他认为这个估值水平和其他大型石油公司相比已物有所值了，所以便将手中的股票以40亿美元全部卖出。（22: 57）
巴菲特通过演说给投资者怎样的启迪目前尚不得而知。但是，在他发表演说的前夕，在给股东的信中，巴菲特表示，在金融投资领域，公司2007年的表现十分出色。他们持股比重最大的四家公司美国运通、可口可乐、宝洁和富国银行中，前三家的每股收益分别上涨12%、14%和14%，仅富国银行由于房产泡沫而略微下滑。（22: 57）
9：23 am：巴菲特给凯恩（Kane）的建议包括，“妙趣横生”的合约桥牌世界。在那部戏中，巴菲特要求典狱长给女强人凯恩三个聪明的狱友，以便能让她在服刑期间玩桥牌。巴菲特本人就说，如果他能有好的同伴玩桥牌，他不介意被关在监狱中。（22: 57）
9:21 am: 现在看到的是巴菲特在All My Children中的扮相（77岁的巴菲特曾在电视剧'All My Children'客串他自己。），当时他正在监狱探视凯恩（Kane），电话响起，是比尔·盖茨。（22: 57）
9:18 am： 正在播放的是一则真人的Geico商业广告，主角正是查理芒格(Charlie Munger)和小理查德（ Little Richard）。（22: 56）
据介绍，今年的股东大会，巴菲特和芒格必定要被问及的问题主要包括如下几个：其一，已经造成了经济巨大骚乱的次贷危机将会如何演绎？会带来哪些影响？其二，关于伯克希尔公司去年底新开始的债券保险业务的更多细节。其三，已77岁高龄的巴菲特在该公司的接班人问题。（22: 56）
按照惯例，巴菲特和他的黄金搭档芒格共同应对的长达五六个小时的问答环节，无疑是每年会议的高潮所在。（22: 55）
9:21 am: 他（巴菲特）的电话响了，是比尔－盖茨打过来的电话。（22: 54）
在次贷危机阴霾笼罩、投资者信心明显不足的背景下，这位股神将在股东大会的演说上发表什么高见？与此同时，他如何看待抛售中石油？这些无疑都成为众所瞩目的焦点。（22: 53）
尽管持有上百亿的美元资产，巴菲特不仅仅是购买某些上市公司的股票，如可口可乐公司和美国运通(American Express)等，他往往是购买整个公司，特别是那些产品更容易为广大消费者理解的公司，这些公司经常都是生产糖果、吸尘器或是砖块的公司。对于今年的这次年度股东大会，相信全球各地的投资者都会相当的期待。（22: 53）
9：14 am：股东们举着一张巴菲特90年代在国会的一张照片（22: 52）
巴菲特很早以前曾这样说过：如何才能成为一个优秀的投资者呢？读一切你能拿到的东西，使你对投资对象能有全方位的思考、不同的观点。（22: 52）
在过去40年里，“股神”巴菲特将自己变成了世界上最富有的人之一，他目前的净资产超过400亿美元。然而在他77岁高龄之时，他有系统的将他绝大部分的资产投入了比尔盖茨和梅琳达基金会(Bill &； Melinda Gates Foundation)之中。（22: 52）
9:14 am: 股东们聚集着，以U字形等待着巴菲特的出现。（22: 52）
每年，投资者仅有两次机会能够看到或听到股神巴菲特对下一波投资机会和股市行情的看法：一次是他为伯克希尔·哈撒韦股东所撰写的“致股东信”中，还有一次就是公司股东大会上发表的演说（22: 51）
周日，5月4日波仙珠宝（borsheims） 全体股东购物日 上午9时-下午4时 戈瑞特牛排屋（Gorat’s Steakhouse） 伯克希尔股东之夜下午4时-晚上10时（22: 51）
内布拉斯加家具中心（Nebraska Furniture Mart） 巴加海滩盛会(baja beach bash) 下午5时30分-晚上8时（22: 51）
周六，5月3日年度会议 开幕时间：上午7时 公司电影放映：上午8时30分问题解答阶段：上午9时30分-下午3时股东商业会议：下午3时15分-3时30分（为大概时间）国际会议和致辞：下午4时-5时30分说明：公司还将为非北美地区的股东举行一次特别的接待活动。任何来自非美国和加拿大的股东都将由公司发送一份国际股东证明，并可持该证明应邀参加这次股东大会。（22: 51）
本周周末时间表：周五，5月2日波仙珠宝（borsheims） 股东鸡尾酒招待会 晚上6时-10时（22: 51）
周六，5月3日会议将在奥马哈市商业区第10大街455号奥马哈奎斯特中心（Qwest Center Omaha）举行，网址为www.qwestcenter.com。周末的活动将从周五（5月2日）晚上开始，在周日（5月4日）晚上在奥马哈戈瑞特牛排屋举行晚宴后结束。（22: 51）
伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司2008年度股东大会日程安排（22: 50）
伯克希尔股东大会将持续三天的时间，其中包括周五晚上的欢迎会、周六持续6小时的会议，以及伯克希尔周日主办的一系列活动。（22: 49）
这次一年一度的股东大会即将在密苏里河畔奥马哈的举行，有大约3万人涌入这个美丽的小城。（22: 49）
“股神”巴菲特此前曾认为美国经济衰退可能将严重高于预期。巴菲特的这番言论与美国财政部长保尔森的说法不一，保尔森认为美国经济长期基本面相当坚实,目前没有滞胀迹象。今天的股东大会上，巴菲特不知道会对美国经济前景发表什么意见。（22: 47）
9:09 am: CNBC的贝基（Becky）刚刚发布了条虚假快讯：巴菲特正在离开伯克希尔-哈撒韦。这个看起来好像只是一个玩笑。（22: 45）
穆迪发言人托尼－米伦达表示，伯克希尔哈撒韦“从未就评级问题与我们进行联络”。（22: 45）
目前美国康涅狄格州首席检察官理查德－布卢门撒尔正在对伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司与国际评级机构穆迪之间的关系进行详细审查。（22: 44）
巴菲特在密苏里河畔奥马哈接受彭博电视台采访时，称：“如果我们向穆迪施压，那将是不道德的，我们也永远不会这样做。我从来都没有与穆迪的管理层接触过，我也不记得我曾经给他们打过电话。”（22: 44）
目前伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司拥有穆迪约20%的股份。巴菲特巴菲特称在国际评级机构穆迪中的股份与伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司市政债券保险业务不冲突，不会向穆迪施压。（22: 43）
9:07 am: 有人在DQ售货亭前停了下来与巴菲特谈话（22: 40）
9:05 am: 杰米李柯蒂斯正在与查理“Hunger”谈话（22: 38）
注：文中时间皆为美国时间（22: 38）
http://www.valuegrow.com/html/value/buffett/20080506/7304.shtml |
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发表于 8-5-2008 02:39 PM
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但斌：2007年巴菲特给股东信摘译
2008-05-08
注: 原文由《Value》杂志的叶茂青译出, 但是存在较多错漏之处, 由于本篇对价值投资者极为重要, 为保持译文准确, 特在叶先生译稿的基础上, 由东方港湾的任环宇和周明波校对重译了中间的部分章句。
Businesses – The Great, the Good and the Gruesome
卓越、优秀和可憎的业务
(2007年巴菲特给股东信摘译 英汉对照)
Let’s take a look at what kind of businesses turn us on. And while we’re at it, let’s also discuss what we wish to avoid.
让我们来看一下什么样的业务会让我们很兴奋。谈论这个话题的同时，我们也探讨一下什么样的业务是我们要避免的。
Charlie and I look for companies that have a) a business we understand; b) favorable long-term economics; c) able and trustworthy management; and d) a sensible price tag. We like to buy the whole business or, if management is our partner, at least 80%. When control-type purchases of quality aren’t available, though, we are also happy to simply buy small portions of great businesses by way of stock-market purchases. It’s better to have a part interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.
查理和我所寻找的公司应是: a)我们所了解的商业；b)有着良好的长期经济前景；c)管理层有能力且值得信任；d)价格合理。我们喜欢买下整个公司，或者如果管理层是我们的合伙人，我们至少买入80％的股份。当我们无法获得控股权的时候，我们还是会乐于仅仅在股市上买入这类伟大企业的小部分股份。拥有“希望钻石”(Hope Diamond，世上现存最大的一颗蓝色钻石，重45.52克拉——译者注)的部分权益要好于拥有一颗人造钻石的全部权益。
A truly great business must have an enduring “moat” that protects excellent returns on invested capital. The dynamics of capitalism guarantee that competitors will repeatedly assault any business “castle” that is earning high returns. Therefore a formidable barrier such as a company’s being the low-cost producer (GEICO, Costco) or possessing a powerful world-wide brand (Coca-Cola, Gillette, American Express) is essential for sustained success. Business history is filled with “Roman Candles,” companies whose moats proved illusory and were soon crossed.
一家真正伟大的企业必须拥有持久的“护城河”，它能为投资者获得丰厚的投资回报提供保护。资本主义的动力必定会使竞争者不断的攻击那些赚取丰厚利润的企业的“城堡”，因此，拥有诸如低成本(GEICO和好事多公司)或者强大的全球性品牌(可口可乐､吉列和美国运通公司)等这种令人望而生畏的高门槛对企业获得持续成功至关重要。纵观整个商业历史，我们可以看到到处都有“罗马焰火筒”现象(roman candle），即那些有着不牢靠护城河的企业很快会被其他企业征服。
Our criterion of “enduring” causes us to rule out companies in industries prone to rapid and continuous change. Though capitalism’s “creative destruction” is highly beneficial for society, it precludes investment certainty. A moat that must be continuously rebuilt will eventually be no moat at all.
我们对“持久”的标准让我们排除了那些处在倾向于发生快速且持续变化的行业中的企业。尽管资本主义的“创新性破坏”对社会非常有利，但这种破坏也排除了投资中的确定性。必须不断重建的护城河最终将不再是护城河。
Additionally, this criterion eliminates the business whose success depends on having a great manager. Of course, a terrific CEO is a huge asset for any enterprise, and at Berkshire we have an abundance of these managers. Their abilities have created billions of dollars of value that would never have materialized if typical CEOs had been running their businesses.
此外，我们的标准也排除了那些成功与否依赖于伟大经理人的企业。当然，优秀的经理人对任何一家企业而言都是一项宝贵的资产，伯克夏公司拥有大量的优秀经理人，他们创造的价值是一般的CEO经营这些企业所无法创造的。
But if a business requires a superstar to produce great results, the business itself cannot be deemed great. A medical partnership led by your area’s premier brain surgeon may enjoy outsized and growing earnings, but that tells little about its future. The partnership’s moat will go when the surgeon goes. You can count, though, on the moat of the Mayo Clinic to endure, even though you can’t name its CEO.
但是，如果一家企业需要有一位超级明星才能产生出色的业绩，这家企业本身并不能算是卓越的企业。由你所居住地区的首屈一指的脑外科医生所领导的一家医疗合伙公司可能会获得丰厚的利润，且利润会不断增加，然而，这些都不代表这家公司未来将一直如此。当这位医生离开这家公司的时候，这家合伙公司的护城河也将随之消失。尽管如此，你依然可以指望梅奥诊所(Mayo Clinic)的护城河将持续存在，虽然你说不出这家公司CEO的名字。
Long-term competitive advantage in a stable industry is what we seek in a business. If that comes with rapid organic growth, great. But even without organic growth, such a business is rewarding. We will simply take the lush earnings of the business and use them to buy similar businesses elsewhere. There’s no rule that you have to invest money where you’ve earned it. Indeed, it’s often a mistake to do so: Truly great businesses, earning huge returns on tangible assets, can’t for any extended period reinvest a large portion of their earnings internally at high rates of return.
我们所寻找的企业来自于稳定行业中拥有长期竞争优势的企业。如果还能伴随着快速的有机的增长，那就太棒了。但即使没有有机增长，这样的企业仍会提供丰厚回报。我们只需将企业获得的丰厚利润拿来，在其他地方购买类似的企业，没有规定说你必须将钱投向那些你已经赚钱的领域。事实上，这样做经常是错的：获取高额有形资产回报率的出色企业，不可能长期持续地把它们的大部分利润以很高的回报率再投资到公司内部。
Let’s look at the prototype of a dream business, our own See’s Candy. The boxed-chocolates industry in which it operates is unexciting: Per-capita consumption in the U.S. is extremely low and doesn’t grow. Many once-important brands have disappeared, and only three companies have earned more than token profits over the last forty years. Indeed, I believe that See’s, though it obtains the bulk of its revenues from only a few states, accounts for nearly half of the entire industry’s earnings.
让我们审视一项梦幻般出色的业务的原型，例如我们的喜诗糖果公司。这家公司所处的盒装巧克力行业并无让人兴奋之处——美国的人均巧克力消费极其低且一直没有出现增长，许多曾经著名的的品牌如今都已经消失不见，在过去的40年内，只有三家企业赚到了像样的利润。事实上，尽管喜诗糖果公司的许多收入仅仅来自于几个州，但我相信这家公司的利润占了整个行业的近一半。
At See’s, annual sales were 16 million pounds of candy when Blue Chip Stamps purchased the company in 1972. (Charlie and I controlled Blue Chip at the time and later merged it into Berkshire.) Last year See’s sold 31 million pounds, a growth rate of only 2% annually. Yet its durable competitive advantage, built by the See’s family over a 50-year period, and strengthened subsequently by Chuck Huggins and Brad Kinstler, has produced extraordinary results for Berkshire.
在Blue Chip Stamps公司1972年买下喜诗糖果公司的时候，这家糖果公司每年的糖果销售量为1600万磅(查理和我在那时获得了Blue Chip公司的控股权，并最终将它整合进了伯克夏公司)。去年喜诗糖果公司的销售量为3100万磅，年增长率仅为2%。然而，喜诗家族在过去50年来所建立起来、随后又得到查克·希金斯(Chuck Huggins)和布莱德·金斯特勒(Brad Kinstler)强化的持久竞争优势为伯克夏公司创造了非比寻常的回报。
We bought See’s for $25 million when its sales were $30 million and pre-tax earnings were less than $5 million. The capital then required to conduct the business was $8 million. (Modest seasonal debt was also needed for a few months each year.) Consequently, the company was earning 60% pre-tax on invested capital. Two factors helped to minimize the funds required for operations. First, the product was sold for cash, and that eliminated accounts receivable. Second, the production and distribution cycle was short, which minimized inventories.
我们以2500万美元买下了喜诗糖果公司,当时它的销售额为3000万美元，税前利润不足500万美元。经营这家企业所需的资本为800万美元 (每年还需要有几个月承担适度的季节性债务)。因此，这家公司投入资本的税前投资收益率为60%。两项因素帮助该公司经营所需的资金降至最低——首先，销售的产品采用现金结算，这消除了应收账款；其次，生产周期和分配周期较短，这帮助库存降至最低水平。
Last year See’s sales were $383 million, and pre-tax profits were $82 million. The capital now required to run the business is $40 million. This means we have had to reinvest only $32 million since 1972 to handle the modest physical growth – and somewhat immodest financial growth – of the business. In the meantime pre-tax earnings have totaled $1.35 billion. All of that, except for the $32 million, has been sent to Berkshire (or, in the early years, to Blue Chip). After paying corporate taxes on the profits, we have used the rest to buy other attractive businesses. Just as Adam and Eve kick-started an activity that led to six billion humans, See’s has given birth to multiple new streams of cash for us. (The biblical command to “be fruitful and multiply” is one we take seriously at Berkshire.)
