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2021年股东大会

第一部分/第五部分

2021年股东大会

上午场

1. 开场致辞

沃伦·巴菲特：早上好。现在是11:30——或者说这里洛杉矶是10:30，我们将举行伯克希尔·哈撒韦第二次线上股东大会。去年我们在奥马哈仓促举办了一次。这次我们有了更充分的准备。所以我们来到了洛杉矶。我们之所以在这里举办，是因为我左边这位先生。不是因为他要求，而是因为我们都希望和查理一起——在洛杉矶这里。所以，我先介绍一下伯克希尔的三位副董事长。我会先展示第一季度的财报。我们不会花太多时间在这上面。我可能会给新投资者们上一两堂非常简短的课——不一定是伯克希尔·哈撒韦的投资者——而是过去一年进入股市的人。而且——我认为进入股市的人数创下了纪录。我会给他们举几个小例子。

然后我们将进入问答环节，由贝基·奎克主持，她已经审阅了提交给她的数千个问题。但在本次会议期间，还可以提交更多问题。我们会时不时地通过镜头展示，如果你想在会议期间提交问题，如何直接与她沟通。上次她被问题淹没了。而她奇迹般地不断整理它们。所以，欢迎随时提出问题。我们将有大约三个半小时的提问时间。最后，我们将举行年度会议，这不会花很长时间。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Good morning. It’s 11:30 — or 10:30 here in Los Angeles, and we’re going to hold our second virtual annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. We did it in Omaha last year on short notice. We had more warning this time. And so, we came to Los Angeles. And the reason we’re doing it from here is because of the man on my left. Not because he asked for it, but because all of us wanted to do it with Charlie in — here in Los Angeles. So, I’ll introduce the three vice chairmen of Berkshire in a minute. I’ll show you the first quarter earnings. We won’t take much time on that. I’ll have one or two very short lessons for, perhaps, the new investors, who are — not necessarily in Berkshire Hathaway — but people who have entered the stock market in the last year. And there’s — I think there have been a record number that have entered the stock market. I’ll have a couple of little examples for them.

And then we’ll swing into a Q&A led by Becky Quick, who’s looked at thousands of questions that have been submitted to her. But more can be submitted during this meeting. And we will put up on camera, from time to time, the way you can communicate directly with her if you want to send questions in during the meeting. She got flooded with them last time. And she miraculously keeps sorting them out. And so, feel free to send in a question. And we will have a question period for about three and a half hours. And then we will finally have the annual meeting, which won’t take long, at the end.

2. 查理·芒格介绍：他在同一栋房子里住了62年

沃伦·巴菲特：那么，首先我想介绍一下伯克希尔·哈撒韦的三位副董事长。我会简单介绍他们。然后最后可能会给你们一个小小的惊喜。我左边是查理·芒格。我认识查理62年了。当时他在洛杉矶做律师。那时他正在离这里几英里的地方建房子。62年后，他仍然住在同一栋房子里。这挺有意思的，因为62年前，就在几个月前，我也买了一栋房子。我现在也还住在同一栋房子里。所以，你们一开始就遇到了两个相当古怪的家伙，都对自己的家情有独钟。查理和我一见如故。我想他大概是负责文化事务的副董事长，当然还有其他职责。但每当我想了解什么才是真正的方向时，我都会和查理谈谈。他帮了我大忙。

他做这些事花的时间比我少得多，说话也比我少得多。但他对伯克希尔的贡献是不可思议的。所以，查理已经在洛杉矶待了60多年了。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: So, with that, I would like to first introduce the three vice chairmen of Berkshire Hathaway. I’ll tell you just a little bit about them. And then I’ll have a mild surprise for you at the end, perhaps. On my left is Charlie Munger. And I met Charlie 62 years ago. He was practicing law in Los Angeles. He was building a house at that time a few miles from here. And 62 years later, he’s still living in the same house. Now that’s kind of interesting, because I was buying a house just a few months before, 62 years ago. And I’m still living in the same house. So, you’ve got a couple of fairly peculiar guys, just to start with, in terms of their love affair with their homes. And Charlie and I hit it off immediately. And I would say he’s probably the vice chairman in charge of culture, among other things. But, if I ever want to get questions about where true north is, I talk to Charlie. And he has been an enormous help.

He’s done it with a lot fewer hours and a lot less talking and everything than I have. But he’s contributed in an incredible way to Berkshire. So, Charlie’s been out here in Los Angeles for 60-plus years.

3. 格雷格·阿贝尔介绍：他打冰球

沃伦·巴菲特：在我右边，也就是你们的左边，是负责除保险和投资之外所有事务的副董事长，格雷格·阿贝尔。格雷格在加拿大艾伯塔省埃德蒙顿出生并长大。他是加拿大人。打冰球。他八岁的孩子也打冰球。他从加拿大大学毕业后的某个时候来到了美国。他负责的业务销售额超过1500亿美元，雇佣了超过20万人——可能接近27.5万人。他在这方面做得比我以前好得多。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: On my right, your left, I have the vice chairman in charge of everything except insurance and investments, Greg Abel. Greg was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. He’s Canadian. Plays hockey. His eight-year-old plays hockey. And he came to the United States sometime after he graduated from college in Canada. And he is in charge of a business which has well over 150 billion in sales and employs 200 — more than 250,000 — probably 275,000 people. And does a much better job at doing that than I was doing previously.

4. 阿吉特·贾因介绍：他对保险学了很多

沃伦·巴菲特：在我最左边，也就是你们的右边，是阿吉特·贾因。阿吉特在印度出生并长大，并在那里大学毕业。我在1986年的一个星期六认识了阿吉特。我当时已经在保险行业——伯克希尔已经在保险行业——相当长一段时间了。我有点磕磕绊绊地探索各种方式。阿吉特来到了办公室。那天是星期六，我正在拆邮件。我说：“你对保险了解多少？“他说：“一无所知。“我说：“好吧，人无完人。我们（笑）来谈谈吧。“到那天早上结束时，我就知道我有了一位能建立伟大保险业务的人。从那一刻开始，这家位于奥马哈、看似不太可能的小公司，以净值计，成为了世界上最大的财产意外险公司。它承保风险——它偶尔会在24小时内承保其他公司根本无法独自承担的风险。其他公司需要召集其他人。

他们要花很长时间才能做出决定。这在过去的某些时候非常重要。现在不那么重要了。但他建立了一个令人难以置信的——世界领先的财产意外险保险公司。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: And on my far left, your right, we have Ajit Jain. And Ajit was born and raised in India, and graduated from college there. And I met Ajit on a Saturday in 1986. And I’d been in the insurance business — Berkshire had been in the insurance business — for quite a while. And I was kind of stumbling around in various ways. And Ajit came to the office. And Saturday, I was opening the mail. And I said, “How much do you know about insurance?” And he said, “Nothing.” And I said, “Well, nobody’s perfect. And let’s (laughs) talk about it some.” And by the end of the morning, I knew I had somebody that was going to build a great insurance business. And starting from that point, this improbable little company in Omaha became the largest property-casualty company in the world, in terms of net worth. It writes risks — it writes risks, occasionally, in a 24-hour period that other companies simply couldn’t take on themselves. They’d have to assemble other people.

It would take them a long time to come to a decision. That was very important at various times in the past. It’s not so important now. But he’s built an incredible — the world’s leading property-casualty insurance company.

5. 我们都曾在奥马哈住过

沃伦·巴菲特：所以，这里有来自洛杉矶60多年的查理。有来自加拿大的格雷格。有来自印度的阿吉特。这三位先生除了为伯克希尔工作并表现出色之外，他们还有一个共同点，那就是他们都在不同时期，在内布拉斯加州奥马哈离我一英里以内的范围住过相当长一段时间。查理在1934年搬到了离我现在住处大约100码的地方。他上了高中，后来参军了。他对那附近和我一样熟悉。他上过我孩子上过的同一所小学。格雷格在奥马哈住了相当长一段时间。住的地方离我大约五六个街区。现在他住在得梅因。阿吉特在奥马哈住了大约一英里外的地方，待了几年。所以，我们起点非常不同，然后某种程度上走到了一起，现在又各奔东西，但一切都很顺利。

我——在本次会议中你们会听到他们的发言——我强烈建议你们提出问题，如果你（听不清），你可以把问题直接提给我，或者提给其他三位中的任何一位。如果你们把相当多的问题提给其他人，那对我来说会是很大的解脱。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: So, here we have Charlie from LA, 60-some years. We’ve got Greg from Canada. We’ve got Ajit from India. And the one thing in common that these three fellows have, aside from working for Berkshire and doing a sensational job, the one thing in common is that at one time or another, for some extended period, they lived within a mile of me in Omaha, Nebraska. And Charlie, in 1934, moved about a hundred yards away from where I now live. And went through high school and eventually went in the service. And knows the neighborhood as well as I do. Went to the same grade school my kids went to and so on. Greg spent significant time in — living in Omaha. Lived about five or six blocks from me. And now lives in Des Moines. And Ajit was in Omaha about a mile away for a couple years. So, we started in very different places, and sort of came together, and now go our separate ways, but it’s all worked very well.

I would — and you’ll hear from them during this meeting — I urge you to send questions if you’re (unintelligble), then you can direct them to me, or you can direct them to anyone of the other three. And it will be a big relief to me if you direct a fair number to the other people.

6. 阅读10-Q，但不要关注净利润

沃伦·巴菲特：所以，今天早上，像往常一样——我们总是在周六发布——我们发布了10-Q报告，其中包含了季度收益。报告已上传到我们的网站BerkshireHathaway.com。这很有趣。我们在周六早上发布这些信息。这不是因为媒体喜欢我们这样做。也不是因为分析师喜欢这样做。但我们希望给你们尽可能多的时间来消化10-Q报告中包含的大量信息。这些信息无法以完美的方式概括。我们会给你们一些总结性的数据。但如果你真的是这家公司的学生——我们的大多数投资者购买股票只是因为相信其他三位先生能做好工作——而这不是一种错误的信任。但如果你真的喜欢深入细节，想要理解伯克希尔·哈撒韦各项业务的来龙去脉，你应该阅读那份10-Q报告。它可能会花你几个小时。

我的意思是，这不是一个小的投资时间。但它包含了我们所有各种业务的大量信息。对于那些有某种商业头脑的人来说，我建议你们去读一读。你们在这里看到的总结性数据，也就是我们在新闻稿中发布的那些，显示了一对有趣的数字。我的意思是，看下面那行，我们有去年的数据。当你看到数字周围的括号时，你知道，你得开始担心了。（笑）而第一季度，我们实际上显示了近500亿美元的亏损。我从未想过会看到这样一个数字。我回想了一下。我试着回忆那个季度我是不是去度假了，把事情交给了其他人。但我查了日历，那就是我。（笑）而今年的这个数字是正的117亿美元。这两个数字本身都没有太大意义。

几年前，（财务会计准则委员会）——在很长、很长、很长、很长一段时间里，像伯克希尔这样的公司的未实现损益是对伯克希尔净值的调整，但它们不计入收益。而几年前，规则被改变了，所以每次股票上涨或下跌，都会计入我们的收益账户。所以，在去年第一季度，当股票大幅下跌时，我们有一大笔未实现——嗯，主要是未实现收益的减少。（笑）当你开始说这些事情时，你就会开始失去听众。但——这个项目今年是一个轻微的正面因素。但是，如果我们——如果我们每天报告收益，你会看到某一天收益30亿美元。第二天——某一天——负20亿美元。这是一种我们认为不太合适的会计处理方式，但它是强制性的。我们在新闻稿中都非常仔细地解释了——我们必须解释——我也试图在我的信中解释，为什么我认为这不是看待伯克希尔的方式。

我们认为，随着时间的推移，我们将获得投资收益，原因我在信中也说明了。在一段时间内，我们持股的公司会保留收益。它们通常会用这些再投资收益为我们创造利益。这最终会以资本利得的形式体现出来。但是对于一家拥有大量普通股——可流通股票——像我们这样的公司，报告出来的收益，你不要去看最后一行，而应该看营业收益那一行。现在，我想说的是，如果你把去年头两个月和今年头两个月相比，这些数字会相当具有可比性。但是，当然，在2020年3月，经济实际上被封锁了。我的意思是，这是一场自我引发的衰退。而且是一场突然的、非常突然的衰退。所以，经济在3月份坠入悬崖。它通过美联储的行动以一种非常有效的方式被复活了。后来，在财政方面，国会也采取了行动。我们稍后会谈到这个，但是——你看到的这个数字——两者的差异，基本上就是三月份的差异。

我们的业务做得——我们稍后会谈到更多细节——但我们的业务确实做得相当不错。这是一场非常、非常、非常不寻常的衰退，因为它按行业划分，其局部性异常突出。而现在，经济的许多领域业务确实非常好，我们稍后会讨论。但如果你处在少数几个真正遭受重创的行业，仍然存在问题。比如，国际航空旅行之类的东西。所以，说到这里，我们稍后可能会在回答问题时再回到这些数字上。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: So, we this morning, as we always do — we always do it on Saturday — we published our 10-Q, which gave the quarterly earnings. It’s up on our website, BerkshireHathaway.com. And it’s very interesting. We put these out on Saturday morning. That’s not because the media likes us to do it that way. It’s not because the analysts like to do it that way. But we want to give you the maximum time to digest an awful lot of information that’s in that 10-Q. It can’t be summarized in a perfect way. We’ll give you some summary figures. But if you’re really a student of the place — and most of our investors buy because they simply have faith in these other three fellows to do a good job — and that’s not a misplaced faith. But if you really enjoy going into the details and you want to understand the nuts and bolts of Berkshire Hathaway’s various operations, you should read that 10-Q. And it’ll take you — it may take you a couple of hours.

I mean, it’s not a small investment of time. But it’s got a lot of information about all our various businesses. And for those of you who are business students of a sort, I recommend you go to it. The summary figures you see here, which are the ones we put in our press release, show kind of an interesting pair of numbers. I mean, down there at the bottom, you know, we have last year. When you see those brackets around numbers, you know, you’ve got to start worrying. (Laughs) And first quarter, we actually showed a loss of almost $50 billion. I never thought I’d ever see a figure like that. And was thinking back. I was trying to remember whether I’d gone on vacation during that quarter and turned things over to the other guys or what. But I checked the calendar, and that was me. (Laughs) And that figure this year is a positive figure of 11.7 billion. And neither figure is very meaningful in itself.

The (Financial) Accounting Standards Board, a few years ago — for many, many, many, many years, unrealized gains or losses of a company like Berkshire were made adjustments to the net worth of Berkshire, but they did not run through earnings. And a few years ago, the rule was changed so that every time stocks go up or down, it goes through our earnings account. So, in the first quarter of last year, when stocks went down a lot, we had a huge sum of unrealized — well, it was a reduction of unrealized gains, largely. (Laughs) And when you start saying things like that, you start losing people. But — That item is a mild plus this year. But if you — if we reported earnings daily, you would see earnings one day of 3 billion. Next year — day — of minus 2 billion. And it’s an accounting treatment that we don’t think is particularly appropriate, but it’s required. And we explain, very carefully, both in our press releases — there we got to explain — and I try to write in my letter and explain why I don’t think that’s the way to look at Berkshire.

We think, over time, that we will have investment gains for reasons I lay out in my letter. Over a period of time, the companies we own stock in retain earnings. And they use those reinvested earnings, usually, to our benefit. And that shows up in capital gains someday. But reported earnings for a company that has a lot of common stocks — marketable stocks — like ours, you don’t want to look at that final line, and you do want to look at the operating earnings line. Now, I would say that if you had taken the first two months of last year and compared to the first two months of this year, those figures would have been quite comparable. But, of course, in March of 2020, the economy was shut down, in effect. I mean, it was a selfinduced recession. And an abrupt one, very abrupt. And so, the economy went off a cliff in March. It was resurrected in an extraordinarily effective way by Federal Reserve action. And later, on the fiscal front, by Congress. And we’ll get into that later, but — The figure you see that — the difference was March, basically, of the two.

And our businesses have done — we’ll get into more specifics later — but our business has done really quite well. This has been a very, very, very unusual recession, in that it’s been localized, as to industry, to an extraordinary extent. And right now, business is really very good in a great many segments of the economy, which we’ll talk about later. But there’s still problems if you’re in a few types of business that really have been decimated. You know, such as international air travel or something of the sort. So, with that, we’ll go back to the figures later on, perhaps in some of the questions.

7. 给新投资者的教训：非凡的事情可能发生

沃伦·巴菲特：我想简单讨论两个问题，我希望——特别是新进入股市的人——在试图每天做30或40笔交易以从看起来非常容易的游戏中获利之前，先稍微思考一下。所以，我想展示幻灯片L-1。请放上来。这些是3月31日，我打印出来的按股票市值计算的世界前20大公司。这些名字——其中很多你们会熟悉——但排名第一的是苹果公司，市值略高于2万亿美元。

一直排到第20名，市值约3300多亿美元。但这些是3月31日按市值计算的世界前20大公司。如果我有一个小——我希望我能有一个小测验机器，这样每个人都能对答案进行权衡，我们稍后可以把它显示出来，但这在技术上是不可能的——但我希望你们做的是看看这张清单。从苹果开始，沙特阿美是一个非常特殊的国家——公司。

我不知道它是否95%由政府拥有，但本质上，就业务而言，它是一个待售的国家（笑）。但在前六名中，有五家是美国公司。所以，当你听到人们说美国做得不好——你知道，它有所有的问题——它运行得不太好之类的——你知道，在全世界，价值最高的六家公司中，有五家在美国。如果你想想——我们去年也稍微谈过这个——但在1790年，我们拥有世界人口的0.5%——略少一点——我们有400万人口，390万人。其中60万是奴隶。爱尔兰的人口比美国多。俄罗斯的人口是美国的五倍。乌克兰的人口是美国的两倍。所以，我们在这里，嗯，我们有什么？

我们有一张未来的地图，一张充满希望的地图，不知何故，仅仅在200多年——嗯，宪法颁布后——232年后，我们就拥有了世界前六强公司中的五家。你知道，这不是偶然的。这不是因为我们更聪明、更强壮之类的。我们有良好的土壤，适宜的气候。但我提到的其他一些国家也是如此。而这个系统运转得难以置信地好。想象一下，世界前六强公司中有五家最终落在一个几百年前只拥有0.5%人口的国家。但我希望你们做的是，如果愿意，花一两分钟看看这份清单。然后做一个估计，做出你自己的猜测。这些公司中有多少将在30年后仍在这份清单上？它们就在这里。这些巨头。你猜有多少会留在清单上？嗯，你知道，不会是全部20家。甚至可能今天或明天就不是全部20家了。（笑）这是3月31日的数据。

但你会猜几个？自己想想。你会写下五个吗？八个？嗯，不管是什么，我现在邀请你们看第二张幻灯片——或者说L-2——它回看的是30多年前。看看1989年的前20名。如果你看1989年的前20名，有两件事应该会引起你的兴趣。至少两件。30年前的20家公司中，没有一家出现在现在的清单上。一家都没有。零。当时清单上有六家美国公司。它们的名字你很熟悉。有通用电气。有埃克森。有IBM公司。这些是——它们还在。默克公司排在下面——没有一家在30年后进入清单。零。我猜，当我几分钟前请你们做一下这个小测验时，你们中很少有人会写下零。我也不认为会是零。但这提醒我们，非凡的事情可能发生。那些在你看来显而易见的事情。日本曾有过一段非常美好、持续很久的牛市。

所以，清单上有很多日本公司。今天一家都没有了。美国当时有六家。现在我们有13家。但不是同样的六家。我邀请你们在观察这份清单时再思考一件事。1989年不是黑暗时代。我们也不是刚刚发现资本主义之类的东西。人们认为他们对股市了解很多。有效市场理论盛行。

他们——那不是落后的时代。如果你看，当时最大的公司市值是1000亿美元，1040亿美元。所以，世界最大的公司，仅仅过了30多年，市值就从1000亿美元增长到了2万亿美元。而排在第20位的公司，市值从340亿美元增长到了大约十倍于这个数字。嗯，这告诉了你一些关于平等的事情，这是这个国家的一个热门话题。它也告诉你一些关于通货膨胀的事情。但总的来说，这不是一个高度通货膨胀的时期。但这告诉你，资本主义运作得难以置信地好，尤其是对资本家而言。这是一个相当惊人的数字。

你认为这种情况现在能重复吗——30年后——你能拿苹果的2万亿美元，并将任何公司乘以30倍，得出领头羊30倍于此的市值？你知道，这似乎不可能。也许就是不可能的。但这恰恰——我们作为投资者——华尔街也是——在1989年就像我们今天一样自信。但世界可能以非常、非常戏剧性的方式改变。我再给你们一个也许可以思考的例子。这是——当你开始过于自信的时候——顺便说一句，它显示了一件事——这是指数基金的有力论据——你知道，主要的事情是登上船——你知道，一艘船。你知道，它们都驶向一个更好的应许之地——你过去知道哪一只是你必须登上的——但如果你只是持有一个多样化的股票组合——我个人偏好美国股票——持有30年，你不可能表现不好。

但如果你认为你很了解该选哪些股票，或者你花大价钱雇来的人有很多想法。我可以告诉你，他们在1989年的最佳想法不一定表现得好。尽管总体而言，股票绝对是该待的地方。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: I would like to just go over two items that I would like — particularly new entrants to the stock market — to ponder just a bit before they try and do 30 or 40 trades a day in order to profit what — from what looks like a very easy game. So, I would like to go to slide L-1. So, put that up. And these, on March 31st, I ran off a list of the 20 largest companies in the world, by stock market value. And those names — a good many of which will be familiar to you — but they were led by Apple at slightly over 2 trillion.

