巴菲特致股东的信（1989年）⑦零息债券

Zero-Coupon Securities

In September, Berkshire issued $902.6 million principal amount of Zero-Coupon Convertible Subordinated Debentures, which are now listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Salomon Brothers handled the underwriting in superb fashion, providing us helpful advice and a flawless execution.

零息债券

去年九月，伯克希尔发行了 9 亿美元的零息可转换次级债券，目前已在纽约证券交易所挂牌交易，由所罗门公司负责本次的债券承销工作，提供了我们宝贵的建议与完美无缺的执行结果。

Most bonds, of course, require regular payments of interest, usually semi-annually. A zero-coupon bond, conversely, requires no current interest payments; instead, the investor receives his yield by purchasing the security at a significant discount from maturity value. The effective interest rate is determined by the original issue price, the maturity value, and the amount of time between issuance and maturity.

大部分的债券当然需要按时支付利息，通常是每半年一次，但是零息债券却不须要马上支付利息，而是由投资人在以相当大的折价幅度在取得债券时预先扣除，实质的利率则取决于发行的债券价格、到期面值与发行时间的长短而定。

In our case, the bonds were issued at 44.314% of maturity value and are due in 15 years. For investors purchasing the bonds, that is the mathematical equivalent of a 5.5% current payment compounded semi-annually. Because we received only 44.31 cents on the dollar, our proceeds from this offering were $400 million (less about $9.5 million of offering expenses).

以我们这次发行的债券来说，发行价是面额的 44.314%，15 年到期，对于买下这次债券的投资人，约可获得相当于 5.5%的年回报率，因为我们只拿到 44.31 美分，所以这次扣除 950 万美元的发行费用，我们实得的款项是 4 亿美元。

The bonds were issued in denominations of $10,000 and each bond is convertible into .4515 shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Because a $10,000 bond cost $4,431, this means that the conversion price was $9,815 per Berkshire share, a 15% premium to the market price then existing. Berkshire can call the bonds at any time after September 28, 1992 at their accreted value (the original issue price plus 5.5% compounded semi-annually) and on two specified days, September 28 of 1994 and 1999, the bondholders can require Berkshire to buy the securities at their accreted value.

这次发行的债券面额是 1 万美元，每张债券可以申请转换为 0.4515 股的伯克希尔股份，因为每张债券的发行价大约是 4,431 美元，所以代表转换为伯克希尔的价格大概是 9,815 美元，比市价有 15%的溢价，同时伯克希尔有权在 1992 年 9 月 28 日以后加计利息(5.5%的年利率)赎回这些债券，至于债券持有人也有权在 1994 年和1999 年的 9 月 28 日，要求公司加计利息赎回其所持有的债券。

For tax purposes, Berkshire is entitled to deduct the 5.5% interest accrual each year, even though we make no payments to the bondholders. Thus the net effect to us, resulting from the reduced taxes, is positive cash flow. That is a very significant benefit. Some unknowable variables prevent us from calculating our exact effective rate of interest, but under all circumstances it will be well below 5.5%. There is meanwhile a symmetry to the tax law: Any taxable holder of the bonds must pay tax each year on the 5.5% interest, even though he receives no cash.

就税负的观点而言，虽然没有马上支付利息，但伯克希尔每年仍可享受 5.5%利息支出的所得税扣抵，由于减少了税负支出，所以就现金流量的角度而言，我们每年还有现金净流入，这是一项不错的好处，当然一些不可知的变量，使我们无法确定这次发行真正的资金成本，但不管怎样，应该都低于 5.5%，而相对的债券持有人每年还是要支付 5.5%的利息所得税，虽然他们根本没有收到任何的现金利息收入。

Neither our bonds nor those of certain other companies that issued similar bonds last year (notably Loews and Motorola) resemble the great bulk of zero-coupon bonds that have been issued in recent years. Of these, Charlie and I have been, and will continue to be, outspoken critics. As I will later explain, such bonds have often been used in the most deceptive of ways and with deadly consequences to investors. But before we tackle that subject, let's travel back to Eden, to a time when the apple had not yet been bitten.