去年喜诗糖果公司的销售额为3.83亿美元，税前利润为8200万美元。如今经营这家企业所需的资本为4000万美元，这意味着自1972年以来我们只需要再投资3200万美元，以应对该企业最小程度的规模扩张——并获得骄人的财务增长。期间的税前利润总额为13.5亿美元．除了那3200万美元，所有的这些利润都纳入了伯克夏公司的腰包(开始几年则归Blue Chip公司所有)。在支付了企业利润税之后，我们使用剩下的资金来购买其他具有吸引力的企业，就像亚当和夏娃的行为带来了60亿人口一样，喜诗公司给我们带来了许多新的现金源泉(我们在伯克夏公司中严格遵守《圣经》中所说的“多生多产”)。
There aren’t many See’s in Corporate America. Typically, companies that increase their earnings from $5 million to $82 million require, say, $400 million or so of capital investment to finance their growth. That’s because growing businesses have both working capital needs that increase in proportion to sales growth and significant requirements for fixed asset investments.
像喜诗糖果这样的企业在美国并不多，对许多企业来说，将利润从500万美元增加至8200万美元可能需要4亿美元左右的资本投资。这是因为成长中的企业，随着销售增长，对营运资金的需求也将同比增长，此外，对固定资产投资也有显著要求。
A company that needs large increases in capital to engender its growth may well prove to be a satisfactory investment. There is, to follow through on our example, nothing shabby about earning $82 million pre-tax on $400 million of net tangible assets. But that equation for the owner is vastly different from the See’s situation. It’s far better to have an ever-increasing stream of earnings with virtually no major capital requirements. Ask Microsoft or Google.
为实现增长而需要大量增加资本的企业可能是一项让人感到满意的投资。继续以我们自己的公司为例，从4亿美元的净有形资产中获得8200万美元的税前利润并不让人感到寒碜。但对企业的所有人而言．这就完全不同了，他们希望最好在没有大量资金需求的情况下能产生不断增加的现金流。这可以问问微软或者 Google。
One example of good, but far from sensational, business economics is our own FlightSafety. This company delivers benefits to its customers that are the equal of those delivered by any business that I know of. It also possesses a durable competitive advantage: Going to any other flight-training provider than the best is like taking the low bid on a surgical procedure.
我们拥有的飞行安全公司(FlightSafety)是优秀但远不是卓越企业的例子。像其他我所知道的企业一样，这家公司给客户提供好的服务。它也拥有一项持久的竞争优势——好比病人不会找要价最低的外科大夫来做手术一样，没理由放着最好的飞行训练公司不去，却偏偏去找其他的。
Nevertheless, this business requires a significant reinvestment of earnings if it is to grow. When we purchased FlightSafety in 1996, its pre-tax operating earnings were $111 million, and its net investment in fixed assets was $570 million. Since our purchase, depreciation charges have totaled $923 million. But capital expenditures have totaled $1.635 billion, most of that for simulators to match the new airplane models that are constantly being introduced. (A simulator can cost us more than $12 million, and we have 273 of them.) Our fixed assets, after depreciation, now amount to $1.079 billion. Pre-tax operating earnings in 2007 were $270 million, a gain of $159 million since 1996. That gain gave us a good, but far from See’s-like, return on our incremental investment of $509 million.
不管怎样，若这家企业希望获得增长，它就需要拿许多利润进行再投资。当我们在1996年收购了飞行安全公司时，该公司的税前营运利润为1.11 亿美元，固定资产净投资额为5.7亿美元。自我们收购这家公司以来，该公司的折旧费用为9.23亿美元，但资本支出总额达到16.35亿美元，其中多数支出用于让模拟器跟上机型的不断发展。(一台模拟器的成本超过1200万美元，我们有273台这样的模拟器)。我们折旧之后的固定资产总值为10.79亿美元。2007年的税前营运利润为2.7亿美元，相比1996年增长了1.59亿美元。对于我们累积投资的5.09亿美元而言，这样的增长相当不错了，但同喜诗公司比就差远了。
Consequently, if measured only by economic returns, FlightSafety is an excellent but not extraordinary business. Its put-up-more-to-earn-more experience is that faced by most corporations. For example, our large investment in regulated utilities falls squarely in this category. We will earn considerably more money in this business ten years from now, but we will invest many billions to make it.
因此，如果光用回报率来加以衡量，飞行安全公司是优秀的企业，但并不是卓越的企业，它的“投入更多，则赚更多”的经验是绝大多数企业都在面对的。例如，我们大规模投资的受管制公用事业公司则恰巧属于这一类。我们可以在未来10年从这些企业获得更大的利润，但我们也需要进行大量投资来获得这些利润。
Now let’s move to the gruesome. The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.
现在让我们来看一下那些可憎的企业。最糟糕的一类企业就是那些增长很快、为获得增长必须提供大量资金，而利润却有限或者没有产生利润的企业。看一下航空企业，自莱特兄弟(Wright Brothers)以来，这个行业所具有的持久竞争优势已被证明是难以捉摸的。事实上，如果有位目光长远的资本家当时恰好在小鹰镇(Kitty Hawk)现场，他可能击落奥维尔·莱特，从而帮后代做一件大好事。
The airline industry’s demand for capital ever since that first flight has been insatiable. Investors have poured money into a bottomless pit, attracted by growth when they should have been repelled by it. And I, to my shame, participated in this foolishness when I had Berkshire buy U.S. Air preferred stock in 1989. As the ink was drying on our check, the company went into a tailspin, and before long our preferred dividend was no longer being paid. But we then got very lucky. In one of the recurrent, but always misguided, bursts of optimism for airlines, we were actually able to sell our shares in 1998 for a hefty gain. In the decade following our sale, the company went bankrupt. Twice.
自第一次飞行以来，航空工业对资金的需求就永无止境。投资者本该对航空行业的增长倍加排斥，他们却为该行业的增长所吸引而将钱投入了无底洞。本人很惭愧，也做了同样的傻事，在1989年的时候让伯克夏买入了美国航空公司(US Air)的优先股。在我们签在支票上的墨水尚未干的时候，这家公司就如飞机坠落般的失控了，很快我们的股息就不再被支付。但我们很幸运，市场上爆发了对航空业的另一轮乐观预期，这种情绪经常会产生误导，我们最终在1998年卖出了我们所持有的美国航空公司股份，赚了不少。在我们卖出这些股票后的10年内，这家公司两次宣布破产。
To sum up, think of three types of “savings accounts.” The great one pays an extraordinarily high interest rate that will rise as the years pass. The good one pays an attractive rate of interest that will be earned also on deposits that are added. Finally, the gruesome account both pays an inadequate interest rate and requires you to keep adding money at those disappointing returns.
总结一下，有三种类型的“存款账户”——伟大的账户会支付非常高的利息，且利息会随着时间的推移而上升；优秀的账户会支付吸引人的利息，且只有当你增加存款的时候才能获得这些利息；最后一种是可憎的账户，它所提供的利息并不充分，且要求你不断增加资金以获得那些让人失望的回报。
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And now it’s confession time. It should be noted that no consultant, board of directors or investment banker pushed me into the mistakes I will describe. In tennis parlance, they were all unforced errors.
现在是反思的时间。应该注意到，没有顾问、董事会成员或者投资银行家让我犯下了我将要描述的错误，套用网球术语，这些都是非受迫性失误(Unforced error)。
To begin with, I almost blew the See’s purchase. The seller was asking $30 million, and I was adamant about not going above $25 million. Fortunately, he caved. Otherwise I would have balked, and that $1.35 billion would have gone to somebody else.
首先,我几乎让收购喜诗糖果公司的项目泡汤。出售方开价3000万美元，而我则坚持自己的2500万美元的最高出价。很幸运，他最终屈服了，否则我会受挫，而那13.5亿美元将落入别人的腰包。
About the time of the See’s purchase, Tom Murphy, then running Capital Cities Broadcasting, called and offered me the Dallas-Fort Worth NBC station for $35 million. The station came with the Fort Worth paper that Capital Cities was buying, and under the “cross-ownership” rules Murph had to divest it. I knew that TV stations were See’s-like businesses that required virtually no capital investment and had excellent prospects for growth. They were simple to run and showered cash on their owners.
在收购喜诗糖果公司的时候，当时经营着Capital Cities广播公司的汤姆·墨菲(Tom Murphy)打电话给我，向我提供了以3500万美元收购Dallas-Fort Worth NBC电视台的机会，同这家电视台一起的还有Fort Worth报，Capital Cities公司当时正在收购这家报社，而根据有关“交叉持股”(cross-ownership)的规定，墨菲必须剥离电视台业务。我知道电视台就像喜诗糖果公司一样，它们的经营并不需要资本投资，且成长前景非常好。经营这样的企业较为简单，所有者却能赚的盆满钵满。
Moreover, Murph, then as now, was a close friend, a man I admired as an extraordinary manager and outstanding human being. He knew the television business forward and backward and would not have called me unless he felt a purchase was certain to work. In effect Murph whispered “buy” into my ear. But I didn’t listen.
而且，墨菲一直以来都是我的好友，他不仅是我所尊敬的极为优秀的经理人，也是一位非常杰出的人士。他对电视台的业务非常了解，如果他认为这项业务不会获得成功，他就不会给我打电话了。事实上他在我的耳边悄声说着“买吧”，但我没有听他的。
In 2006, the station earned $73 million pre-tax, bringing its total earnings since I turned down the deal to at least $1 billion – almost all available to its owner for other purposes. Moreover, the property now has a capital value of about $800 million. Why did I say “no”? The only explanation is that my brain had gone on vacation and forgot to notify me. (My behavior resembled that of a politician Molly Ivins once described: “If his I.Q. was any lower, you would have to water him twice a day.”)
2006年，Dallas-Fort Worth NBC电视台税前利润7300万美元，从我拒绝收购这项业务以来，这家电视台的利润总额至少为10亿美元——所有者几乎可以全部拿来用于其他用途。此外，这家电视台当前的资本价值约为8亿美元左右。为何当初我要说“不”呢? 唯一的解释是我的大脑当时正在度假，并忘了提醒我了。(我的这一行为与政客Molly Ivins所描述的行为相类似：“如果他的智商再低点，你必须每天两次泼醒他。”)
Finally, I made an even worse mistake when I said “yes” to Dexter, a shoe business I bought in 1993 for $433 million in Berkshire stock (25,203 shares of A). What I had assessed as durable competitive advantage vanished within a few years. But that’s just the beginning: By using Berkshire stock, I compounded this error hugely. That move made the cost to Berkshire shareholders not $400 million, but rather $3.5 billion. In essence, I gave away 1.6% of a wonderful business – one now valued at $220 billion – to buy a worthless business.
最后要说的是，当我对Dexter公司说出“好的”这句话时，我犯下了更为可怕的错误。我在1993年以价值4.33亿美元的伯克夏公司股份 (25203股A股)买入这家鞋类企业。我此前所认为的持久竞争优势在几年之内就荡然无存。但这还只是厄运的开始：由于使用了伯克夏公司的股份来进行这项收购，我让错误也被复利放大了。这一收购决定让伯克夏股东付出的代价不是4亿美元，而是35亿美元。实际上我是无端放弃了一家优秀企业1.6%的股份－－该企业如今的价值达到2,200亿美元－－购买了一家毫无价值的企业。
To date, Dexter is the worst deal that I’ve made. But I’ll make more mistakes in the future – you can bet on that. A line from Bobby Bare’s country song explains what too often happens with acquisitions: “I’ve never gone to bed with an ugly woman, but I’ve sure woke up with a few.”