And it went down to the number 20th was worth 330-odd billion. But those are the 20 largest companies in the world, by market value, on March 31st. Now if I had a little — I was hoping I could get a little quiz machine so I could have everybody weigh on this answer, and we could flash it up a little later, but that proved technically impossible for — but what I would like you to do is look at that list. It starts off with Apple, and Saudi Aramco is a pretty kind of a specialized country — company.

I don’t know whether it’s 95% owned by the government or what, but it’s essentially a country that’s for sale there (laughs), in terms of that business. But the top — of the top six companies, five of them are American. So, when you hear people say that America hasn’t done — you know, it’s got all the — it’s not working very well or something of the sort — you know, in the whole world, of the six top companies in value, five of them are in the United States. And if you think about it — you know, we talked a little about this last year — but in 1790, we had one-half of one percent of the world’s population — a little less — we had four million people, 3.9 million people. Six-hundred thousand of them were slaves. Ireland had more people than the United States had. Russia had five times as many people as the U.S. did. Ukraine had twice as many people as the United States. So, here we were, well, what did we have?

We had a map for the future, an aspirational map, that somehow, now only 200 and — well, after the Constitution — 232 years later, leaves us with five of the top six companies in the world. You know, that’s not an accident. And it’s not because we were way smarter, way stronger, you know, anything of the sort. We had good soil, decent climate. But so do some of those other countries I named. And the system has worked unbelievably well. Just imagine thinking of five of the top six companies in the world ending up with a country that started with a half of one percent of the population just a few hundred years ago. But what I would like you to do is look at that list for a minute or two, if you want to. And then make an estimate, make your own guess. How many of those companies are going to be on the list 30 years from now? Here they are. These powerhouses. How many would you guess are going to be on the list? Well, you know, it’s not going to be all 20. It may not even be all 20 today or tomorrow. (Laughs) This was March 31st.

But what would you guess? And think about that yourself. Would you put down five? Eight? Well, whatever it would be, I would now invite you to look at slide two — or L-2 — which goes back a little more than 30 years. And look at the top 20 from 1989. And if you look at the top 20 from 1989, there’s two things that should grab your interest. At least two. None of the 20 from 30 years ago are on the present list. None. Zero. There were then six U.S. companies on the list. And their names are familiar to you. They have General Electric. We have Exxon. We have IBM Corp. And these are — they’re still around. Merck is down there at number — none made it to the list 30 years later. Zero. And I would guess that very few of you, when I asked you to play the quiz a little — a few minutes ago — would have put down zero. And I don’t think it will be zero. But it is a reminder of what extraordinary things can happen. Things that seem obvious to you. Japan had this wonderful bull market for a very long time.

So, you had a number of Japanese companies on the list. Today there are none. And the United States had the six. Now we have 13. But they aren’t the same six. I would invite you to think about one other thing as you look at this list. 1989 was not the dark ages. And we weren’t just discovering capitalism or anything else. And people thought they knew a lot about the stock market. And the efficient market theory was in.

And they were — it was not a backward time. And if you look, the top company at that time had a market value of 100 billion, 104 billion. So, the largest company in the world, of title, in just a shade over 30 years, has gone from 100 billion to 2 trillion. At the bottom, the number 20 has gone from 34 billion to something a little over ten times that. Well, that tells you something about what’s happened with equality, which is a hot subject in this country. It tells you a little bit about inflation. But this was not a highly inflationary period, as a whole. But it tells you that capitalism has worked incredibly well, especially for the capitalists. And it’s a pretty astounding number.

Do you think it could be repeated now that — 30 years from now — that you could take 2 trillion for Apple, and multiply any company, and come up with 30 times that for the leader? You know, it seems impossible. And maybe it is impossible. But that just — we were just as sure of ourselves as investors — and Wall Street was — in 1989 as we are today. But the world can change in very, very dramatic ways. And I’ll just give you one other example you might ponder. This is — when you start feeling too sure of yourself — One thing it shows, incidentally, is that — it’s a great argument for index funds — is that, you know, the main thing to do was to be aboard the ship — you know, a ship. You know, they were all going to a better promised land — you used to know which one was the one they’d necessarily get on — but you couldn’t help but do well if you just had a diversified group of equities — U.S. equities would be my preference — to hold over a 30-year period.

But if you thought you knew a lot about which ones to pick, or the person that you had hiring, you were paying a lot of money to, had all these ideas. And I could tell you their best ideas in 1989 did not necessarily do that well. Although, overall, equities were absolutely the place to be.

8. 给新投资者的教训：挑选赢家并不”像听起来那么容易”

沃伦·巴菲特：其次，人们会被各种行业极大地吸引。我的意思是，他们认为——他们认为如果你知道——如果一家公司说它在某个热门行业，你可以卖IPO，你可以卖SPAC，你可以——人们忽视销售数字、收益数字——只是，你知道，这是该去的地方。所以，伯克希尔·哈撒韦——1903年哪里是该去的地方呢？我父亲出生于1903年，但那并不是什么大新闻——但确实是大新闻的是，亨利·福特正在创办福特汽车公司。他之前失败过几次。但他即将改变世界。我的意思是，汽车——当你想到一切时——我们有一家很棒的汽车保险公司。（笑）如果没有汽车，就不会有GEICO。但它改变了这个国家。亨利·福特引入了5美元日薪，这是件大事。流水线——我的意思是，汽车带来了一切。

所以，让我们假设你在1903年快速看了一眼所有州际高速公路，美国有2.9亿辆汽车在路上。你知道，关于它的一切。然后你说：“嗯，这很简单。会是汽车。会是汽车。“嗯，伯克希尔——让我们看看我们上面有什么。是的，不，保持原样。回去。（笑）我还没想换幻灯片。回去，回到L系列——伯克希尔，偶然——嗯，我们拥有一家叫Marmon的公司。几年前我们从普利兹克家族那里买来的。普利兹克家族从他们收购的许多、许多、许多公司中建立了这个业务。他们公司的名字是Marmon。我不确切知道为什么杰伊和鲍勃决定叫它Marmon。但他们确实拥有一家叫Marmon的公司。

Marmon公司——幻灯片又超前了一点，但没关系——我们叫它——它是——他们拥有这家叫Marmon的公司，这家公司在1911年其汽车赢得了第一届印第安纳波利斯500大赛。也许这就是他们叫它Marmon的原因。他们为公司在1911年赢得第一届印第安纳波利斯500大赛而感到自豪。它也是发明后视镜的公司。我不确定这是否是对社会的巨大贡献。当然，在你家里——（笑）——后视镜，你不想强调太多。但是——参加印第安纳波利斯500大赛的汽车，那个通常坐在驾驶员旁边向后看以了解竞争对手情况的人病了，所以他们发明了后视镜。所以，让我们假设你决定汽车是件不可思议的事情。总有一天，会有印第安纳波利斯500大赛。总有一天，汽车上会有后视镜。

总有一天，2.9亿辆汽车会在美国行驶——或者汽车——这里还算了卡车。所以，我决定看看历史。我想我应该列出这些年来汽车公司的名单。我原本只想列出以M开头的，这样我就可以放在一张幻灯片上。但当我看到M开头的时，它没完没了。所以，我决定只列出以MA开头的。正如你所见，有将近40家公司进入了汽车行业——仅仅是以MA开头的——包括我们的小——我们的Marmon在中间一列，它持续了一段时间，相当长一段时间。它在20世纪30年代销售的汽车确实非常特别。但无论如何，至少有2000家公司进入了汽车行业，因为它们清楚地看到了这个不可思议的未来。当然，你还记得，在2009年，只剩下三家。其中两家破产了。

所以，挑选股票远不止是弄清楚什么未来会是一个好行业那么简单。美泰克公司推出过汽车。好事达保险公司推出过汽车。杜邦公司推出过汽车。我的意思是，还有一家内布拉斯加汽车公司。每个人都创办汽车公司，就像现在每个人都在创办某种可以从别人那里拿到钱的东西一样。但非常、非常、非常少的人选对了赢家，抓住了机会。在福特汽车公司，亨利·福特有几个合伙人，他不喜欢他们，所以他想办法把他们买断了。这差不多是——这是一个——汽车金融的开始。这是个很长的故事，但我们不讲了。但你无法买入福特汽车公司。当然，通用汽车最终成为了主导公司，因为亨利·福特没有很好地完成从T型车到A型车的转换——效果不太好。所以，我只想告诉你们，这并不像听起来那么容易。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Secondly, people get enormously attracted to various industries. I mean, they think if — they think if you know — if a company says it’s in the XYZ industry and that’s a popular one, you can sell IPOs, you can sell SPACs, you can — people disregard sales numbers, earnings numbers — that just, you know, it’s the place to be. So, Berkshire Hathaway — where was the place to be in 1903 when — my dad was born in 1903, but that wasn’t really that big of news — but it was big news that actually Henry Ford was starting the Ford Motor Company. He’d failed a couple of times before. But he was about to change the world. I mean, the auto — when you think about everything — we’ve got a great auto insurance company. (Laughs) If there weren’t any autos, we wouldn’t have GEICO, the — But it’s transformed the country. And Henry Ford brought in the $5 daily wage, and that was a huge thing. Assembly lines — I mean, everything autos came along.

So, let’s just assume that you had seen a quick glance back in 1903 of all the interstate highways, 290 million vehicles on the road in the United States. You know, everything about it. And you said, “Well, this is pretty easy. It’s going to be cars. It’s going to be autos.” Well, Berkshire — let’s see what we’ve got up there. Yeah, no, stay where you were. Go back. (Laughs) I don’t want to change slides yet. The — go back to the L’s — the — Berkshire, by accident — well, we own a company called Marmon. We bought it from the Pritzker family some years ago. The Pritzkers had built this business from many, many, many companies that they’d acquired. And the name of their company was Marmon. And I don’t know exactly why Jay and Bob decided to name it Marmon. But they did own a company called Marmon.

And the Marmon Company had — getting slightly ahead of me on the slides again, but that’s OK — the — we called it — it was — they owned this company Marmon, which, in 1911 had been the company whose car won the first Indianapolis 500. And maybe that’s why they called it Marmon. They were proud of the fact that the company in 1911 named the — won the first Indianapolis 500. It also was the company that invented the rearview mirror. I’m not sure whether that was a big contribution to society. Certainly, around your household — (laughs) — a rearview mirror, you don’t want to emphasize too much. But they — the car that was entered in the Indianapolis 500, the guy who normally sat next to the driver and looked backwards to tell what the competitors were doing, he was sick, so they invented the rearview mirror. So, let’s just assume that you had decided that autos were this incredible thing. And someday, there’d be an Indianapolis 500. And someday, they’d have rearview mirrors on cars.

And someday, 290 million cars would be buzzing around the United States — or autos — they’re counting trucks there. And so, I decided to look at the history. And I thought I’d put up the list of auto companies from over the years. And I was originally going to put up just the ones that were the M’s, so I could get them on one slide. But when I went to the M’s, it went on and on and on. So, I just decided to put up the ones that started with M-A. And as you can see, there were almost 40 companies that went into the auto business — just starting with M-A — including our little — our Marmon there in the middle column, which lasted for a while, quite a while. It was selling cars in the 1930s (that) were really quite special. But in any event, there were at least 2,000 companies that entered the auto business, because they clearly had this incredible future. And, of course, you remember, that in 2009, there were three left. Two of which went bankrupt.

So, there’s a lot more to picking stocks than figuring out, you know, what’s going to be a wonderful industry in the future. The Maytag Company put out a car. Allstate put out a car. DuPont put out a car. I mean, there was a Nebraska Motor Company. Everybody started car companies, just like everybody’s starting something now that can be — where you can get money from people. But there were very, very, very few people that picked the winner, got the opportunity. At Ford Motor, Henry Ford had a few partners, and he didn’t like them, so he figured a way to buy them out. That was sort of the — that was one — is sort of the beginning of the auto finance. That’s a long story, but we won’t get into that. But you couldn’t buy into Ford Motor. And, of course, General Motors became the dominant company, finally, when Henry Ford did not really make the shift from the Model T to the Model A very — it did not work very well. So, I just want to tell you, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

9. 问答环节开始

沃伦·巴菲特：说完这些，我们来连线贝基·奎克。她会向我们四人中的任何一位提问，问题她已选好，并且我们——她不会提前与我们分享。我们将进行相当长一段时间的问答。所以，你们可以给她发送问题。然后在大约三个半小时后，我们将举行年度会议，这不会花很长时间。所以，贝基，交给你了。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: And with that, we will go to Becky Quick. And she will ask any of the four of us questions she has selected, and which we don’t — she doesn’t share with us. And we will do this for a considerable period of time. So, you can be sending in questions to her. And then later on, after about three and a half hours, we will have the annual meeting, which won’t take long. So, Becky, over to you.

10. “我仍然不想买入航空业”

贝基·奎克：谢谢，沃伦。大家好。第一个问题来自安迪·西斯。他说他持有的B股远远不够。他说：“巴菲特先生，您以’别人贪婪时恐惧，别人恐惧时贪婪’而闻名。但种种迹象表明，在新冠疫情最初的几个月里，当别人最为恐惧时，伯克希尔却显得恐惧，在接近市场低点抛售了航空股，没有利用市场弥漫的恐惧以异常低廉的价格买入上市公司股票，并且在伯克希尔股价极有吸引力时对大规模回购犹豫不决。""我希望听到您对这段时间的看法，以及伯克希尔是如何做出决策的，特别是在通过《CARES法案》确保政府将为金融市场提供强有力的支持之后。”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，直到货币政策和财政政策都开始发力之后——你才知道我们面临着一个难以置信的问题。就像查理是首席文化官一样，我是伯克希尔的首席风险官。那是我的工作。我们希望做得好，但我们要确保不会做得太糟。但我们并没有卖出大量资产。我的意思是，我们是一家拥有大约7000亿美元业务的公司，有些是全资拥有，有些是部分持股。我不知道在那个时期，我们卖出的资产是否占到我们所有业务价值的1%。但航空业——特别是航空业，有点意思。我会谈到财政和货币政策方面所做的事情。但伯克希尔的一些子公司有几个人想去寻求政府的帮助。

在某些情况下，他们拥有少数股东，仅占几个百分点，他们说，哦，你知道，我们会被发布的规定以及阻止经济活动的措施害死。他们说每个人都去寻求帮助了，为什么我们不去？我说，你知道——（笑）——伯克希尔能应付。这是给那些无法应对当前情况的人的。所以，我们不申请。但航空公司是立即发生事件中最主要的受益者。他们最初获得了250亿美元，大部分流向四大航空公司，其中一部分是以拨款而非贷款的形式发放的。你知道，我认为这是很好的公共政策。我希望它能够惠及每一家餐馆、每一家干洗店和每一家真正倒闭、毫无办法的小企业。我的意思是，他们基本上是被牺牲了。但航空公司——显然，所发生的事情绝不是他们的错，无论从哪个方面来看都不是。

不像2008年和2009年，当时人们指责银行，不愿意看到它们得到救助。所以，现在是——航空公司可以在破产状态下运营。所以，情况并不像那样——我们知道，四大航空公司中有三家在此前10到15年内经历过破产——所以那些多少习惯于在破产状态下运营的航空公司，它们会继续运营。但航空公司得到帮助是完全合理的。整个航空业，你知道——看看苹果2万亿美元之类的数字——整个四大航空公司，它们总共卖了大约1000亿美元，几乎是——我的意思是，这是一个非常、非常小的数字——加起来，它们都远远不够格。我的意思是，它们进不了前50名。所以无论如何，它们去找了政府。它们需要政府的帮助，否则它们——其中一些会破产。实际上，国会，还有（财政部长）史蒂夫·姆努钦，他们决定航空公司应该得到帮助，我对此完全没有异议。

但想象一下，如果伯克希尔是它们每家10%的股东，就像过去那样，它们会说：“让伯克希尔来承担吧。“（笑）这就像我们的一个——它们可能会——如果它们有一个持有8%或9%股份的非常、非常、非常富有的股东，结果可能会非常、非常、非常不同。但当它们去找政府时，它们没有这样的股东。所以，我们的——你可能得不到同样的结果。事实上，我认为很可能不会。我的意思是，我现在就能想象出头条新闻。你知道，因为你已经看到一些公司拿了1亿、2亿美元的头条，它们其实并不需要。其中一些公司还回去了——大多数都还回去了。但你实际上看到的结果可能与我们保留股票时的结果不同。但无论如何，一个实际售价不到1000亿美元的行业损失了一大笔钱。它们损失了未来的盈利能力。

我的意思是，现在，你知道，国际旅行还没有恢复。但我想说，总的来说，经济复苏的情况远比你能有把握地说的要好得多。所以，我们当时不喜欢在银行里放那么多钱。所以我削减了一些银行投资。但基本上，我们的净销售额大约在1%到1.5%之间。回过头来看，你知道，当时买入会更好。但是——我不认为这是伯克希尔历史上的伟大时刻。但同时，根据会计准则，我们的净资产比美国任何公司都多。我们拥有6000到7000亿美元总体不错的业务。而且我认为，正如我所想的，我认为航空业因为我们抛售而变得更好，我祝他们好运。但我仍然不想买入航空业（笑）。国际——人们真的想要——他们因为个人原因想要旅行，而商务旅行又是另一回事。

而且，我们通过持有美国运通19%的股份以及拥有为航空业提供服务的精密铸件公司，对商务旅行有相当大的风险敞口。所以，我们在航空旅行上仍有很大的投资，很大的投入。但我们祝愿四大航空公司一切顺利。我认为他们的管理层在此期间做得非常好。

原文

BECKY QUICK: Thanks, Warren. And hello to everybody. This first question that came in, came in from Andy Cies. He says he’s the owner of not nearly enough B shares. He says, “Mr. Buffett, you’re well known for saying to be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. But, by all appearances, Berkshire was fearful when others were most fearful in the early months of COVID, dumping airline stocks at or near the low, not taking advantage of the fear gripping the market to buy shares of public companies at exceptional discounts, and being hesitant to buy back significant amounts of Berkshire stock at very attractive prices. “I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts surrounding this time and how Berkshire approached its decision making, specifically after it was assured, through the CARES Act, that the government would provide a robust backstop to the financial markets.”

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, it wasn’t until late — until both monetary and fiscal policy kicked in — well, you knew we had an incredible problem. And I am, just as Charlie is the chief culture officer, I’m the chief risk officer of Berkshire. That’s my job. We hope we do well, but we want to be sure we don’t do terribly. But we didn’t sell a substantial amount. I mean we’re a company with six, probably $700 billion worth of businesses, some we own in their entirety, some we own a piece of. And I don’t know whether we were sellers of maybe 1% of the value of all the businesses we had at that period. But the airline — it’s kind of interesting with the airline businesses, in particular. And I’ll get to what was done in fiscal and monetary policy. But we had a few people at various subsidiaries of Berkshire that wanted to go in for help from the government.

And, in some cases, they had minority shareholders who owned a few percent, and they said, well, this — you know, we’re going to get killed by what’s happening with the regulations that are being put out and that were stopping the economy. And they said everybody’s going in for them, and why don’t we go in? I said, you know — (laughs) — Berkshire can handle it. This is for people that can’t handle what’s happening. And so, we’re not applying. But the airlines were the most prominent beneficiaries of what took place immediately. They got 25 billion, initially, most of which went to the big four airlines, and some of which went is as grants, not loans. And, you know, I think that was fine public policy. I think it — I wished it could go to every restaurant and dry cleaner and every small business that really was out of business and had no — I mean they were made toast of, you know, basically. But the airlines — clearly, what happened was not their fault in any way, shape, or form.

It wasn’t like 2008 and ‘09 when people blamed the banks and hated to see them helped. So, it was — Now, airlines operate in bankruptcy. So, it isn’t like that — three of the four big ones, as we know, went through bankruptcy within the previous 10 or 15 — so the airlines that were kind of used to operating in bankruptcy, they would have kept operating. But it was perfectly proper for the airlines to be helped. The entire airline business, you know — you look at these figures of 2 trillion for Apple and so on — the entire big four airlines, they sold for about $100 billion, almost — I mean it’s a very, very small — combined, they wouldn’t come close to making the cut. I mean, they wouldn’t be in the top 50. So anyway, they went into the government. They needed the government help, or they needed — or they would go bankrupt, some of them. And really the Congress, but (Treasury Secretary) Steve Mnuchin, too, they decided they deserved the help, which I do not quarrel with at all.