去年我们与其它公司所发行的类似债券(尤其是 Loews 与摩托罗拉公司)，与这几年盛行的零息债券有相当大的差异，对于后者，查理跟我一直有相当的意见，后面我会再详加说明，我们认为这些债券隐藏着欺骗行为，对买下他们的投资人有相当不利的影响，不过在谈论这个话题之前，让我们把时光回溯到亚当还未引诱夏娃啃下苹果之前的时代。

If you're my age you bought your first zero-coupon bonds during World War II, by purchasing the famous Series E U. S. Savings Bond, the most widely-sold bond issue in history. (After the war, these bonds were held by one out of two U. S. households.) Nobody, of course, called the Series E a zero-coupon bond, a term in fact that I doubt had been invented. But that's precisely what the Series E was.

如果你像我这样的年纪，曾在二次世界大战期间买了第一批最有名的 E 系列美国储蓄零息债券，这种广为流传的债券是有史以来发行量最大的债券，几乎每两个家庭就会有一个家庭持有，当然，在当时没有人会把它当作是零息债券的一种，因为这名词当时还未出现，但基本上它就是一种零息债券。(E 系列债券最初是为了资助美国卷入第二次世界大战而发行的。它们以低于面值的价格出售，到期时按面值全额支付。E 系列债券在战后仍然作为美国储蓄债券发行，并于 1980 年被 EE 系列储蓄债券取代，也被称为“爱国者债券”)

These bonds came in denominations as small as $18.75. That amount purchased a $25 obligation of the United States government due in 10 years, terms that gave the buyer a compounded annual return of 2.9%. At the time, this was an attractive offer: the 2.9% rate was higher than that generally available on Government bonds and the holder faced no market-fluctuation risk, since he could at any time cash in his bonds with only a minor reduction in interest.

这种债券的面额最小的只有 18.75 美元，买下 10 年后美国政府必须偿还 25 美元，投资人大概可以获得2.9%的年投资回报率，在当时这是相当不错的一项投资，2.9%的年利率远高于普通的政府债券利率，且持有人不必担心利率波动的风险，而且他可以随时予以变现，利息不会被打折太多。

A second form of zero-coupon U. S. Treasury issue, also benign and useful, surfaced in the last decade. One problem with a normal bond is that even though it pays a given interest rate - say 10% - the holder cannot be assured that a compounded 10% return will be realized. For that rate to materialize, each semi-annual coupon must be reinvested at 10% as it is received. If current interest rates are, say, only 6% or 7% when these coupons come due, the holder will be unable to compound his money over the life of the bond at the advertised rate. For pension funds or other investors with long-term liabilities, "reinvestment risk" of this type can be a serious problem. Savings Bonds might have solved it, except that they are issued only to individuals and are unavailable in large denominations. What big buyers needed was huge quantities of "Savings Bond Equivalents."

第二种形式的美国零息国债。出现在十几年前，也相当的不错，一般的债券有一个很大的问题，那就是虽然它的票面是 10%，但持有人却不一定能够保证就能得到 10%的回报率，因为要能获得 10%的话就必须把收到的利息按 10%回报率再投资出去才行，若是所得的利息之后只能得到 6%或 7%的报酬，则最后结算的回报率可能没有办法达到 10%的预定回报，这对于退休基金或是其它具有长期负债的投资者来说(保险公司)，这种“再投资风险”可能是一个很严重的问题。储蓄债券则可以解决这样的问题，只可惜它只能发行给个人而且面额都不大，对于大买家来说，它们需要的是类似这种储蓄债券的替代品。(零息票美国国债也被称为零国库券，当股票价格下跌时，它们的价格通常会大幅上涨。但是，这种显著的优势也伴随着一些独特的风险。由于对利率的敏感性，零息票国债具有极高的利率风险。如果美联储加息，美国国债零利率将大幅下跌。他们也没有利息支付来缓冲下跌。)

