(5)How has your understanding of markets contributed towards your political views? WB: I wouldn't say knowledge of markets has. My political views were formed bythis process. Just imagine that it is 24 hours before you are born. Agenie comes and says to you in the womb, 「You look like an extraordinarilyresponsible, intelligent, potential human being. Going to emerge in 24 hoursand it is an enormous responsibility I am going to assign to you –determination of the political, economic and social system into which you are goingto emerge. You set the rules, any political system, democracy, parliamentary,anything you wish, can set the economic structure, communistic, capitalistic,set anything in motion and I guarantee you that when you emerge this world willexist for you, your children and grandchildren. What's the catch? One catch –just before you emerge you have to go through a huge bucket with 7 billionslips, one for each human. Dip your hand in and that is what you get – youcould be born intelligent or not intelligent, born healthy or disabled, bornblack or white, born in the US or in Bangladesh, etc. You have no idea whichslip you will get. Not knowing which slip you are going to get, how would youdesign the world? Do you want men to push around females? It's a 50/50 chanceyou get female. If you think about the political world, you want a system thatgets what people want. You want more and more output because you'll have morewealth to share around. The US is a great system, turns out $50,000 GDP percapita, 6 times the amount when I was born in just one lifetime. But notknowing what slip you get, you want a system that once it produces output, youdon't want anyone to be left behind. You want to incentivize the topperformers, don't want equality in results, but do want something that thosewho get the bad tickets still have a decent life. You also don't want fear inpeople's minds – fear of lack of money in old age, fear of cost of healthcare. I call this the 「Ovarian Lottery」. My sisters didn't get the same ticket.Expectations for them were that they would marry well, or if they work, wouldwork as a nurse, teacher, etc. If you are designing the world knowing 50/50male or female, you don't want this type of world for women – you could getfemale. Design your world this way; this should be your philosophy. I look atForbes 400, look at their figures and see how it's gone up in the last 30years. Americans at the bottom are also improving, and that is great, but wedon't want that degree of inequality. Only governments can correct that. Rightway to look at it is the standpoint of how you would view the world if youdidn't know who you would be. If you're not willing to gamble with your slipout of 100 random slips, you are lucky! The top 1% of 7 billion people.Everyone is wired differently. You can't say you do everything yourself. We allhave teachers, and people before us who led us to where we are. We can't letpeople fall too far behind. You all definitely got good slips.
(6) You are one of the few male CEO's whochampions women in the workplace. Can you talk about your reasoning and how wecan contribute our intelligence to the workplace? (from a woman speaker) WB: We wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776 – 「All men arecreated equal」 etc. In 1789 we wrote a Constitution – on second thoughts…blacks are only 3/5 of a person. They slipped up. They wrote in such a way thatthey didn't have to use gender pronouns. They gave themselves away inpresidency, they said 「He」. Pretty soon all men are created equal became allmales are created equal. Move forward to the Gettysburg address, Lincolnrepeated the line about All men are created equal. Slipped over the fact thatwomen couldn't vote, couldn't even inherit money in some states. Finally, in1920, 131 years into this new venture of governance, 「Oh yea, women should havea fair stake in vote.」 After this, many justices were appointed before O'Connorwas. Everyone had expectations of me as a child, but my sisters who were justas smart, were delegated to something different. Here is this country, thinkabout how far we came from using half our talent. Now we are beginning tounleash the potential of the other half. If we only allow people to be CEO's,accountants or lawyers if they are above 5』10〞, and people under 5』10〞 mustbecome nurses, etc. that would be crazy, we could not unleash potential. Samething was the case for women. No one realized it, my dad didn't, and myteachers didn't. Women are obviously just as smart and work just as hard. No one is better at running our annual meetings than Carrie. I think itsnuts for a CEO to pass up the most talented person based on their gender. Butwe are going in the right direction. We're moving towards the ideals we set,but these ideals set by Jefferson weren't practiced until much later.