But imagine if Berkshire was the 10% holder, which they had been, of everyone in the airlines, they said, “Take it up in Berkshire.” (Laughs) It’s — it would be like one of our — they would have had — they might have very well had a very, very, very different result if they’d had a very, very, very rich shareholder that owned 8 or 9%. And they didn’t have that. You know, when they went in. So, our — you might not have gotten the same result. In fact, I would think you probably wouldn’t. I mean, I can just see the headlines now. I mean, you know, because you’ve seen the headlines on some companies that took a hundred million or two, you know, and really didn’t need it. And some of them gave it back — most of them gave it back. But you were looking — you’re actually looking at probably a different result than if we’d kept our stock. But in any event, an industry that was really selling for less than a hundred billion dollars lost a significant amount of money. They lost prospective earning power.

I mean right now, they’re — you know, international travel’s not come back. But I would say, overall, to — the economic recovery has gone far better than you could say with any assurance. So, we didn’t like having as much money as we had in banks at that time. So I cut back some of the bank investment. But basically, our net sales were about 1% or one and a half percent. And looking back, you know, it would have been better to be buying. But what — I do not consider it a great moment in Berkshire’s history. But also, we’ve got more net worth than any company in the United States, under accounting principles. And we’ve got six or 700 billion of generally good businesses. And I think, as I think, I think the airline business has done better because we’ve sold, and I wish them well. But I still wouldn’t want to buy the airline business (laughs). International — people really want to — they want to travel for personal reasons, and business travel is another thing.

And we’ve got a big exposure to business travel, of course, through the fact that we own 19% of American Express and we own Precision Castparts, which services the air business. So, we’ve still got a big investment in air travel, a big commitment to it. But we wish the big four the best. And I think their managements have done a very good job during this period.

标题：2021年股东大会

第2部分，共5部分

沃伦·巴菲特：——是为了满足那些根本不持有任何股票的人，而且在很多情况下，我可以看出他们甚至没有读过我们的年报。你知道，正如我在年报中指出的那样，我从未——没有人会猜到这一点。人们以为我们是一群持有股票之类的人。但根据GAAP会计准则，伯克希尔·哈撒韦拥有的物业、厂房、设备、商业基础设施——总统周三晚上刚刚谈到过——基础设施及其重要性——按GAAP衡量——比美国任何其他公司都多。我们比那些全国最大公司名单上的任何一家都多，而且我们远超它们。所以，我们对推动国家运转的东西进行了投资。州际间15%的货物通过我们的铁路运输。我们还在建设输电线路。

我们从2006年或2007年开始规划如何关闭燃煤电厂，但——你不能在电力从发电地输送到用户之前就关闭燃煤电厂。如果你要在怀俄明州发电，然后输送到拉斯维加斯或其他地方，而以前那里附近有燃煤电厂，因为那是50年或75年前的做法，你最好先建好输电线路。让风在怀俄明州吹，而人们在拉斯维加斯开灯，这是没有意义的。所以，我们比人们讨论这个问题要早得多就开始着手输电规划了。我们已经做了——我们在年报中提到有160亿左右的项目正在进行中。自年报发布以来，我们又增加了20亿。全国没有哪家公用事业公司能接近这个数字。你跟他们说说。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: — to satisfy people who actually don’t own any stock themselves and, in many cases, I can tell they haven’t read our annual report, even. You know, we, as I point out in the annual report, and I never — nobody would have guessed this. People think we’re a bunch of guys that own stocks and all that sort of thing. Berkshire Hathaway owns, by GAAP accounting, more property plant equipment, business infrastructure — which the president just got through talking about Wednesday night — infrastructure, the importance of it — we have, measured by GAAP accounting, more than any other company in the United States. We have more than any of those companies that are on the list of the largest companies in the country, but we — and we’ve got it by a substantial margin. So, we have an investment in what makes this country move and work. Fifteen percent of the interstate goods move on our railroad. We’re building transmission.

And we started, in 2006 or ’07, planning how we would close coal plants, but — You can’t close coal plants until you get the electricity from where it’s generated to the customer. And if you’re going to generate it in Wyoming, and it’s going to go to Las Vegas or someplace, and previously they had a coal plant near the place, because that was the way it was done 50 years ago or 75 years ago, you’d better have the transmission. There’s no sense having the wind blow in Wyoming and people turn around and turn on the lights in Las Vegas. So, we went at the transmission plan question a lot earlier than people were talking about it. And we’ve done — we said 16 billion or whatever it was in the annual report that we — underway. And we just added 2 billion since the annual report came out. And there’s no utility in the country that’s coming anywhere close to that. Tell them a little bit about it.

16. 阿贝尔详述伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源在气候变化方面的行动

格雷格·阿贝尔：当然，沃伦，谢谢。实际上，正如沃伦提到的，当你想到伯克希尔时，BHE和BNSF拥有我们最显著的碳足迹。沃伦，你提到了我们自2007年以来一直提供的披露。我确实调出了两份投资者演示材料，一份是2007年的，另一份是我们2021年最新的。所以，如果我们能调出幻灯片BHE-1，我认为它会突出显示，自2007年以来，我们一直为所谓的固定收益投资者做投资者演示，我们每年都这么做，直到2021年。我们每年向董事会提供非常相似的披露，并讨论伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源的脱碳计划。现在，有趣的是。如果你回到2007年的固定收益会议——当时我们确实在开会——我们持有第三方债务、资本债务，这些是由我们的公用事业公司筹集的。这是一种传统的资本结构，用于我们的受监管实体，以管理我们对客户的总成本。

所以，我们有投资者。正如我们强调的，我们每年都会向他们演示。如果你回到2007年的那次投资者会议，很有趣。在那次演示中，我们强调了气候变化是一个根本风险。我们讨论了什么才是好的政策。我们讨论了创新。我们讨论了市场转型以及设定目标的重要性，当时就是这样。我们还为我们的行业提出了建议。然后，从那时起，每年我们都提交了计划，实际上围绕BHE中每个业务以及我们每个受监管实体如何转型的战略。整个转型围绕脱碳展开，代表我们在许多州的利益相关者、我们服务的客户管理该风险，并最终为伯克希尔·哈撒韦的股东管理该风险。现在，当你浏览这些演示时，有一个共同主题。沃伦已经提到了。你必须先打好基础。这个基础就是建设高压输电系统。

沃伦在他今年的年报和致股东信中提到了这一点。他强调，在伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源，我们仅在西部就将花费180亿美元用于输电。其中50亿已经花掉了。未来十年将花费剩余的130亿美元。这个基础使我们能够建设额外的可再生能源，并将其输送到我们在伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源服务的许多州，甚至更远。我想强调，我们已经建立了输电基础设施。我们一直在建设可再生能源。如果你看看截至2020年底的投资，我们已经投资了300亿美元——或者超过300亿美元——用于可再生能源，并彻底改变了我们业务的运营方式，即我们的公用事业业务。它们一直在脱碳，并为我们的利益相关者和客户提供有价值的产品。我认为结果非常惊人，我给你一些参考点。如果你回到2015年，当时美国

正在讨论——对不起——加入《巴黎协定》，设定了非常具体的目标。在这些目标设定之前，伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源和其他12家公司，包括苹果、谷歌、沃尔玛，承诺支持巴黎协定，需要设定目标。伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源是2015年做出承诺的公司之一。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，当时还有多少其他公用事业公司？

格雷格·阿贝尔：对，沃伦。当时没有其他能源公司做出任何类型的承诺。我很高兴地报告，我们做出了各种承诺。其中之一是，当时我们已在可再生能源上投资了150亿美元，并承诺总额达到300亿美元。好吧，我们现在已经远远超过了这个总额。所以，我们对减少业务碳排放做出了明确承诺。我们专注于非常明确、可量化的结果。我认为这非常重要。如果你看看最初美国政府在《巴黎协定》中设定的标准，目标是相对于2005年减少26%到28%的碳足迹。这是到2025年的减排期。他们希望达到26%到28%的减排水平。我们在BHE承诺了这一点。我很高兴地报告，沃伦——我们已向董事会汇报——我们在2020年实现了这一目标。所以，我们兑现了承诺。我们履行了《巴黎协定》下的承诺。

然后，如果你快进到现在或已经发生的关于重新加入《巴黎协定》的讨论，现任政府提议，同样以2005年为基准，到2030年的减排目标应为50%到52%。再次，我很高兴向我们的股东汇报，并向我们的董事会做了简报，但伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源将在2030年前实现这一目标。我们的减排将达到《巴黎协定》的目标。同样，我们能实现这一点，是因为我们通过输电建立了基础，即沃伦强调的大规模投资，然后在此基础上对可再生能源进行了非常具体的投资。我还有一张增量幻灯片，希望能把所有内容整合起来，那就是BHE-2。因为人们在讨论碳排放时，通常会提到燃煤机组，你有多少台，关闭了多少台。毫无疑问，这可以是一个重要的指标。但这是一个转型过程。

我们非常专注于我们拥有的三个公用事业公司以及我们在幻灯片上强调的那些，通过输电从现有发电机组转向可再生能源。我们没有过度依赖转向天然气。这是一项明确的策略。因此，随着时间的推移，我们的燃煤机组将退役。我很高兴地向我们的股东报告，截至2020年，我们已关闭了16个机组。从2021年到2030年，将再关闭16个机组。然后到2049年底，我们剩下的14个机组将关闭。到那时，我们所有的燃煤机组都将关闭。这张幻灯片只是我们每个业务部门为促进这一转型所采取的所有活动的汇总，真正转向使这些机组脱碳。我说过，首先代表我们的客户以及他们在各州的众多利益相关者使我们的业务脱碳。同样重要的是，代表我们的伯克希尔·哈撒韦股东使这些业务脱碳。

我唯一想补充的是，作为伯克希尔内部碳足迹第二大的实体——当你把BNSF和BHE结合起来，你谈到的就是伯克希尔内部主要的排放量——BNSF在管理其碳排放方面也非常积极。他们承诺到2030年设定基于科学的目标。同样，这些目标将再次与《巴黎协定》保持一致。我们已经看到其他参与者，或其中一些，在行业中做出的承诺。我们的承诺将非常相似，即与《巴黎协定》保持一致。但到2030年，BNSF的碳足迹将减少30%。再次，如果你看看我们的——这已经公开披露。这在BNSF的网站上。我讨论的关于BHE的一切都在他们的网站上，以8-K文件提交，我们的所有股东都可以完全访问。

所以，当我从伯克希尔股东的角度来看待这个问题时，我真的相信这个风险正在得到良好的管理，我们正在为长期发展做好准备。谢谢，沃伦。

原文

16. Abel details Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s actions on climate change

GREG ABEL: Sure, Warren. Thank you. And, really, as Warren touched on, BHE and BNSF have our — have the significant carbon footprints when you think of Berkshire. And Warren, you touched on the disclosure that we’ve provided in the past going all the way back to 2007. I did pull those two investor presentations, one from 2007, and then our most recent one in 2021. So, if we could pull up BHE-1 as a slide, I think it would just highlight, going all the way back to 2007, we’ve been doing investor presentations for what we call our fixed-income investors, and we’ve done that through — every year through 2021. We’ve provided very similar disclosures to our board on an annual basis and had discussions around Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s plans to decarbonize. Now, it’s interesting. If you go back to the 2007 fixed-income conference — and we are having a conference at that point in time — we have third-party debt, capital debt, that our utilities raise. It’s a traditional capital structure used across our regulated entities to manage our total cost to the customer.

So, we have investors. We present to them, as we’re highlighting, on an annual basis. And if you go back to that 2007 investor conference, it’s interesting. In that presentation, we’re highlighting climate change, that it’s a fundamental risk. And we discussed what good policy would be. We discussed innovation. We discussed market transformation and the importance of — and the importance of setting targets, at that point in time. And we had recommendations for our industry. And then, since then, each year, we’ve presented, really, a plan and a strategy around how each of our businesses in BHE, but each of our regulated entities, how they’re going to transform. And the whole transformation has been around decarbonization, managing that risk on behalf of our stakeholders in our many states, our customers that we serve, and ultimately managing that risk for Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders. Now, as you go through those presentations, there’s a common theme. And Warren touched on it already. You have to build the foundation first. And that foundation is around building the high-voltage — the transmission system.

Warren touched on it in his annual report this year and letter. He highlighted that at Berkshire Hathaway Energy, we’ll be spending, just in the West, $18 billion on transmission. Five billion of that’s already been spent as we sit here today. And that $13 billion will be spent over the next ten years. That’s the foundation that then allows us to build incremental renewable resources and move it to our many states that we serve at Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and well beyond that. I would highlight, well — we’ve been building the transmission infrastructure in place. We have been building renewables. If you look at our investment through the end of 2020, we’ve invested $30 billion — or in excess of $30 billion — into renewables and have really completely changed the way our businesses do business, i.e. our utility businesses. They’ve been decarbonizing and delivering a valued product to our stakeholders, to our customers. And I think the — and I think the results are really amazing when you look at them, and I’ll give you a couple of reference points. If you go back to 2015, when the U.S.

was discussing — excuse me — joining the Paris Agreement, very specific targets were set. Prior to those targets being set, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and 12 other companies, including the Apples of the world, Google, Walmart, committed to Paris, and that targets needed to be set. Berkshire Hathaway Energy was one of those companies in 2015.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, how many other utilities were there?

GREG ABEL: Right. Warren, there were no other energy companies that made any type of commitment at that point in time. I’m happy to report we made a variety of pledges. Well, one of them was, at that point, we’d invested $15 billion in renewables, and that we would commit 30 billion in total. Well, we far exceeded that total now. So, there’s been a clear commitment to reduce — decarbonizing our businesses. We have focused on very identifiable, quantifiable outcomes. And I think that’s very important. If you look at the standards that were set with the — that were the original U.S. government’s commitments associated with the Paris Agreement, the target was 26% to 28% reductions in carbon footprints going back to 2005. So, that’s the reduction period through 2025. And they wanted the 26% to 28% reduction level. We committed to that at BHE. And I’m happy to report, Warren — and we’ve briefed our board — we achieved that in 2020. So, we met our pledge. And we met the commitment under the Paris Agreement.

And then, if you fast forward to the discussions that are occurring right now, or have occurred, around rejoining the Paris Agreement, the current administration has proposed that, again, using 2005 as a starting point, that the emission goals for reduction should be 50% to 52% by 2030. Again, I’m happy to brief to our shareholders, and in briefings we’ve provided to our board, but Berkshire Hathaway Energy will achieve that by 2030. Our reductions will hit the Paris Agreement target. Again, the reason we can do it is we’ve built the foundation through transmission, the substantial investment that Warren’s highlighted, and then followed that up with very specific investments on the renewable side. I’ve one incremental slide that, I hope, sort of pulls it all together, and that’s BHE-2. Because, as people discuss carbon, they often go to coal units, how many you own, how many have you closed. And there’s no important — there’s no question that can be an important metric. But it is a transition.

And we have very much focused across the three utilities we own and the ones we’ve highlighted on the slide, is to transition from our existing fleet to renewables, using transmission. We have not become overly dependent on transitioning to gas. That’s been a clear strategy. So, over a period of time, our coal units will retire. I’m happy to report — or pleased to report — to our shareholders that through 2020, we’ve closed 16 units to date. If you look at — from 2021 through 2030, there will be an incremental 16 units closed. And then if you go through to the end of 2049, our remaining 14 units will be closed. And at that point in time, all our coal units are closed. That slide is just an aggregation of all the activities each of our business units have been taking to help facilitate that transition, and really transitioning to decarbonizing those units. And I said, decarbonizing our businesses on behalf of, first and foremost, our customers, the many stakeholders they represent in the various states. And then equally important, decarbonizing those businesses on behalf of our Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

The only other thing I would add, as it is the entity that has the second-largest carbon footprint in Berkshire — and when you combine BNSF and BHE, you’re talking the material set of emissions within Berkshire — BNSF has also been very active in managing their carbon profile. They’ve committed to have science-based targets established for 2030. So, again, those targets will, again, be consistent with the Paris Agreement. We have seen what the other participants, or some of them in the class — in the industry — that have committed to. And our commitment will be very similar, i.e. it’ll be consistent with the Paris Agreement. But it’ll be a 30% reduction in BNSF’s footprint by 2030. So, again, if you look at our — and that’s been publicly disclosed. That’s on the BNSF website. Everything I’ve discussed regarding BHE is on their website, filed in 8-Ks, completely accessible by our many shareholders.

So, when I look at it on — from the perspective of our Berkshire shareholders, I really believe this risk is being well-managed, and we are positioning ourselves for the long term. Thanks, Warren.

17. “我们在可再生能源和输电方面的投入远超任何公用事业公司”

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，顺便提一下，总统前天晚上谈到了1000亿美元的基础设施。我们很乐意花这1000亿。但他谈到的——输电实际上是个大问题。因为你需要把阳光充足和风力强劲的地方的能源输送到人口集中区。还要跨州，穿过人们的地盘（笑），到处都是。不知道联邦政府是否有更好的运气，直接说就该这么做，然后强推下去——我是说，他们可能有这个权力。他们可能做得比我们快。另一方面，我们很乐意做。我们会花这1000亿。但我们能做的速度是——我们在2006年收购了PacifiCorp，在遥远的西部有很多客户，他们有燃煤电厂为他们供电。

要改变这一点，你必须要能到达风能充足的地方并输送电力。所以，有趣的是，我们公开了这些信息。我们在美国可再生能源和输电方面的投入远超任何公用事业公司。我们是从一无所有（笑）开始的，一个小业务。但那些用自己的钱购买股票的个人投资者似乎理解这一点。他们阅读报告。我们接到电话，他们说，我们想出来和你们谈谈。但我们不能忽略那100万（笑）长期以来一直信任我们、用自己的积蓄购买股票的人。我们不会给予分析师或机构优于个人的特殊待遇，这些个人基本上把他们的积蓄托付给我们，托付终身。

原文

17. “We’ve spent far more than any utility” on renewable energy and transmission

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, incidentally, I mean, the president, the other night, talked about a hundred billion for infrastructure. We’d love to spend a hundred billion. But he was talking about, you know — Transmission is really the problem, I mean, a big problem. Because you got to get from where the sun is shining and where the wind is blowing, essentially, to concentrations of population. And it’ll be whether the — you know, you cross state lines and you go through people’s backyards (laughs) and everywhere. Whether the federal government has better luck in just saying this is the way it’s going to be done and ramming it down the throats of where they go and getting it done — I mean, they may have that power. And they’ll be able to do it faster than we are. On the other hand, we’d love to do it. We’ll spend the a hundred billion. But the speed at which we can do it is — we bought PacifiCorp in 2006, and we had a bunch of customers out in the far West, and they had coal plants serving them.

And to change that, you’ve got to be able to go to where wind blows and deliver it. So, it’s — But it is interesting that we have published this information. We’ve spent far more than any utility, in terms of renewables and transmission in the United States. And we started with a nothing — (laughs) you know, a little operation. But the people who bought the stock with their own money, the individuals, they seem to understand it. And they read the reports. And we get calls, and they say, well, we want to come out and talk to you about it. Well, we’re not talking to them and ignoring the million people (laughs) that have been with us over time and bought it with their own money. We will not give special treatment to — either to analysts or to the — to institutions over the individuals that, basically, trust us with their savings for their lifetime.