到目前为止，收购Dexter公司是我做过的最糟糕的交易。但我会在未来出更多的差错——你可以对此打赌。乡村歌手鲍比·拜尔(Bobby Bare)的歌词解释了在进行收购时经常会发生些什么：“我从不与丑陋的女人同床共枕，但肯定会和一些丑陋的女人一块醒来。”
http://www.valuegrow.com/html/valuemen/danbin/20080508/7394.shtml |
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发表于 8-5-2008 02:39 PM
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觐见巴菲特
转载 2008-05-08
那个感觉是从明尼阿波利斯机场开始的。我周五从纽约飞到那里转机到奥马哈。登机前，机场工作人员开始叫最后一刻拿到座位的侯坐乘客名字，每位被叫的人都是一副欣喜若狂的模样，一位年轻人夸张的表情和动作足以让人以为他中了彩票。
满飞机的人基本上都是到奥马哈参加沃伦－巴菲特的公司伯克希尔-哈撒韦(Berkshire Hathaway)股东年会的，包括一位坐在头等舱、穿着笔挺深蓝色西装的小男孩。或者更准确地说，他们是去觐见“股神”巴菲特和他的长期搭档查理•芒格 (Charlie Munger)。还可以引用巴菲特自己的话说，他们是受邀参加一场资本家大型音乐会。
晚上7点多下了飞机，不能不感觉到巴菲特在这个城市的影响。机场书店里有很多关于巴菲特的书。租车公司的助理对一对探亲的夫妇说，他们是一天来她接待的唯一不是来参加股东大会的顾客。她还说，很多人在芝加哥的航班都被取消了，是开了10个小时车来的。
伯克希尔的股东们究竟是些什么样的人？他们为什么年复一年来到这个美国中西部的小镇，听两个七、八十岁的老头讲已经重复了无数遍而且听起来似乎很简单的投资和作人原则？我能不能找到中国投资者？他们和美国人佩服巴菲特的原因是相同还是不同？
上周六，我就坐在奥马哈体育场里和来自世界各地的三万一千名伯克希尔股东听巴菲特和芒格讲他们的投资原则和作人哲学。我在国内没有参加过股东大会，不知道是什么样子。去年我到芝加哥报道过摩托罗拉股东大会，当时公司业绩大幅下滑，一位大股东正在和董事会打架，会场上股东和管理层针锋相对，气氛非常紧张。
而伯克希尔股东大会可能是世界上最好玩、气氛也最轻松的股东大会之一。大会是以题为“查理选总统”的漫画片开始的。说的是巴菲特和比尔•盖茨说服芒格去竞选总统，因为美国需要一个知道怎样挣钱而不是花钱的领导人。巴菲特将身兼商业部长、财政部长和美联储主席数职，而盖茨将担任科技部长。
更重要的是，与会的人对巴菲特和芒格有太多尊敬，很少有人用责问的口气（只有一个印地安部落提问伯克希尔控制的一家公司水坝造成的污染问题），甚至很少有人问公司为什么做这个或不做那个。除了这些，问什么的都有。外国人（你想象不到有多少德国人和印度人提问）会问伯克希尔什么时候去他们国家投资买公司，小孩子问该读什么书，还有问内向的人怎样在事业上成功。
巴菲特和芒格用了差不多五个小时，回答了很多问题，但每次都是一样的思路清晰、诚实而幽默：
－如果你遵循本杰明•格莱姆(注：巴菲特的导师)的教导，你不会有坏的投资结果。
－查理和我一点都不知道下周、下个月和明年的市场走向。
－如果你可以选择的话，为你景仰的公司和个人工作。
－如果你对什么东西有兴趣，你很可能会比较擅长。
－你应该每天读报纸，尽可能多地了解周围的世界。
－我不会在那个价位（7亿美元）买任何棒球队。
令我高兴的是（我相信也令有些人失望的是），几个小时的问答没有太多沉重的金融术语。
但我也想到了另一个问题：连我这个对巴菲特不那么了解的人（读过几本书，看过一个纪录片，在去奥马哈的飞机上读了2007年年报）都能感觉到他和芒格在不断重复自己（虽然是有意思的重复），对他们已经了解很多的股东们还想跑到这里来学什么新东西？
从加州来的Robert Harte和妻子Jeanne Harte是第三次来参加大会了。Robert说，巴菲特和芒格是喜欢重复自己，但学习就在于不断重复，而且他们两人都很擅长用简单的语言解释复杂的话题。这个复杂的世界需要清晰的启示。
从南加州来的Sasha Meshkov说，她是做金融咨询工作的，她发现巴菲特诚实得不可思议，在这一行是很难得的。在纽约金融界工作的中国人毛学军是第一次参加伯克希尔股东大会，但他已经打算明年再去。他说：“就象基督徒不会一辈子只去一次教堂一样，价值投资者也不会一辈子只去一次最著名的价值投资者的聚会。”
从亚利桑那州来的Brian Henderson也说：“这就象去教堂，即便你差不多能猜到他要说什么，我还是需要听他说，因为那些原则很难遵守。”他还说，如果你象巴菲特一样遵守价值投资原则，你在投资世界里会是极少数。每年开年会的这一天是一年中唯一的机会，能让他感到周围人和他做的是一样的事情。
我本来以为会很难找到从中国来的投资者采访，没想到有一个20人的中国总裁访问团在场，会后我也得以问他们几个关于巴菲特的问题。我发现，中美投资者敬仰巴菲特的原因其实是非常相似的。
上海熙可控股总裁朱演铭说，他出差时经常听一本巴菲特投资原则的录音书，因为它能让他远离市场上的噪音，保持头脑清醒，遵守价值投资原则。中证万融的赵炳贤说他研究巴菲特已经有十几年了，那本致股东信的书也看了有十几遍了。他最佩服巴菲特的是，他能把一个非常简单的投资方法坚持50年，重复50年。他认为虽然中国的市场环境和美国很不一样，但在中国象巴菲特一样做长期投资可能机会更多，因为没有人在长线上竞争。广东今日投资董事长何伯权最佩服巴菲特的人生理念──不把赚钱看作人生最高理想。
我最后在记者招待会上问“股神”本人这个问题：为什么三万一千人会从世界各地赶来听他和芒格重复简单而一致的启示？
和往常一样，“股神”用他早已公布于世的原则（也就是重复）回答了这个问题。他引用的是伯克希尔所有人商业原则15条里的第一条：他和芒格从来都把股东看作把钱交给他们代管的生意伙伴。股东们来这里是因为“他们想感觉与查理和我是一个团队。”
我敢打赌很多股东都愿意有那种感觉。
http://www.valuegrow.com/html/value/buffett/20080508/7391.shtml |
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发表于 12-5-2008 06:14 PM
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翟敬勇：去年的对话,今年仍然值得学习
2008-05-07
Why were Warren Buffett and his creation, Berkshire Hathaway, so unusually
successful?
为什么巴菲特和他的所建立的公司伯克希尔,都是那么不寻常的成功?
Why did one man, starting with nothing, no credit rating, end up with this ridiculous collection of assets: $120 billion of cash and marketable securities, all from $10 million when Warren took over, with about the same number of shares outstanding. It’s a very extreme result…
为什么一个人,开始一无所有,没有信用评级,但结果竟然是拥有这种荒唐和庞大的资产:从华伦接手时的1000万美元,大约同样数量的流通股，变成了现在1200亿美元的现金和有价证券。这是一个非常极端结果…
A confluence of factors in the same direction caused Warren’s success. It’s very unlikely that a lollapalooza effect can come from anything else. So let’s look at the factors that contributed to this result:
很多因素在同一方向汇合造成沃伦的成功.这样如此出色的伟人是非常罕有的，并不是意外就可以解释他的存在，让我们看看因素促成了这一结果因素:
The first factor is the mental aptitude. Warren is seriously smart. On the other hand, he can’t beat all comers in chess blindfolded. He’s out-achieved his mental aptitude.
第一项因素是心理素质.华伦他绝顶聪明.另一方面,他是不能击败所有前来挑战他对手。但他可以战胜过他的心理素质.
Then there’s the good effect caused by his doing this since he was 10 years old. It’s very hard to succeed until you take the first step in what you’re strongly interested in. There’s no substitute for strong interest and he got a very early start.
他10岁的时候就开始做自己有兴趣的事情并且得到了良好的结果，兴趣则是他成功的垫脚石.凡事起步难，除非你能踏出第一步去做非常感兴趣的事情。而兴趣是无法代替的,巴菲特他年少的时候就开始做他感兴趣的事情.
This is really crucial: Warren is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles who outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you. Warren was lucky that he could still learn effectively and build his skills, even after he reached retirement age.
Warren’s investing skills have markedly increased since he turned 65. Having watched the whole process with Warren, I can report that if he had stopped with what he knew at earlier points, the record would be a pale shadow of what it is.
这实在是非常重要的:华伦是这个地球上最好的学习机器之一。乌龟跑赢兔子的故事说明了乌龟也是个了不起的学习机器. 如果你停止学习,在这个世界很快就超越你.即使他达到退休年龄，幸运的是他仍然能够有效地学习和建立自己的技能。进入65岁的高龄，沃伦的投资技巧明显提高. 看了整个过程与华伦我可以向大家报告说,如果他很早就放弃学习,他所创造的记录早将会是一个淡淡的阴影,并不是今天所谓的历史。
The work has been heavily concentrated in one mind. Sure, others have had input, but Berkshire enormously reflects the contributions of one great single mind. It’s hard to think of great success by committees in the investment world – or in physics. Many people miss this. Look at John Wooden, the greatest basketball coach ever: his record improved later in life when he got a great idea: be less egalitarian. Of 12 players on his team, the bottom five didn’t play – they were just sparring partners. Instead, he concentrated experience in his top players. That happened at Berkshire – there was concentrated experience and playing time.
企业的发展方向很大程度上是量集中在一个人的思想.当然,其他人也有付出,但伯克希尔的成功却有效地反映出一个伟大思想所作出的贡献.在投资和物理界，成就是很难会发生在委员会中的，很多人怀念这个事实。看看约翰木,伟大的篮球教练:他的一个大胆的念头改变了他后半生:将减少平均主义. 他球队里的12个球员, 其中5个是得不到上场比赛的机会,他们只是核心球员的训练伙伴.相反,他集中培养球队里的顶尖选手.这也发生在伯克希尔集团里-集中培养经验管理层.
This is not how we normally live: in a democracy, everyone takes turns. But if you really want a lot of wisdom, it’s better to concentrate decisions and process in one person…
这不是我们正常的生活:在一个民主国家里，人人平等.但如果你真想得到很多的智慧已经成功,最好是把决策权和过程集中在一人身上… …
Lots of people are very, very smart in terms of passing tests and making rapid calculations, but they just make one asinine decision after another because they have terrible streaks of nuttiness... You’ll find that Warren is very objective.
从通过测试和迅速计算的能力可以看出许多人都非常聪明, 但他们刚做了愚蠢的决定后,马上又会犯上其他错误。你会发现,沃伦是很客观.
All human beings work better when they get what psychologists call reinforcement. If you get constant rewards, even if you’re Warren Buffett, you’ll respond – and few things give more rewards than being a great investor…
所有人类更努力地工作时,他们所得到的心理学家叫XXX.如果你得到的报酬是一直不变,即使你是巴菲特的话,你也会有所不满－也有其他职业的报酬是比投资者还要多的。
The importance of reading（阅读的重要性）
How did Berkshire’s track record happen? If you were an observer, you’d see that Warren did most of it sitting on his ass and reading. If you want to be an outlier in achievement, just sit on your ass and read most of your life. But they fire you for that!
Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multi-tasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading. If you want wisdom, you’ll get it sitting on your ass. That’s the way it comes.
巴菲特是怎样刷新纪录的呢? 如果你是名观察者, 你会发现华伦确实大部分时间是在阅读.如果你也想像他那么成功,那就多阅读吧.但你的老板可能会因为这样解雇你！
看看这一代人,所用的电子设备和多任务处理器. 我可以满怀信心地预言：这么多的电子发明都比不上在专注阅读华伦巴菲特.如果你想智慧和学识,你就得像他那样阅读，事情就是这样而来.
Mental models（心智模式）
If you have enough sense to become a mental adult yourself, you can run rings around people smarter than you. Just pick up key ideas from all the disciplines, not just a few, and you’re immensely wiser than they are. This is not a great social advantage, however, as I can tell you from experience of the early Charlie Munger. To meet a great expert in a field and regard him as a malformed child is not a winning social grace. I got a lot of hard knocks when I was young. You could say I was forced into investing. The world will not ordinarily reward you for correcting other people in their area of expertise…
如果你有足够的见识而成为一种有心智的成年人,你可以指使周围比你更聪明的人. 就拿各个学科的重要的概念来说吧,不只是一个点,而且你非常聪明,比他们好.这并不是一个巨大的社会优势,但正如我可以告诉你关于Charlie Munger早期的经验. 迎接一个在某个领域的伟大的专家并把他看成一个畸形的孩子不是个好的社会风尚.我年轻的时候经历过不少的打击与挫折.你可以说我是被迫的投资.然而你纠正其他人的专业领域知识，世界是不会奖赏你的。
I’m a great believer in solving hard problems by using a checklist. You need to get all the likely and unlikely answers before you; otherwise it’s easy to miss something important.
我是在解决问题,通常会列出一份清单，想出所以有很可能发生的事情和最坏的结果是什么，否则很容易错过一些重要的东西.
What is your favorite human misjudgment? （你最喜欢的人性误判是什么?）
My favorite human misjudgment is self-serving bias: how the brain subconsciously will decide that what’s good for the holder of the brain is good for everyone else. If the little me wants it, why shouldn’t the little me have it? People go through life like this.
我个人最喜欢的人性误判是自私偏见:大脑是如何将潜意识决定对自己有利的东西对别人也是有好处的呢？如果渺小的我想得到什么东西，那为什么渺小的我不拥有它呢?人身就是这样.
I’ve underestimated this phenomenon all my life. People go bonkers taking care of their own self-interest. It’s a sea of miscognition. People who write the laws, people who treat patients, who experiment with rats, all suffer horribly from this bias…
我低估了生活中的这个现象－人们疯狂地了照顾为了自身的利益生存.制定法律的人,治疗病人的医生，拿老鼠做试验的研究人员，都遭受到这个偏见。
I would say that the current head of the World Bank [Paul Wolfowitz] had an elementary question: as head of the Bank, a lot of people hate you, so how bright do you have to be to distance yourself from a question of a large raise from your live-in girlfriend? He sent it to the lawyers, they hemmed and hawed, and he lost his moorings. Even a child shouldn’t make his obvious mistake. Similarly, I’d guess President Clinton would have had a better record if he’d had better insight on certain subjects. Note that I carefully picked one from each party. [Laughter]
我会说,现任世界银行[沃尔福威茨]有个问题：作为世行行长,世上很多人关注你而且有很多人恨你，你怎么能利用职权替你女朋友升职加薪呢？他把问题留给他律师处理，但最后他还是要下台。这种连小孩都不会犯的错竟然会发生在世行行长身上。同样,美国总统克林顿如果他更注意他的个人行为，我猜他本来有更好的留任纪录。注意,我只是从各党里挑出一个现象. [笑]
Comments on Berkshire （对伯克希尔公司的评价）
The Munger family has the better part of $2 billion in Berkshire, so there has been some thought as to whether this is a good idea. The answer is that I’m quite content to hold that position and I hope my family members will hold an overwhelming amount of that for a long time. They won’t have the same kind of results that I have had getting the position to its present size from small beginnings, but they don’t need the kind of results I got.
Munger家族拥有差不多20亿的资产在伯克希尔公司，有人提出这个疑问：一直把这么多资产留在伯克希尔公司是明智的吗？我的回应是绝对支持的，我希望我家族成员会永久把所以资产都投资在伯克希尔集团。但他们并不需要我那样的结果，从一开始规模较小的公司发展成现在庞大的企业。
Berkshire’s a very reputable place, full of the right kind of people with the right kind of values. If your expectations are moderate and you like to sleep well at night, it’s not a bad place to have your money compared to other stocks. If what you need is 30% compounded for years into the future, our stock is not for you. Compared to the other stocks available to you, it’s OK and will stay OK long after Warren and I are gone…
伯克希尔集团是一个非常有声誉的地方，满是有实力而且有价值的人才。如果你的预期回报率是中等而且想晚上睡的安心，这里就不属于你。如果你是个期望回报是30％的复合增长，这里也股票也不适合你。就算巴菲特和我都去世了，和其他股票相比，我们的股票还是会给你们带来不错的收入。
As I said on an earlier occasion, if you get Warren Buffett for 40 years and the bastard finally dies on you, you don’t really have a right to complain. [Laughter]
正如我说早先所说,如果你可以使巴菲特生存多40年，但他最终还是会去世的,你真的没有抱怨的权利. [笑]
A seamless web of deserved trust（一个值得信赖的关系网络）
An enormous pleasure in life is to be rightly trusted... If your friends are asking you to raise their children if they die, you’re doing something right... Some think if we just had more compliance checks and process, virtue would be maximized. At Berkshire, we have subnormal process. We try to operate in a web of seamless trust, deserved trust, and try to be careful whom we let in.
人身最大的乐趣在于得到别人的信任。如果你一个朋友在去世前请你照顾他的孩子，你是在做正确的事情。有人认为,如果我们能有更多的监督巡查,效能将会最大限度的发挥。在伯克希尔，我们的有低于正常的过程。我们尝试在值得信任的网络里运作,并设法加以小心要加入我们网络的人（或公司）。
What role does the board of directors play at Berkshire?（董事会在伯克希尔扮演着什么样的角色?）
The board is a safety valve in case I go completely crazy and Warren doesn’t do anything about it. [Laughter] They are eminent people. We’re required to have a board with independent directors and since we’re required to have such a board, we figured we might as well have a good one.
当我完全疯了而华伦巴菲特什么事情都不做的时候，董事会是非常安全的（开玩笑）。他们都是杰出的领导人。我们必须有一个董事会,由独立董事组成。我们必须有这样一个董事会,而我认为我们有一个很好的董事会。
[He paused here, apparently debating whether to add the following:] Would we have had a board if we were allowed not to have one? No, we wouldn’t have a board. [Laughter]
Is value investing becoming more widespread?（价值投资是否变得越来越普及）
I think our way of looking at things will become more popular. In fact, it already is a lot more popular than it was decades ago. I used to look out at this group and it was 20 people. The increased popularity of the investment style will not make it easier for all of you to make a lot of money. All these smart people competing will make it harder, but that’s not all a bad thing: maybe some of you will have to make money less the way we did and more the way some engineer does.