Enter some ingenious and, in this case, highly useful investment bankers (led, I'm happy to say, by Salomon Brothers). They created the instrument desired by "stripping" the semi-annual coupons from standard Government issues. Each coupon, once detached, takes on the essential character of a Savings Bond since it represents a single sum due sometime in the future. For example, if you strip the 40 semi-annual coupons from a U. S. Government Bond due in the year 2010, you will have 40 zero-coupon bonds, with maturities from six months to 20 years, each of which can then be bundled with other coupons of like maturity and marketed. If current interest rates are, say, 10% for all maturities, the six-month issue will sell for 95.24% of maturity value and the 20-year issue will sell for 14.20%. The purchaser of any given maturity is thus guaranteed a compounded rate of 10% for his entire holding period. Stripping of government bonds has occurred on a large scale in recent years, as long-term investors, ranging from pension funds to individual IRA accounts, recognized these high-grade, zero-coupon issues to be well suited to their needs.

这时创意十足的银行家就适时出现了，(我很高兴的向各位报告那就是所罗门兄弟公司)，它们从标准的政府债券中，分拆出大家所想要的零息债券，每一张债券都跟储蓄债券一样，在未来的某一天到期后可以拿回完整的一笔钱，举例来说如果你可以将 20 年期每半年付息的债券，分拆成 40 张到期日分别为半年到 20 年不等的零息债券，之后再将到期日相同的债券并起来对外出售，假设现行的殖利率为 10%，半年期的价格大概是 95.24%，20年期的则只有 14.20%，如此一来所有购买这种债券的投资者就可以明确的确保它可以获得的回报率，分拆债券这几年因符合长期的退休基金与 IRA 个人退休帐户投资者需求，广受欢迎而大量流行。

But as happens in Wall Street all too often, what the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end. In the last few years zero-coupon bonds (and their functional equivalent, pay-in-kind bonds, which distribute additional PIK bonds semi-annually as interest instead of paying cash) have been issued in enormous quantities by ever-junkier credits. To these issuers, zero (or PIK) bonds offer one overwhelming advantage: It is impossible to default on a promise to pay nothing. Indeed, if LDC governments had issued no debt in the 1970's other than long-term zero-coupon obligations, they would now have a spotless record as debtors.

但就像是华尔街经常会发生的，不管什么好东西到最后都会变质，最近几年来零息债券，以及功能类似的实物支付债券(pay-in-kind 债券，每半年发放一次 PIK 债券作为股息取代支付现金)，有一大部分是垃圾债券等级。对这些发行公司来说，零息债券有一个很大的好处，因为在发行后直到到期日前根本就不必付出任何资金，所以根本就不会出现无法偿付的违约情况。事实上，如果最不发达国家的政府在 1970 年代，除了长期零息债券之外就没有发行过其它债券，那么它们作为债务人的记录到现在将一尘不染。

This principle at work - that you need not default for a long time if you solemnly promise to pay nothing for a long time - has not been lost on promoters and investment bankers seeking to finance ever-shakier deals. But its acceptance by lenders took a while: When the leveraged buy-out craze began some years back, purchasers could borrow only on a reasonably sound basis, in which conservatively-estimated free cash flow - that is, operating earnings plus depreciation and amortization less normalized capital expenditures - was adequate to cover both interest and modest reductions in debt.