18. 保险子公司已为“不愉快的意外”做好准备

贝基·奎克：这个问题是给沃伦和阿吉特的。来自巴拿马的伯克希尔长期股东费尔南多·刘易斯，他说：“作为打算继续持股数十年的股东，我最担心的是可能因超出预期的保险损失而产生的亏损。我们在其他伟大公司身上看到过，承保错误最终摧毁了之前被视为典范的业务。虽然我理解伯克希尔的独特文化，保险部门人才济济，但这仍是一个让我担忧的风险。作为股东，我们很多人现在感到放心，是因为有幸有巴菲特先生、芒格先生和贾殷先生审视这些交易。然而，总有一天情况不再如此。从长期来看，伯克希尔是否应该专注于像GEICO这样的简单、短尾保险业务，并减少某些长尾风险业务的规模，这是否合理？我想澄清的是，我对所有建立了全球最佳保险集团的伯克希尔员工怀有最大的敬意和感激。我相信我们有能力在未来几十年保持这一领域的领先地位。这个问题关注的是某些保险业务固有的不透明性和风险。”

沃伦·巴菲特：阿吉特，你想先来，还是……？

阿吉特·贾殷：显然，合同确定性对我们保险业来说是一个问题。这个问题不仅涉及你提到的长尾业务，甚至也影响短尾财产险业务。最近的例子是业务中断险，这是企业购买和出售的任何财产险保单的组成部分。每次我们签发合同时，都存在风险，要么因为合同书写得草率，要么因为我们都必须遵守的监管环境，合同中的文字可能被曲解。通常被曲解时，结果往往对保险业不利，而不是有利。所以，这是一个风险。这是一个未知的风险，不知道它会多糟糕。我希望我们在定价时考虑到了这一点。如果你们愿意，我们会为未知的未知留出一些余地。我们尝试按主要风险类别汇总我们的敞口。希望能让我们有所安心，对真实敞口有所限制。

但毫无疑问，监管机构在业务的经济性方面发挥着非常重要的作用，尤其是在美国，我们需要与50个州的监管机构打交道，在定价、合同等方面——

沃伦·巴菲特：保险业的大部分意外，几乎全部，都是不愉快的。我的意思是（笑），你预先收取保费，那是愉快的。然后从那时起，你会遇到一些非常有想象力的损失。还有一些是你已经承担的。我们愿意在可能的最大损失范围内——我们认为，我们愿意在单一事件中损失100亿美元。我们希望为此得到非常充分的补偿。我们有足够的资源来应对。但如果我们在只能损失5000万美元（笑）的事情上损失了100亿美元，那可不行。你知道，当前的情况，比如美国童子军，我认为最初有1100起索赔，现在仅——

阿吉特·贾殷：不，不。现在接近10万起了。

沃伦·巴菲特：你知道，而且——

阿吉特·贾殷：增加了50倍。

沃伦·巴菲特：这些索赔可以追溯到1950年或1960年。而且有人在广告征集索赔。所以，突然之间，你得到大量索赔。我敢肯定很多索赔是有效的。我也敢肯定很多是无效的。而且——

阿吉特·贾殷：嗯——

沃伦·巴菲特：——你怎么区分呢？（笑）

阿吉特·贾殷：是的，这又回到了你刚才提出的问题。为什么索赔数量从不到2000飙升到接近10万，是因为诉讼时效已过，但在几个州，如果不是大多数州的话，它们单方面延长了提出索赔的截止日期，将其延长了几年。结果，出现了更多的索赔，由资金充足的原告律师资助。这导致索赔数量激增。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。保险业会有很多不愉快的意外。但我们有一个非常——我对此很偏心。但我不会——（笑）——我认为我们拥有世界上最好的保险业务。阿吉特是创建它的人。GEICO的人——我们收购了它——随着时间的推移，他们也做出了出色的贡献。但阿吉特是它的交响乐指挥。（笑）

原文

18. Insurance subsidiaries are prepared for “unpleasant surprises”

BECKY QUICK: This question is for Warren and Ajit. It comes from Fernando Lewis, a long-time Berkshire shareholder from Panama, who says, “As a shareholder that intends to remain so for many decades, my biggest concern is around possible losses arising from higher-than-expected insurance losses. “We’ve seen this in other great companies where underwriting mistakes end up crippling businesses previously considered exemplar. “While I understand that Berkshire’s culture is unique and the insurance division is full of talented individuals, this is a risk that concerns me. “Many of us shareholders feel comfortable now, given the privilege of having Mr. Buffett, Mr. Munger, and Mr. Jain looking at these deals. However, there will be a day when this is no longer the case. Is it reasonable to think that over the long term, Berkshire should focus on plain, vanilla short-tail insurance businesses like GEICO and reduce the size of some long-tail risk? “I want to clarify that I have the most respect and gratitude for all of Berkshire employees that have built the best insurance group in the world.

I’m confident we have this talent to remain leaders in this field for decades to come. This is focused on the inherent opaqueness and risk of some insurance lines.”

WARREN BUFFETT: Ajit, do you want to lead off, or —?

AJIT JAIN: I mean, clearly contract certainty is an issue for us in the insurance industry. It is an issue that cuts across not only the long-tail line that you mentioned, but even short-tail property focus lines. The most recent example is business interruption, which is an integral part of any property insurance policy that is bought and sold by corporations. It is a risk every time we issue a contract that, either because of sloppiness in terms of how that contract is written, or because of the regulatory environment we all have to live in, that the words in the contract may be tortured. And normally when they are tortured, they end up going against the insurance industry, not in their favor. So, it is a risk. It’s an unknown risk, in terms of how bad it can be. I hope we price for it when we price for the product. We throw something for the unknown unknowns, if you will. And we try and aggregate our exposures by major risk categories. Hopefully, that’ll give us some comfort, in terms of having some boundaries on what the exposure really can be.

But there’s no question the regulators play a very important role, in terms of the economics of the business, especially in the U.S., where the 50 state regulators who we have to deal with, in terms of pricing, in terms of contracts, in terms of —

WARREN BUFFETT: Most of those surprises in insurance, practically all of them, are unpleasant. I mean, (laughs), you get the premium up front. That’s pleasant. And then from there on, you get some very imaginative losses that come through. And you get some that you’ve taken on. We are willing to lose, in terms of, sort of, the outside limit, we think, well, we’re willing to lose $10 billion in a single event. And we want to get paid very appropriately for that. But we’ve got the resources to do it. And if — But we don’t want to lose 10 billion in something where we only thought we could (laughs) lose 50 million or something like that. And, you know, the current situation, for example, with The Boy Scouts of America, you know, they — I think there were 11-hundred claims, or something like that, that have been filed and now, there’s 17,000 just in —

AJIT JAIN: No, no. They’re close to a hundred thousand now.

WARREN BUFFETT: You know, and —

AJIT JAIN: Up by 50 times.

WARREN BUFFETT: And these go back to 1950 or 1960. And you’ve got people advertising for claims. And so, all of a sudden, you get a lot of claims. I’m sure a lot of the claims are valid. I’m sure a lot of them are invalid. And —

AJIT JAIN: Well —

WARREN BUFFETT: — and how in the world do you pick out the difference? (Laughs)

AJIT JAIN: Yeah, and it goes back to the issue that you just raised. The reason why this number of claims have skyrocketed from less than 2,000 to close to a hundred thousand is because the statute of limitations had expired, but in several states, if not in most states, they have unilaterally extended the deadline by when you can make claims, and expanded it by a few years. As a result of which, a lot more claims have appeared, funded by plaintiff lawyers who are now very well-funded. And that results in claims just skyrocketing.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. You get a lot of unpleasant surprises in insurance. But we’ve got a very — I’m very biased on this. But I wouldn’t — (laughs) — I think we’ve got the best insurance operation in the world. And Ajit is the guy that created it. And the people at GEICO — we bought that — and they did wonderful things over time to contribute their part of it, too, and other people have. But Ajit is the symphony conductor of it. (Laughs)

19. “沃伦和我没必要在每件小事上都达成一致”

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自亨利·周。他说：“看起来查理和沃伦最近有一些不同的看法，比如Costco和富国银行。这对伯克希尔意味着什么？”

沃伦·巴菲特：查理？（笑）

查理·芒格：嗯，我们没那么不同。Costco是我非常欣赏的一家公司，我很享受与它的长期合作。而且——但我也爱伯克希尔——所以，幸运的是，没有冲突。沃伦和我没必要在每件小事上都达成一致。我们相处得相当好。

沃伦·巴菲特：我们——（笑）——比相当好还要好——我们从未有过争执——

查理·芒格：是的。

沃伦·巴菲特：——在62年里。并不是我们在所有事情上都同意。但我们确实——在62年里，我们从未对彼此生气过。（笑）

查理·芒格：不，不，不——

沃伦·巴菲特：就是没发生过。（笑）

原文

19. “Warren and I don’t have to agree on every damn little thing we do”

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from Henry Zhou. And he says, “It looks like Charlie and Warren have some different opinions recently, like Costco and Wells Fargo. Where’s that taking Berkshire?”

WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie? (Laughs)

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, we’re not all that different. And Costco is a company I very much admire, and I have enjoyed my long association with it, that company. And — but I love Berkshire, too, — so. And luckily, there’s no conflict. And Warren and I don’t have to agree on every damn little thing we do. We’ve gotten along pretty well.

WARREN BUFFETT: We have — (laughs) — better than pretty — we have never had an argument —

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah.

WARREN BUFFETT: — in 62 years. And it’s not that we agree on everything. But we’ve literally — in 62 years, we’ve never gotten mad at each other. (Laughs)

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, no, no —

WARREN BUFFETT: It just doesn’t happen. (Laughs)

20. 他们不像巴菲特和芒格那样亲密，但阿贝尔和贾殷有良好的工作关系

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自杰森·普劳纳。他说：“贾殷先生和阿贝尔先生，这个问题是问你们的。伯克希尔成功的特征之一是巴菲特先生和芒格先生之间的牢固纽带，他们因为有彼此而能更好地管理公司。作为伯克希尔·哈撒韦下一代明确的领导者，能否告诉我们你们如何互动，或者你们会向其他哪些非常有能力的伯克希尔经理人寻求建议？”

沃伦·巴菲特：这个问题是给谁的？

贝基·奎克：格雷格和阿吉特——

查理·芒格：阿吉特。

沃伦·巴菲特：好的。

阿吉特·贾殷：嗯，毫无疑问，沃伦和查理的关系是独一无二的，不可能被复制，当然不会被我和格雷格复制，不会。我想不出有多少对其他搭档能复制它。尽管如此，格雷格和我，至少从我个人的角度来看，我确信格雷格会为自己说话，我们认识很久了。我肯定在专业层面和个人层面都非常尊重格雷格的能力。我们没有像沃伦和查理那样频繁互动。但每个季度，我们会讨论彼此的业务，了解最新情况。然后在季度中，虽然我们可能没有正式的会议，但每当出现与保险相关的问题时，格雷格会打电话给我。

同样，如果出现与格雷格负责的非保险业务相关的任何问题，比如最近我的一个客户在寻找买家，我打电话给格雷格，讨论如何最好地进行。所以，这是会发生的。在每个季度，我们每季度都会交换意见。我们两人之间的关系运作得非常好。我希望它能保持下去。格雷格？

格雷格·阿贝尔：是的，阿吉特，说得好。正如他提到的，沃伦和查理有着非凡的关系。但我为我们与阿吉特的关系感到非常自豪。正如阿吉特所说，这种关系是多年来发展的。我有机会——或者我有机会——看到阿吉特如何经营保险业务。正如沃伦和查理强调的，没有人比他做得更好。所以，我有机会观察这一点。同样，多年来，这种关系不断建立并变得越来越牢固。正如阿吉特所说，我对阿吉特怀有最高的个人和职业敬意。尽管互动方式可能与沃伦和查理的方式不同，但正如阿吉特提到的，我们之间有定期的对话，既涉及我们两个业务和部门内的机会，也包括如果我们看到对方应该知道的异常情况，我们确保总是互相跟进。但这还不止于此。阿吉特非常了解伯克希尔的文化。

我坚信我也了解。每当我们任何一个业务中出现任何异常情况，我都会打电话给阿吉特，说：“你觉得我们采取这种方法合适吗？它是否与你的想法一致，与你对保险的思考方式一致？”所以，这不仅仅是讨论业务，还在于维护我们在伯克希尔拥有的非凡文化并在此基础上发展。所以，非常幸运能有阿吉特作为同事，我非常享受每天与他共事。谢谢。

原文

20. They’re not as close as Buffett and Munger, but Abel and Jain have a good working relationship

BECKY QUICK: This question is from Jason Plawner. And he says, “Mr. Jain and Mr. Abel, this question is for you. “One of the successful features of Berkshire is the strong bond between Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, who manage the company better because they had each other. “As you two are clear leaders of the next generation at Berkshire Hathaway, can you please tell us about how you interact with each other, or some of the other incredibly competent Berkshire managers you seek for advice?”

WARREN BUFFETT: Who’s that directed at?

BECKY QUICK: Greg and Ajit —

CHARLIE MUNGER: Ajit.

WARREN BUFFETT: OK.

AJIT JAIN: Well, there’s no question that the relationship Warren has with Charlie is unique, and it’s not going to be duplicated, certainly not by me and Greg, no. I can’t think of very many other pairs that can duplicate it. Nevertheless, both Greg and I, at least certainly from my perspective, and I’m sure Greg will speak for himself, we’ve known each other for a very long time. I certainly have a lot of respect, both at a professional level and a personal level, in terms of what Greg’s abilities are. We do not interact with each other as often as Warren and Charlie do. But every quarter, we will talk to each other about our respective businesses and update each other on our respective businesses. And then, during the course of the quarter, while we may not have any formal sort of meetings, if you will, but every time a question comes up which is related to insurance, Greg will pick up the phone and call me.

By the same token, if there’s any question that comes up relating to any of the non-insurance operations that Greg is in charge of, like we had recently where a client of mine was looking for — trying to find a buyer. And I picked up the phone and talked to Greg, and we talked about, you know, how best to proceed. So, that happens. And during the course of the quarter, every quarter we exchange notes. And we have a perfectly well-functioning relationship between the two of us. And I hope it remains that way. Greg?

GREG ABEL: Yes. Ajit, well said. And as he touched on, Warren and Charlie have an exceptional relationship. But I’m very proud of the relationship Ajit and I’ve had. And as Ajit touched on, it’s developed over many years. We’ve had the opportunity — or I’ve had the opportunity — to see how Ajit’s run the insurance business. And as Warren highlight and Charlie highlights, there’s no one better at it. So, I’ve had the opportunity to observe that. And then, equally over the years, that relationship has just built and become greater and greater. And as Ajit touched on, couldn’t have more personal respect for Ajit, both personally and professionally. And even though the interaction may be different than, say, how Warren and Charlie do it, as Ajit touched on, there is a regular dialogue, both around opportunities within our two businesses and units, both if we see something unusual that the other individual should hear, we make sure we’re always following up with each other. But it goes beyond that. Ajit has a great understanding of the Berkshire culture.

I strongly believe I do, too. And any time we see anything unusual in one of our businesses, it’s Ajit who I’m going to call and say, are you comfortable that we’re taking this approach? Is it going to be consistent with how you think about it, how you think about it in insurance? So, it goes — it goes beyond just discussing the businesses, but that maintaining the exceptional culture we have at Berkshire and building upon that. So, very fortunate to have Ajit as a colleague, and immensely enjoy working with him every day. Thank you.

21. 巴菲特为BNSF辩护，称其与联合太平洋公司具有竞争力

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自格伦·格林伯格。是关于GEICO和BNSF的利润率。他说：“为什么这些公司的利润率显著低于其主要竞争对手前进保险和联合太平洋？能否期待现任管理层至少达到同等的利润率？”

沃伦·巴菲特：是GEICO和——？

贝基·奎克：BNSF。

沃伦·巴菲特：哦。实际上，如果你看第一季度的数据，你会发现伯克希尔·哈撒韦/联合太平洋的比较（笑）好了很多。凯蒂·法默在BNSF做得非常出色。五年或十年后，BNSF和联合太平洋谁有更高的收益，这将是一个有趣的问题。我们过去有过更高的收益。联合太平洋超过了我们。你可以看第一季度——他们认为自己有稍好一些的业务区域。我们认为我们也有稍好一些的业务区域。我们知道我们比联合太平洋更大。我们的业务量会超过他们。我们应该赚得比他们多一点，但过去几年没有。不过，它是一家非常棒的铁路公司。我对它感觉非常好。

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21. Buffett defends BNSF as competitive with Union Pacific

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from Glenn Greenberg. He says — it’s on the profitability of GEICO and BNSF. He said, “Why do these companies operate at meaningfully lower profit margins than their main competitors, Progressive and Union Pacific? Can we expect current managements to at least achieve parity?”

WARREN BUFFETT: Was it GEICO and — ?

BECKY QUICK: BNSF.

WARREN BUFFETT: Oh. Actually, if you look at the first quarter figures, you’ll see that the Berkshire Hathaway/Union Pacific comparison has gotten (laughs) quite better. Katie Farmer’s doing an incredible job at BNSF. And it’ll be an interesting question, whether five years from now or ten years from now, BNSF or Union Pacific has the higher earnings. We’ve had higher earnings in the past. Union Pacific passed us. The first quarter, you can look at, and, you know — they think they’ve got the — a slightly better franchise. We think we’ve got a slightly better franchise. We know we’re larger than Union Pacific. I mean, we will do more business than they do. And we should make a little more money than they do, but we haven’t in the last few years. But, it’s quite a railroad. I feel very good about that.

22. “我们将拥有老龄化速度最慢的管理层”

沃伦·巴菲特：我应该回到之前那个问题。你知道，人们谈论伯克希尔的老龄化管理层。我总是以为他们在说查理（笑）。但我想指出，再过三年，查理将以每年1%的速度老龄化。（笑声）他是——没有人比查理老龄化得慢（笑）。如果你以一些拥有25岁年轻人的新公司为例，他们正以每年4%的速度老化。（笑）所以，按百分比计算，我们将拥有比任何美国公司都慢得多的老龄化管理层。

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22. “We will have the slowest-aging management”

WARREN BUFFETT: I should — I should go back to that previous question. You know, people talk about the aging management at Berkshire. And I always assume they’re talking about Charlie (laughs) when they say that. But I would like to point out that in three more years, Charlie will be aging at 1% a year. (Laughter) And he is the — no one is aging (laughs) less than Charlie. If you could take (laughs) some of these new companies with 25-year-olds, they’re aging at 4% a year. (Laughs) So, we will have the slowest-aging management, percentage-wise, by far, than any corporate — any American company has.

23. 前进保险最近表现更好，但GEICO正在追赶

贝基·奎克：你想谈谈GEICO对比前进保险吗，因为我收到了很多关于这个的问题——

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，前进保险近年来——前进保险近年来在将费率匹配到风险方面做得最好。我的意思是，这是保险的核心之一。但是，你必须设定正确的费率。如果你认为90岁的人和20岁的人死亡概率相同，（笑）那么在寿险业务中你会很快倒闭。你会得到所有90岁的风险，而对方会得到20岁的风险。同样的情况也适用于汽车保险。16岁男性和40岁已婚有工作的人如何驾驶，差异巨大。所以，能够为每个保单持有人设定最合适费率的公司会做得很好。前进保险在这方面做得非常好。我们在这方面也已经做得更好。但托德·库姆斯去了那里。这是一个非常有趣的业务。

前进保险和GEICO都创立于30年代——我相信我对前进保险的这一点是对的——我们成立于1936年。长期以来，我们拥有更好的产品，我的意思是就成本而言。85年后，我们拥有大约13%的市场份额。前进保险略少一点。所以，在80多年后，在这个巨大的市场中，我们两家大约占据了25%的份额，尽管都有更好的产品。所以，这是一个变化非常缓慢的竞争态势。但前进保险最近做得非常非常好。我们多年来也做得非常非常好。我们现在也做得很好。但我们做出了一些非常重要的改进。如果你看——你不应该过多关注季度数据——但我们第一季度的盈利能力不错。

但在疫情爆发时，在我们的保费返还计划下，我们返还了更多资金——我们在返还计划中返还了28亿美元——这也是所有公司中最多的。我认为是全国最大的。GEICO和前进保险（笑）未来都会做得非常好。实际上，联合太平洋和BNSF未来也会做得很好。只是在两种情况下，我们都想比对手做得更好一点。（笑）

阿吉特·贾殷：我可以——我可以——

贝基·奎克：是的。

阿吉特·贾殷：——补充一点吗？是的，毫无疑问前进保险是一台机器。他们非常擅长他们所做的事情，无论是沃伦提到的承保，将费率匹配到风险，还是管理索赔。话虽如此，我认为GEICO正在追赶前进保险。一年多前——大约一年前——前进保险的利润率几乎是GEICO的两倍，增长率也几乎是GEICO的两倍。如果你看现在的数据，前进保险在增长方面仍然优于GEICO。但在利润率方面，GEICO肯定已经赶上了前进保险。希望未来这个差距会消失。关于费率匹配风险的问题，我要说的第二点是：GEICO显然错过了机会，在认识到远程信息处理的价值方面落后了。他们已经意识到远程信息处理在匹配费率与风险方面发挥着重要作用。他们有许多举措。

希望他们能在不久后看到成效，这将使他们能够在匹配费率与风险方面赶上竞争对手。

沃伦·巴菲特：我预测五年后——州立农业保险仍然是最大的汽车保险公司——但我预测五年后，很可能前两位将是GEICO和前进保险。顺序如何，我们拭目以待。但我认为两家公司都会做得非常好。嗯，他们——GEICO做得非常好——极其出色。但前进保险在设定正确费率方面做得更好，我想我们正在相当快地追赶。

阿吉特·贾殷：是的。对不起。前进保险当然做得更好。但在品牌方面，我认为GEICO（咳嗽）对不起——远远领先于前进保险。在管理费用方面，我认为GEICO比业内其他任何公司都做得好得多。

原文

23. Progressive has been better lately, but GEICO is catching up

BECKY QUICK: Did you want to talk about GEICO versus Progressive, too, because I got a lot of questions on that —

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, Progressive in recent — Progressive has had the best operation in the last — in recent years, in terms of matching rate to risk. I mean, that’s what insurance is all about, among other things. But, I mean, you have to have the right rate. If you think that 90-year-olds and 20-year-olds have an equal chance of dying, (laughs) I mean, you’re going to be out of business very quickly in the life insurance business. And you will get all the 90-year-old risks, and the other guy will get the 20-year-old risks. And the same thing applies in auto insurance. I mean, there is a huge difference between 16year-old males and how they drive, and 40-year-old married and, you know, employed people. So, the companies that do the best job of actually having the appropriate rate for every one of their policyholders is going to do well. And Progressive has done a very good job on that. And we’re doing a much better job on that already. But Todd Combs has gone there. And — It’s a very interesting business.