我觉得我们的投资理念会将会变得更受欢迎。事实上，它已经比几十年前受欢迎多了，我以前注意的时候只有20个人。这样日益流行的投资方式不会容易地让你赚到钱。所有这些聪明的投资者在竞争,难度会更大,但这并非全部是坏事：你们可能会赚得比我少，但会比一般工薪阶层要多。
Where are there market inefficiencies? （哪里有因不完全信息而失效的市场？）
Two markets are inefficient: very small ones (which are not much use to Berkshire, with its $120 billion), and ones where crazy people are doing crazy things, especially if they’re selling. From time to time, the big markets have some crazily mispriced securities in them. But there’s no question that in small markets there’s a lot of opportunity to find mispricings.
有两个市场是失效的:第一个市场是非常小(这对拥有1200亿美元的伯克希尔公司没有多大用处) 另外一个市场，疯狂的投资者经常在做疯狂的事,尤其是如果他们卖出所持有的股票.有时,大市场里会有些低于其企业本身价值的股票证券.但有一点毫无疑问, 在市场规模小,这样机会会更多。
Subprime and the rating agencies （次级和信用评级机构）
The rating agencies have prospered mightily, and their most likely source of embarrassment is subprime paper. Overall, they do a good job, and you always miss things with the benefit of hindsight. I would not predict they encounter great distress. If you want to pick things to disapprove of, the rating agencies would be far down on the list.
You might pick many originators of the subprime mortgages. They are some of the most disgusting people we’ve been able to produce, and many of them belong in the lowest circle of hell. There will always will be such people, making money by misleading people. You’ll always get people like the worst commissioned salespeople in the mortgage brokerage business. This isn’t the real tragedy.
信用评级机构非常繁荣，并且他们最有可能的阻碍来源是subprime paper. 总体而言，他们做好他们的本身的工作，你也经常怀念后见之明的好处。我将不会预测他们会遭遇大危难。如果你想要证明机构的误处，信用机构将不会在你考虑范围之内。
你或许会挑出次级信用评级机构的创始人。他们是最恶心的人，其中很多属于地狱最底层的圈子。世上总会有这样的人，靠误导别人而赚钱。你总会在按揭经纪业务中遇到这样品质差的销售员。这不是真正的悲剧。
The real tragedy is the people higher up at the Wall Street banks who only asked if they could sell it, not if they should do it. They violated engineering principles and ethical principles.
真正的悲剧是在华尔街银行,如果只要求他们可以卖掉股票,他们实际上是炒高股票的价格，他们并不是做他们该做的事情.他们违反工程原理和伦理原则.
Is there a trend in the private equity business? （私募股权投资公司有趋势吗？）
Of course there’s a trend. The LBO funds get larger and larger and buy larger and larger businesses, so it’s a huge trend.
It’s a different lifestyle than Berkshire’s. We almost never sell – we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to play gin rummy with our friends, dumping five businesses and getting five new ones. We aren’t buying to resell.
当然有趋势。杠杆收购基金变得越来越多并且购买越来越多的公司，所以这是个极大的趋势。
但它和伯克希尔的投资理念不同。我们从来不出售公司－我们并不想这样做。我们不会和我们的朋友玩拉米牌戏，卖掉5个公司然后又买5个新的回来。我们购置公司的动机并不是要出售它。
The leveraged equity crowd is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. What’s happened is endowments and pension plans are believing in the tooth fairy. With assets being bid up, they’re not getting enough return from ordinary investments from stocks and bonds. Then silver-tongued people came along and said you don’t have to suffer low returns. Give us the money, we’ll lever up, pay us a lot of compensation and we will give you 15% not 5%. It’s worked – not as well as claimed; there’s dubious use of statistics – but for good shops, it works.
杠杆式股权投资公司瓶颈问题变得越来越严重。但公司资产给市场哄高，他们将不能从原先的投资在股票或债券中得到足够的回报。那些杠杆收购基金公司就会和你说你所得到得回报不止这么少，并说服你把钱交给他们管理，他们有办法把回报率提高，他们会给你15％的回报而不是5％。这样的确可行－但不是像他说得那么好；他们用可疑的数据－但在好的企业里，这的确会发生。
Then, a lot of envy sweeps the field. Yale can’t stand Harvard making more. Envy is a huge motivator, though it’s seldom admitted. In my whole life, I’ve never had someone say, “Charlie, I’m doing this out of envy.”
然后，耶鲁不能站在哈佛前面说他们比哈佛有多好。妒忌的是一个巨大的动力,虽然它的很少被承认.在我的整个生命,从来不会有人对我说, "查理,我这样做是因为嫉妒"。
In venture capital, except for a handful of firms at the top, the returns are lousy. This will eventually happen to the LBO firms as well. God has not decided that anyone who wants 15% can get it.
在风险资本,除极少数在行业顶端公司,回报是很糟糕的. 这将最终出现的杠杆股权投资公司上.上帝还没有决定让哪些想得到15％回报率的公司得到这样的回报。
Thoughts on his advancing age（晚年思想）
I’m getting more experienced at aging. I’m like the man who jumped off the skyscraper and at the 5th floor on the way down says, “So far this is not a bad ride.” [Laughter] I’m getting better with aging. I’m not going to complain about age because if I didn’t have it, I’d be dead.
随着年龄在增加，我变得越来越富有经验。我喜欢的人跳下摩天大楼,在五楼上下山途中说, "到目前为止,这是一个不错的旅程. " [笑] 我随着年龄渐入佳境.我不想抱怨年龄,因为如果我我没有它, 我就是死了.
Career advice（职业忠告）
Ideally, you would have figured it out by now. If you’re only now asking that question well along in your business school career, then your business school is about as effective as I would have guessed. [Laughter]
理想情况下,现在你会明白这一点。如果在商学院的你现在才提出了这个问题,那么我猜你的商学院所得到的建议和我的忠告是是一样有效地.
Deserve what you want（你值得拥有什么）
Figure out what you don’t want and avoid it and you’ll get what you do want. Warren had the same instincts I had. We haven’t had our share of disappointed, angry people that ruin so many lives. It’s easy to get into that position. Ask the question: How can you best get what you want? The answer: Deserve what you want! How can it be any other way?
找出你不想要的并且避免它，你将会得到你所想要得。巴菲特和我有一样的本能。我们没有分享过对人生的失望, 愤怒的人摧毁了无数的生命.人们很容易犯这样的错误.问问你自己:你如何能得到你想要的? 答案是:你值得拥有什么!除了这样的答案，还会有其他吗?
http://www.valuegrow.com/html/va ... 20080507/7382.shtml |
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发表于 16-5-2008 03:01 PM
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新闻。
Buffett's Ins And Outs
Carl Gutierrez, 05.16.08, 12:17 AM ET
It's that time of year again, when investors and analysts get a chance to peak into the holdings of the Oracle of Omaha.
What they found this time around is the complete sale of the stake held by Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRKA - news - people ) in Ameriprise Financial (nyse: AMP - news - people ), which at the end of the fourth quarter totaled 661,742 shares.
Chuck Hamilton of FTN Midwest Securities said that the move out of Ameriprise by the world's richest man makes sense. "Ameriprise is a consumer finance company," Hamilton said, "and when consumers are getting whacked by rising food and energy prices, along with dropping housing prices, its not a company you want to have a stake in."
Warren Buffett's Berkshire also padded his stake in Kraft (nyse: KFT - news - people ) to 138.8 million shares from 132.4 million. In February, Berkshire's fourth-quarter disclosure made waves when it revealed it was the food company's largest shareholder. (See: "Buffett On The Prowl")
Although Buffett doesn't talk to analysts, Hamilton argued at the time that Buffett's move into Kraft was in line with his strategy of buying brand names with significant market power, such as Coca-Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) and Procter & Gamble (nyse: PG - news - people ).
As in February, Kraft shares rose on the news, gaining 0.9%, or 28 cents, to $32.21.
Buffett also upped his position in railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe (nyse: BNI - news - people ) to 63.8 million shares from 60.8 million. "Burlington seems like a play against the rising cost of energy," Hamilton said. "As trucks get hit by higher costs, the transportation of goods will be transferred to the railroads."
Berkshire lowered its stake in data- and document-storage company Iron Mountain (nyse: IRM - news - people ) from 4.7 million shares to 3.4 million. It raised its position in US Bancorp (nyse: USB - news - people ) to 68.6 million shares, and in Carmax (nyse: KMX - news - people ) to 21.3 million shares.
Thursday's disclosure comes weeks after Buffett joined in with Mars for a joint bid for William Wrigley Jr. Co. (nyse: WWY - news - people ). The recent downturn in the financial sector has inspired Buffett to buy a large chunk of reinsurer Swiss Re.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/20 ... _0515markets42.html |
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发表于 16-5-2008 03:04 PM
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新闻。
Warren Buffett--In 1974
04.30.08, 4:45 PM ET
Under the 1974 headline, "Look At All Those Beautiful, Scantily Clad Girls Out There!," this profile in Forbes magazine captures Warren Buffett's personality and chronicles the singular path he cut through the investment world. Though the piece is 34 years old, it sheds light on the man behind Berkshire Hathaway as the company's shareholders meet this weekend in Omaha, Neb.
Robert Lenzner and Evelyn Rusli will be reporting from Omaha all weekend. You can find the latest on the shareholders' meeting here.
How do you contemplate the current stock market, we asked Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha, Neb.
"Like an oversexed guy in a harem," he shot back. "This is the time to start investing."
The Dow was below 600 when he said that. Before we could get Buffett's words in print, it was up almost 15% in one of the fastest rallies ever.
We called him back and asked if he found the market as sexy at 660 as he did at 580. "I don't know what the averages are going to do next," he replied, "but there are still plenty of bargains around." He remarked that the situation reminded him of the early '50s.
Warren Buffett doesn't talk much, but when he does it's well worth listening to. His sense of timing has been remarkable. Five years ago, late in 1969, when he was 39, he called it quits on the market. He liquidated his money management pool, Buffett Partnership, Ltd., and gave his clients their money back. Before that, in good years and bad, he had been beating the averages, making the partnership grow at a compounded annual rate of 30% before fees between 1957 and 1969. (That works out to a $10,000 investment growing to $300,000 and change.)
He quit essentially because he found the game no longer worth playing. Multiples on good stocks were sky-high, the go-go boys were "performing" and the list was so picked over that the kind of solid bargains that Buffett likes were not to be had. He told his clients that they might do better in tax-exempt bonds than in playing the market. "When I got started," he says, "the bargains were flowing like the Johnstown flood; by 1969 it was like a leaky toilet in Altoona." Pretty cagey, this Buffett. When all the sharp MBAs were crowding into the investment business, Buffett was quietly walking away.
Buffett settled back to manage the business interests he had acquired, including Diversified Retailing, a chain of women's apparel stores; Blue Chip Stamps, a western states trading stamp operation; and Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified banking and insurance company that owned, among other things, a weekly newspaper, The Omaha Sun. The businesses did well. Under Buffett's management, the Sun won a Pulitzer prize for its exposé of how Boys Town, despite pleas of poverty, had been turned into a "moneymaking machine."
Swing, You Bum!
Buffett is like the legendary guy who sold his stocks in 1928 and went fishing until 1933. That guy probably didn't exist. The stock market is habit-forming: You can always persuade yourself that there are bargains around. Even in 1929. Or in 1970. But Buffett did kick the habit. He did "go fishing" from 1969 to 1974. If he had stuck around, he concedes, he would have had mediocre results.
"I call investing the greatest business in the world," he says, "because you never have to swing." You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! And nobody calls a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it."
But pity the pros at the investment institutions. They're the victims of impossible "performance" measurements. Says Buffett, continuing his baseball imagery, "It's like Babe Ruth at bat with 50,000 fans and the club owner yelling, 'Swing, you bum!' and some guy is trying to pitch him an intentional walk. They know if they don't take a swing at the next pitch, the guy will say, 'Turn in your uniform.'" Buffett claims he set up his partnership to avoid these pressures.
Stay dispassionate and be patient is Buffett's message. "You're dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it's like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be OK." First the crowd is boozy on optimism and buying every new issue in sight. The next moment it is boozy on pessimism, buying gold bars and predicting another Great Depression.
Fine, we said, if you're so bullish, what are you buying? His answer: "I don't want to tout my own stocks."
Any general suggestions, we asked?
Just common sense ones. Buy stocks that sell at ridiculously low prices. Low by what standards? By the conventional ones of net worth, book value, the value of the business as a going concern. Above all, stick with what you know; don't get too fancy. "Draw a circle around the businesses you understand and then eliminate those that fail to qualify on the basis of value, good management and limited exposure to hard times." No high technology. No multicompanies. "I don't understand them," says Buffett. "Buy into a company because you want to own it, not because you want the stock to go up."
"A water company is pretty simple," he says, adding that Blue Chip Stamps has a 5% interest in the San Jose Water Works. "So is a newspaper. Or a major retailer." He'll even buy a Street favorite if he isn't paying a big premium for things that haven't happened yet. He mentions Polaroid. "At some price, you don't pay anything for the future, and you even discount the present. Then, if Dr. Land has some surprises up his sleeve, you get them for nothing."
Have faith in your own judgment or your adviser's, Buffett advises. Don't be swayed by every opinion you hear and every suggestion you read. Buffett recalls a favorite saying of Professor Benjamin Graham, the father of modern security analysis and Buffett's teacher at Columbia Business School: "You are neither right nor wrong because people agree with you." Another way of saying that wisdom, truth, lies elsewhere than in the moment's moods.
All Alone?
What good, though, is a bargain if the market never recognizes it as a bargain? What if the stock market never comes back? Buffett replies: "When I worked for Graham-Newman, I asked Ben Graham, who then was my boss, about that. He just shrugged and replied that the market always eventually does. He was right--in the short run, it's a voting machine; in the long run, it's a weighing machine. Today on Wall Street they say, 'Yes, it's cheap, but it's not going to go up.' That's silly. People have been successful investors because they've stuck with successful companies. Sooner or later the market mirrors the business." Such classic advice is likely to remain sound in the future when they write musical comedies about the go-go boys.
We reminded Buffett of the old play on the Kipling lines: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs … maybe they know something you don't."
Buffett responded that, yes, he was well aware that the world is in a mess. "What the DeBeers did with diamonds, the Arabs are doing with oil; the trouble is we need oil more than diamonds." And there is the population explosion, resource scarcity, nuclear proliferation. But, he went on, you can't invest in the anticipation of calamity; gold coins and art collections can't protect you against Doomsday. If the world really is burning up, "you might as well be like Nero and say, 'It's only burning on the south side.'"
"Look, I can't construct a disaster-proof portfolio. But if you're only worried about corporate profits, panic or depression, these things don't bother me at these prices."
Buffett's final word: "Now is the time to invest and get rich."
