巴菲特致股东的信（2010年）⑪生活和债务

Life and Debt

生活和债务

The fundamental principle of auto racing is that to finish first, you must first finish. That dictum is equally applicable to business and guides our every action at Berkshire.

汽车比赛的基本法则是，比赛第一的前提是你必须先能完成比赛。该准则同样适合经营企业，指导我们在伯克希尔的每一项活动。

Unquestionably, some people have become very rich through the use of borrowed money. However, that’s also been a way to get very poor. When leverage works, it magnifies your gains. Your spouse thinks you’re clever, and your neighbors get envious. But leverage is addictive. Once having profited from its wonders, very few people retreat to more conservative practices. And as we all learned in third grade – and some relearned in 2008 – any series of positive numbers, however impressive the numbers may be, evaporates when multiplied by a single zero. History tells us that leverage all too often produces zeroes, even when it is employed by very smart people.

毫无疑问，有些人通过借钱投资成为巨富，然而这也同样能使你一贫如洗。当杠杆效应发挥作用的时候，收益会成倍放大，配偶觉得你很聪明，邻居也艳羡不已。但杠杆会使人上瘾，一旦你从奇迹中获利，很少有人回到保守的做法上去。正如我们在三年级学到的(有些人在 2008 年金融危机中重新学到)，不管多大的数字一旦乘以 0都会化为乌有。历史表明，无论操作者多么聪明，杠杆效应的结果往往是"0"。

Leverage, of course, can be lethal to businesses as well. Companies with large debts often assume that these obligations can be refinanced as they mature. That assumption is usually valid. Occasionally, though, either because of company-specific problems or a worldwide shortage of credit, maturities must actually be met by payment. For that, only cash will do the job.

当然对企业来说，金融杠杆也是致命的。许多负债累累的公司认为债务到期时可以靠继续融资解决，这种假定通常是正常的。可一旦企业本身或者全球信用出现危机，到期债务就必须如约清偿，届时只有现金才靠得住。

Borrowers then learn that credit is like oxygen. When either is abundant, its presence goes unnoticed. When either is missing, that’s all that is noticed. Even a short absence of credit can bring a company to its knees. In September 2008, in fact, its overnight disappearance in many sectors of the economy came dangerously close to bringing our entire country to its knees.

然后，借款人就会明白，现金就像氧气，供应充沛时，人们甚至不会加以注意。而一旦发生紧缺，你就会注意到它的重要性。即使短暂的信贷危机也可能使企业崩溃，事实上，2008 年 9 月一夜之间席卷多个经济部门的信贷危机使整个美国都濒临崩溃。

Charlie and I have no interest in any activity that could pose the slightest threat to Berkshire’s well-being. (With our having a combined age of 167, starting over is not on our bucket list.) We are forever conscious of the fact that you, our partners, have entrusted us with what in many cases is a major portion of your savings. In addition, important philanthropy is dependent on our prudence. Finally, many disabled victims of accidents caused by our insureds are counting on us to deliver sums payable decades from now. It would be irresponsible for us to risk what all these constituencies need just to pursue a few points of extra return.

查理和我对任何可能给伯克希尔的健康带来丝毫威胁的活动都不感兴趣。(我们俩加起来已经 167 岁，可不想"从头再来"。)我们永远铭记在心：你们，也就是我们的合伙人，将毕生大部分积蓄托付给我们。此外，一些重要的慈善活动也依赖于我们的审慎决定。最后，许多因我们的投保人造成的事故导致致残的受害人，也指望我们未来几十年的提供保险金。如果为了追求额外的一点利润而使这么多人面临风险，那将是不负责任的。

A little personal history may partially explain our extreme aversion to financial adventurism. I didn’t meet Charlie until he was 35, though he grew up within 100 yards of where I have lived for 52 years and also attended the same inner-city public high school in Omaha from which my father, wife, children and two grandchildren graduated. Charlie and I did, however, both work as young boys at my grandfather’s grocery store, though our periods of employment were separated by about five years. My grandfather’s name was Ernest, and perhaps no man was more aptly named. No one worked for Ernest, even as a stock boy, without being shaped by the experience.