Both Progressive and GEICO were started in the ’30s — I believe I’m right about Progressive on that — and we were started in ’36. You know, we have had the better product for a long, long time, I mean, in terms of cost. And here we are, 85 years later, in our case, and we have about 13% or so of the market, whatever it may be. And Progressive has just a slight bit less. So, the two of us have 25% of the market roughly, in this huge market, after 80-something years of having a better product. So, it’s a very slow-changing competitive situation. But Progressive has done a very, very good job recently. And we’ve done a very, very good job over the years. And we’re doing a good job now. But we have made some very significant improvements. And if you looked at the — you don’t want to look at the quarters too much — but our profitability in the first quarter was good.

But we gave back more money, under our giveback arrangement when the virus broke out — we gave 2.8 billion on our giveback program — that was larger than any company as well. It was the largest, I think in the country. And GEICO and Progressive are both (laughs) going to do very well in the future. And actually, Union Pacific and BNSF are going to do well in the future. It’s just, in both cases, we want to do a little bit better than the other guy. (Laughs)

AJIT JAIN: Can I — can I just —

BECKY QUICK: Yeah.

AJIT JAIN: — add a little bit? Yeah, there’s no question Progressive is a machine. They are very good at what they do, whether it’s underwriting, which Warren talked about, in terms of matching rate to risk, whether it’s admin claims. Having said that, I think GEICO is catching up with Progressive. More than a year ago — about a year ago — Progressive had margins that were almost twice as much as GEICO’s, and growth rates that were almost twice as much as GEICO’s. If you look at the results as of now, Progressive is still crushing it, in terms of growth, relative to GEICO. But GEICO has certainly caught up with Progressive, in terms of margins. And hopefully, that gap will be nonexistent in the future. The second point I want to make on the issue of matching rate to risk: GEICO had clearly missed the bus and were late in terms of appreciating the value of telematics. They have woken up to the fact that telematics plays a big role in matching rate to risk. They have a number of initiatives.

And hopefully, they will see the light of day before not too long, and that’ll allow them to catch up with their competitors, in terms of the issue of matching rate to risk.

WARREN BUFFETT: I will predict that five years from now — State Farm is still the largest auto insurer — but I will predict that five years from now, it’s very likely that the top two will be GEICO and Progressive. And in which order, we’ll see. But both companies are going to do very well, in my opinion. Well, they — and they — GEICO’s done well — extremely well. But Progressive was better at setting the right rate, and we’re catching up, I think, fairly fast.

AJIT JAIN: Yeah. Excuse me. Progressive has certainly done better. But when it comes to branding, GEICO is, I think, miles — (coughs) excuse me — miles ahead of Progressive. And in terms of managing expenses, well, I think GEICO does a much better job than anyone else in the industry.

24. 巴菲特承认出售部分“非凡的”苹果股票“可能是个错误”

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自瑞士的维托里奥·阿格奇，他写道：“为什么在最近的过去，伯克希尔出售了部分持有的苹果普通股？如果该公司被认为是伯克希尔的‘第四颗宝石’，为什么伯克希尔不在2020年购买更多苹果股票？这似乎有违直觉。”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我们现在拥有大约5.3%的股份。第一季度这个比例上升了，因为我们回购了自己的股票，这帮助我们的股东在不花一分钱的情况下间接扩大了对苹果的权益。然后苹果也回购了它的股票，并刚刚宣布了另一个回购计划。所以，我们可以说——我们视苹果为我们拥有5.3%股份的业务。现在它是一项有价证券，所以它在我们的投资中显示为远大于我们持有的任何其他有价证券。但当然，如果你看看我们的铁路，正如我们提到的——联合太平洋的市值大约是1500亿美元，我们拥有的铁路比联合太平洋略大，赚的钱略少，但差不了太多。所以，苹果是一家非凡的公司——它有一位出色的经理。CEO蒂姆·库克一度被低估。他是世界上最好的经理人之一，我见过很多经理人。

他拥有一个人们绝对喜爱的产品。有一个庞大的用户基础，用户满意度达到99%。我从内布拉斯加家具城得到销售数据，如果人们进来想要一部安卓手机，他们就会买安卓手机。如果他们想要苹果手机，你就不能向他们推销另一款。（笑）这个品牌——产品是一款不可思议的产品。对人们来说，它非常非常划算。它在人们生活中扮演的角色非常巨大。我把它当电话用，但我可能是全国唯一一个还这么做的人。也许亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔的后代也这么做。但它对人们来说是必不可少的。你知道，一辆车要35000美元。

我相信，对一些人来说，如果你问他们是否愿意放弃——必须放弃——他们的苹果手机还是放弃他们的汽车，真正为未来五年做出选择，谁知道他们会怎么做？而且，你瞧，我们有机会买入它，我去年卖出了一些股票，但我们的股东仍然因我们回购股票而使他们的持股比例上升了。但那可能是个错误。事实上，查理，以他惯常的含蓄方式，让我知道——你也认为这是个错误，不是吗，查理？（笑）

查理·芒格：是的。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。（笑）是啊，我只能在查理面前做有限次能侥幸逃脱的事情。（笑）我基本上在Costco和苹果上用光了这些机会。（笑声）所以——顺便提一下，他很可能是对的，在两种情况下都是。这是一个非凡的业务。但我想强调，以他自己的方式——虽然方式不同——但蒂姆·库克是——我们见过很多公司的很多经理人，而你们在这里看到的是两位了不起的经理人。他把业务经营得如此出色。他当然无法像史蒂夫·乔布斯那样做创造性的事情。但我不认为，在很多方面，史蒂夫·乔布斯真的能做到蒂姆·库克所做的事情。

查理·芒格：嗯，我也认为很明显，你展示的那张美国领先公司名单——我们在这些新技术领域做得如此出色，对美国非常重要。我个人不希望看到我们现在的巨头因为一些反竞争的理由而被削弱到低水平。我不认为它们在反竞争方面造成了很大危害。我认为它们是美国人的骄傲——是我们文明的骄傲。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，而且它们规模巨大。

查理·芒格：它们规模巨大。这对我们来说是好事。

原文

24. Buffett admits “probably a mistake” to sell some shares of “extraordinary” Apple

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from Vittorio Agueci, from Switzerland, who writes in, “Why, in the recent past, did Berkshire sell some of the common stocks owned on Apple? “If the company is considered Berkshire’s ‘Fourth Jewel,’ why didn’t Berkshire buy more of Apple’s stocks in 2020? This seems to be counterintuitive.”

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we have 5.3%, or something like that, now. It’s gone up in the first quarter because we bought in our shares, which helps our own shareholders expand their interest in Apple indirectly without laying out a penny. And then Apple’s repurchased its shares and just announced another repurchase program. So, let’s say — we look at Apple as a business that we own at 5.3%. Now we’ve got — it’s a marketable security, so it shows up as way greater than any other marketable security we have. But, of course, if you look at our railroad, as we mentioned — well, the Union Pacific is selling for about 150 billion on the market, and we own one that’s a little larger than the Union Pacific and making a little less money, but not much less. So, it’s a — it’s an extraordinarily — Apple — it’s got a fantastic manager. (CEO) Tim Cook was underappreciated for a while. He’s one of the best managers in the world, and I’ve seen a lot of managers.

And he’s got a product that people absolutely love. And there’s an installed base of people and they get satisfaction rates of 99%. And I get the figures from the (Nebraska) Furniture Mart as to what’s being sold, and if people come in and they want an Android phone, they want an Android phone. If they want Apple — they want an Apple phone — you can’t sell them the other one. (Laughs) The brand — and the product is an incredible product. It’s a huge, huge bargain to people. I mean, the part it plays in their lives is huge. I use it as a phone, but I’m probably the only guy in the country. You know, maybe some descendant of Alexander Graham Bell’s doing the same thing. But it is indispensable to people. And, you know, it costs — you know, a car costs $35,000.

And I’m sure, with some people, if you asked them whether they want to give up — had to give up — their Apple or give up their car, you know, really make the choice for the next five years, you know, who knows what they’d do? And, it is — and you know, we got a chance to buy it, and I — I sold some stock last year, although our shareholders still had their percentage interest go up because we repurchased shares. But that was probably a mistake. In fact, Charlie, in his usual low-key way, let me know that — you thought it was a mistake, too, didn’t you, Charlie? (Laughs)

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. (Laughs) Yeah, I can only do so many things that I can get away with, with Charlie. (Laughs) And I kind of used them up between Costco and Apple. (Laughter) So — and incidentally, he probably — he’s very likely was right in both circumstances. It’s an extraordinary business. But I do want to emphasize that, in his own way — it’s a different way — but Tim Cook is — we see a lot of managers of a lot of businesses, and you’re looking at two great ones on both ends here. He’s handled that business so well. He couldn’t do what Steve Jobs, obviously, could do in terms of creation. But, I don’t — but Steve Jobs couldn’t really, I don’t think, do what Tim Cook has done, in many respects.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I also think it’s clear that that list you showed, of the leading American companies — it’s been very important for America that we’ve done so well in this new tech field. And I personally would not like to see our present giants brought down to some low level by some anti-competitive reasonings. I don’t think they’re doing a lot of harm, anti-competitively. I think they’re a credit to the Americans — credit to our civilization.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, and they’re huge.

CHARLIE MUNGER: And they’re huge. And that’s good for us.

25. 如果利率保持如此低位，高飞的科技股“非常非常便宜”

贝基·奎克：那么让我就此问一个后续问题。这来自杰克·曾，他说：“当你看到这么多高飞的股票时，你是如何想的？不是GME或meme股，而是像大型科技成长股，在一年或更短的时间内上涨50%、100%、200%等等。”“我知道你最终在2016年购买了苹果，是因为其业务和管理的质量。考虑到这些疯狂的高估值使情况变得模糊，你如何评估这些高飞的股票是否值得投资？”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我们认为它们不疯狂。（笑）但——但我们不——至少我——查理，你——我觉得我比理解其他一些公司更好地理解苹果及其在全球消费者中的未来。但我不认为价格——这又回到了投资中的一些基本问题。我的意思是，利率本质上对资产价值的作用，就像重力对物质的作用一样。在来的路上，我昨天从《华尔街日报》上撕下了一小段剪报——很可能只有我读了它——太小了，我很难找到。但无论如何，周四，美国财政部出售了一些八周期——一些四周期票据——国债。价格是——如果你看你的《华尔街日报》，在一个小角落里，我报纸的倒数第二页，在最下面的角落里，这里是——国债拍卖结果——非常小的东西。

（笑）他们出售了四周期——四周期国债的申请额超过1000亿美元。他们接受了430亿美元的投标。上面写着：平均价格：100.000000——六个零。基本上，人们向财政部提供了400多亿美元——他们提出提供1300亿或更多的投标——财政部以零利率收到了这笔钱。耶伦部长谈过几次债务的降低持有成本。我认为在上一个财政季度，美国财政部——美国政府——比一年前多了几千亿——几千亿美元，我应该说——他们的利息支出下降了8%。所以，所谓的“超级无风险”群体，短期国债，出现了令人难以置信的利率下降。这是衡量其他价值的标尺。

我的意思是，如果我能将重力减少约80%，我就能参加东京奥运会跳高比赛了。（笑）本质上，如果利率是10%，估值（听不清）就会发生这种令人难以置信的变化，因为无风险利率目前实际上什么也产生不了，短期来说。这非常有趣。我带了这本书来，因为25年或更长时间里，保罗·萨缪尔森的书一直是经济学的权威教材。每所学校都教它。保罗是第一位诺贝尔奖得主——它有点像诺贝尔奖的亲戚，我想是在60年代末开始颁发经济学奖。他是美国第一位得主，保罗·萨缪尔森。令人惊讶的是，第二位得主是肯·阿罗，两人都是拉里·萨默斯的叔叔。（笑）拉里·萨默斯有前两位得主做叔叔。

但保罗——他是个很棒的人，一位出色的作家，权威作家——所以我拿出了73年的经济学书。请记住，经济学可能始于——作为一种有趣的科学，并且是受人尊敬的——我们可以说从亚当·斯密开始。你知道，他在1776年写了《国富论》，之前还写过一些书。但你可以从我们国家建立的时候算起。然后后来有了所有这些著名的经济学家。保罗成为他那个时代最著名的。所以，我在书的后面查找“利率”，我查找“负利率”。那里什么也没有。所以，我终于找到了“零利率”，而保罗·萨缪尔森——一个聪明的人——在我们对经济学进行了几百年研究之后，基本上，他说——他说你可以想象，技术上，他说，你也许可以想象负利率，但它永远不可能真正发生。那是在20世纪70年代。

这不是在黑暗时代。而且——没有经济学家跑出来说，这在书中是个可怕的段落之类的话。而现在，我们身处这样一个世界，上周——或本周——四周期票据的利率为零。伯克希尔·哈撒韦拥有超过这个数字——但假设我们有1000亿美元的国库券。我们拥有的比这多。在疫情之前，我们每年从中获得大约15亿美元。按照目前的利率，如果是两个基点，我们将获得2000万美元。想象一下你的工资从每小时15美元降到每小时20美分或类似的情况。（笑）这是一场巨变。而且这就是设计目标。我的意思是，这就是美联储采取行动的原因。

他们想给予巨大的推动，就像欧洲央行行长马里奥·德拉吉在2012年所做的那样，当时他说“不惜一切代价”，之后利率变成了负值。而我们——美联储表示不想走向负利率，我认为财政部实际上有一些小（听不清）。但如果当前利率注定是合适的，如果10年期国债真的应该以现在的价格交易，那么那位先生问题中提到的那些公司就是便宜货。它们有能力以一定速度交付现金，如果你将其折现回来——并且你以当前利率折现——那么股票就非常非常便宜。现在，问题是利率随时间会如何变化。但是，基于30年期收益率曲线等，人们对利率会有一个看法。这是一个迷人的时代。

我们从未真正见过在近乎零利率的货币政策的同时，以如此规模进行财政刺激，这极其（听不清）。但在经济学中，有一件事要永远记住。你永远不可能只做一件事。你总得问：“然后呢？”我们正在发放巨额资金。我的意思是，总统周三说过：85%的人将收到一张1400美元的支票，你知道：85%。而几年前，我们说40%的人永远拿不出400美元的现金。所以，现在85%的人收到了这笔钱。到目前为止，我们还没有看到任何不愉快的后果。我的意思是，人们感觉更好。收到钱的人感觉更好——而借钱的人感觉不太好。但这推动股市上涨，推动商业繁荣，让选民开心，我们会看看是否还会导致其他事情。

如果没有其他后果，你可以指望它会以非常大的规模继续下去（笑）。但是，你知道，经济学中的一切都有后果。但这就是为什么谷歌和苹果——我们没有拥有谷歌，我们不拥有微软，我们不——但它们是不可思议的公司，就资本收益率而言。它们不需要大量资本，却能涌出更多资金。如果你想找到能涌出更多资金的债券，我们从联邦政府有1000亿美元正在涌出（笑），每年可能产生3000万或4000万美元，取决于短期利率。所以，这带来了压力，而这正是货币当局希望看到的。我的意思是，他们正在推动经济——而且他们在欧洲做得甚至更极端。

他们正在推动，我们通过财政政策辅助，人们感觉良好，而且——人们对数字变得麻木。你知道，万亿对任何人来说都没有意义。而1400美元对他们确实有意义。所以，我们将看看这一切会走向何方，但这是——查理和我认为这是有史以来最有趣的电影，就经济学而言，不是吗，查理？

查理·芒格：是的，当然，专业经济学家对发生的事情感到非常惊讶。这让我想起丘吉尔谈到克莱门特·艾德礼时说的话。他说他是一个非常谦虚的人，有很多理由谦虚。这正是专业经济学家遇到的情况。他们曾对一切都如此自信。结果证明世界比他们想象的要复杂。

原文

25. High-flying tech stocks are “very, very cheap” if interest rates stay so low

BECKY QUICK: Well, let me ask a follow-up question on that, then. This comes from Jack Tsang, who says, “What’s your mindset when you see so many of these high-fliers? Not the GME or meme stocks, but more like the Big Tech growth stocks, gaining 50%, 100%. 200%, et cetera, in a matter of a year or less?” “I know you eventually bought Apple in 2016 because of the quality of their businesses and their management. How do you assess if these high-fliers are worthy of your investment, given these crazy high valuations that muddy the waters?”

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we don’t think they’re crazy. (Laughs) The — but we don’t — at least I — Charlie, you — I feel that that I understand Apple and its future with consumers around the world better than I understand some of the others. But I don’t regard prices — and that gets back — well, it gets back to something fundamental in investments. I mean, interest rates, you know, basically are to the value of assets what gravity is to matter, you know, essentially. And on the way out here, I tore out a little clipping from The Wall Street Journal yesterday — probably the only one that read it — so small I’m having trouble finding it. But, anyway, on Thursday, the U.S. Treasury sold some eight-week — some four-week notes — Treasury bills. And the price was — if you looked at your Wall Street Journal, down in a little corner, next-tothe-last page in my paper, in the very bottom corner, the — here it is — the results of the Treasury auction — little, tiny thing.

(Laughs) They sold four — they had applications on the four-week Treasury bill for a hundred-and-some billion. They accepted bids for 43 billion worth. And it says average — average price: one hundred point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero — six zeroes. And, essentially, people were giving $40-some billion to the Treasury — and they offered to give 130 billion or something, whatever the amount tendered — and the Treasury received the money at zero. And (Treasury Secretary) Janet Yellen has talked a couple of times about the reduced carrying cost of the debt. And I think in the last fiscal quarter, the U.S. Treasury, which — the U.S. Government — which owes a few billion — a few trillion dollars, I should say — a few trillion dollars more than a year ago, their interest expense was down 8%. So, you’ve had this incredible reduction in the so-called “super risk-free” group, the short-term Treasury bill. And that is the yardstick against which other values are measured.

I mean, if I could reduce gravity’s pull by about 80%, I mean, I’d be in the Tokyo Olympics, jumping. (Laughs) And, essentially, if interest rates were 10%, valuations (unintelligible) had this incredible change in the valuation of everything that produces money, because the risk-free rate produces, really, short enough, right now, nothing. It’s very interesting. I brought this book along because for 25 or more years, Paul Samuelson’s book was the definitive book on economics. It was taught in every school. And Paul was the — he was the first — he was the first Nobel Prize winner — it’s sort of a cousin to the Nobel Prize, they started giving it in economics, I think, in the late ’60s. He was the first winner from the United States, Paul Samuelson. Amazingly enough, the second winner was Ken Arrow, and both of them are the uncles of Larry Summers. (Laughs) Larry Summers had the first two winners as uncles.

But Paul — he was a wonderful guy, he was a wonderful writer, the definitive writer — and so I got out the ’73 economics books. And bear in mind, probably economics kind of started in — as kind of an interesting science, and respectable — with Adam Smith, we’ll say. You know, he wrote “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776, and he’d written some books earlier. But you sort of date it from kind of when our country started. And then you had all these famous economists subsequently. And Paul became the most famous of his time. So, I looked up in the back, under “interest rates,” I looked for “negative interest rates.” There’s nothing there. So, I finally found “zero interest rates,” and Paul Samuelson — brilliant man, after a couple of hundred years we’ve had of, kind of, studying economics, basically, he said that — he said you can conceivably, technically, he said, you can conceive perhaps of negative interest rates, but it can’t ever really happen. And that was, you know, in the 1970s.

This wasn’t back in the Dark Ages. And this was — and no economist rode up and said this is a terrible line to have in a book, or anything. You know, and here we are in this world where we had zero interest rates last year on a — I mean, last week on — or this week — on a four-week note. And Berkshire Hathaway, which had a — has more than this — but let’s say we had $100 billion in Treasury Bills. We have more than that. Before the epidemic — pandemic — we were getting about a billion and a half from that a year. At present rates, if it’s two basis points, we’d get 20 million. Imagine your wages going from $15 an hour to twenty cents an hour or something. (Laughs) It’s been a sea change. And it was designed to be that. I mean, it was — that’s why the Fed moved the way they did.