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2 ... .html?partner=links |
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发表于 16-5-2008 03:05 PM
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Buffett: Recession? Yes. Opportunity? Yes
Andrew Farrell, 03.03.08, 4:49 PM ET
Yes, Warren Buffett says the U.S. is in a recession. But some kind of economic doomsday? Hardly. The legendary investor is plenty bullish on the long-term viability of the American economy.
"Despite our country's many imperfections and unrelenting problems of one sort or another, America's rule of law, market-responsive economic system and belief in meritocracy are almost certain to produce ever growing prosperity for its citizens," Buffett wrote in a Friday letter to Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRKA - news - people ) shareholders. He said his holding company will continue to concentrate its assets in the U.S.
It's not just idle talk. In December, Berkshire Hathaway announced the biggest cash purchase in its history. It will pay $4.5 billion upfront, and more down the road, to buy the Chicago-based Marmon Group from the feuding Pritzker family. It's a broad endorsement of the American economy, since the remarkably diversified conglomerate includes 125 businesses like Union Tank Car and EcoWater Systems. (See "Buffett Helps Resolve Pritzker Family Feud.")
The current turmoil isn't swaying Buffett's philosophy on what makes a good company. "A truly great business must have an enduring 'moat' that protects excellent returns on invested capital," he said.
Since a successful business will inevitably draw copycats trying to offer the same goods or services, Buffett likes those with ingrained advantages that help them fight off upstarts. That's why Berkshire Hathaway owns insurer GEICO and a stake in discount-retail warehouse Costco (nasdaq: COST - news - people ). Buffett points to both as companies that can trump challengers because of their low-cost offerings.
He also points to an excellent brand name as a barrier that is difficult for competitors to overcome. Berkshire Hathaway owns stakes in Coca-Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) and American Express (nyse: AXP - news - people ) partly for this reason.
Buffett, the second-wealthiest American, with a fortune of $52 billion when we last valued his holdings in the fall of 2007, is also sniffing out opportunities created by the recent financial market turmoil. Most of the major bond insurers are struggling after overextending themselves. In search of bigger profits, they started guaranteeing risky collateralized debt obligations, many of which are now souring because of spiking defaults in subprime mortgages.
Buffett pounced in December when he said Berkshire would start insuring municipal bonds. With a stellar credit rating, Berkshire is having no problems wooing governmental debt issuers. The new business should offer a safe, steady flow of profits since municipal bonds rarely default.
Investors looking to take a page out of Buffett's playbook should avoid the bond insurers facing credit downgrades. They are the ones most likely to cede market share. Instead, they could look into Assured Guaranty (nyse: AGO - news - people ), which didn't jump on the collateralized debt obligation bandwagon and thus kept its topnotch rating. The company looks even more attractive with deep-pocketed billionaire Wilbur Ross supporting it.
http://www.forbes.com/businessbi ... af_0303buffett.html |
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发表于 16-5-2008 03:07 PM
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新闻。
Billionaires Pounce On Bond Insurers' Stumble
Andrew Farrell, 03.01.08, 6:00 AM ET
The woes of overextended bond insurers are creating a huge money-making opportunity and two of the world's most successful investors have pounced. Wilbur Ross followed Warren Buffett into the municipal bond insurance business Friday with a big investment in Assured Guaranty.
The recent entrance of the two billionaires into bond insurance was actually precipitated years ago with the decision of sector players to expand their coverage. At the time, most insured primarily municipal bonds. It was a safe, lucrative business because municipal bonds rarely default.
Insurers, hungry for bigger profits, then started insuring other types of debt. They found huge demand for their services in the exploding field of collateralized debt obligations, a type of debt backed by various assets. Many included bundles of subprime mortgages.
Now spiking mortgage defaults put the insurers on the hook for potentially mammoth payouts. The problem is prompting credit rating agencies to lower ratings on many of the insurers. The downgrades are a painful blow since municipal debt issuers only want to buy insurance from the highest rated companies.
Enter Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest American with a fortune of $52.0 billion, and Wilbur Ross, the 286th wealthiest with a fortune of $1.7 billion. Both have earned well-deserved reputations of finding value in out-of-favor sectors. Neither have any interest in insuring the collateralized debt obligations that caused so much trouble. They just want to grab the safe and steady cash flow of municipal bond coverage.
Buffett moved first. In December, he announced his Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRKA - news - people ) would start insuring municipal bonds. With the company boasting a stellar credit rating, it's having no problems wooing governmental debt issuers. (See: "Buffett Swoops Into Bond Insurance")
Ross opted not to start from scratch. On Friday, Ross's plans to invest as much as $1 billion in Assured Guaranty (nyse: AGO - news - people ) were unveiled. His choice of companies caught many off guard but makes sense. Unlike most of its competitors, Assured didn't jump on the collateralized debt obligation bandwagon and thus kept its top-notch credit rating. (See: "Wilbur Ross Makes A Safe Bet")
"Assured is one of the very few [bond insurers] that's ranked as a strong, stable triple-A even without our capital," said Ross on a CNBC appearance Friday morning. "So unlike the other situations where you would put in capital mainly to fill a hole, in the case of Assured, the capital is going in gradually over the next year to help [Assured Chief Executive Dominic J. Frederico] propel himself to a new level."
With deep pockets behind them and strong credit ratings, Berkshire Hathaway and Assured Guaranty are poised to make huge gains in market share in the current turmoil. Not only are they perfectly positioned to capture coverage for new municipal bonds, they can also profit by re-insuring older debt. Portfolio managers holding debt guaranteed by the struggling insurers are looking for insurance from more stable sources.
It adds up to more grim news for the sector's other major players like Ambac Financial (nyse: ABK - news - people ) and MBIA (nyse: MBE - news - people ). Shares of both dropped further Friday and continued a steep slide that has eroded the market value of each by about 80%.
http://www.forbes.com/facesinthe ... autofacescan04.html |
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发表于 17-10-2008 01:41 PM
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新闻。
The Paradoxes of Warren Buffett the Billionare
Author Alice Schroeder talks about her new book, "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life"
By Rick Newman
Posted October 9, 2008
At least 50 authors have written about Warren Buffett, but now comes a biography penned with unprecedented access to the billionaire investor. Buffett spent 2,000 hours talking with author Alice Schroeder and shared piles of personal papers. That makes The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Bantam) an indispensable title for students of the prolific investor. (A snowball, Buffett learned early on, swells if you push it through the right kind of snow, just as well-invested money compounds.) Yet the book also depicts a financial genius who's often needy, stingy, contradictory, and aloof, as Schroeder explained to U.S. News.
Buffett is on TV all the time, and so much has been written about him. What did you learn that we don't already know?
There are a number of paradoxes about Warren. He's a liberal Democrat who came from a staunch Republican family. He works hard but says his success comes mostly from luck. He's known for being thrifty, but he has a jetsetter lifestyle. He's also America's business teacher, through his annual shareholder letter and other things he says. People look to him for investing advice and even advice about life.
I got to know him when I was an analyst at Morgan Stanley, covering Berkshire Hathaway, his company. Everybody who's seen him on TV knows he's always very quick with a witty answer to any question. He's amazingly powerful. He has tremendous self-confidence and this grandfatherly demeanor.
But here's what else I saw. When his wife underwent surgery for cancer, I saw depths of pain and suffering. He's very uncomfortable with illness and death. He has a reputation for being not just thrifty but stingy. At one point he said he didn't want any of his money given away until after his death. I got to see that change because, during the time I was working on this book, he became somebody more comfortable with being generous.
What made him more generous?
For one thing, he lost people. To illness or death. His wife Susie died in 2004. He came to understand that what matters is people. He was not an attentive father in his early years. He's making amends now. He says that the measure of success in life is the number of people you want to love you who do love you. And the way to be loved is to be lovable.
He had a strange situation for years, with his wife living in San Francisco and another woman, Astrid Menks, living with him in Omaha. Sorry for the pop psychology, but did that produce seething resentment between the two women?
His wife Susie was one of the most instrumental people in his life. She kept part of the role of wife. She offered emotional support and was an authority figure. She had a public role, too, appearing with him at events. Astrid, who is now his second wife, helped take care of him day to day. It was a situation that was acceptable to all three of them. Astrid and Susie liked each other. There was no seething resentment.
And Katharine Graham, who ran the Washington Post and had a long friendship with Buffett—was that an affair?
Kay Graham boasted to friends that they had an affair. She was sexually insecure, but there was zero chemistry between them. There was no steam coming off of this relationship. Any romantic aspect of their relationship lasted about five minutes.
What was it like spending so much time with Buffett?
For five years it was a combination of cooperation and negotiation. He didn't try to supervise. He has the energy of an 18-year-old, so I was exhausted much of the time. One highlight was when he would spend time with me. I got to watch him work, talk on the phone to people like U.S. senators and Bill Gates. I sat in on meetings with him. I got to understand how his mind works.
He has had a lot to say about the current financial crisis, and of course he's in the middle of it, through his $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs. What else do you suppose he thinks about it?
I got to understand how he thinks about risk. Don't bet the ranch unless you can afford to lose it. He always thinks through what's the worst possible thing that could happen. I think what we're seeing now is a lot of people who said, "This kind of calamity has never happened before, so it probably won't happen to me." But that doesn't mean the calamity will never happen.
There are a lot of Buffetisms, those aphorisms of his. Any favorites that maybe we haven't heard?
Here's one: "Intensity is the price of excellence." And I've also heard him say that "cash combined with courage in a time of crisis is priceless." Isn't that great?
http://www.usnews.com/articles/b ... the-billionare.html |
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发表于 17-10-2008 01:50 PM
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新闻。
Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview
Posted By:Alex Crippen
Warren Buffett appears on the Charlie Rose program, October 1, 2008
Charlie Rose
In an interview tonight (Wednesday) with Charlie Rose on PBS, Warren Buffett says, "In my adult lifetime I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful, economically, as they are now... The economy is going to be getting worse for a while."
Bloomberg also reports Buffett tells Rose that the freezing of credit markets is "sucking blood" from the U.S. economy, which he compares to a heart attack victim "flat on the floor."
Earlier today, in a telephone interview with CNBC following the announcement that Berkshire Hathaway is investing $3 billion in General Electric [GE 19.89 0.64 (+3.32%) ], Buffett criticized Congress for not acting sooner on a financial rescue plan:
"You've had an economy that's like a great athlete that's had a heart attack, cardiac arrest, and the paramedics that have come, (and are) arguing (about) who was at fault, the athlete should have been checking his blood pressure more carefully. The important thing is to apply the resuscitator. It doesn't help spending time worrying about who is to blame for the patient having the heart attack."
Buffett told us he still thinks Congress will "do the right thing" but will "feel better after the votes have been counted." He warned that there will be "terrible, terrible" problems if Congress doesn't take action, sooner rather than later.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26982338
Here is a complete transcript of tonight's Warren Buffett interview with Charlie Rose, airing on PBS. It was provided to CNBC by the Charlie Rose program.
Charlie Rose:
We are in San Diego, California this afternoon for a conversation with Warren Buffett. He is a man congressional leaders, the administration, and the Federal Reserve want to talk and talk to. He is the legendary chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Its success has made him the world's richest man. He's admired for his investment results over a long period of time. He is trusted for his common sense and the fact that he's warned over the years, in his annual letter to stockholders, about some of the things that are contributing to the crisis facing America and the global economy. For all those reasons, we have come to see him in San Diego where he is attending the Fortune Magazine's most powerful women's summit. Later, he will be interviewed at a conference by the Fortune reporter and long time friend, Carol Loomis. We come this evening from the studios of our public television affiliate in San Diego, KPBS. I thank my friend, Warren Buffet, for taking time in a busy schedule to talk to us.
Warren Buffett:
My pleasure, Charlie.
Charlie Rose:
Let me talk of the news of today. You have announced an investment of $3 billion in General Electric, along the same terms as the the Goldman Sachs --
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, almost identical.
Charlie Rose:
Why GE?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I got a call this morning from a friend of mine at Goldman Sachs saying they might be interested in such an investment. I'm familiar with the company. I've known the management, the current management, Jack Welch before Jeff Immelt. I've known him for decades. And so I understand their businesses. We do lot of business with him, and GE has been -- I think it's the longest running stock in the Dow Jones industrial average. It will be 100 years now it will be around. I hope I'm around then, too. And it was an attractive investment. And we have had a lot of money around, over the last two years, and we're seeing things that are attractive now.
Charlie Rose:
Are you looking at other things?
Warren Buffett:
I look at everything, Charlie. That's my job. I really do. I mean every day, I think about everything, yeah.
Charlie Rose:
I know, but cash is said to be king now. Are you sitting on a lot of cash so that this is the time for Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffet to look carefully at a lot of opportunities.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, we want to use cash. The reason we haven't used our cash two years ago, we just didn't find things that were that attractive. But when people talk about cash being king, it's not king if it just sits there and never does anything. There are times when cash buys more than other times, and this is one of the other times when it buys a fair amount more, so we use it.
Charlie Rose:
There is a time to accumulate and a time to spend.
Warren Buffett:
Absolutely. You want to be greedy when others are fearful. You want to be fearful when others are greedy. It's that simple.
Charlie Rose:
What are they now?
Warren Buffett:
They're pretty fearful. In fact, in my adult lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now.
Charlie Rose:
Why is that, do you think?
Warren Buffett:
Well, it's because they -- they have seen the credit market seize up. They're worried about money market funds, although the latest proposition from government should take care of that. They've seen eight percent of the bank deposits in the United States get moved very skillfully, I might say, within the last couple of weeks from institutions that they thought were fine a few months ago to other institutions. They are not wrong to be worried.
Charlie Rose:
Is it being felt as people often point out on Main Street?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I've read about all the sales today. If you're an auto dealer, you're feeling it. If you're a furniture retailer like we are, you're feeling it. If you're a jewelry retailer, you're feeling it. I know some of these businesses because we're in them. Yeah, it's being felt, but it will be felt big time more if we don't do something about it, what's going on.
Charlie Rose:
The Senate will vote sometime this evening.
Warren Buffett:
Right.
Charlie Rose:
Are you satisfied with that rescue plan?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I don't think it's perfect, but I don't know that I could draw one that's perfect. But I'd rather by approximately right than precisely wrong, and it would be precisely wrong to turn it down. We need -- we have a terrific economy -- it's like a great athlete that's had a cardiac arrest. It's flat on the floor, and the paramedics have arrived. And they shouldn't argue about whether they put the resuscitation equipment a quarter of an inch this way or a quarter of an inch this way, or they shouldn't start criticizing the patient, because he didn't have a blood pressure test or something like that. They should do what's needed right now. And I think they will. I think the Congress will do the right thing. I think that they've -- you know, they got into certain arguments and they start worrying about assessing blame, and there is a little demagoguery, but in the end, something this important, they'll do the right thing. So this really is an economic Pearl Harbor. That sounds melodramatic, but I've never used that phrase before. And this really is one.
