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发表于 2010-2-23 07:21:01
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芒格试图唤醒美国人民：
再这样下去，美国经济就玩玩啦
Basically, It's Over
A parable about how one nation came to financial ruin.
By Charles Munger
Updated Sunday, Feb. 21, 2010, at 3:30 PM ET
Inthe early 1700s, Europeans discovered in the Pacific Ocean a large,unpopulated island with a temperate climate, rich in all nature'sbounty except coal, oil, and natural gas. Reflecting its lack ofcivilization, they named this island "Basicland."
The Europeansrapidly repopulated Basicland, creating a new nation. They installed asystem of government like that of the early United States. There wasmuch encouragement of trade, and no internal tariff or other impedimentto such trade. Property rights were greatly respected and stronglyenforced. The banking system was simple. It adapted to a national ethosthat sought to provide a sound currency, efficient trade, and ampleloans for credit-worthy businesses while strongly discouraging loans tothe incompetent or for ordinary daily purchases.
Moreover, almost nodebt was used to purchase or carry securities or other investments,including real estate and tangible personal property. The one exceptionwas the widespread presence of secured, high-down-payment, fullyamortizing, fixed-rate loans on sound houses, other real estate,vehicles, and appliances, to be used by industrious persons who livedwithin their means. Speculation in Basicland's security and commoditymarkets was always rigorously discouraged and remained small. There wasno trading in options on securities or in derivatives other than "plainvanilla" commodity contracts cleared through responsible exchangesunder laws that greatly limited use of financial leverage.
In itsfirst 150 years, the government of Basicland spent no more than 7percent of its gross domestic product in providing its citizens withessential services such as fire protection, water, sewage and garbageremoval, some education, defense forces, courts, and immigrationcontrol. A strong family-oriented culture emphasizing duty torelatives, plus considerable private charity, provided the only socialsafety net.
The tax system was also simple. In the early years,governmental revenues came almost entirely from import duties, andtaxes received matched government expenditures. There was never muchdebt outstanding in the form of government bonds.
As Adam Smithwould have expected, GDP per person grew steadily. Indeed, in themodern area it grew in real terms at 3 percent per year, decade afterdecade, until Basicland led the world in GDP per person. As thishappened, taxes on sales, income, property, and payrolls wereintroduced. Eventually total taxes, matched by total governmentexpenditures, amounted to 35 percent of GDP. The revenue from increasedtaxes was spent on more government-run education and a substantialgovernment-run social safety net, including medical care and pensions.
Aregular increase in such tax-financed government spending, undersystems hard to "game" by the unworthy, was considered a moralimperative?a sort of egality-promoting national dividend?so long asgrowth of such spending was kept well below the growth rate of thecountry's GDP per person.
Basicland also sought to avoid troublethrough a policy that kept imports and exports in near balance, witheach amounting to about 25 percent of GDP. Some citizens were initiallynervous because 60 percent of imports consisted of absolutely essentialcoal and oil. But, as the years rolled by with no terrible consequencesfrom this dependency, such worry melted away.
Basicland wasexceptionally creditworthy, with no significant deficit ever allowed.And the present value of large "off-book" promises to provide futuremedical care and pensions appeared unlikely to cause problems, givenBasicland's steady 3 percent growth in GDP per person and restraint inmaking unfunded promises. Basicland seemed to have a system that wouldlong assure its felicity and long induce other nations to follow itsexample?thus improving the welfare of all humanity.
But even acountry as cautious, sound, and generous as Basicland could come toruin if it failed to address the dangers that can be caused by theordinary accidents of life. These dangers were significant by 2012,when the extreme prosperity of Basicland had created a peculiaroutcome: As their affluence and leisure time grew, Basicland's citizensmore and more whiled away their time in the excitement of casinogambling. Most casino revenue now came from bets on security pricesunder a system used in the 1920s in the United States and called "thebucket shop system."
The winnings of the casinos eventually amountedto 25 percent of Basicland's GDP, while 22 percent of all employeeearnings in Basicland were paid to persons employed by the casinos(many of whom were engineers needed elsewhere). So much time was spentat casinos that it amounted to an average of five hours per day forevery citizen of Basicland, including newborn babies and the comatoseelderly. Many of the gamblers were highly talented engineers attractedpartly by casino poker but mostly by bets available in the bucket shopsystems, with the bets now called "financial derivatives."