They wanted to give a massive push, just like (then-European Central Bank president) Mario Draghi did in Europe in, whenever it was, 2012, when he says, “whatever it takes,” and they went to negative rates. And we — the Fed has said it doesn’t want to go to negative rates, and I think the Treasury actually has got some small (unintelligible). But if present rates were destined to be appropriate, if the 10-year should really be at the price it is, those companies that the

30. 为什么我们有时会买不太看好的股票

贝基·奎克：沃伦，我们在年会前交谈时，你说我可以追问一两个问题，我现在想——

沃伦·巴菲特：当然可以。

贝基·奎克：——现在就问一个。你说你买了一些自己不太了解的股票。是哪些？

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯——我不会具体说出（笑）我们买了哪些股票。也可能有些股票我自以为了解，但其实并不了解。我们确实买过一些我和查理——我的意思是，我们大致了解这些生意——但我们没有任何独到见解。整体而言，如果我——假如他们告诉我，除非我取得最佳结果，否则就要被枪毙，那我宁愿持有这些股票，而不是我们持有的国债。但另一方面，我们管理的资金量很大，如果把500亿投到我感觉一般、但比国债好的东西上，即使可以撤销，我也并不完全放心。要卖掉500亿，然后在真正有吸引力的买入时机出现时再去买，这么大笔资金转移过程中可能产生很多损耗。所以我们一直在讨论这个问题。这些公司是好公司。

它们是优质企业。但我们是否真的了解这些公司，或者有能让我们占据优势的评估方法？答案——我觉得——你怎么看，查理？我们讨论过很多次了。

查理·芒格：当然，现在要难多了。

原文

30. Why we sometimes buy stocks we’re not wild about

BECKY QUICK: Warren, when we spoke before the annual meeting, you said that it was OK if I asked a follow-up or two, and I’d like to —

WARREN BUFFETT: Sure.

BECKY QUICK: — take one of those right now. You said you bought some stocks that you don’t know a lot about. What are they?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well — I will not get into naming (laughs) what we — stocks. And it may be that there’s some there that I think I know about that I don’t know about. But we have bought stocks where Charlie and I — I mean, we know the business, generally — but we don’t have any insights. And they are, as a group — if I had — if they told me I was going to be shot unless I got the best result, I would rather own those stocks than the Treasury bills we own. But, on the other hand, we work with quantities of money where if we put 50 billion into the things that I’m kind of so-so about, but that are better than Treasury bills, it doesn’t — I’m not wildly comfortable about that, even though it can be undone. Selling 50 billion to — when it’s really attractive to buy something else, there’s a lot of — there’s a lot of slippage that can happen in moving sums like that around. So, that’s something we talk about all the time. They’re good companies.

They’re fine companies. But do we know something about those companies, or have a way of evaluating that gives us an edge? The answer — I think — what do you feel about it, Charlie? We’ve talked about it a lot.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, of course, it’s a lot harder.

31. 芒格：伯尼·桑德斯无意中赢得了反对财富不平等的斗争

查理·芒格：我认为当前局势的一个后果是，（参议员）伯尼·桑德斯（佛蒙特州独立人士）基本上赢了。这是因为——随着——一切都涨得这么高，利率又这么低，结果就是，千禧一代将很难像我们这一代那样致富。因此，在崛起的一代人中，贫富差距将会小得多。所以，伯尼赢了。

原文

31. Munger: Bernie Sanders has accidentally won his fight against wealth inequality

CHARLIE MUNGER: And I think one consequence of the present situation is that (Senator) Bernie Sanders (I- Vermont) has basically won. And that’s because the — with the — everything boomed up so high and interest rates so low, what’s going to happen is the Millennial Generation is going to have a hell of a time getting rich, compared to our generation. And so, the difference between the rich and the poor in the generation that’s rising is going to be a lot less. So, Bernie has won.

下午场

1. 动机决定股票回购的道德性

贝基·奎克：好的，这个问题来自匹兹堡的股东丹尼·波兰。“一位著名的参议员（马萨诸塞州民主党参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦）最近将股票回购归类为一种市场操纵行为。您经常说，以低于内在价值的价格回购股票有利于继续持有的股东。“您和查理能否详细说明这些股票回购对社会的更高层次影响？”

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，这本质上是一种方式——当其他共同所有者大多希望你进行再投资时，向那些想要现金的人分配现金。这是一个储蓄工具。如果我们四个人坐在这张桌子旁，决定买几家冰雪皇后加盟店，我们成立一个小公司，每人投入一百万美元左右，买下这些加盟店，而且它们经营得很好。我们四个人中有三个人想继续买更多的加盟店。我们还没完成建设和为未来储蓄。我们从事的是财富创造业务。第四个人说，“听着，我已经够富了。我想拿出一些钱。”那么，只有两种方法。我们可以向我们四个人都支付股息，但其中三个人不想要。

我们可以以公平的价格回购股票——如果只有我们四个人——我们确定一个公平价格，第四个人就退出他的权益。我几乎无法相信有些论点说，如果合伙人想退出，而你又能以对留下的人有利的价格进行回购，这是糟糕的事情。这也有利于想退出的人。伯克希尔的大多数股东——绝大多数——我们曾经就股息进行过投票——我们是储蓄者。部分原因是我们把自己宣传成那种工具。我们创造了这个。我们坚持了57年。人们——大量个人——把伯克希尔视为他们将持有到死的东西。现在他们的——情况可能发生变化。他们的需求可能改变。但储蓄者通常会继续储蓄。我们最近有一位60年前（听不清）的人，资产达到数十亿美元。

他们——他们不完全是为了养老而储蓄，这几乎是他们本性中喜欢做的事情。现在，慈善机构会得到很多钱，等等。没有比这更合乎逻辑的了：如果你的持有者中极少数想退出，而大多数想留下，并且想退出的人想要钱，那么你不应该把钱给所有人。你只把钱给想要的人。而且你以一个对大多数方都有利的价格进行。在私人交易中，你会确定一个公允价值。对于上市公司，市场会告诉你价值。查理，有什么要说的吗？

查理·芒格：嗯，如果你回购股票只是为了把它推得更高，那是非常不道德的。但如果你回购股票是因为这是为了现有股东利益而做的公平之事，那是一种高度道德的行为。那些批评它的人是疯了。

原文

Afternoon Session

BECKY QUICK: Right, this question comes from Denny Poland, a shareholder from Pittsburgh. “A prominent senator (Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts) recently categorized share buybacks as a form of market manipulation. You’ve often said that repurchasing shares at prices below intrinsic value benefits continuing shareholders. “Could you and Charlie please elaborate on the higher order effect that these share repurchases have on society?”

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, they’re a way of — they’re a way of, essentially, of distributing cash to the people that want the cash when other co-owners mostly want you to reinvest. And it’s a savings vehicle. If the four of us sitting at this table decided we’d buy a few Dairy Queen franchises, we form a little company, and we all put in a million dollars or something like that, and we buy the Dairy Queen franchises, and they’re doing well. And three of the four of us want to keep buying more Dairy Queen franchises. And we’re not done building and saving for the future. And we’re in the wealth creation business. And the fourth one says, “Listen, I’ve gotten rich enough. I’d rather take some money out.” And, well, there’s only two ways to do it. We can pay dividends to all four of us, three of us — of whom don’t want it.

And we can repurchase the shares at a fair price — if it’s just the four of us — we pick out a fair price and the fourth one gets bought out of his interest. I find it almost impossible to believe some of the arguments that are made that it’s terrible to repurchase shares from a partner if they want to get out of something (laughs) and you’re able to do it at prices advantageous to the people who are staying. And it helps slightly the person that wants out. And a majority of the Berkshire shareholders — a great majority — we had a vote on dividends one time — we’ve got savers. Now, that’s partly because we’ve advertised ourselves as being that sort of a vehicle. We’ve created that something. We’ve stuck with it for 57 years. And people look — individuals — a huge number — look at Berkshire as something they’re going to own till they die. Now they may — their circumstances may change. Their needs may change. But the savers generally keep saving. We just recently had somebody that (unintelligible) 60 years ago, and billions of dollars.

And they just — they weren’t saving, exactly, for their old age, just was sort of built into them that they liked to do it. Now, philanthropies will get a lot of money and so on. It’s the most — what could be more logical than, if a very small minority of your holders want to get out, and most of them want to stay in, and the person that wants to get out wants the money, you don’t give the money to everybody. You give it to the one who wants it. And you do it at a price that is beneficial to most parties. On a private deal, you’d work out the fair value. The market tells you the value, in the case of a publicly traded company. Charlie, got anything?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, if you’re repurchasing stock, just a bull it higher, it’s deeply immoral. But if you’re repurchasing stock because it’s a fair thing to do in the interest of your existing shareholders, it’s a highly moral act. And the people who are criticizing it are bonkers.

2. 税法变更不会影响伯克希尔不分红的立场

贝基·奎克：好的，这个问题来自加里·甘比诺。他想知道“如果资本利得税率上升到43.4%，伯克希尔是否会将其资本回报政策从回购转向分红。在这种情况下，分红对股东来说税收优惠得多。”

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。我们确实让股东投过票。现在，我们的股东群体与REIT或MLP的股东不同。我是说，不同的人选择不同的投资标的。投资SPAC的人是希望股票下周就涨，基本上是这样。我们有一群在过去55年里聚集起来的股东，但他们最初的基础是那些视伯克希尔为终身投资的人。如果他们想套现，他们认为届时能获得一个公平的价格。但他们最初购买时并没有那样的意图。所以我们进行了一次投票，我记得大约97%的股份表示他们不想要股息。这在其他公司就不一样了。

像可口可乐那样多年定期分红，然后突然改变数百万人的预期，试图把它变成不同的东西，那是愚蠢的。但可口可乐不会变成伯克希尔，伯克希尔也不会变成可口可乐。我们有不同的所有者群体。而且它会继续自我选择，因为人们每天都有选择：你想要哪种类型？在这方面，伯克希尔是某种特定的动物。因此，我们不会——如果他们调整税法，我的意思是，那实际上与我们的决定无关。我们有非常明显的多数人希望我们把钱进行再投资。他们更关心的是我们能否找到把钱用出去的地方，比如那一千亿左右。而回购股票有助于他们——随着时间推移，他们拥有伯克希尔更大的比例。他们很乐意看到我们收购另一家企业。

但他们不介意我们加强他们在现有业务中的权益。

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2. Tax law change wouldn’t affect Berkshire’s no-dividend stance

BECKY QUICK: OK, this comes from Gary Gambino. He wants to know “if Berkshire would switch it’s capital return policy to dividends from buybacks if the capital gains rate goes up to 43.4%. Dividends would be far more taxed-advertised for shareholders under that scenario.”

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We literally did have a vote by our shareholders. Now, we’ve got a different group of shareholders than a REIT would have or, you know, an MLP might have. I mean there’s different — people select what they go into. And people that go into SPACs are hoping the stock goes up next week, you know, I mean, basically, and — We’ve got a bunch of people that were assembled over 55 years, but they started with a base of people that — it was a lifetime investment. And if they wanted to cash out, they thought they’d get a fair price at that time. But they really didn’t — they bought it with no intentions like that. So, we had a vote, and I think it was something like 97% or something of the shares said they don’t want a dividend. And now, that wouldn’t be true at other companies.

And it would be crazy to be paying a regular dividend, like Coca-Cola has done for many years, and then, all of a sudden, change the policy on millions of people who had bought it with one expectation in mind, and try and change it into a different animal. But Coca-Cola isn’t going to change to Berkshire, and Berkshire isn’t going to change to CocaCola. We’ve got a different group of owners. And it will keep self-selecting, because people have a choice every day: which do you want — sort of thing do you want to be in? And Berkshire is a certain kind of animal in that respect. So, we will not — if they jig around the tax laws, I mean, that’s really got nothing to do with the decision. I mean we’ve got a very substantial majority of people that want us to reinvest the money. And what they’re more concerned about is whether we find something to do with the money, the hundred billion or something. And repurchasing shares is something that helps them in their — they own a larger percentage of Berkshire as they go along. And they’d love to see us buy another business.

But they don’t mind us intensifying their interest in the present business.

3. 巴菲特投了拜登的票，但不想在会议上谈论税收

贝基·奎克：有很多关于税收的问题。我会挑几个。我们看看你们能回答多少——在讲到它们之前你们能回答多少。但这个问题来自丹佛的亚瑟·刘易斯：“你对新政府的资本利得税、公司税和递增基税上调有什么看法？”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，如果查理想回答，我很乐意让他回答。很久以前，我多次说过，在我担任这个职位时，我不会把我的政治观点或任何东西置于盲目信托中。但我也不是代表伯克希尔·哈撒韦发言。我们的股东对税收有着非常不同的看法。你知道，我过去表达过一些东西。当我在伯克希尔·哈撒韦年会上坐着，假设代表伯克希尔发言时，我不太喜欢参与政治问题，一般来说。我真的认为我不应该。但我也认为，如果有人问我上次选举投了谁的票，就个人而言，我投给了拜登。但我没有——我从未问过我们任何一个员工他们投了谁的票，任何这类事情——什么宗教——这——我没有授权以伯克希尔·哈撒韦董事长的名义到处签署提案。

如果我写专栏文章，我是以个人身份写的。我尽量说清楚。所以，我不认为我会利用——我不想利用这次会议发表很多关于税收的看法。查理？

查理·芒格：不，但是——

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3. Buffett voted for Biden but doesn’t want to talk taxes at the meeting

BECKY QUICK: You had a lot of questions that came in on taxes. So, I’ll run through a few of them. We’ll see, kind of, how many of you answered them — how many you answer before we get to them. But this one came from Arthur Lewis in Denver: “What are your thoughts on the new administration’s capital gains, corporate tax, and stepped-up basis tax increases?”

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, if Charlie wants to answer that, I’ll be glad to have him do it. I, long ago, many times, have said that I don’t put my political opinions or anything in a blind trust when I take this job. But I also don’t speak for Berkshire Hathaway. I mean we’ve got people that have very different views on taxes. And, you know, I’ve expressed some things in the past. I don’t like to speak on behalf of — when I’m sitting in a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, presumably, speaking for Berkshire, I don’t really like to get into political questions, generally. I don’t really think I should. But I also think, if somebody asked me who I voted for the last election, on a personal basis, I voted for Biden. But I don’t — I’ve never asked a single employee of ours who they voted for, you know, anything of the sort — what religion — it just — it’s — and I am not authorized to go around signing my name as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway to proposals.

If I wrote op-ed pieces, I do it as an individual. I try and make it clear. So, I don’t think I’ll use — I don’t want to use the meeting to give a lot of views on taxes. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, but —

4. 芒格谈增税：“基本上反资本主义是个错误”

查理·芒格：我认为基本上反资本主义可能是个错误。我认为资本主义是提高每个人GDP的东西。所以——我也有一种感觉，本杰明·富兰克林说得对，他说：“空袋子很难站直。”在某种程度上，美国领先机构的繁荣帮助它们表现得更好。当然，在促销金融等领域也有例外。但总的来说，富兰克林是对的。因此，我有点警惕仅仅因为别人多一点钱就不断生气。

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4. Munger on tax hikes: “Mistake to be basically anti-capitalist”

CHARLIE MUNGER: I think it’s probably a mistake to be basically anti-capitalist. I think capitalism is what raises GDP for everybody. And so — And I have also a feeling that Benjamin Franklin was right when he said that, “It’s hard for an empty sack to stand upright.” And to some extent, the prosperity of leading American institutions helps them behave better. Now, there are exceptions in promotional finance, and so on. But, by and large, Franklin was right. And so, I’m a little wary of just constantly being mad at people because they have a little more money.

5. 芒格谈税收：“各州赶走最富有的公民是愚蠢的”

贝基·奎克：查理，有一个具体问你的税收问题（来自加州埃尔蒙特的托尼·G·李）。“多年来，特别是2020年，我们听到人们因为各种原因离开加州，比如生活成本高、税高等。我理解你认为各州制定政策和法律逼走富裕居民是愚蠢的。但你对那些离开的人有什么看法？是什么让你留在加州？”

查理·芒格：嗯，这是一个非常有趣的问题。我经常说，我不会为了给我的孩子省5亿美元的税而搬到街对面。所以，这是我个人的看法。但我确实认为各州赶走最富有的公民是愚蠢的。老年人，他们不犯罪。他们向当地慈善机构捐款。哪个头脑正常的人会赶走富人？我的意思是，佛罗里达和类似的地方非常精明。而像加州这样的地方则非常愚蠢。这不符合该州的利益。

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5. Munger on taxes: “It is stupid for states to drive out their wealthiest citizens”

BECKY QUICK: Charlie, there was a question that came in specifically to you on the tax issue (from Tony G. Lee of El Monte, California). “Over the years, and with emphasis in 2020, we’ve heard people leaving California for various reasons, such as high cost of living, high taxes, etc. I understand that you believe it’s dumb for states to have policies and laws that provoke rich residents leaving. But are your thoughts — what are your thoughts on those people leaving? What keeps you in California?”

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, that’s a very interesting question. I have frequently said I wouldn’t move across the street to save my children 500 million in taxes. And so, I have — that’s my personal view on the subject. But I do think it is stupid for states to drive out their wealthiest citizens. The old people, they don’t commit any crimes. They donate to the local charity. Who in the hell in their right mind would drive out the rich people? I mean Florida, and places like that, are very shrewd. And places like California are being very stupid. It’s contrary to the interests of the state.

6. “所有公司税上调都转嫁给消费者”是“虚构的”

贝基·奎克：再问你一个问题。杰克·罗宾斯问：“25%到28%的公司税率将如何影响伯克希尔的公司？”

查理·芒格：嗯，我不认为这会是世界末日。无论税率是多少，我们都会适应。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。我想说，如果他们提高税率，联邦政府就拥有——它拥有企业更大的一部分。我不是——但我不是说税率是多少。我们有A类股和B类股。美国政府拥有我所说的AA类股。这是一种非常特殊的股票。他们获得收益的一部分，但他们不拥有资产。他们也不对谁来经营公司或任何其他事情投票。但如果政府想要——在我刚开始的时候，联邦政府曾经拿走公司利润的52%。他们拥有——你愿意出多少钱购买政府的A类——AA类——股票？如果美国财政部公开发行，他们说这个工具——给它起个名字，比如SPAC或者更性感的名字——但它所做的只是永远拥有伯克希尔·哈撒韦未来的税收支付。那么现在这只股票值多少钱？

它会——它会支付大量的现金股息，而且随着我们保留收益、建立公司等，它会升值。嗯，如果税率是25%、28%或52%，它比21%的时候更值钱。他们拥有一种特殊的股票。当人们谈论这一切如何转嫁给客户等等时——在公用事业业务中，它确实如此。那是一个特例。但它在我们的多数业务中并不——我的意思是，这只是一个公司的虚构，当他们发表声明说这对所有你们这些人来说将是可怕的，（笑）如果我们支付更多的税。如果税率更高，它会伤害伯克希尔的股东。这可能是非常合适的。但说其他话只是——没有任何意义。我很想看到政府实际发行——他们可以——我的意思是他们可以成立一家公司。就叫它伯克希尔·哈撒韦税务公司。它会拿走我们每年支付的所有税款。

他们能把这个资产卖多少钱？他们谈论政府的无资金义务。这是联邦政府的一项未报告的资产。他们拥有伯克希尔的一部分，并且他们决定有多少。我的意思是，这是一个有趣的问题。

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6. It’s “fiction” that all corporate tax hikes are passed on to consumers

BECKY QUICK: One more question for you. Jack Robbins asks, “How will a 25 to 28% corporate tax rate affect Berkshire’s companies?”

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I don’t think it would be the end of the world. We’ve adapted to the tax rate, whatever it is.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. I would say, if they raise the tax rate, they’re owning a — the federal government’s owning a larger percentage of the business. I’m not — but I’m not saying what the tax rate is. But we have a Class A stock and a Class B stock. The U.S. government owns what I call the Class AA stock. And it’s a very special stock. They get a percentage of the earnings, but they don’t own the assets. And they don’t vote on who gets to run the place or anything else. But if the government wants to take — when I was first starting, they used to take 52%, the federal government did, of corporate profits. And they’ve got — what would you pay to own the government’s Class A — double-A — stock? If there was a public issue by the U.S. Treasury and they said this vehicle — give it a name like SPAC or something even sexier, but — and all it will do is it owns the future tax payments of Berkshire Hathaway forever. And how much is that stock now worth?

And it gets — and it’ll pay a big cash dividend, and they’ll go up as we retain earnings and build the company and everything else. Well, it’s worth more if it’s — if the tax rate is 25% or 28% or 52%, than at 21%. They own a special stock. And when people talk about how it all gets passed through to the customer and everything — in the utility business, it actually does. That’s a special case. But it doesn’t — it doesn’t in most of our businesses. I mean it’s just — it’s a corporate fiction when they put out statements about the fact that this will be terrible for all of you people who have — (laughs) — if we pay more taxes. It hurts the Berkshire shareholders if rates are higher. And that may be quite appropriate. But to say otherwise is just — it doesn’t make any sense. I would love to see the government actually issue — they could have — I mean they could set up a company. Just call it the Berkshire Hathaway Tax Company. And it would take all the taxes we paid every year.

How much would they be able to sell that asset for? They talk about unfunded obligations of the government. That’s an unreported asset of the federal government. They own part of Berkshire, and they get to determine how much. I mean, it’s an interesting question.