Charlie Rose:
Go through why that is true beyond the fact that there is a freeze on credit, beyond the fact that nobody is making loans, beyond the fact that banks don't lend to backs beyond the fact that treasury bills are at a low.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. When 40 billion of treasury bills are sold like they were last week, seven day treasury bills, at a yield of 1/20th of one percent, that means the whole country is basically at the point virtually, or a lot of the country is at the point of putting the money under the mattress. One twentieth of one percent away from where it's betting to put it under the mattress. You don't want 300 million Americans putting their money under the mattress. This economy doesn't work well without the lubrication of credit and trust. And that's been lost. It's a huge problem. What you have is you have the major institutions of the world all wanting to deleverage. They want to take down their assets and liabilities. What seemed so easy to borrow against a year ago now looks like rat poison to them. So they're trying to deleverage. There is only one institution in the world that can leverage up in a way that's all a countervailing force to that, and that's the United States Treasury.
Charlie Rose:
Are you approving of what has been taking place along the stages that got us to where we are now, whether it's Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers or AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie, or what you've done with Goldman Sachs and the rest?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, I think basically the right things have been done. But no one saw the tsunami coming fully. And so when Bear Stearns came along, it looked like if you stopped the flood at that point, you didn't have to worry about being downstream from it. And I think the Fed did the right thing there. And I really thought that would probably halt runs on other major institutions, but it didn't. We have seen wave after wave. And admittedly, there's been somewhat of an ad hoc response. I'd rather have an ad hoc response than no response at all. And I don't think -- I don't think the treasury could remotely have gone to Congress three or four months ago and laid out that scenario of what's happened and been credible and gotten the necessary tools. I think it took a crisis like this --
Charlie Rose:
And asking for the power he is asking for and the level that he was asking for.
Warren Buffett:
No, they wouldn't have gotten it. So I think it's been, you know, kind of like a tragic play to this point. But at this point, I think it's clear, and will be clear to the majority of the Congress. I think it's clear to the American people that there is only one countervailing force to a world where financial institutions are trying to sell instruments every day and where credit has dried up, and that's the United States Treasury.
Charlie Rose:
But at the same time, there has been, and Congressmen and women will tell you this, a resistance across the country because they think, as you well know, it's a bailout of Wall Street and that they are sitting there in their own economic life, and nobody's coming along to say, We're here to help you. We're from the government.
Warren Buffett:
Well, the patient that's on the floor with the cardiac arrest is not Wall Street. It's the American economy. I mean, that's --
Charlie Rose:
Do you think they understand that yet? Because that's --
[talking simultaneously]
Charlie Rose:
-- communication.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. I think they probably don't. And I think any time you couple the term "Wall Street" with "bailout" or something like that, you know -- I don't like what's going on in Wall Street. I don't like what's going on with the executive compensation. You know, but I don't want to give a lecture to this body that's out there. You know, I mean, having had the heart attack, I want to get it back functioning. And as a practical matter, I mean if you were Bear Stearns, and you were a shareholder, you know, you lost 90 to 95 percent of your money. A good many lost their jobs. They lost very cushy lives, many of them.
Charlie Rose:
Right.
Warren Buffett:
If you were at Lehman, the same thing happened. If you were at AIG, the shareholders are getting creamed on these things. And those shareholders are not just a bunch of big shots in Wall Street. Those are pension funds, and those are investors all over the country. I wouldn't worry too much about that. Justice won't be perfect on it. I mean, you may be very mad at some guy that walked away with a huge golden parachute, but that really isn't the important thing. I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing.
Charlie Rose:
Right.
Warren Buffett:
It doesn't make any difference.
Charlie Rose:
It's Pearl Harbor. [unintelligible]
Warren Buffett:
I mean, the job is Pearl Harbor. And you better not spends weeks and weeks and weeks trying to assign blame or deciding on a complete plan for fighting the whole war, you know, and letting a committee decide where the battleships should go and all of that. You better spring into action with the best people you have.
Charlie Rose:
You have never seen anything like this in your life.
Warren Buffett:
No, I haven't.
Charlie Rose:
There are those who argue that we are headed for a recession, you know? And they look at depression as the great fear.
Warren Buffett:
Sure.
Charlie Rose:
Is that a possibility if this plan doesn't work?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, it's a possibility, yeah. We have about 6.1 percent unemployment now. I mean, we've been in a recession, by any common sense definition, because if you look at the American public, they've got 20 billion -- 20 trillion, I should say, worth of residential homes. They've got 20 trillion worth of stocks, very roughly. Those are the two big assets of American families. They are both down dramatically for different families. But 95 percent of the people at least are worse off in terms of their residential wealth plus stock wealth from a year ago or two years ago. That is bleeding into the real economy. I mean, that's bleeding into auto sales and jewelry sales and furniture sales and all that. But that wave is just starting to hit. And if the paralysis we have in the credit markets, if every company continues to feel all we want to do is get our balance sheet down, sell assets, you know, it's just the start of what can happen. Unemployment's going to go up under any circumstances. I mean, it's the 6.1 is going to go higher. But whether it goes and quits at 7 or whether it quits as 10 or 11 or 12 depends on, among other things, the wisdom of Congress, and then the wisdom of, in terms of carrying out the plan that Congress authorizes.
Charlie Rose:
Would you say that this plan which you have argued very strongly the Senate ought to pass and the House ought to pass is simply the plan that we have, and I don't have a better idea. But it's essential for the confidence of the nation and the system?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. I just worry about whether it's enough. But I think it is --
Charlie Rose:
Enough what?
Warren Buffett:
Every day that goes by, I mean, if you don't react to Pearl Harbor for a week or two weeks or three weeks, you're behind in the war that you otherwise would have fought. But it's very important that the determination of the US Congress to do what is is needed be made evident this week and by the actions of most of the members. I mean, you're not going to get total assent.
Charlie Rose:
What makes you confident that this plan will work? I mean --
Warren Buffett:
Well, I think you've got -- I don't think you can have a better secretary of the Treasury than Hank Paulson, you know. I mean, he is in there at the wrong time, probably shouldn’t have taken the job. He’s a friend of mine. But he knows markets, he knows corporations’ work, he knows money, and he’s got the interests of the country at heart. And so, you’ve got the right -- you’ve got a wonderful person with Sheila Bair, most of the viewers have never heard of Sheila Bair. Sheila Bair, in the last two weeks, has taken eight percent of the deposits in the United States and seamlessly moved those over to sound institutions which in turn have gotten more capital, ended up, it’s been a magnificent job. Eight percent of the deposits in the United States, 10s of millions of depositors. And nobody’s ever heard of her. She’ll never get a golden parachute or any severance pay or anything. She’s done a great job. We’ve got some great public servants. We have I think the right people in there to get the job done, and then they need more tools.
Charlie Rose:
And those more tools might be in addition to what’s in this plan?
Warren Buffett:
Well, they need plenty of money and they really need plenty of flexibility to carry out this plan. They also need in my view to very much tie it to market prices. I have said, Charlie, that the 700 billion, if they buy mortgage-related securities or mortgages themselves at current market prices, they’re going to make money over time because the United States government has staying power and it has a low cost of borrowing. And if I could take one percent of that 700 billion pot and take the gain or loss from it and be their partner, and they would buy the stuff at market, I'd make a lot of money. It’s -- I mean you have hedge funds and people like that buying these assets to yield 15 or 20 percent, I mean, that’s the buyer for these people that are trying to unload them. The U.S. Treasury has got borrowing costs like nobody else has. They can borrow basically unlimited amounts. They can stay there for years and years. These assets will be worth more money over time. So when Merrill Lynch sells a bunch of mortgage-related assets at 22 cents on the dollar like they did a month or so ago, the buyer goes -- is going to make money, and he’s going to make a lot more money if it happens to be an institution like the U.S. government which has very, very cheap borrowing costs.
Charlie Rose:
So you are saying to those taxpayers who are worried about what’s going to happen to the $700 billion, chances are good that when these securities are purchased and sold, you’ll get a lot of your money back.
Warren Buffett:
I think [inaudible].
Charlie Rose:
Or all of your money back, and maybe something else [spelled phonetically].
Warren Buffett:
I would bet on it. I mean, if I got a chance to take one percent of the deal either way, I would make that bet. When Berkshire Hathaway laid out three billion dollars for GE today, we didn’t spend it, we invested it. When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they’re not spending it, they’re investing it. Now, they’re investing it in distress type assets but they’re buying them at distress prices if they buy them at market. It’s the kind of stuff I love to do. I just don’t have 700 million. Maybe we could go in it together.
[laughter]
You know, with your money and my brains, I mean, there’s no telling how far we’d go.
Charlie Rose:
Whatever, I’ll take the deal, whatever you want to do. There is this, though, I mean, in terms of alternatives, some people have suggested for example that why don’t we -- why isn’t America doing what Berkshire Hathaway is doing? Why isn’t that a better deal for America?
Warren Buffett:
I don’t think it would be crazy to have a model or an entity model on the Reconstruction Finance Corp. That goes back to 1932, although it was really implemented in ’33 under Jesse Jones, and it invested in mostly banks initially and preferred stock and that sort of thing. So there are two things needed in the system, the one that’s needed overwhelmingly is liquidity. I mean, when people are trying to [unintelligible], there has to be somebody there to buy. And they don’t have to buy at a fancy prices, but to buy. And then there’s also a capital problem with some of the institutions. We have provided capital here with a couple of institutions recently. The Federal government did that in the ‘30s for the RFC and I think there could well be a proper role for government in that.
Charlie Rose:
Would that have been a better idea today?
Warren Buffett:
It wouldn’t have been big enough today. And it wouldn’t have been -- you couldn’t have -- if you’d set up at RFC today and you gave them $100 billion invested in the [spelled phonetically] capital, there’d be a very cumbersome type of application process and everything, these assets are getting shoved out day by day, and loans are coming to a commercial papers not being renewed. I mean, the commercial paper market, when that dries up, you know, that’s just like sucking the blood out of the economic body of the United States. And that’s happening. So I would say that an RFC-like thing might make sense. I probably would do it myself. But I don’t think trying to combine that with what’s going through now, I think what is needed now is liquidity.
Charlie Rose:
All right. There are those who -- you just said you would do it yourself -- there are those who believe and it has been suggested, you know, that this is the time for Warren Buffett to answer the call of his government in a country that’s been very good to him. I mean what are you prepared to do yourself beyond run Berkshire Hathaway well is this.
Warren Buffett:
That's my job. But any time I can be of help to the government in terms of giving advice -- I've given a little advice, actually. [talking simultaneously] anyway, no. I obviously am willing to do that. I'm here tonight talking about this for that reason. It isn't going to do anything for Berkshire Hathaway. Well, that isn't really true. I mean anything that enables this economy to run in the manner that it should -- I mean we've got the same clients out there we had two years ago. We have the houses, we've got people -- more productive than they've ever been in the history of this country. We've got a wonderful economic formula in this country, but right now, it is being -- it's been brought to a halt by some events --
Charlie Rose:
By?
Warren Buffett:
Well, it's the deleveraging that's going on right now that has caused the credit crisis.
Charlie Rose:
I mentioned earlier in this introduction do you, if you read your letters to your stockholders which you write, and Carol Loomis edits every year, and you think of your sister as the person [talking simultaneously]
Warren Buffett:
Two sisters, yeah.
Charlie Rose:
You have talked about derivatives. Derivatives are, in part, at the core of this problem, yes?
Warren Buffett:
AIG would be doing fine today. It was one of the ten largest companies in the United States in terms of market value, over 200 billion, the most respected insurer and everything in the world. If they never heard of the word derivatives, they'd be doing fine. They'd be going to work in the morning and they would have no troubles. But they -- they -- it was very easy to do, because it's very tempting to write numbers on little pieces of paper and you can report the profit you want to, and there is no limit on it. I mean there is no capital requirements to it or anything of the sort. And basically, I said there were possibly financial weapons of mass destruction, and they had them. They destroyed AIG. They certainly contributed to the destruction of Bear Sterns and Lehman. Although Lehman had other problems, too.
Charlie Rose:
I'm interested in this because people are asking, did people get away with murder here? Were there people who simply gained the system and took advantage and made huge amounts of profit, and we had accesses that inevitably led to where we are today?
Warren Buffett:
Well, we had all of that. But I would say the biggest single cause was we had an incredible residential real estate bubble. I mean you can go back to tulip bulbs in Holland 400 years ago. The human beings going through combinations of fear and greed and all of that sort of thing, their behavior can lead to bubbles. And it may have had and Internet bubble at one time, you've had a farm bubble, farmland bubble in the Midwest which resulted in all kinds of tragedy in the early '80s. But 300 million Americans, their lending institutions, their government, their media, all believed that house prices were going to go up consistently. And that got billed into a $20 trillion residential home market. Lending was done based on it, and everybody did a lot of foolish things. And people really behaved in a fraudulent way or something, we'll go back and find the culprits later on. But that really isn't the problem we have. I mean that's where it came from, though. We leveraged up and if you have a 20 percent fall in value of a $20 trillion asset, that's $4 trillion. And when $4 trillion lands -- losses land in the wrong part of this economy, it can gum up the whole place.
Charlie Rose:
And it continues with respect to the housing market.
Warren Buffett:
It continues.
Charlie Rose:
And some will argue that we have to do something about that in terms of a long-term recovery of the American economy.
Warren Buffett:
Well, there is no question we have an access stock. The good thing is, we have household formation in this country. We have a country where I don't know whether it's a million households a year or more, but good form. So we can eat off an [unintelligible], but too big, and house prices just soared beyond -- beyond reason in many places and they got financed in silly ways, and people lied about loans, all kinds of accesses entered into it. But that is what -- that is the single biggest cause of why we're here.
Charlie Rose:
And should wise people have known better?
Warren Buffett:
People should always know better.
Charlie Rose:
Yeah.
Warren Buffett:
I mean people -- people don't get -- they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed and you can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is, and he's doing these things, you know, and he's getting rich, and your spouse is getting unhappy with you because you aren't doing -- pretty soon you start doing it. And so you get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots. And that's what happens. Everybody just kind of goes along. And you look kind of silly if you disagree. I mean, you know, you could have these crazy Internet valuations in the late 1990s, but they prove themselves out in the market. The next day they were selling for more than they were the day before, and people said, you know, you're crazy if you don't get in on this. So it's very human. Now, with housing it's something even more dramatic than that, because most people aspire to own their own home. And if you really think that houses prices are going to go up next year and the year after, you feel if I don't buy it this year, I'm going to have to buy it next year. That's not true of an Internet stock. But it's true of a home. And when somebody makes it very easy for you to do it by saying you don't really have to put up my money, you can lie about your income a little, or we'll give you 100 percent mortgage, you're going to do it, because everybody that's done it has been proven right. You have what they call social tools, and, you know, you're going to feel like an idiot if you didn't do it, because the house cost more.
Charlie Rose:
It's sound money.
Warren Buffett:
It's sound money, sure.