这原则实在是管用，如果你郑重承诺在很长一段时间内不支付任何费用，你就不必长期违约。这一原则并没有被寻求为更不稳定的交易融资的发起人和投资银行家所忽视。不过债权人也花好长一段时间才接受了这种做法：当杠杆并购热潮开始之前，投资者只敢在合理的基础上借款，因为债权人会保守地估计其未来的现金流量，即经营收益加上折旧与摊销再扣除常态化的资本支出，必须要能够确保未来的利息支出与本金的支付。

Later, as the adrenalin of deal-makers surged, businesses began to be purchased at prices so high that all free cash flow necessarily had to be allocated to the payment of interest. That left nothing for the paydown of debt. In effect, a Scarlett O'Hara "I'll think about it tomorrow" position in respect to principal payments was taken by borrowers and accepted by a new breed of lender, the buyer of original-issue junk bonds. Debt now became something to be refinanced rather than repaid. The change brings to mind a New Yorker cartoon in which the grateful borrower rises to shake the hand of the bank's lending officer and gushes: "I don't know how I'll ever repay you."

之后随着肾上腺素升高，并购价格持续飙高使得所有的预估现金流量都必须被分配用来支付利息，没有留下任何东西来偿还本金。接着放款人对于本金偿还的态度就变得像乱世佳人中的郝思佳一样，“管他的，明天再说吧！”，而更离谱的是偏偏就有放款人愿意吃这一套，那就是专门买垃圾债券的投资者，债务从此以后只要再融资即可，根本就不用考虑要偿还，这种心态的转变在《纽约客》的一幅漫画中描写的最贴切，一个借款人痛哭零涕地握着银行贷款员的手说到，“我实在不知道该如何报答你。”

Soon borrowers found even the new, lax standards intolerably binding. To induce lenders to finance even sillier transactions, they introduced an abomination, EBDIT - Earnings Before Depreciation, Interest and Taxes - as the test of a company's ability to pay interest. Using this sawed-off yardstick, the borrower ignored depreciation as an expense on the theory that it did not require a current cash outlay.

很快，借款人发现即使是新的宽松标准也具有难以忍受的约束力。为了诱使金主为更离谱的交易提供资金，这群人又引进了一个令人憎恶的新名词，叫 EBDIT(息税折旧摊销前利润)，来衡量一家公司偿债的能力，利用这种较低的标准，借款人故意忽略了折旧也是一种费用，因为它当前不需要支付现金。

Such an attitude is clearly delusional. At 95% of American businesses, capital expenditures that over time roughly approximate depreciation are a necessity and are every bit as real an expense as labor or utility costs. Even a high school dropout knows that to finance a car he must have income that covers not only interest and operating expenses, but also realistically-calculated depreciation. He would be laughed out of the bank if he started talking about EBDIT.

这样的态度摆明了就是掩耳盗铃，95%的美国企业，长期而言，大概与累积折旧费用相当的资本支出是必须的，其所花的每一分钱都与日常的劳工薪资或水电成本一样真实存在，即使是中学的辍学生也知道，养一台车子不只是要负担利息与日常油钱保养费用而已，还必须精确地考量到每月实际摊销的折旧，若是他跑到银行摆出EBDIT 这一套说法，保证一下子就会被轰出来。

Capital outlays at a business can be skipped, of course, in any given month, just as a human can skip a day or even a week of eating. But if the skipping becomes routine and is not made up, the body weakens and eventually dies. Furthermore, a start-and-stop feeding policy will over time produce a less healthy organism, human or corporate, than that produced by a steady diet. As businessmen, Charlie and I relish having competitors who are unable to fund capital expenditures.

当然，在任何一个给定月份，一个企业的资本支出可以暂时不考虑，就像是一个人可以一天或甚至一个礼拜不吃东西。但是，如果这种情况变成一种坏习惯的话，身体很快就会吃不消，甚至有死亡的危险，此外，饥一顿饱一顿的进食比起稳定的进食习惯，更可能使得一个健康的人身体机能变差，不管是人体或是企业都是如此，身为一个生意人，查理跟我对于竞争对手可能没有资金进行资本支出感到欣喜。

You might think that waving away a major expense such as depreciation in an attempt to make a terrible deal look like a good one hits the limits of Wall Street's ingenuity. If so, you haven't been paying attention during the past few years. Promoters needed to find a way to justify even pricier acquisitions. Otherwise, they risked - heaven forbid! - losing deals to other promoters with more "imagination."

