巴菲特致股东的信（2008年）⑧免税债券保险

Tax-Exempt Bond Insurance

免税债券保险

Early in 2008, we activated Berkshire Hathaway Assurance Company (“BHAC”) as an insurer of the tax-exempt bonds issued by states, cities and other local entities. BHAC insures these securities for issuers both at the time their bonds are sold to the public (primary transactions) and later, when the bonds are already owned by investors (secondary transactions).

2008 年初，我们成立了伯克希尔哈撒韦保险公司(BHAC)，此公司承保由各州、城市和其它地方机构发行的免税政府债券。当债券首次向公众发售(一级交易)，以及债券已经是投资者所有(次级交易)时，BHAC 为这些证券的发行人提供保险。

By yearend 2007, the half dozen or so companies that had been the major players in this business had all fallen into big trouble. The cause of their problems was captured long ago by Mae West: “I was Snow White, but I drifted.”

在 2007 年末，这项业务中六家主要公司都陷入困境。他们问题的原因在很久之前就被MaeWest 看到了："我是白雪公主，但我是漂白的。"

The monolines (as the bond insurers are called) initially insured only tax-exempt bonds that were low-risk. But over the years competition for this business intensified, and rates fell. Faced with the prospect of stagnating or declining earnings, the monoline managers turned to ever-riskier propositions. Some of these involved the insuring of residential mortgage obligations. When housing prices plummeted, the monoline industry quickly became a basket case.

单一险种保险公司(债券保险人的称呼)最初只承保低风险的免税债券。但之后这个行业竞争激烈，价格降低。出于对收益停滞或下滑的担忧，单一保险的经理们把注意力转向风险较高的债券。其中包括住宅抵押债券。当房价骤然下降，单一保险行业迅速陷入难以救药的状态。

Early in the year, Berkshire offered to assume all of the insurance issued on tax-exempts that was on the books of the three largest monolines. These companies were all in life-threatening trouble (though they said otherwise.) We would have charged a 11⁄2% rate to take over the guarantees on about $822 billion of bonds. If our offer had been accepted, we would have been required to pay any losses suffered by investors who owned these bonds – a guarantee stretching for 40 years in some cases. Ours was not a frivolous proposal: For reasons we will come to later, it involved substantial risk for Berkshire.

年初，伯克希尔公司提出承保三家最大的单一保险公司账面上所有的免税政府债券。这些公司都处于危及生存的困难中(虽然他们并不承认)。我们将接管价值 8220 亿美元债券的担保并收取 1.5%的费用。如果我们的承保被接受，按照要求我们必须支付这些债券投资者的所有损失，有些情况这一保险长达 40 年。我们并不是草率的提议：之后我们将叙述相关原因，这给伯克希尔带来了巨大的风险。

The monolines summarily rejected our offer, in some cases appending an insult or two. In the end, though, the turndowns proved to be very good news for us, because it became apparent that I had severely underpriced our offer.

单一保险公司马上拒绝了我们提出的报价，有的还附以一两句辱骂。然而他们的拒绝对于我们来说是很好的消息，因为最终事实证明，我们严重低估了这个我们的报价。

Thereafter, we wrote about $15.6 billion of insurance in the secondary market. And here’s the punch line: About 77% of this business was on bonds that were already insured, largely by the three aforementioned monolines. In these agreements, we have to pay for defaults only if the original insurer is financially unable to do so.

在那之后，我们在次级市场承保了价值约 156 亿美元的保险。这里的关键在于，77%的业务是已经投保的债券，并且多数来自前面提到的三家公司。在这些协议中，我们只需要在原始承保人无法支付违约金的时候才必须支付。

We wrote this “second-to-pay” insurance for rates averaging 3.3%. That’s right; we have been paid far more for becoming the second to pay than the 1.5% we would have earlier charged to be the first to pay. In one extreme case, we actually agreed to be fourth to pay, nonetheless receiving about three times the 1% premium charged by the monoline that remains first to pay. In other words, three other monolines have to first go broke before we need to write a check.

我们承保了这些"第二顺位支付"保险的平均费率为 3.3%。没错，因为我们是第二支付者，我们收取的费率远远多于我们是第一支付者的 1.5%。在某些极端情形下，我们其实同意成为第四支付者，然而收取了是第一支付者3 倍的保险费，他们收得保费是 1%。换句话说，前面三家单一保险公司都破产了我们才需要签写第一张支票。

Two of the three monolines to which we made our initial bulk offer later raised substantial capital. This, of course, directly helps us, since it makes it less likely that we will have to pay, at least in the near term, any claims on our second-to-pay insurance because these two monolines fail. In addition to our book of secondary business, we have also written $3.7 billion of primary business for a premium of $96 million. In primary business, of course, we are first to pay if the issuer gets in trouble.