Charlie Rose:
And so when you look at where we are going, there seems to be two issues that are apparent to me at least, risk and leverage. We just lost sight of risk and leverage of what was appropriate?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. Again, because it pays off for a while. You know, you can lose leverage, and it's the only way a smart guy can go broke. If you owe money, you can't pay them out. You just pay for everything, you do smart things, you eventually get very rich. If you do smart things and use leverage and do one wrong thing along the way, it could wipe you out, because anything times zero is zero. But it's reinforcing when the people around you are doing it successfully, you're doing it successfully, and it's a lot like Cinderella at the ball. I mean you know at midnight everything is going to turn to pumpkins and mice; right? But if the evening goes along, I mean, you know, the guys look better all the time, the music sounds better, it's more and more fun, you think why the hell should I leave at quarter of 12. I'll leave at two minutes to 12. But the trouble is, there are no clocks on the wall. And everybody thinks they're going to leave at two minutes to 12.
Charlie Rose:
And you're having a good time.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, sure.
Charlie Rose:
So if this plan -- you hope it will do what? It will loosen credit. It will stop the slide and the panic. People will have more confidence --
Warren Buffett:
Confidence is key. Confidence is key. You're not going to leave your money with me unless you're confident I'm going to give it back to you. And at this point, when treasury bills, seven day treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent, it's not because people want to earn 1/20th of one percent, it's because they trust the fact the treasury will give it back to them next week. And I'm sitting with six and a half billion dollars we're going to use to close the Mars-Wrigley deal on October 6. I've got to hand over that six and a half billion on October 6. Now, I have to be very careful about who I leave it in between now and then, because they're expecting that he show up. But I lose confidence in other people, all kinds of institutions. And there are plenty of them that I've lost confidence in. Then they get -- their funds aren't available. They don't have it for the next -- I mean the whole economy just comes to a grinding halt. Competence in markets and in institutions, it's a lot like oxygen. When you have it, you don't even think about it. Indispensable. You can go years without thinking about it. When it's gone for five minutes, it's the only thing you think about. And the oxygen has been sucked out of the credit markets, and confidence, and there has to be -- it'
And that's what this --
Warren Buffett:
That's what I hope gets done.
Charlie Rose:
And if it doesn't work?
Warren Buffett:
You turn the spigot. But you -- I've argued with the senators and congressmen I've talked to. You don't want to be too little too late. They're being somewhat too late, in my view, and -- but that's okay. We're going to argue for a few weeks after Pearl Harbor to decide whether the Japanese attacked or whether we should actually commit a few battle ships. But the too little part, you know, it could be a mistake. I mean this has to be done on a --
Charlie Rose:
Too little meaning in terms of dramatic steps, or the amount of money you're spending --
Warren Buffett:
It's whether people think it's too little, when you get all through with it. I mean in the end, 700 billion is a lot of money. And it will buy a lot of distressed property. And if you buy them at the right price, you may be buying two trillion of face value. The one thing you don't want to do -- [unintelligible] paid for it what you're paying it from or what his carrying value is, you got to buy it at market. And one way to do that is if some institution wants to sell you a billion dollars worth of mortgages, they might have to sell 100 million in the market, and then you'll buy the other 900 million on the same terms. Now, the very fact that this has been authorized or will be authorized, I hope, will firm up the market to some degree. And that's fine. But you don't want to have artificial prices being paid.
Charlie Rose:
What do you believe might never be the same?
Warren Buffett:
Oh, I think confidence will come back. I will tell you this. This country is going -- be living better ten years from now than it is now. It will be living better in 20 years from now than ten years from now. The ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world -- I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century. Now, we had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. You know, we had oil shock. You know, we had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in -- there's never been any -- I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have. The American worker is more productive than he's ever been. We've got more people to do it. We've got all the ingredients for a sensational future. It's just that right now the athlete's on the floor. But we -- this is a super athlete.
Charlie Rose:
And what's the impact of the athlete being on the floor around the globe?
Warren Buffett:
Plenty. Plenty, and we're finding that out. And the same things happen to quite an extent around the globe. I mean, the European banks were doing what the American banks were.
Charlie Rose:
And they're failing now, too.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. I mean, they were getting the mortgage of some guy in Omaha, you know, securitized a couple of times. I mean he had all these -- they had all these types from Wall Street, you know, and they had advanced degrees, and they look very alert, and they came with these -- they came with these things that said gamma and alpha and sigma and all that. And all I can say is beware of geeks, you know, bearing formulas. They've heard that in Europe.
Charlie Rose:
Have we learned something about decoupling or the American economy in terms of its impact, for example, China, a place where you've had investments, and you know well.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. We just made a new one a couple days ago.
Charlie Rose:
Where was that?
Warren Buffett:
In a company called BYD, and they develop a really good electric car, I hope.
Charlie Rose:
Is there an operative narrative to the kinds of investments you are making other than you look at and you buy on value, look at advantagement [spelled phonetically] you look at a place that can absorbed the amount of money you want to invest, and you look at its prospects, and you look at price.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. They have to be pretty good size for us now to have -- to move the needle. But we look for fairly large situations. We look for things I can understand. A lot of businesses I don't understand. So some guy may know how to make money in cocoa beans, but I don't so I just let him have that. But it's got to be something I understand. It's got to be a business with fundamentally good economics. It's got to be a management that I like and trust and admire. And it's got to be a price that makes sense. And lately the price --
Charlie Rose:
Prices make sense.
Warren Buffett:
Prices make a lot more sense now, yeah.
Charlie Rose:
Now, is it --
Warren Buffett:
And I'm not worried they're all about the investments we make. I mean, listen, this country -- we've got $46,000 or $47,000 of GDP per capita. Now, we've done pretty darn well. We'll do better in the future. I am not worried about the country. I'm just worried about anything that gums up the potential of the country. And right now, it's pretty gummed up.
Charlie Rose:
Okay. But we do this emergency, urgent rescue.
Warren Buffett:
Right.
Charlie Rose:
Come January, we have a new president. We have a new treasury secretary.
Warren Buffett:
Right.
Charlie Rose:
We have a new legislature. What's there in parity? What will be the challenge for them because they then can take a little bit of a longer term, look, maybe the patient's getting up off the ground. And but you want to get him or her moving faster.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. Well, I think it will get moving faster. I mean once you get it off the -- once credit flows -- now the recession is going to get worse. I mean, I don't want to hold out false hopes that the -- by some magic moment, that things will turn around in a couple months because they wouldn't, Charlie. I mean, and it's a big mistake to try and mislead people. They will turn around. I don't know whether it will be six months or whether it'll be two years.
Charlie Rose:
It's more likely two years than six months.
Warren Buffett:
I don't know. It isn't going to be one month or to months, no matter what happens. All I can --
Charlie Rose:
Can you imagine six months from now, it's beginning to turn around? With the condition that you know their --
Warren Buffett:
That's sort of the best case, yeah. That's sort of the best case.
Charlie Rose:
And the worst case?
Warren Buffett:
Worst case is a long time. And I would say that if they --
Charlie Rose:
Worst case is five years or --
Warren Buffett:
If we don't do the things we should do, it could be five years, sure.
Charlie Rose:
Okay. We should do, though, beyond where we are now. What are those things?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I would say this, if it becomes evident that -- I understand the latest bill, they're talking about 350 billion early and then going back.
Charlie Rose:
Right, right.
Warren Buffett:
But we need to throw the resources at this that are necessary. But like I say, we are not spending money. I mean, if we buy these assets intelligently, the United States Treasury will make money. I mean, it's borrowing money. It's just a few percent a year. And these assets are better than that.
Charlie Rose:
Okay. But that's a very big if.
Warren Buffett:
And it makes a difference who the treasury secretary is.
Charlie Rose:
Okay. So that's the important question in terms of whether we buy these assets wisely.
Warren Buffett:
I would say it's more important who the treasury secretary is than who the vice president is. If you want to have a debate here, I'd like a debate between potential treasury secretaries than the vice presidential debate.
Charlie Rose:
Well, might it be a good thing for the presidential candidates to tell it who it is they're going to be listening to and who might be a potential treasury secretary?
Warren Buffett:
Well, presidential candidates which I know listen to you.
Charlie Rose:
That's because they tell you that, aren't they?
Warren Buffett:
Well, no, but I mean it's not their job to know the candidacy of people.
Charlie Rose:
When all these people call you up, what are they asking you? I mean, you’re hearing from your friends and people at the Fed, you’ve been through this before too I mean you were that long term capital , a lot of other times you have had to face difficult crisis.
Warren Buffett:
I’ve seen a lot of things happen.
Charlie Rose:
So they come to you and they say “You’ve fought wars before, Warren, we’d like to talk to you.” But what’s the question they’re asking? What is it they want to know? And I’m talking about smart people who are charged with fixing it.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. Well, lately they’ve been asking will this work.
Charlie Rose:
Right. Yeah.
Warren Buffett:
And you’re assuring them that if they do it --
Charlie Rose:
I will.
Warren Buffett:
-- if they do it, I -- I [talking simultaneously] Treasury Secretary [unintelligible] I would say this, I would -- they hate this term in Washington, obviously, but I would hand something pretty close to a blank check to a fellow like Hank Paulson to fight --
Charlie Rose:
Would you, really?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. Well --
[talking simultaneously]
Charlie Rose:
A blank check, $700 billion, go spend it?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, go invest it. Go invest it. And maybe put up a little of your own money up beside it, I mean, I might ask Hank to go invest with me.
[laughter]
Charlie Rose:
That’s right.
Warren Buffett:
But, no I think that trying to invest through 535 people is a tough job, you know, and so I would give more latitude. That isn’t going to happen and I -- you know, I [inaudible] --
Charlie Rose:
-- go with oversight? I mean, that’s what [inaudible], go with oversight.
Warren Buffett:
[inaudible], I think --
Charlie Rose:
But don’t try to make the decision --
[talking simultaneously]
Warren Buffett:
No, I think the oversight is great, and I think that oversight ought to be devoted almost entirely to the question is this being done at market you know. In other words, you want to make sure that the government isn’t investing foolishly. But you don’t want to care about which congressional districts it goes to or whether banks get favored over --
Charlie Rose:
But how do we determine whether it’s being done wisely?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I think --
Charlie Rose:
That’s a big question.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, I think you’ll have plenty of scrutiny as how the money’s invested. I mean, just like the RFC. When the RFC operated, people knew which institutions they were buying preferred stock in. And it worked very well.
Charlie Rose:
But is this different from the Resolution Trust Company because they are talking about securities, not real estate?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, well Resolution Trust Company was set up to liquidate a bunch of assets that the government had inherited because the savings and loans went broke. So the savings and loans went broke, the government stepped in, paid off depositors, and now they’re left with this mass of assets to sell. We’re not talking about selling here, we’re talking about buying intelligently. They were selling what they got handed to them by a bunch of savings and loan operators that had in many cases had done some very dumb thing. But their job was to liquidate it. And they liquidated. This is an entirely different proposition.
Charlie Rose:
You have said to me before that capitalism is not a perfect system. It may be better than all the other systems, but it’s not a perfect system. You talked about it in terms of some of its failings. People are looking at this now and saying, you know, excesses of capitalism, number one, markets that don’t work. And there’s some people in certain countries are pointing a finger at us and saying, “See, we told you, the markets will not always deliver for you.”
Warren Buffett:
Markets aren’t -- people do, as long as you have markets, you’ll have excesses. People went crazy with tulip bulbs. They went crazy with the South Sea Bubble, they went crazy internet stocks, they went crazy with the uranium stocks back when I was first getting started. I mean, you know, you’re not going to change the human animal. And the human animal really doesn’t get a lot smarter. Now, you can you know you can have institutions that put curbs on that in various ways, and actually what the banks, you know, they have various capital ratios and that sort of thing, but the banks got around them, I mean, they set up sieves and that sort of thing just to get more leverage. People love leverage when it’s working. I mean, it’s so easy to borrow money from a guy at X and put it out at X [inaudible].
[talking simultaneously]
Charlie Rose:
-- going up, you’re --
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, but you don’t get the X plus one back, if you still have the X on the other side you’re in trouble.
Charlie Rose:
There is this, too, accounting. You have strong feelings about accounting and mark [spelled phonetically] to market. Tell me where you are on that issue.
Warren Buffett:
A lot of people disagree with me on this, I believe in mark to market. I think that accounting in 1974 Charlie, it was either 1974 or ’75, we owned a bunch of common stocks at Berkshire Hathaway. I told our shareholders what the market was. And we used that. I said I think these things are worth a lot more than market. And I think we’re going to make a lot of money out of it. But this is what they’re worth today. And I don't think anybody gets hurt by telling the truth on that sort of thing. And I think that once you start saying we’re going to peg these things at some price that isn’t market, God knows what a financial [talking simultaneously].
Charlie Rose:
[inaudible] these people make that argue against you will say the assets are worth much more than mark to market says and therefore --
Warren Buffett:
They’re not worth it today.
Charlie Rose:
-- therefore we’re not seeing a reality.
Warren Buffett:
Well, but that is the reality. And that’s the reality of what they’re going to sell them to the Treasury for. You know, I --
Charlie Rose:
You get market.
Warren Buffett:
You get in a lot of trouble when you start putting fictitious numbers --
Charlie Rose:
On value.
Warren Buffett:
-- on value. I mean, you can explain the fact that these are depressed prices, you know. We think these assets are going to be worth a lot more. And I think that case can be made in certain situations. But I think to just say, you know, we're going to say a dollar of cash is worth $2 all of a sudden, it isn't worth $2. It's worth a dollar today. And I think once you start putting phony figures into financial statements, you get in a lot of trouble. And we've seen so much of that in the last 20 years.
Charlie Rose:
Is it getting worse?
Warren Buffett:
I don't think it's getting worse. I think people -- what people want to do is make it get worse. [laughter]
Charlie Rose:
But what would you reform about that in terms of the way the accounting process -- you'd keep mark to market?
Warren Buffett:
The rule [unintelligible]. I mean it's -- it's a nightmare to administer some of this sort of thing, but I want to tell the shareholders of Berkshire, to the percent we own marketable securities or things for which there are market, even if those markets -- I want to tell them what it's all about. As a matter of fact, I've already written a section in the annual report for next year explaining why I think in one case that the figures on our balance sheet as calculated are wrong. But it's the standard way of doing it. It's holy writ. The SEC wants us to do it that way, and we'll do it that way, and I'll explain why I think it's wrong and shareholders can read it and see whether they agree with my logic or don't.
Charlie Rose:
You -- when you look at the prospects for this country, there are other people who argue, you know, that America, as good as it is, lives in a world today and there are books being written in which our supremacy, our primacy will now have to be shared. That we may still own as much of the pie as we had, but other people will own a lot more.
Warren Buffett:
That's great. You know, I want our -- I want our pie to grow all the people, but if some other guy's pie is growing a little faster, that's terrific. It will be good for us in the long run, and I mean there are, you know, six and a half billion people in this world. And it's great for 300 million to keep enjoying more and more property, but I think it's terrific if, you know, the remainder do. And I think if they can learn something from us in terms of our system, and I think they have, they are learning more about how to unleash the potential of their citizenry to turn out more goods and services that their citizens want or that we want, I think that's terrific. And that's -- you know, I think it's much better to live in the world where those around you, particularly when some of them have nuclear bombs, I think it's much better to live in a world where their lives are getting better also.
Charlie Rose:
Yeah. But you mean you look at that. So when you look at China today, and you look at some Asian countries and the amount of American debt they have, how much does that concern you in today's economic circumstances? And are they losing some of their confidence in America? And does that pose a huge problem for us?