或许你会认为，排除一项主要的费用诸如折旧等，使得原本一桩很烂的交易变成不错的交易，是华尔街聪明才智发挥到极致的表现，那你可能完全没有注意到华尔街过去几年的发展，支持者必须再找到一个更有看头的做法，来合理解释价格更离谱的并购案，不然的话，他们就必须冒着被扫地出门的风险，被其它更有”想象力”的支持者把生意抢走。

So, stepping through the Looking Glass, promoters and their investment bankers proclaimed that EBDIT should now be measured against cash interest only, which meant that interest accruing on zero-coupon or PIK bonds could be ignored when the financial feasibility of a transaction was being assessed. This approach not only relegated depreciation expense to the let's-ignore-it corner, but gave similar treatment to what was usually a significant portion of interest expense. To their shame, many professional investment managers went along with this nonsense, though they usually were careful to do so only with clients' money, not their own. (Calling these managers "professionals" is actually too kind; they should be designated "promotees.")

因此，通过镜子进入仙境后，发起人与其投资银行宣称 EBDIT 现在应该只根据现金利息来衡量，这意味着，在评估一项投资案的时候，那些记帐不须马上支付的利息(零息债券和 PIK 债券)根本就不必纳入考量，这样的方式不但是把折旧归到没人注意的角落，还将占利息费用很大部分的费用也给予同样的方式对待，可耻的是，许多专业投资银行家竟然昧着良心附和，反正只要确定这是客户而不是他们自己的钱就好，(称呼这群人为专业人士实在是太恭维他们了，他们应该被归类为抬轿者)。

Under this new standard, a business earning, say, $100 million pre-tax and having debt on which $90 million of interest must be paid currently, might use a zero-coupon or PIK issue to incur another $60 million of annual interest that would accrue and compound but not come due for some years. The rate on these issues would typically be very high, which means that the situation in year 2 might be $90 million cash interest plus $69 million accrued interest, and so on as the compounding proceeds. Such high-rate reborrowing schemes, which a few years ago were appropriately confined to the waterfront, soon became models of modern finance at virtually all major investment banking houses.

在这种新的标准之下，一家公司假设税前有 1 亿美元的获利，同时最近一年有 9 千万的利息支出，大可以运用发行零息债券或是 PIK 债券来额外负担 6 千万只要记帐却不须马上支付利息与本金，这些利息将累积和复利，而这种债券的利率通常非常高。到了第二年，公司可能要承担 9 千万的付现息与 6,900 万的记帐息，之后由于复利，记帐息持续增加，而这种高利率的融资计划，在刚开始几年还能获得有效控制，但不久之后就变成所有大型投资银行必备推荐给客户的标准融资工具。

When they make these offerings, investment bankers display their humorous side: They dispense income and balance sheet projections extending five or more years into the future for companies they barely had heard of a few months earlier. If you are shown such schedules, I suggest that you join in the fun: Ask the investment banker for the one-year budgets that his own firm prepared as the last few years began and then compare these with what actually happened.

当投资银行推出这些融资产品时，银行家们展现出他们幽默的一面，他们为几个月前几乎从未听说过的公司提供未来五年或更长时间的利润和资产负债表预测。我想如果你那天碰到这种预估表，我建议你可以参与这样的游戏：跟这位投资银行家要一份他们自己公司的过去几年的年度预算，然后跟他们实际的结果比较一下，你就知道是什么回事了。

Some time ago Ken Galbraith, in his witty and insightful The Great Crash, coined a new economic term: "the bezzle," defined as the current amount of undiscovered embezzlement. This financial creature has a magical quality: The embezzlers are richer by the amount of the bezzle, while the embezzlees do not yet feel poorer.