7. 巴菲特：我希望我的钱用于慈善，而不是减少国债

贝基·奎克：最后一个税收问题。来自威廉·巴纳德，他说：“沃伦，在《所有者手册》中，你年报的一部分，你写道：‘在我去世时，我的股票都不必出售来支付我做出的现金遗赠或税款。’“拜登最近提出的将未实现收益视为已出售并在去世时按43.4%税率征税的提案，是否会改变在你去世时需要出售股票来支付税款的数量？”

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。嗯，税法明天就可以改变。我不知道，可以通过很多不同的方式。过去也用过很多不同的方式。我可以告诉你——我实际上可以向社会做出一个承诺，我去世时99.7%的财产要么捐给慈善机构，要么交给联邦政府。联邦政府实际上可以决定规则。不，我宁愿它用于慈善。我认为如果由一些聪明人用于慈善，实际上会比简单地在我去世时减少一千亿美元的联邦债务产生更多的效用。我不认为这有什么该死的区别（笑），联邦债务是高出一千亿还是低一千亿。它不会改变世界上的任何事情。在目前，这实际上也不会为他们节省任何东西，因为他们可以借一千亿，而且反正也不花他们任何成本。但那种债务状况不会持续。

但我不——我不认为——我只是个人谈谈，我不是真的在倡导这种公共政策。但我不——如果他们全部拿走，你知道，我不会在意。我的意思是——

查理·芒格：我保证你不会有感觉。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的！（笑声）查理说：“你不会知道的。”（笑声）你知道，如果你决定——如果美国民主决定最好全部拿走——我不认为他们会，也不认为他们应该——但尽管如此，你知道，那又怎样？（笑）我希望看到它被用于为人类实现最大利益。我的意思是，这意味着让聪明人，有适当的动机——更重要的是，没有不适当的动机——以某种方式分配它——谁知道十年、二十年、三十或四十年后会是什么样子？我确实知道，如果它归于政府，它基本上会减少相应数额的国债。我不认为这会改变他们是否修改最低工资法或做任何其他事情。（笑）我只是觉得那个小数字会变。它会——你知道，有一天它会出现在预算中，从巴菲特那里收到，你知道，X，然后（笑）下面会出现一个巨大的数字。

我不认为它真的——所以我更希望它被私人使用。但这实际上由美国人民通过他们的代表来决定。

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7. Buffett: I’d like my money to go to philanthropy rather than reduce the national debt

BECKY QUICK: One last tax question. This one comes from William Barnard, who says, “In the Owner’s Manual, a portion of your annual report, Warren, you state, ‘On my death, none of my stock will have to be sold to take care of the cash bequests I’ve made or for taxes.’ “Would the recent Biden proposal to treat unrealized gains as sold and taxable at death at a 43.4% rate change the amount of stock required to be sold for payment of taxes upon your death?”

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Well, the tax law can be changed tomorrow. And I don’t — you know, it can be done a lot of different ways. And it’s been done a lot of different ways in the past. I can tell you — I can actually make a promise to society, that 99.7% of what I have when I die will either go to philanthropy or to the federal government. And the federal government can actually determine the rules on that. And no, I would prefer that it would go to philanthropy. I think it actually will accomplish more utility if it goes to be used by some smart people in philanthropy than if it simply reduces the federal debt by a hundred billion dollars or something when I die. I don’t think it makes a damn bit of difference (laughs) you know, if the federal debt is 100 billion higher or lower. It won’t change anything in the world. And in present days, it doesn’t really save them anything, because they can borrow a hundred billion, and it doesn’t cost them anything anyway. But that debt condition won’t prevail.

But I don’t — I would not regard — I’m just talking personally, I’m not really advocating as this public policy. But I wouldn’t — if they took it all, you know, it would not bother me. I mean it —

CHARLIE MUNGER: I guarantee it won’t bother you.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah! (Laughter) Charlie says, “You won’t know.” (Laughter) You know, if you decide — if American democracy decides that it’s better to take it all — which I don’t think they will, and I don’t think they should — but nevertheless, you know, so what, you know? (Laughs) I would like to see it used to accomplish the most for humanity. I mean, and that means having smart people, properly motivated — and more importantly, not improperly motivated — distribute it in a way — and who knows what the hell it would be, 10, 20, 30, or 40 years from now? I do know, if it goes to government, it basically reduces the national debt by that amount. I don’t think it changes whether they change the minimum wage laws or does anything else. (Laughs) I just think that little figure changes. It’ll be — you know, it’ll show up in the budget one day, you know, received from Buffett, you know, X, and then (laughs) some huge figure appears down below.

I don’t think it really — so I would prefer it be used privately. But that’s really up to the people in the United States to decide through their representatives.

8. 保险业对疫情风险“完全定价过低”

贝基·奎克：下一个问题给阿吉特。来自密苏里科技大学唐·温奇教授，他说：“贾殷先生，COVID-19教会了我们关于系统性和相关性风险的什么？从此以后我们会有什么不同的做法吗？”

阿吉特·贾殷：是的。在保险业务中，我们经常将疫情风险视为我们需要应对的风险因素之一。话虽如此，我认为经历了最近的一切后，我们学到的重要一课是，虽然我们意识到疫情风险是一个风险因素，但我们整个行业所有人对它的定价都完全、完全过低。

阿吉特·贾殷：我们中的一些人认为这是一个最多百年一遇的事件。即便如此，这个概率也已经很高了。所以，我认为重要的教训是重新校准和重新思考像疫情风险这样的事件其重现期是多久。另外，作为一个行业，我们还没有做得足够好，我指的是在关联风险、聚合风险以及确保我们能处理聚合数字方面。例如，疫情风险显然夺走了人们的生命。但另外，我们中的一些人曾经写过所谓的“赛事取消”或“应急”保单。在为应急保单定价时，比如奥运会取消，NBC会为其转播权购买保险，而这些权利可能突然变得不那么值钱。在为类似情况定价时，我们会考虑地震和风险，以及最近的恐怖主义。但我们从未考虑过，保费中应该有多少部分来自疫情风险敞口。

所以，我认为整个行业会变得更加成熟，会全面思考疫情风险对整个投资组合的影响，而不是仅仅局限于一两个领域。

贝基·奎克：抱歉，唐还问台上的其他人是否想在阿吉特之后就同一个话题发表评论。

沃伦·巴菲特：我没听到。

贝基·奎克：哦，他只是想问台上的其他人是否想就此发表评论。

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，正如阿吉特提到的，人们正在加入——嗯，在赛事取消险中，你知道，很多人购买保险以防奥运会取消，或美国不参加。我的意思是，他们试图考虑各种风险，因为他们有基于此的广告活动。所以，有很多赛事取消险。其保费中隐含的、可归因于疫情风险的部分可能被低估了。我的意思是，你知道，比尔·盖茨五六年前在Ted活动上发表过一场精彩的演讲，但人们忽略了它。非常有趣，因为我们现在看到的还不是最坏的情况。然而，已经发生的事情已经令人震惊。那些承保的人——他们有时可能会发现，他们承保了他们不想——甚至无意承保的东西，也许被保险人也不认为自己买了。但尽管如此，事件发生后，他们会非常巧妙地追索。还有一些风险太大了。

例如，核风险。联邦政府很早就认识到了这一点。私营保险业——他们无法处理涉及大规模核打击之类的财务风险。所以，疫情——未来的保单措辞会更加小心（笑），试图非常精确地定义它。顺便说一句，到目前为止，在英国发生的案件——我认为有一家特定的保险公司——案件对保险公司的判决比美国严厉得多。我的意思是，保单的写法不同。你不会为你没有购买的东西获得保险。一般来说，法院判决对保险公司有利。在伯克希尔，碰巧我们不是一个大玩家。但那是——在商业多重风险中——那可能不是——对伯克希尔来说不是一个巨大的因素。

原文

8. Pandemic risk was “totally underpriced” by insurance industry

BECKY QUICK: Now this next question’s for Ajit. It comes from Professor Don Wunsch at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, who says, “Mr. Jain, what has COVID-19 taught us about systemic and correlated risk? And is there anything that we will do differently from now on?”

AJIT JAIN: Yeah. In the insurance business, we often think about pandemic risk as one of the risk factors that we need to cope with in our business. Having said that, I think the big lesson for us, having gone through what we’ve gone through recently, is that, while we were aware of the fact that pandemic risk is a risk factor, it was totally, totally underpriced by all of us in the industry.

AJIT JAIN: Several of us thought it’s an event that’ll happen, at most, once in a hundred years. And even then, those odds are pretty high. So, I think the big lesson for us is to recalibrate and rethink about what the return time is for something like a pandemic risk. And separately, we haven’t yet done a good enough job as an industry, I’m saying, in terms of correlating the risk and aggregating the risk and making sure we can deal with the aggregate numbers. For example, pandemic risk has obviously taken the lives — taken people’s lives. But then separately, a bunch of us used to write something called “event cancellation,” or “contingency” policies. And, in terms of pricing for the contingency policies, like the Olympics being canceled, NBC would buy insurance for their rights, which might suddenly be not worth much. And when pricing something like that, we would think in terms of earthquake and risk and, more recently, terrorism. But we would never factor something like what portion of the price should come from the pandemic exposure.

So, I think the industry will become a lot more sophisticated, in terms of thinking through what is the impact of pandemic risk across the entire portfolio, as opposed to it just being localized to one or two areas.

BECKY QUICK: And I’m sorry, Don asked if anyone else on the stage wanted to comment after Ajit on that same topic.

WARREN BUFFETT: I missed that.

BECKY QUICK: Oh, he was just looking if anyone else on the stage wanted to comment on that.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, as Ajit mentioned, people were throwing in — well, in event cancellation, you know, I mean lots of people buy insurance against the Olympics being canceled, or the United States not participating. I mean they try to think of all kinds of risk because they have ad campaigns based upon all — So, there’s a lot of event cancellation insurance. And it was probably underpriced — the implicit part of that premium that was attributable to a pandemic risk. I mean, you know, Bill Gates gave a terrific talk at Ted events five or six years ago, and people ignored it. And it’s very interesting, because this isn’t a worst case, what we’ve seen. And yet, it’s staggering, in terms of what has happened. And people that wrote insurance, that — they may have found out, sometimes, that they were covering things they didn’t want to — didn’t even intend to cover and maybe the insured didn’t think they were buying. But nevertheless, after the event occurs, that they get very inventive in coming after them. There are certain risks, too, that are just too big.

The nuclear risk, for example. I mean the federal government is, very early on, recognized it. The private insurance industry — they can’t handle the risk involved in — the financial risk — that would be involved in terms of a massive nuclear strike or something like that. So, it’s — Pandemics — the wording will be much more careful (laughs) in future policies on trying to define it very precisely. And incidentally, I mean, in the way the cases have come so far, in the United Kingdom — I mean, and I think there was one particular insurer — I mean, the cases are coming down much tougher on insurers than in the United States. I mean, the policies were just written differently. You don’t — you don’t get insurance against something you don’t buy (unintelligible) for. And generally, the court decisions have come down favorable to insurers. And at Berkshire, it just so happens, we are not a big player. But that’s — in commercial multiple peril — which might be where — it is not a huge factor for Berkshire.

9. 伯克希尔的COVID-19保险赔付将“远远高于”目前16亿美元的储备

贝基·奎克：跟进问题来自马丁·迪瓦恩。他问阿吉特和沃伦：“您对伯克希尔因COVID-19疫情产生的保险索赔敞口的最佳估计是多少？”

阿吉特·贾殷：嗯，就准备金而言，从去年到今年第一季度末，我们已经计提了16亿美元多一点。现在，这还没有考虑到因COVID-19导致事故减少而带来的频率收益。GEICO因此获得了巨大的顺风。但就保险业务整体将要支付的金额而言，到目前为止，这个数字大约是16亿。我的猜测是，这个数字可能会增长。因为如果你看一下——整个行业已经计提了——我们计提了16亿，正如我提到的——整个行业目前为COVID-19计提了大约250到300亿美元。如果你相信行业专家，他们会告诉你这个数字可能接近1000亿。所以，还有大约700-750亿美元的COVID-19损失需要流经保险业的资产负债表和利润表。

因此，我们目前16亿的数字将会远远高于这个数。但这不是我们完全无法管理的事情。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。我猜，我们不会成为保险索赔支付额前五的公司，即使我们是——我们实际上承保的人寿保险和年金的金额都小得多。你知道，最终，我们会——我们会有更多人寿保险索赔。但年金不会持续。会有更多人去世，否则他们会从年金中获得付款。它从很多方面产生影响。这是——你知道，这是有史以来最伟大的人类灾难之一。但在保险中它不算大。我想说，如果保险业认为他们会损失1000亿美元，那么这1000亿现在应该已经记在他们的账上了，我的意思是——（笑）分批计入损失的想法——你有一项负债。

我们的目标不是——我们的目标是——在我们认为它发生时计提负债，并且——如果我们真的认为我们将按比例承担1000亿中的一部分，我们不应该只有16亿。但是——关于这一点说得够多了。（笑）

原文

9. Berkshire COVID-19 insurance payouts will be “a lot, lot higher” than current reserve of $1.6 billion

BECKY QUICK: This follow-up question is from Martin Devine. And he asks both Ajit and Warren, “What’s your best estimate of Berkshire’s insurance claim exposure from the COVID-19 pandemic?”

AJIT JAIN: Well, in terms of reserves, starting from last year to the end of the first quarter this year, we have put up a billion-six and change, in terms of reserves. Now, what that doesn’t take into account is some of the frequency benefit because of COVID19 that results because of fewer accidents. And GEICO has had a huge tailwind because of that. But in terms of what the insurance operations collectively are going to be writing checks for, that number, as of now, is about a billion-six. And my guess is that’ll probably grow. Because if you look upon it — the industry as a whole has reserved — we reserved 1.6, as I mentioned — the industry as a whole has reserved about 25 to $30 billion for COVID-19 as of now. If you believe the pundits in the industry, they will tell you that number is probably going to be closer to a hundred billion. So, there’s another, about 70-75 billion dollars of COVID-19 losses that need to flow through insurance industry’s balance sheet and income statement.

Our number, therefore, of 1.6 that we have as of now, is going to be a lot, lot higher. But it’s not something that we cannot manage completely.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We will not be in the top five payers of, my guess, of insurance claims, even though we’re — it’s — And we write a much smaller amount of both life insurance and annuities, actually. And, you know, in the end, we get — we had more life insurance claims. But the annuities are not going to last. More people will have died that would have otherwise got payments on their annuities. It cuts a lot of ways. It’s — it’s a — you know, one of the great human catastrophes of all time. But it is not that big in insurance. And I would say this, if the insurance industry thinks they’re going to lose a hundred billion dollars, the hundred billion ought to be up on their books now, I mean — (Laughs) The idea of feeding in losses — you’ve got a liability.

And our goal is not — our goal is to have — put up the liability when we think it’s happened, and — If — we should not be at a billion-six, I would say this, if we really think we’re going to have some proportional share of a hundred billion. But — But that’s enough said on that. (Laughs)

10. 收购堪萨斯城南方铁路不会对BNSF产生巨大影响

贝基·奎克：下一个问题给格雷格，也给沃伦和查理。来自布莱尔·米勒，他问：“堪萨斯城南方铁路与加拿大太平洋铁路或加拿大国家铁路的合并对BNSF意味着什么，在竞争方面？您认为合并的协同效应能否证明所支付的倍数是合理的？”

格雷格·阿贝尔：当然。显然，我们非常关注这笔交易，加拿大国家铁路和加拿大太平洋铁路都在竞购堪萨斯城南方铁路。这两家公司中任何一家收购堪萨斯城南方铁路都会对BNSF产生影响。我们——他们基本上提议的是打造一条从加拿大到墨西哥的南北铁路。我们在墨西哥有很强的存在——不像我们的一些竞争对手那么强。但我们会感受到那里的竞争。所以，我们会非常密切关注这笔交易。在它提交给地面运输委员会（STB）时，适用的标准是必须保护或加强竞争。所以这是我们的机会，代表我们的客户保护我们的特许经营权。我们为某些客户进出那里运输多式联运业务。我们希望保护我们客户在那里的权利。因此，我们将在审批过程中积极行动。但毫无疑问，最终它会影响到我们的特许经营权。沃伦？

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，影响不大。但它对联合太平洋和BNSF都有轻微影响——相对较小。但这不是地面运输委员会真正担心的。他们的工作是做对托运人最有利的事情。至于支付的价格，你知道，就像你说的，如果你能以零成本借到所有钱——零成本——（笑）——这对人们来说没什么区别。如果利率环境不同，就不会支付这个价格。我的意思是很简单。但堪萨斯城南方铁路没有什么魔力。它——我认为他们与墨西哥的协议到2047年结束。它——你知道，它不会——承运的车辆数等等，不会有太大变化。但有点意思。只有——两家主要的加拿大——他们所谓的I级铁路。

美国有五家。这将会导致，你知道，实质上，三个单元是加拿大的，四个是美国的，这不是你通常认为的（笑）美国铁路系统发展的方式。但——你知道，我们讨论了很多。CP——或者加拿大太平洋或加拿大国家铁路——很可能会得到它。我认为地面运输委员会——前几天他们以四比一投票了，不是吗？没有——

格雷格·阿贝尔：他们就加拿大太平洋铁路必须获得批准的初始信托结构进行了投票。正如你所说，沃伦，那是四比一的投票结果。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。

格雷格·阿贝尔：所以他们正在推进评估。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。通常情况下，铁路交易评估需要很长时间。但在这种情况下，我认为他们有两个对立的信托提案。实际上，通过做出——如果他们快速决定——允许哪个信托提案——我不明白如何同时允许两个提案。所以，这可能是一个非常快速的决策，不是——我不知道。但这取决于地面运输委员会来决定什么是最好的，以及他们对国家的义务。

贝基·奎克：关于那个有一个跟进问题——

沃伦·巴菲特：当然。

贝基·奎克：——你认为他们支付的估值值得吗？

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我们——非常非常温和地说。我的意思是，自从我进入铁路行业以来，每个人都在某种程度上尝试与不同的铁路公司做交易，你知道。（笑）所以，你知道，我们讨论过。当CP——当亨特·哈里森或——你知道，是亨特竞购CP并引领了潮流吗？你知道，我们考虑过购买CP。我的意思是，每个人都考虑过一切，并且——我们不会支付这个价格。这意味着BNSF的价格甚至比UP的售价还要高。但是，你知道，在某种程度上，这是好玩的钱。我的意思是，当利率这么低时，我确信从CP和CN的角度来看，只有一家KC南方铁路。他们没有机会扩张——他们不会买我们，也不会买UP。于是激情涌动，价格上升，并且——

查理·芒格：他们用别人的钱买。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，是别人的钱。而且你会在五到十年内退休——

查理·芒格：是的。

沃伦·巴菲特：——人们不会记得你付了多少钱，但他们记得你是否建立了一个更大的系统。投资银行家们在你每一步行动中都为你欢呼。你知道，他们说你还可以付更多，这是——你知道，他们在移动数字，电子表格出来了，费用在流动。（笑）

原文

10. Kansas City Southern acquisition won’t have huge impact on BNSF

BECKY QUICK: This next question is for Greg, but also for Warren and Charlie. It’s from Blair Miller, who asks, “What does the combination of Kansas City Southern with either Canadian Pacific or Canadian National mean to BNSF, in terms of competition? “And do you think the synergies of the merger will justify the multiple paid?”

GREG ABEL: Sure. So, obviously, a transaction we followed very closely with both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific bidding to purchase Kansas City Southern. Either of those companies acquiring Kansas City Southern will have an impact on BNSF. We — what they’re basically proposing is to create a north/south railway that goes from Canada into Mexico. We do have a strong presence in Mexico — not as strong as some of our competition. But we would feel competition there. So, we’ll follow that transaction very closely. As it goes before the Surface Transportation Board, the standard that will be applied is that competition has to be protected or enhanced. So that’s our opportunity to protect our franchise on behalf of our customers. So, we move intermodal business both in and out of there on behalf of certain customers. We’ll want to protect the rights of our customers there. So, we’ll be active in the approval process. But there’s no question, in the end, it impacts our franchise. Warren?

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, it’s not huge. But it affects both the Union Pacific and BNSF to a small degree — a relatively small degree. But that’s— that’s not really the worry of the Surface Transportation Board. Their job is to do what’s best for the shippers. And in terms of the price that’s being paid, you know, like you say, if you can borrow all the money at nothing — for nothing — you know, (laughs), it doesn’t make much difference to people. And this would not be being paid under a different interest rate environment. I mean it’s very simple. But it would make — there’s no magic to the Kansas City Southern. It’s got a — I think their deal with Mexico ends in 2047. It’s — it’s — you know, it will — the number of carloads carried and everything, it’s not going to change that much. But it is kind of interesting. There’s only — there’s two major Canadian — what they call Class I railroads.

And there’s five in the United States. And this will result, you know, in essentially, three of the units being Canadian, four being U.S., which is not the way you normally think of (laughs) the way of the development of the railroad system would work in the United States. But it’s — you know, we’ve talked about it plenty. And CP — or either Canadian Pacific or Canadian National — is very likely to get it. I think the Surface Transportation Board will — voted four-to-one, didn’t they, the other day? Didn’t get —

GREG ABEL: They voted on an initial trust structure that they had to approve for Canadian Pacific. And that was a four-to-one vote, as you noted, Warren.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.