Warren Buffett:
Well, somebody's buying these treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent. I mean the -- we -- [talking simultaneously] consuming about $2 billion a day of goods and services beyond what we're producing. In other words, the rest of the world sends about $2 billion a day net of something. We got to send them something in return, don't we. So we send them little pieces of paper. That would be nice if they stuck them all under a mattress, but they got to buy something with them. Sometimes they buy a treasury note, sometimes they set up sovereign wealth funds. They can do all kinds of things. They can buy our companies here. As long as we consume more than we produce, and we trade away little pieces of the country daily, they're going to own something. Now, they can't run from American assets. I mean every day the rest of the world is going to have about two billion more of American assets than we have, as long as they sell us these goods.
Charlie Rose:
Because we're borrowing two million dollars --
Warren Buffett:
Yeah, and they want to sell us these goods.
Charlie Rose:
But you don't believe that's good. I mean you believe that an increasing current accounts deficit is bad.
Warren Buffett:
I think it's bad.
Charlie Rose:
And it reflects American's consumption ideas rather than its savings ideas.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah.
Charlie Rose:
But how does that change?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I laid out -- it's kind of a Rube Goldberg plan a few years ago, which I don't like myself, except I like it better than the alternative, which is what we're doing. But we've actually been pretty good on exports. I mean we are exporting 12% of our GDP now roughly. That was five percent many years ago, a much smaller GDP. So the rest of the world really likes our stuff pretty well. It's just we buy so damn much of what they produce. And I think -- I think that should be something addressed by -- I don't think it's the most pressing problem now at all. We are trading away a little bit of our country all the time for this access consumption that we have over what we've produced. That is not good. I think it's terrible over time. But our country's productive grows enough so we actually can do that, and we'll still be better off. We just don't be as well off as if we hadn't done it.
Charlie Rose:
What's all this going to do to the price of the dollar?
Warren Buffett:
It could be very tough on -- inflation could be a very -- is a likely consequence out of what's going on now. Right now, we are in effect making a -- to some extent, making a choice between future inflation and getting our -- getting off the floor. And we're likely -- we're likely to have more inflation in the future as a consequence of the things we do to fight the present situation.
Charlie Rose:
Senator Obama, who you support, I think, I don't want -- to be clear on this, but made an economic speech today, talks about another stimulus program. Is that essential at this time?
Warren Buffett:
I think the biggest thing we need now is to unclog the credit markets, and we may need another stimulus -- if we do, it's -- it should go to the lower and middle-income people. I mean the truth is, I've never had it so good in terms of taxes. I am paying the lowest tax rate that I've ever paid in my life. Now, that's crazy. And if you look at the Forbes 400, they are paying a lower rate, accounting payroll taxes, than their secretary or -- whomever around their office. On average. And so I think that actually people in my situation should be paying more tax. I think the rest of the country should be paying less, the 95 percent that Obama talks about or maybe even a little higher than that. But I think that a stimulus plan should really be geared to the people. You know, you've got -- you've got, what, 24 million households, 1/5th of the households of the United States, you have earning $21,000 a year or less, on average of close to four people, three people in those households. Two and a half they will actually probably. But just imagine living on 21,000 a year, Charlie, 22,000 a year. I mean you have 20 percent of the population doing that. So you don't have to worry about guys like me. I would push purchasing power -- you push out $1,000 of purchasing to those people, it's going to get -- it's going to get spent. And it needs to be spent. They need it. And it should come, to some extent, from guys like me.
Charlie Rose:
… what about the capital gains tax?
Warren Buffett:
Well, you know, the capital gains tax is 15 percent now. So I sit there in my office and I make a lot of money by capital gains, and I pay 15 percent, and I pay no payroll tax on it.
Charlie Rose:
Right.
Warren Buffett:
The woman that comes in, takes the wastebasket away, she's paying 15.3 or whatever it is on payroll tax alone. I mean it is -- I never had it so good.
Charlie Rose:
So therefore the capital gains tax should be changed to 18, 25, 30?
Warren Buffett:
I think it's terrible for people in effect to say that income from investment should be taxed at a much lower rate than income from labor. I mean I just think that you're going to -- we're going to spend 3.1 trillion, something like that, this year. We're going to only raise about 2.6 trillion or something like -- you're going to raise it from somebody. You know. Now, who you're going to get it from, you're going to get it from me and you, or you're going to get it from, you know, the people that drive the taxis, bring me here. Whatever. Maybe. I mean you got to get it from somebody. And, you know, everybody is against paying tax. I feel the same, everybody feels that way. But if you want a government that's going to do the things we ask our government to do, you've got to get it from somebody. And over the years, the last -- particularly the last six or eight years, they've taken less and less from a guy like me. Now, you know, everybody likes to talk about how the top one percent pays this percent in income, but the income tax, we'll say 1.3 trillion. The payroll taxes are over 900 billion. That 900 billion, that doesn't come from me. I pay it on the first hundred thousand or something like that. But that comes from the people in my office. And they are paying 900 billion -- nobody ever talked about that when they talk about what the one percent is paying. I love to tell how I'm suffering because one percent we're paying 25 percent of the total. We're not paying 25 percent of the total taxes on individuals. We're paying maybe 25 percent of the income tax, but the payroll tax is over a third of the receipts of the federal government. And they don't take that from me on capital gains. They don't take that from me on dividends. They take from the woman who comes in and takes the wastebaskets out.
Charlie Rose:
You mentioned inflation. The possibilities of inflation. Are you therefore -- do you have a position on what interest rates -- what the fed should do about interest rates?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I think that's almost -- for the time being, just put that aside and we'll get to that after the patient is up and walking. It's interesting, though. I mean we are -- what's going to happen -- things we're doing are going to have some inflationary consequences. But, you see, interest rates, you know, very low levels, including the long rates.
Charlie Rose:
When we watch this, I mean you and I are having this conversation today. The senate votes tonight. House may vote. People I talked to today believe it's going to pass. Whatever happened to change minds either in the combination of what they did with the plan and tweaking the plan, or B, some people got so scared by the failure of the vote last time that it brought home a danger of not doing anything.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah.
Charlie Rose:
All right. How will we measure the progress, whether this is working or not? What's the indicia?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. It's going to be tough because the economy is going to be getting worse for a while. And it might fall off a cliff if this doesn't pass. But nobody will ever know that if it does. And so what they will not see immediate reaction. I mean, we'll be pounding on the guy's chest, you know, on the floor, and you know, he's not going to just jump up all of a sudden. So it makes it tough. I mean, it's tough to be in the legislature, you know, and vote for something and then people say, well, you voted all this money and you know, it's all getting spent. It isn't getting spent. It's getting invested. But it's all getting spent. Nothing's happening. You know, how could you have done that? You haven't done anything for me. I mean, you go through all of that. And that's going to be tough. And it takes -- what it really takes is leadership that knows what it's all about and can explain what it's all about. And that people will believe --
Charlie Rose:
But hasn't that been missing, though --
Warren Buffett:
Sure.
Charlie Rose:
-- leadership that can explain what it's all about?
Warren Buffett:
Absolutely.
Charlie Rose:
And the reason you're here and the reason I want to have a kind of fireside chat with you, it is that somehow it hadn't gotten through, the idea --
Warren Buffett:
When the president of the United States goes out at, you know, 8:00 o'clock in the morning and then his own party votes gets him 2 to 1 in the house, you know that somehow a message isn't getting out. It takes real leadership. I mean Roosevelt didn't -- you know, when he came in, he didn't print any money. Well, he actually may have done [unintelligible], but he -- it wasn't like, you know, you've got the greatest economics professor in the world or anything else. But he did restore confidence. And they did a lot of thing. And you needed it. You needed to jump-start the economy. It took a long time. I mean, the world did not change, you know, in 1933 or '4. But we put in things like the FDIC. I think the FDIC was one of the great inventions of the American [unintelligible].
Charlie Rose:
Well, they had to tweak that in terms of his bill, did they not?
Warren Buffett:
Yeah. They were -- and --
Charlie Rose:
[unintelligible] extended five-year.
Warren Buffett:
They're going the right direction, yeah.
Charlie Rose:
Roosevelt also said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, which is clearly the fear that exists in the country. Tell me when you worried the most of all the things that you have seen over the last three weeks, say. I mean how about in the last month, when did you say, my God, I never knew it could get to this point?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I don't get that afraid in a sense because I really do have faith in both -- I know the country works extremely well. You know, but when it isn't clogged up. And I know that Congress will do the right thing. But I will tell you, when I watched the House vote the other day, I wasn't afraid because I -- I still felt something would pass. But I -- we are going through a very, very tough period. And, you know, I did not think I would see the day when, you know, an AIG would not be able to have its checks clear.
Charlie Rose:
If AIG had failed, would fold man sacks have been exposed and at risk, JP Morgan would have been --
Warren Buffett:
Everybody would have been exposed, Charlie. Everybody.
Charlie Rose:
So why was there even a question of not rescuing AIG at that time?
Warren Buffett:
Well, I think what people understand there probably -- well, they were hoping the private sector would do it.
Charlie Rose:
Right.
Warren Buffett:
I mean, that's the same way I would behave. If I were the treasury secretary or head of the Fed, you know, I would try to scare the hell the out of the private sector and say, you better save this because you're going down with the ship. So you guys save it. And I went as long as I could worrying if they didn't save it, I'd come in.
Charlie Rose:
Well, did that in fact happen during this crisis in which the secretary of the treasury said you better save this or we'll all going down?
Warren Buffett:
I think certainly --
Charlie Rose:
You better put up some cash right now.
Warren Buffett:
I think that they hoped the private sector would come in. And the private sector tried to come in until they saw the size of the problem. I mean, from were people on that weekend that thought they'd had a solution. And then the hole kept getting bigger and bigger. And all of a sudden became apparent that 20 billion wouldn't do it and 30 billion wouldn't do it and 40 billion wouldn't do it. So it got beyond anybody's ability to certainly to do it in a short period of time.
Charlie Rose:
There was not enough capital available other than from the government.
Warren Buffett:
It's an unknown situation. You have the derivative book, [unintelligible] AIG financial products, you know. Nobody's every heard of it except it was a terrific profit center. You know, you could manufacturer earnings out of it, do all these things. And I will guarantee that you the top management -- and I'm not knocking them for this. I don't think I could have done it. They couldn't get their minds around it. I bought a company called General Reinsurance in 1998 that had a similar but much smaller operation, had 23,000 contracts in it.
Charlie Rose:
And you had to get rid of it.
Warren Buffett:
I got to get out of this. It cost me 400-and-some million dollars in benign -- in a benign situation. But when this was not a benign situation. If AIG had tried to unwind their derivatives books. I don't know. It would have hit every institution in the world.
Charlie Rose:
And there was no private capital to come in and do that.
Warren Buffett:
Not big enough.
Charlie Rose:
Not even Berkshire Hathaway.
Warren Buffett:
No. Not even Berkshire Hathaway. I mean, if I thought 5 or 10 billion would have bought me a good deal, and I could have done that, I'd have done it.
Charlie Rose:
They were --
Warren Buffett:
I'm not bashful.
Charlie Rose:
[unintelligible] was within reach.
Warren Buffett:
Yeah.
Charlie Rose:
But 85 billion might not have been.
Warren Buffett:
No, no. And the Fed structured that thing very, very well. I mean, they have put themselves in a position --
Charlie Rose:
Yeah.
Warren Buffett:
-- where they are very likely to get their money back; maybe more. They participate 80 percent -- I mean, they drove tough terms. I mean I want to hire the guy that made that deal. He’d fit in well at Berkshire.
Charlie Rose:
A lot of people look at you and Goldman Sachs and GE saying I want to hire the guy that made that deal for you.
Warren Buffett:
No, Tim Geithner did a better job on this one.
[laughter]
Charlie Rose:
So we come down to the close of this conversation and you have been warning us about certain kinds of things. I hear from this conversation too this plan is essential now. Otherwise we’re in a very, very difficult place and each week we go beyond not doing something we get deeper and it becomes more irreversible.
Warren Buffett:
And, yeah, whoever said, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure understated it and I you know a pound of cure that’s delayed another six months is going to need a ton of cure later on I mean it would be crazy not to do this. It will not produce dramatic results though in the economy. That’s what people have to understand. You’re going to see unemployment go up. You know, you’re going to see lousy earnings in many businesses. And they’re not --
Charlie Rose:
You’re going to see people unemployed.
Warren Buffett:
You’re going to see more people unemployed. But the difference Charlie if we bottom this thing out at seven percent unemployed versus nine percent, that’s three million people, that’s three million people that if we do it wrong you know lose their jobs unnecessarily in my view I mean you know I’ve never been unemployed. I’ve never been very fully employed either but just think of what it’s like, you know, to go home with a mortgage payment you know and kids and everything else. My dad had that happen to him in the early ‘30s. It you know you don’t want to create three million people more unnecessarily. But I don’t think you --
Charlie Rose:
That’s the depression --
[talking simultaneously]
Warren Buffett:
It really is. And you can’t help some increase from this point. I don’t want any viewer to go away think a magic wand exists in Congress. So they’re going to see some more bad news. But if we do this, we’re doing the right thing. And if -- the system will work over time. There’s no -- we got a wonderful system.
Charlie Rose:
Okay, but I mean let me come to that in the end. Do we need to do anything about the system? And beyond the emergency of the moment, the urgency of the moment, come January, about the system, lots of talk about regulation as you know and finding the right balance, lots of talk about whether government involvement is an idea we need more of rather than less of, rethinking sort of what President Reagan brought to fore.
Warren Buffett:
Once we get the [unintelligible] back, we can [unintelligible] changes [unintelligible], exercising [unintelligible], we can do all of that sort of thing. And you know if I got any good ideas out of that or I think they’re good ideas, I’ll be glad to contribute them but the system will probably overdo some other things. I mean, the nature of democracy is such that when there’s this -- there’ll be this revulsion, obviously, toward -- that’s never going to happen again, so we’ll probably attack it in various ways that don’t make sense. But I -- that’s what Congress is for. And that’s what advisors are for. And I’m all for getting the best minds you can get to work on that kind of thing. Like I say, I don’t think it’ll be done perfectly. Maybe we’ll end up with a little bit better system. But the end, we had a pretty good system over time. But when we went crazy, and we did go crazy on residential real estate, it set things in motion that just -- the dominoes started toppling.
Charlie Rose:
Thank you for coming.
Warren Buffett:
Thank you, Charlie.
Charlie Rose:
Pleasure to see you.
Warren Buffett:
Enjoyed it.
Charlie Rose:
Warren Buffett. We’re in San Diego. My thanks to the people at KPBS here. A conversation here about the crisis that we all face, and hearing from a man that a lot of people want to hear from. And I’m pleased that we were able to join with him here. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. |
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发表于 19-10-2008 06:35 PM
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Buffet的文章。
Buy American. I Am.
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Published: October 16, 2008
THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.
So ... I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.
Why?
A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.
Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.
A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.
Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.
You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.
Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.
Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”
I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities.
Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/1 ... ion&oref=slogin |
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