许久以前 Ken Galbraith 在他的名著《1929 年大崩盘》中，发明了一个新的经济名词：黑金 Bezzle，用来代表现有未被发现的贪污舞弊。这种金融现象有一个很奇特的特质，那就是贪污舞弊者因为贪污舞弊而发大财，但问题是受害者却一点也没有觉得被剥夺变穷了。

Professor Galbraith astutely pointed out that this sum should be added to the National Wealth so that we might know the Psychic National Wealth. Logically, a society that wanted to feel enormously prosperous would both encourage its citizens to embezzle and try not to detect the crime. By this means, "wealth" would balloon though not an erg of productive work had been done.

Galbraith 教授敏锐地指出，这笔钱应该加进国民财富当中，从而我们可以知道心理上的国民财富为多少。理论上，一个社会若想要觉得自己经济繁荣发展，就应该多多鼓励人民去贪污舞弊，并试着不要去揭发它。通过这种方式，一个国家的财富可以大幅地增长，虽然实际上它什么有生产力的事都没做。

The satirical nonsense of the bezzle is dwarfed by the real-world nonsense of the zero-coupon bond. With zeros, one party to a contract can experience "income" without his opposite experiencing the pain of expenditure. In our illustration, a company capable of earning only $100 million dollars annually - and therefore capable of paying only that much in interest - magically creates "earnings" for bondholders of $150 million. As long as major investors willingly don their Peter Pan wings and repeatedly say "I believe," there is no limit to how much "income" can be created by the zero-coupon bond.

黑金这种充满荒唐讽刺的属性，在现实社会中却被零息债券给比了下去。利用这些零息债券，一家公司可以大大方方靠着一纸合同，享受利用借款所带来的收入，但另外一方面却不必承担支付的痛苦。以我们先前提到的例子，一家每年可以赚 1 亿美元的公司，利用这种方法，在债券投资人面前，却可以膨胀到 1.5 亿美元，只要投资人愿意充当彼得潘，不断地说“我相信你”，只要你愿意，零息债券所创造的收入是没有上限的。

Wall Street welcomed this invention with the enthusiasm less-enlightened folk might reserve for the wheel or the plow. Here, finally, was an instrument that would let the Street make deals at prices no longer limited by actual earning power. The result, obviously, would be more transactions: Silly prices will always attract sellers. And, as Jesse Unruh might have put it, transactions are the mother's milk of finance.

华尔街以热情拥抱这项新发明工具，而那些不那么开明的人可能宁愿把这种热情留给更原始的工具如轮子或犁。终于有一种工具，可以让华尔街以不再受实际盈利能力限制的价格进行交易。结果很明显，当然就会有更多的生意上门，离谱的价格一定有卖家愿意出，就像 Jesse Unruh 说的一句话，交易就像是喂养金融世界的母乳。

The zero-coupon or PIK bond possesses one additional attraction for the promoter and investment banker, which is that the time elapsing between folly and failure can be stretched out. This is no small benefit. If the period before all costs must be faced is long, promoters can create a string of foolish deals - and take in lots of fees - before any chickens come home to roost from their earlier ventures.

此外零息与 PIK 债券还有一项特点使得支持者与银行家更愿意推行，就是东窗事发的时间可以再延长，这点可是相当的重要，如果交易所产生的后果要很长一段时间才会浮现，那么支持者就可以在这段期间做更多的交易，从中赚取更多的手续费，直到事件东窗事发。

But in the end, alchemy, whether it is metallurgical or financial, fails. A base business can not be transformed into a golden business by tricks of accounting or capital structure. The man claiming to be a financial alchemist may become rich. But gullible investors rather than business achievements will usually be the source of his wealth.

不过到最后，炼金术，不管是冶金的或是财务上的，终究会失败。一个烂公司不可能只靠着会计或财务技巧而摇身一变成为好公司，那个宣称金融炼金术的人或许会发大财，但他靠的却是容易上当的投资人而不是企业经营成就。

Whatever their weaknesses, we should add, many zero-coupon and PIK bonds will not default. We have in fact owned some and may buy more if their market becomes sufficiently distressed. (We've not, however, even considered buying a new issue from a weak credit.) No financial instrument is evil per se; it's just that some variations have far more potential for mischief than others.