Manypeople, particularly foreigners with savings to invest, regarded thissituation as disgraceful. After all, they reasoned, it was just commonsense for lenders to avoid gambling addicts. As a result, almost allforeigners avoided holding Basicland's currency or owning its bonds.They feared big trouble if the gambling-addicted citizens of Basiclandwere suddenly faced with hardship.
And then came the twin shocks.Hydrocarbon prices rose to new highs. And in Basicland's export marketsthere was a dramatic increase in low-cost competition from developingcountries. It was soon obvious that the same exports that had formerlyamounted to 25 percent of Basicland's GDP would now only amount to 10percent. Meanwhile, hydrocarbon imports would amount to 30 percent ofGDP, instead of 15 percent. Suddenly Basicland had to come up with 30percent of its GDP every year, in foreign currency, to pay itscreditors.
How was Basicland to adjust to this brutal new reality?This problem so stumped Basicland's politicians that they asked foradvice from Benfranklin Leekwanyou Vokker, an old man who wasconsidered so virtuous and wise that he was often called the "GoodFather." Such consultations were rare. Politicians usually ignored theGood Father because he made no campaign contributions.
Among thesuggestions of the Good Father were the following. First, he suggestedthat Basicland change its laws. It should strongly discourage casinogambling, partly through a complete ban on the trading in financialderivatives, and it should encourage former casino employees?and formercasino patrons?to produce and sell items that foreigners were willingto buy. Second, as this change was sure to be painful, he suggestedthat Basicland's citizens cheerfully embrace their fate. After all, heobserved, a man diagnosed with lung cancer is willing to quit smokingand undergo surgery because it is likely to prolong his life.
Theviews of the Good Father drew some approval, mostly from people whoadmired the fiscal virtue of the Romans during the Punic Wars. Butothers, including many of Basicland's prominent economists, had strongobjections. These economists had intense faith that any outcome at allin a free market?even wild growth in casino gambling?is constructive.Indeed, these economists were so committed to their basic faith thatthey looked forward to the day when Basicland would expand realsecurities trading, as a percentage of securities outstanding, by afactor of 100, so that it could match the speculation level present inthe United States just before onslaught of the Great Recession thatbegan in 2008.
The strong faith of these Basicland economists in thebeneficence of hypergambling in both securities and financialderivatives stemmed from their utter rejection of the ideas of thegreat and long-dead economist who had known the most abouthyperspeculation, John Maynard Keynes. Keynes had famously said, "Whenthe capital development of a country is the byproduct of the operationsof a casino, the job is likely to be ill done." It was easy for theseeconomists to dismiss such a sentence because securities had been solong associated with respectable wealth, and financial derivativesseemed so similar to securities.
Basicland's investment andcommercial bankers were hostile to change. Like the objectingeconomists, the bankers wanted change exactly opposite to change wantedby the Good Father. Such bankers provided constructive services toBasicland. But they had only moderate earnings, which they deeplyresented because Basicland's casinos?which provided no suchconstructive services?reported immoderate earnings from theirbucket-shop systems. Moreover, foreign investment bankers had alsoreported immoderate earnings after building their own bucket-shopsystems?and carefully obscuring this fact with ingenious twaddle,including claims that rational risk-management systems were in place,supervised by perfect regulators. Naturally, the ambitious Basiclandbankers desired to prosper like the foreign bankers. And so they cameto believe that the Good Father lacked any understanding of importantand eternal causes of human progress that the bankers were trying toserve by creating more bucket shops in Basicland.
Of course, themost effective political opposition to change came from the gamblingcasinos themselves. This was not surprising, as at least one casino waslocated in each legislative district. The casinos resented beingcompared with cancer when they saw themselves as part of along-established industry that provided harmless pleasure whileimproving the thinking skills of its customers.
As it worked out,the politicians ignored the Good Father one more time, and theBasicland banks were allowed to open bucket shops and to finance thepurchase and carry of real securities with extreme financial leverage.A couple of economic messes followed, during which every constituencytried to avoid hardship by deflecting it to others. Muchcounterproductive governmental action was taken, and the country'scredit was reduced to tatters. Basicland is now under new management,using a new governmental system. It also has a new nickname: Sorrowland.
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Charles Munger is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
［此帖子已被 highlander 在 2010-2-23 7:22:07 编辑过］ |
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发表于 2010-2-18 21:38:19
发表于 2010-2-23 09:32:14