巴菲特: 2008年,我們對高盛和GE進行了投資,這我做夢也沒想到(想像一下, GE打電話給你,說他們需要你的資金資助)。 BRK購買了附有5年( 2013年9月到期)認股權證的優先股。認股權證可以購買價值50億高盛、300億通用電氣的普通股。如果我們行權,我們將不得不投入額外80億。但這兩家公司不想發出這些新股。今年早些時候,我們達成共識,他們不發行所有該等股份,我們也不需要耗資80億。讓我們算一算,可能大家都想我們算算。我們不需要支出現金,他們也並不需要發行該等股份。 BRK獲得了高盛價值接近20億的股票,而沒有支出一分錢的現金(原句BRK ended up with Goldman Sachs shares valued close to $2 billionwithout any outlay of BRK'scash. 沒有背景知識,不知如何翻譯好,就翻譯成了這樣)。 而GE我們只花了2億美金。 BRK現在只剩下一個美國銀行發行的權證了。我們有權在2021年8月前以每股7.14購買7億股(共計5億美金)美股銀行股票。我們會持有權證,除非股息變高,或者權證到期。高盛和GE的交易非常有趣,當然誰又能猜到5年前會發生的事情呢。因為雷曼,貨幣市場幾近坍塌。而貨幣市場基金持有大量雷曼權證。一夜之間,雷曼倒閉,30多萬原以為貨幣市場十分安全的投資者損失慘重。這造成主要的貨幣市場基金破產、貶值。貨幣市場頓時鴉雀無聲。在雷曼倒閉後的起初三天,3.5萬億美元的貨幣市場基金和1750億基金資產資金流出。所有貨幣市場基金都持有商業票據。像GE這樣的公司也很多的商業票據。此後,美國工業運轉名義上進入停止狀態。布什說,「如果貨幣政策不放鬆,這些混蛋都會倒閉」 。 我相信這是有史以來最偉大的經濟陳述。這就是為什麼他支持保爾森和伯南克。企業都對商業票據市場十分依賴。 2008年9月,我們來到了地獄。如果保爾森和伯南克沒有干預,兩日內所有的一切都將完蛋。 BRK一直保持著200億或更多的現金。這聽起來很瘋狂,需要這麼多現金幹嘛?但在未來100年裡,若有一天當世界再次停止運轉時,我們已經做好準備。總會有一些事件會發生,也許就是是明天。這個個時候,你就需要現金。這個時候的現金就像是氧氣!當你不需要它時,你不會注意到它。當你迫切需要它時,它將是你唯一需要的東西。我們的流動性管理或許以你想像不到的方式進行著。我們不像銀行那樣操作。當局沒有以美國國債的形式保擔保幣市場基金。他們的權力來自國會。2008年9月,保爾森設立外匯平準基金,為貨幣市場基金擔保。這一措施終止了貨幣市場基金的運行。一切都結束了。在有生之年,這樣的事情可能多次發生。當類似的事情再次發生時,注意兩點:1不要讓它毀了你;2如果你有錢或膽量,你將有機會以意想不到價格買到寶貝。恐懼迅速蔓延,它是會傳染的。這與智商無關。信心只能逐漸恢復(一次只能回來一點),不是立馬。有時候,恐懼能使投資世界癱瘓。這時候你不要欠錢,如果你有錢,你應該在這個時候買入。「別人恐懼時我貪婪,別人貪婪時我恐懼」 。
WB :我僅僅從我爸那學的談判方法。不同人有不同的談判風格。我不希望參與到那種只能在某點上達成一致的那種談判(it 「has to end」 at some point)。不希望與他們在一個點上爭吵(Don't want them to have me by the throat while I have them by the throat)。這種情況下要麼我們放棄,要麼扼殺對方。我的風格與大多數人不同,我只是說我做什麼。如果在你的整個生活你都這樣做,然後一直堅持。我也能一走了之。我說我會付$ X,通常這是最好的交易。我不想虛報低價,然後你反擊,然後多少多少錢。你花時間和金錢這樣做吧。我只是說我會付多少,而且一旦有了聲譽,這招很好用。你不願意因為你買不起而進行談判,然後一走了之。與你愛的人討價還價是一個可怕的錯誤,簡直是破壞性的錯誤。在這個世界上最強大的力量是無條件的愛。