我们最初提出批量承保的三家保险公司中，有两家后来筹集了足够的资本。当然，这对于我们是有帮助的，因为至少在近期，这两家保险公司的倒闭可能性大幅降低，而我们作为第二支付者支付的可能性也大幅减少了。除了次级业务，我们也承保了价值 37 亿美元的一级业务，保费一共是 9600 万美元。当然，在一级业务下，如果发行者有麻烦，我们是第一支付者。

We have a great many more multiples of capital behind the insurance we write than does any other monoline. Consequently, our guarantee is far more valuable than theirs. This explains why many sophisticated investors have bought second-to-pay insurance from us even though they were already insured by another monoline. BHAC has become not only the insurer of preference, but in many cases the sole insurer acceptable to bondholders.

在我们承保的保险背后，我们拥有的资本倍数，比其他任何一家单一险种保险公司都要多得多，因此我们的担保比其他保险公司更有价值。这解释了为什么尽管许多老练的投资者已经从其他公司的买了保险，还从我们这里买第二支付者的保险。BHAC 不仅成为了优先承保人，在很多时候还成为了债券持有人唯一能接受的承保人。

Nevertheless, we remain very cautious about the business we write and regard it as far from a sure thing that this insurance will ultimately be profitable for us. The reason is simple, though I have never seen even a passing reference to it by any financial analyst, rating agency or monoline CEO.

尽管如此，我们对于承保的业务还是非常谨慎，并且认为这项保险最终能给公司带来利润是非常不确定的。

The rationale behind very low premium rates for insuring tax-exempts has been that defaults have historically been few. But that record largely reflects the experience of entities that issued uninsured bonds. Insurance of tax-exempt bonds didn’t exist before 1971, and even after that most bonds remained uninsured.

原因很简单，我从未看过一个金融分析师，评级机构或保险公司的 CEO 的提及此事。低保费承保免税债券的背后的道理在于，历史上几乎没有违约。但这个记录主要是反映了，发行无保险债券的团体的经验。在 1971 年之前，免税债券的保险并不存在，即使在那之后，多数债券仍然没有买保险。

A universe of tax-exempts fully covered by insurance would be certain to have a somewhat different loss experience from a group of uninsured, but otherwise similar bonds, the only question being how different. To understand why, let’s go back to 1975 when New York City was on the edge of bankruptcy. At the time its bonds – virtually all uninsured – were heavily held by the city’s wealthier residents as well as by New York banks and other institutions. These local bondholders deeply desired to solve the city’s fiscal problems. So before long, concessions and cooperation from a host of involved constituencies produced a solution. Without one, it was apparent to all that New York’s citizens and businesses would have experienced widespread and severe financial losses from their bond holdings.

一个完全由保险覆盖的免税债券，与没有投保的相似债券，在某种程度上必然存在不一样的损失经验，唯一的问题是有多大的不同。要明白这个原因，让我们回到 1975 年，那时候纽约市处在破产的边缘。当时纽约市债券基本上都没有投保，多数被纽约的富人，纽约的银行和其他机构持有。这些地方债券持有者非常希望解决城市的财政问题。因此不久，一群相关的选民通过让步和合作，制定了一个解决方案。如果没有这个机制，所有人都很清楚，纽约市民和企业会因为持有这些债券，而遭受大规模的且严重的经济损失。

Now, imagine that all of the city’s bonds had instead been insured by Berkshire. Would similar belt-tightening, tax increases, labor concessions, etc. have been forthcoming? Of course not. At a minimum, Berkshire would have been asked to “share” in the required sacrifices. And, considering our deep pockets, the required contribution would most certainly have been substantial.

现在想象一下，所有城市的债券都由伯克希尔承保。类似的紧缩开支，增加税收，劳工让步等等让步措施会到来吗？当然不会。至少，伯克希尔会被要求一起承担应有的牺牲。考虑到我们财务实力，被要求的贡献一定是非常巨大的。

Local governments are going to face far tougher fiscal problems in the future than they have to date. The pension liabilities I talked about in last year’s report will be a huge contributor to these woes. Many cities and states were surely horrified when they inspected the status of their funding at yearend 2008. The gap between assets and a realistic actuarial valuation of present liabilities is simply staggering.