不管这些债券有多少缺点，我们却必须承认许多零息与 PIK 债券应该不会还不出钱来，事实上我们自己也投资了一些，如果债券市场变得更糟，我们可能还会购买更多，(当然我们从来就不会考虑去买那些新发行债信又差的垃圾债券)，任何金融工具本身不是邪恶的，只是有一些变种比其他更具作恶潜力。

The blue ribbon for mischief-making should go to the zero-coupon issuer unable to make its interest payments on a current basis. Our advice: Whenever an investment banker starts talking about EBDIT - or whenever someone creates a capital structure that does not allow all interest, both payable and accrued, to be comfortably met out of current cash flow net of ample capital expenditures - zip up your wallet. Turn the tables by suggesting that the promoter and his high-priced entourage accept zero-coupon fees, deferring their take until the zero-coupon bonds have been paid in full. See then how much enthusiasm for the deal endures.

所有罪过应该归咎于是那些不能按时支付利息的零息债券发行人，我们的建议是，每当有投资银行家开始提到 EBDIT 时，或是有人在对你提供一个可以不支付任何利息(包括应付利息和应计利息)以舒适地满足不扣除的资本支出的现金流金融工具时，请赶快捂住你的钱包。在零息债券完全付清以前不要让他们拿走报酬，然后看看他们对这笔买卖的热情还能支撑多久。

Our comments about investment bankers may seem harsh. But Charlie and I - in our hopelessly old-fashioned way - believe that they should perform a gatekeeping role, guarding investors against the promoter's propensity to indulge in excess. Promoters, after all, have throughout time exercised the same judgment and restraint in accepting money that alcoholics have exercised in accepting liquor. At a minimum, therefore, the banker's conduct should rise to that of a responsible bartender who, when necessary, refuses the profit from the next drink to avoid sending a drunk out on the highway. In recent years, unfortunately, many leading investment firms have found bartender morality to be an intolerably restrictive standard. Lately, those who have traveled the high road in Wall Street have not encountered heavy traffic.

我们对于这些投资银行家的批判或许是激烈了一点，但查理和我以一贯的保守作风认为他们确实应该做好把关工作，保护投资人免于这些推销者的过度引诱，因为推销者对于佣金的饥渴就像是酗酒者对于酒精的沉溺一样。因此，投资银行家最起码也要肩负起吧台调酒师的角色，必要的时候，就算少赚一杯酒钱，也要劝客户少喝一点，以免将一个醉汉送上高速公路。不幸的是，最近几年来，不少主要的投资公司已经发现酒保的道德观是一种无法忍受的限制标准，他们解释说，近来，那些已经在华尔街的高速公路上行驶过的人还没有遇上重大的交通事故。

One distressing footnote: The cost of the zero-coupon folly will not be borne solely by the direct participants. Certain savings and loan associations were heavy buyers of such bonds, using cash that came from FSLIC-insured deposits. Straining to show splendid earnings, these buyers recorded - but did not receive - ultra-high interest income on these issues. Many of these associations are now in major trouble. Had their loans to shaky credits worked, the owners of the associations would have pocketed the profits. In the many cases in which the loans will fail, the taxpayer will pick up the bill. To paraphrase Jackie Mason, at these associations it was the managers who should have been wearing the ski masks.

最后还有一个令人不平的附带说明，零息债券的愚蠢代价并不只由直接参与者承担，一些储贷机构由于是这些垃圾债券的大买家，使用来自 FSLIC 保险存款的现金。为了尽量美化报告收益数字，这些单位将这些即使还没有收到的超高利息收入全部认列为利润。许多储贷机构因此陷入困境，若是他们那些债信不佳的债务人能偿付本金，当然状况就可以顺利解决，但问题是通常他们都付不出本金，最后还必须由纳税义务人来买单。套句 JackieMason 的话，应该是由这些储贷机构的经理人来戴上滑雪面罩。