我个人的一点历史经历或许可以解释，为什么我们对任何财务上的冒险主义极度厌恶。我直到查理 35 岁才见到他，尽管他在距离我已经居住了 52 年的房子只有 100 码远，而且我们在奥马哈市区同一所公立高中上学，我的爸爸、妻子、三个孩子和两个孙子也是上了这所高中。但查理和我都是小男孩的时候，都在我爷爷的杂货店里打过工。尽管我俩打工的时间相隔 5 年之久。我爷爷的名字是欧内斯特(Ernest)，可能再也没有任何人比他更适合这个名字了。所有为他工作过的人，即使是一个股票男孩，都会受到这段工作经历的重大影响。

On the facing page you can read a letter sent in 1939 by Ernest to his youngest son, my Uncle Fred. Similar letters went to his other four children. I still have the letter sent to my Aunt Alice, which I found – along with $1,000 of cash – when, as executor of her estate, I opened her safe deposit box in 1970.

后面你会看到Ernest 在 1939 年写给他的最小的儿子也就是我的叔叔弗雷德(Fred)的一封信。他另外四个孩子也收到过同样的信。我还保存着爷爷写给我姑姑爱丽丝(Alice)的同样内容的一封信。1970 年，作为姑姑的遗嘱执行人，我打开了她放在银行的保险箱，发现了爷爷给她的信，信里还有 1000 美元现金。

Ernest never went to business school – he never in fact finished high school – but he understood the importance of liquidity as a condition for assured survival. At Berkshire, we have taken his $1,000 solution a bit further and have pledged that we will hold at least $10 billion of cash, excluding that held at our regulated utility and railroad businesses. Because of that commitment, we customarily keep at least $20 billion on hand so that we can both withstand unprecedented insurance losses (our largest to date having been about $3 billion from Katrina, the insurance industry’s most expensive catastrophe) and quickly seize acquisition or investment opportunities, even during times of financial turmoil.

Ernest 从来没有读什么商业院校，事实上他连高中也没有读完，但是他非常明白，现金作为确保生存前提至关重要。在伯克希尔，我们严格遵循他保留足够现金的原则，并对他 1000 美元的解决方案进一步推进了一步，我们承诺，将始终维持最少 100 亿美元的现金储备，为此我们通常会保留最少 200 亿美元现金。这样我们就可以承受前所未有的保险损失(迄今为止最大的一笔是卡特里娜飓风造成的高达 30 亿美元的保险赔付，这是保险业最昂贵的一次灾害)，并能迅速抓住收购或投资机会，即使是金融危机也影响不到我们。

We keep our cash largely in U.S. Treasury bills and avoid other short-term securities yielding a few more basis points, a policy we adhered to long before the frailties of commercial paper and money market funds became apparent in September 2008. We agree with investment writer Ray DeVoe’s observation, “More money has been lost reaching for yield than at the point of a gun.” At Berkshire, we don’t rely on bank lines, and we don’t enter into contracts that could require postings of collateral except for amounts that are tiny in relation to our liquid assets.

我们的现金主要是以美国国债的形式存在，而避免持有利率略高几个基点的其他短期证券。商业债券和货币市场基金的脆弱性在 2008 年 9 月暴露无疑，而我们在此之前就长期坚持上述原则。我们非常认同投资作家RayDeVoe 的观点："更多的钱损失在追求盈利上而不是损失在枪口下。"在伯克希尔公司，我们既不依赖于银行的信用额度，也不会签订需要提供担保的借款合同，除非这些抵押品的规模相对于我们庞大的流动性资产而言微不足道。

Furthermore, not a dime of cash has left Berkshire for dividends or share repurchases during the past 40 years. Instead, we have retained all of our earnings to strengthen our business, a reinforcement now running about $1 billion per month. Our net worth has thus increased from $48 million to $157 billion during those four decades and our intrinsic value has grown far more. No other American corporation has come close to building up its financial strength in this unrelenting way.

此外，过去 40 年来伯克希尔从未将现金用于分红或回购股票，我们保留了所有的收益来强化我们的业务，现在月度盈利已超过 10 亿美元。在这 40 年中，我们的股东权益从 4800 万美元增长至 1570 亿美元。我们的内在价值增长的更快。没有任何一家美国公司能够以这种坚持不懈的方式建立起自己的财务实力。

By being so cautious in respect to leverage, we penalize our returns by a minor amount. Having loads of liquidity, though, lets us sleep well. Moreover, during the episodes of financial chaos that occasionally erupt in our economy, we will be equipped both financially and emotionally to play offense while others scramble for survival. That’s what allowed us to invest $15.6 billion in 25 days of panic following the Lehman bankruptcy in 2008.

由于我们对利用财务杠杆如此谨慎，我们的回报略受影响，但拥有大量现金使我们得以安枕无忧。此外，在偶尔爆发的经济危机中，在其他公司都为生存而挣扎时，我们将拥有充沛资金和精神准备去发动攻势。2008 年雷曼兄弟破产后市场一片恐慌，而我们得以在 25 天内投资了 156 亿美元。