未来，地方政府将要面对比目前严峻得多的财政问题。在去年报告中我提到的养老金负债将会是这些灾难的主要贡献者。许多城市和州在 2008 年末检查他们的资金情况时，一定会感到震惊。资产和实际债务价值之间的差距简直是令人震惊。

When faced with large revenue shortfalls, communities that have all of their bonds insured will be more prone to develop “solutions” less favorable to bondholders than those communities that have uninsured bonds held by local banks and residents. Losses in the tax-exempt arena, when they come, are also likely to be highly correlated among issuers. If a few communities stiff their creditors and get away with it, the chance that others will follow in their footsteps will grow. What mayor or city council is going to choose pain to local citizens in the form of major tax increases over pain to a far-away bond insurer?

当面对巨大的收入不足问题时，所有债券均以投保的发行人，相比由地方银行和市民持有但没有投保的债券的发行人，更倾向制定对债券持有人不利的解决方案。免税债券带来的损失也很有可能在发行人中互相影响。如果一些发行人对债权人不友善并且一走了之，其他发行人效仿的可能性就会增大。市长和市议会应该如何选择？用增税的方式让当地市民承受痛苦还是让遥远的债券保险公司承受？

Insuring tax-exempts, therefore, has the look today of a dangerous business – one with similarities, in fact, to the insuring of natural catastrophes. In both cases, a string of loss-free years can be followed by a devastating experience that more than wipes out all earlier profits. We will try, therefore, to proceed carefully in this business, eschewing many classes of bonds that other monolines regularly embrace.

因此，承保免税债券，今天看来是一项危险的业务，实际上和承保自然灾害相似。在这两种情况下，一连串无损失的年份过后，可能跟着一次毁灭性的损失，足以让之前的利润一扫而光。因此，我们将对这项业务非常谨慎，许多其他单一保险公司都会承保的债券类别，我们会避开。

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The type of fallacy involved in projecting loss experience from a universe of non-insured bonds onto a deceptively-similar universe in which many bonds are insured pops up in other areas of finance. “Back-tested” models of many kinds are susceptible to this sort of error. Nevertheless, they are frequently touted in financial markets as guides to future action. (If merely looking up past financial data would tell you what the future holds, the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians.)

把没有投保的债券的损失经验，投射到一个看似相似却已经投保的债券上，这类错误在金融业的其他领域突然出现，许多不同的回溯测试模型都容易出现这类错误。然而，它们在金融市场上，经常被吹捧为未来行为指南而备受推崇。(如果只凭过去的财务数据就能告诉我们未来的情况，那么福布斯 400 强将由图书管理员组成)。

Indeed, the stupefying losses in mortgage-related securities came in large part because of flawed, history-based models used by salesmen, rating agencies and investors. These parties looked at loss experience over periods when home prices rose only moderately and speculation in houses was negligible. They then made this experience a yardstick for evaluating future losses. They blissfully ignored the fact that house prices had recently skyrocketed, loan practices had deteriorated and many buyers had opted for houses they couldn’t afford. In short, universe “past” and universe “current” had very different characteristics. But lenders, government and media largely failed to recognize this all-important fact.

事实上，抵押贷款相关的证券的惊人损失很大程度上是因为，销售人员、评级机构和投资者运用了有缺陷的基于历史的模型而造成的。这些人只研究了房价温和上升，房产投机行为微不足道时期的损失记录，然后他们把这个经验作为评估未来损失的标尺。他们兴奋地把把这些事实忽略掉：最近房价飙升，贷款纪律恶化，许多购房人选择他们支付不起的房子。总之，过去与现在的情形大相径庭。但是贷方，政府和媒体都没认识到这些重要的事实。

Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the symbols. Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

投资者应该对基于历史的模型保持怀疑态度。这些模型由听似书呆子的神职人员构建的，运用神秘的专用术语 β，α，ε 等等，这些模型往往看上去令人印象深刻。然而，投资者常常忘记检查这些模型背后的假设。我们的建议是：小心带有公式的怪人。

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A final post-script on BHAC: Who, you may wonder, runs this operation? While I help set policy, all of the heavy lifting is done by Ajit and his crew. Sure, they were already generating $24 billion of float along with hundreds of millions of underwriting profit annually. But how busy can that keep a 31-person group? Charlie and I decided it was high time for them to start doing a full day’s work.

最后关于 BHAC 的附言：你可能想知道，谁在运营这个公司？虽然我负责帮助制定保单，但所有繁重的事情有阿吉特及他的团队完成的。当然，他们已经获得了 240 亿的浮存金，每年还有数千万美元承保利润。但是要多忙才能维持一个 31 人的团队呢？查理和我觉得是时候让他们做全日制工作了。