GREG ABEL: So, they’re moving forward with the evaluation of it.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. And normally, railroad deals are very long — take a long time for them to evaluate. But in this case, I think they have two opposing trust proposals. And in effect, by making a — if they make a quick decision on the — which trust proposal they allow — I don’t see how you allow two proposals, exactly. So, it may be a very accelerated decision, not — I don’t know. But it’s up to the Surface Transportation Board to do what’s best for what their obligation is to the country to do.

BECKY QUICK: There was a follow-up question on that —

WARREN BUFFETT: Sure.

BECKY QUICK: — do you think the valuation that they’re paying is worth it?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we — in a very, very mild way. I mean, everybody’s kind of played at making deals with different railroads, you know, ever since I’ve been in the railroad business. (Laughs) So, you know, we’ve talked about it. When CP — when Hunter Harrison or — you know, came after — was it Hunter that bid on CP that kind of led the way? And, you know, we looked at buying CP. I mean, everybody looks at everything, and — We would not pay this price. And it implies a price for BNSF that’s even higher than what the UP is selling for. But, you know, it’s kind of play money, to some degree. I mean when interest rates are this low, and I’m sure from the standpoint of both CP and CN, there’s only one KC Southern. And they’re not going to get a chance to expand — they’re not going to buy us, they’re not going to buy the UP. And the juices flow, and the prices go up, and —

CHARLIE MUNGER: They’re buying it with somebody else’s money.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, it’s somebody else’s money. And you’re going to retire —

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah.

WARREN BUFFETT: — in five or 10 years. And people are not going to remember what you paid, but they’re going to remember whether you built a larger system. And the investment bankers are cheering you on at every move. You know, they’re saying you could pay more, and this is the — you know, and they’re moving the figures around, the spreadsheets are out, and the fees are flowing. (Laughs)

11. 成功的收购自然会成为业务中更大的一部分

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自布鲁克林的阿舍·哈夫特，他说——阿舍从2006年起就是股东。他说他很欣赏您在解释所犯代价高昂的错误时的诚实和坦率。“在今年的董事长信中，您提到在2016年计算精密铸件公司的未来平均收益时犯了错误，导致伯克希尔为收购它支付了过高的价格。“精密铸件公司2020年的收益似乎因疫情以及航空和旅游业的影响而大幅下降。您在2016年本可以做哪些计算从而改变收购决定？其次，精密铸件公司目前面临的问题是否比疫情更大？”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，伯克希尔没有犯错，是我犯了错，顺便说一句。（笑）不，每次我们考虑收购一家企业时，我们都会评估其竞争优势、需要支付的价格、获得的管理层等。我们在管理层上没有犯错。但就平均盈利能力而言，你知道——当波音遇到Max问题时，那是一种可能性。我的意思是，任何时候，任何大客户——各种事情都可能发生。我们已经看到其中一些情况发生了。因此，相对于平均收益，我支付了过高的价格。这是一家非常棒的公司。你知道，我对管理层和一切都很满意，并且——但通用电气不需要我们原先认为它们需要的那么多发动机。（笑）它们进入了电力业务，以及其他各种业务。我们知道它们在这些业务中。

但我们没有想到这些业务会在其他业务——我们收购的其他业务最终有时表现比我们预期更好——陷入接近萧条状态时也陷入困境。但我们会继续犯错。我的意思是——我不应该说我们会——我会。但即使是这些其他的——

查理·芒格：我们其他人会帮忙的。（笑声）

沃伦·巴菲特：我们会——你知道，我们有一些很棒的交易，也有一些糟糕的交易。好的一点是——正如我指出的，这不完全适用于精密铸件公司——但当我们对一项业务感到失望时，它通常会成为我们业务中越来越小的一部分，这是事物的本质，因为它不会有任何发展。而当我们获得一项成功的业务，比如GEICO或类似的公司——GEICO做得很好——它们现在做的业务量是我们1995年获得控股权时的15倍——它们成为我们组合中比例重要得多的部分。所以，通过自然力量，你的钱会更多地集中在那些发展比你预期更有利的事情上。你最终会更多地集中在那些成功的业务上。这不像——正如查理所说，不像生孩子。我的意思是——（笑）那些——不好的孩子会给你带来更多麻烦。

（笑）但在这个——在企业的孩子中，小的那些有点——顺便说一句，查理和我从三家企业开始。伯克希尔是纺织品，多元零售是一家百货公司，蓝筹印花是交易印花业务。那是我们合并的三家公司。三家原始企业都失败了。这让我有点感慨，因为有些人担心，难道我们不知道煤炭会随着时间的推移被淘汰吗？（笑）当然，我们知道煤炭会——你知道，但这并不意味着我们会随着时间的推移被淘汰。我的意思是——每家企业都有一些需要考虑的事情。

原文

11. Successful acquisitions naturally become a bigger part of the business

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from Asher Haft in Brooklyn, who says — Asher’s been a shareholder since 2006. Says that he appreciates your honestly and candidness when it comes to explaining costly errors you made. “In this year’s chairman letter, you discussed that you made a mistake in 2016 when calculating Precision Castpart’s average amount of future earnings, which resulted in Berkshire overpaying to acquire it. “It appears that Precision’s earnings declined substantially in 2020 because of the pandemic and the effect of airline and travel industry. What calculations could you have made in 2016 that might have altered your decision to acquire it? And secondly, are the problems Precision is currently facing larger than the pandemic?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, Berkshire didn’t make the mistake, I made the mistake, incidentally. (Laughs) No, any time we look at buying a business, we’re evaluating the competitive strengths of the business, the price we have to pay, the management we get and everything. We didn’t make a mistake on the management. But in terms of the earning power, on average, and, you know — when Boeing has troubles with the Max, well, that’s a probability. I mean, any time, any customers of big — I mean, all kinds of things can happen. And we have seen some of those things happen. And therefore, I paid too much, in relation to average earnings. It’s a terrific company. And, you know, it’s — I’m happy with the management and everything, and — But GE doesn’t need as many engines as we thought they would need. (Laughs) And they get into the power business, and a variety of things. And we knew they were in the businesses.

But we did not think those businesses would necessarily be in something close to a depression when other businesses are — that we bought end up, sometimes, doing better than we think. But we’ll continue making mistakes. I mean — and I shouldn’t say we will — I will. But even these other —

CHARLIE MUNGER: The rest of us will help. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: And we’ll — you know, we’ve got some wonderful deals, and some terrible deals. And the nice thing about it is — as I pointed out, this doesn’t really apply in the case of Precision, precisely — but when we’re disappointed in a business, it usually becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of our business, just by the nature of things, because it isn’t going anyplace. And when we get a successful business, like a GEICO or something of the sort — GEICO’s doing — they’re doing 15 times as much business as when we bought control in 19 — they become a proportionally much more important part of our mix. So, you really get, through just natural forces, you get more of your money in the things that have developed more favorably than you thought. You actually end up getting a greater concentration in the ones that work out. It’s not like — as Charlie would say, it’s not like having children. I mean — (Laughs) The one that — the bad ones cause you more problems.

(Laughs) But the — in this — in the children of businesses, the small ones kind of — by the way, we started with three businesses, Charlie and I. And Berkshire was textiles, Diversified Retailing was a department store, and trading stamps were Blue Chip’s business. And those were the three companies we put together. And all three of the original businesses failed. Which sort of gets me, in terms of the people that are worried about, don’t we know that coal is going to be phased out over time? (Laughs) Of course, we know coal’s going to be — you know, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be phased out over time. I mean that — Every business has some things to think about, about that way.

12. 任何企业的首要“风险因素”是管理不当

沃伦·巴菲特：最大的危险——招股说明书中有一个部分叫做，他们管那叫什么？关于——某些——

格雷格·阿贝尔：风险因素。

阿吉特·贾殷：风险因素。

沃伦·巴菲特：风险因素，是的。第一大风险因素——你从来没见过——第一大风险因素是这家企业得到了错误的管理层。你让一个男人或女人负责，他们——他们很有人缘，董事们喜欢他们。他们不知道自己在做什么，但他们知道如何装模作样。这是企业面临的最大单一危险——那个人留下来经营了10或15年，要么留在纺织业或百货业，要么扩张。（笑）你知道，我看过很多企业。这就是导致头号问题的原因。这不是那种律师让他们全部列出来的东西。

原文

12. Top “risk factor” for any business is getting the wrong management

WARREN BUFFETT: The biggest danger — they have that section in the prospectus called, what do they call that? About — certain —

GREG ABEL: Risk factors.

AJIT JAIN: Risk factors.

WARREN BUFFETT: Risk factors, yeah. The number one risk factor — you never see it — the number one risk factor is that this business gets the wrong management. And you get a guy or a woman in charge of it that are — they’re personable, the directors like them. They don’t know what they’re doing, but they know how to put on an appearance. That’s the biggest single danger that a business — and that that person stays and runs it for 10 or 15 years, and either stays in the textile business or department store business and expands. (Laughs) And, you know, I’ve looked at a lot of businesses. And that’s what’s caused the number one problem. And it isn’t the kind of thing where they list them all because the lawyers tell them to list them.

13. 巴菲特效仿政治人物，回避比特币问题

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自拉古·拜克瓦尔，问沃伦和查理。“现在加密货币市场总价值达2万亿美元，您仍然认为加密货币是毫无价值的人造黄金吗？”

沃伦·巴菲特：（笑）嗯，我就知道会有人问比特币或加密货币的问题。我心想，好吧，我一直看着这些政治人物回避问题。我总觉得他们这样做有点令人恶心，但事实是，我要回避这个问题，（笑）因为可能有几十万观看的人拥有比特币，而可能只有两个人做空。所以，我们有两种选择：让40万人对我们生气和不满——或者让两个人开心。这是个愚蠢的等式。所以，我想了想。内布拉斯加州以前有位州长——很久以前——当他遇到尖锐问题时，比如你怎么看财产税？或者，我们应该怎么处理学校？他会直视那个人说：“我对那个没问题！”（笑声）然后他就走开了。

嗯，我对那个没问题，也许我们看看查理怎么样。（笑）

原文

13. Buffett follows politician’s lead and dodges Bitcoin question

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from Raghu Baichwal, and it’s for both Warren and Charlie. “Now that the crypto market overall is valued at $2 trillion, do you still consider cryptos as worthless artificial gold?”

WARREN BUFFETT: (Laughs) Well, I knew there’d be a question on Bitcoin or crypto. And I thought to myself, well, I’ve watched these politicians dodge questions all the time, you know. And I always find it kind of disgusting when they do it, but the truth is, I’m going to dodge that question, (laughs), because we’ve probably got hundreds of thousands of people watching this that own bitcoin, and we’ve probably got two people that are short. So, we got a choice of making 400,000 people mad at us and unhappy and — or making two people happy. And that’s just a dumb equation. So, I thought about it. We had a governor one time in Nebraska — a long time ago — but he would get a tough question, you know, what do you think about property taxes? Or, you know, what should we do about schools? And he’d look right at the person and he’d say, “I’m all right on that one!” (Laughter) And then he’d just walk off.

Well, I’m all right on that one, and maybe we’ll see how Charlie is. (Laughs)

14. 芒格：“当然，我讨厌比特币的成功”

查理·芒格：嗯，了解我的人都知道他们这是在向公牛挥舞红旗。（笑声）当然，我讨厌比特币的成功。我不欢迎一种对绑架犯、敲诈勒索者等等如此有用的货币，也不喜欢仅仅把额外的几十亿、几百亿美元送给某个凭空发明了一种新金融产品的人。所以，我想我应该谦虚地说，我认为整个该死的发展是令人厌恶的，并且违背了文明的利益。我把批评留给别人。（笑声）

沃伦·巴菲特：我对那个没问题！（笑声）

原文

14. Munger: “Of course, I hate the Bitcoin success”

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, those who know me well are just waving the red flag at the bull. (Laughter) Of course, I hate the Bitcoin success. And I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth, nor do I like just shoveling out a few extra billions and billions and billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air. So, I think I should say modestly that I think the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interest of civilization. And I’ll leave the criticism to others. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: I’m all right on that one! (Laughter)

15. 我们的德州能源提案可能不是最好的，但比马斯克的好

贝基·奎克：下一个问题——或者说下一系列问题——来自詹姆斯·埃尔南德斯。他有两个问题，一个给阿吉特，一个给格雷格。都关于埃隆·马斯克。给格雷格的问题：“埃隆·马斯克表示，伯克希尔·哈撒韦为德克萨斯州提出的、耗资超过90亿美元建设新发电能力的能源提案是错误的。相反，马斯克先生认为，使用电池储能进行负荷平衡才是正确的做法。“您能解释为什么BHE的提案对（格雷格）阿博特州长和德克萨斯州来说是更好的做法吗？具体来说，与马斯克先生的提案相比，德克萨斯州公民可以预期节省多少？”

格雷格·阿贝尔：当然。显然，今年二月德克萨斯州发生了非常不幸的事件。它基本上持续了四天。许多生命逝去。经济损失巨大。德克萨斯州强调，在那段时间内，损失在800到1300亿美元之间。我认为，当你审视电力部门时，它从根本上辜负了公民。它的表现没有达到预期。而当它确实发挥作用时，又极其昂贵。他们承担了数十亿美元的能源成本，是之前支付的——他们在那四天支付的能源成本是过去一年所支付成本的10倍。所以，对德克萨斯州来说是一个非常重大的事件。我们带着我们认为良好的解决方案去了德克萨斯州。我们花了很多时间整合方案，理解其根本问题。我们的提案实际上基于这样一个事实：德克萨斯人的健康和福利处于危险之中。

我们需要为他们建立一个有效的保险政策——如果他们需要在非常短的时间内获得电力，它应该能够调度，并且能在四天内供应——我们实际上提议能供应七天。我们提案的基本概念一直是，如果有更好的提案被提出来，那我们就完成了使命。我们只是在那里——这是我们能想到的最好的提案或选择。显然，如果德克萨斯州、埃隆或其他任何人提出更好的建议，我们一直说，德克萨斯州，你应该采纳它。我们坚信，我们现在拥有——剩下的对德克萨斯州来说是一个非常好的提案。它将继续被讨论和评估。电池提案和我们的提案之间的巨大区别在于，我们将拥有可以连续七天持续发电的电力，而如果采用电池解决方案，你可能只能释放储存了四个小时的电力。但我们讨论的是四天的问题，而不是四个小时。这完全是一个不同的成本方程和解决方案。

所以，我为我们的团队提出了一个我认为非常独特的解决方案而感到非常自豪。我们与供应商和Peter Kiewit & Sons公司共同努力，提出了我们认为是固定成本并且可以在2023年11月前交付的方案。同样，我们给出了一个确定的日期——不幸的是，它不会在明年冬天准备好。今年夏天也不会准备好。但这是一个有价值的解决方案，我们希望至少能引发正确的讨论，并为该州找到正确的长期解决方案。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我们还愿意拿出40亿美元，如果我们没有按承诺交付，我们将把它作为罚金支付。你知道，我们去找了基威特，找了通用电气，说，你知道，我们多久能拿到涡轮机——你知道。如果你要为2023年做准备，你必须很快开始。而且还有通货膨胀。基威特不会在一个月内改变对我们的承诺。我们不会试图把所有合同都写出来。但他们有一百人在做这个——

格雷格·阿贝尔：是的，他们有几百人在做——（笑）

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。你知道，通用电气也很合作——但这并不意味着我们有最好的解决方案。我们只知道我们能做什么。如果有人能做得更快，他们可以做得更便宜，等等，那很好。但如果他们做不到，他们应该承担一些损失，我的意思是——我们将用40亿美元来支持我们的承诺，你知道。我们不会有任何狡猾的条款说如果发生这个或那个，我们就不付钱。但我们一年后将无法做到这一点。我的意思是，我们可以一年后再做，但成本会不同，而且会更晚。但我们希望德克萨斯州——德克萨斯州是一个做生意的好地方。我们在那里有很多业务。BNSF的总部就在那里。这是一个好地方。

这是突然出现的，但无论如何——公用事业业务的性质是，你必须为可能不会发生的事情做好准备。（笑）你知道，你不想说，这是一个30年一遇的事件，你知道，人们会死。我的意思是，所以——你需要一个安全边际。我们有一个解决方案，其他人可能有其他解决方案。当任何解决方案达成时，我们都会欢呼。如果是我们的解决方案，我们会欢呼得更大声一点。（笑）

原文

15. Our Texas energy proposal may not be the best, but it’s better than Musk’s

BECKY QUICK: The next question that comes in — or the next series of questions — are from James Hernandez. He has two questions, one for Ajit and one for Greg. They both concern Elon Musk. For Greg, this question is for you. “Elon Musk has stated that Berkshire Hathaway’s energy proposal for Texas, spending more than $9 billion for new generating capacity, is wrong. Instead, Mr. Musk argues that load balancing using battery storage is the appropriate course of action. “Can you explain why the BHE proposal is the better course of action for Governor (Greg) Abbott and the state of Texas? Specifically, what amount of savings can the citizens of Texas expect above and beyond what Mr. Musk is proposing?”

GREG ABEL: Sure. So the — obviously, there is the very unfortunate event in Texas in February. And it basically lasted four days. Many lives were lost. The economic damage was significant. Texas has highlighted that anywhere from 80 to $130 billion in incurred losses over that period of time. I think when you look at the power sector, it fundamentally let the citizens down. It didn’t perform as they expected. And then when it did perform, it was extremely expensive. They incurred billions and billions of dollars of energy costs versus a multiple of, basically, 10 times what they paid — they paid 10 times in energy costs over those four days what they paid in the past year. So, a very substantial event for Texas. We’ve gone to Texas with what we believe is a good solution. We spent a lot of time pulling it together, understanding the fundamental issues around it. And our proposal is really based upon the fact that the health and welfare of Texans were at risk.

And we needed to have, effectively, an insurance policy in place for them — that if they needed the power on very short notice, it would be able to be dispatched and it would be there for the four days — we’re actually proposing it could be there for seven days. And the fundamental concept of our proposal has always been, if there’s a better proposal that’s brought forward, we’ve accomplished our mission. We’ve just been really there to — it’s the best proposal or option we could come up with. And obviously if Texas or Elon or someone else comes up with a better proposition, we’ve always said, Texas, you should pursue it. We strongly believe right now we have — what remains is a very good proposal for Texas. And it will continue to be discussed and evaluated. The big difference between a battery proposal and our proposal is that we will have power that can be generated continuously for seven consistent days, where if you went to a battery solution, you may release that power that’s been stored for four hours. But we’re talking four days of a problem,

2021年股东大会

第4/5部分

查理·芒格：我认为中国政府会允许企业蓬勃发展。这堪称世界历史上最非凡的事件之一——一群坚定的共产主义者看着新加坡等地的繁荣，说：“见鬼，我们不能再这样贫困下去了。我们要复制有效的方法。”他们改变了共产主义。他们直接接受了亚当·斯密的思想，并将其融入共产主义，声称现在我们有中国特色社会主义，也就是一个拥有自由市场、一群亿万富翁等的中国。他们实现了这一转变。在这方面，他们值得高度赞扬。沃伦和我在很多情况下，在改变自己的想法方面，可没他们那么擅长。（笑声）

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I think that the Chinese government will allow businesses to flourish. It was one of the most remarkable things that ever happened in the history of the world, when a bunch of committed communists just looked at the prosperity of places like Singapore and said the hell with this, we’re not going to stay here in poverty. We’re going to copy what works. And they changed communism. They just accepted Adam Smith and added it to their communism and said now we have communism with Chinese characteristics, which is China with a free market with a bunch of billionaires and so forth. And they made that shift. They deserve a lot of credit. Warren and I are not quite as good at that as changing our minds, in many cases. (Laughs)

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.

查理·芒格：而那是来自这样一个地方的一次显著变革。当然，它成效显著。中国普通民众的平均收入实现了巨大增长。他们让8亿人摆脱了贫困。速度很快。这在世界历史上是空前的。所以，我向中国人致敬。我认为他们会继续允许人们赚钱。他们知道这是有效的。中国——我一开始就很喜欢那位人物（中国领导人邓小平）说的话。“不管黑猫白猫，抓住老鼠就是好猫。”这正是我喜欢的那种说法。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: And that was a remarkable change coming from such a place. And, of course, it’s worked like gangbusters. That is enormous growth in the average income of the average Chinese. They’ve lifted 800 million people out of poverty. Fast. There was never anything like it in the history of the world. So, my hat is off to the Chinese. And I think they will continue to allow people to make money. They learned it works. The Chinese — I loved what the guy (Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping) said in the first place. “I don’t care whether the cat is black and white as long as it catches mice.” That’s my kind of talk.

沃伦·巴菲特：在那份全球最有价值的20家公司榜单中——正好——有三家是中国公司。如果你展望未来30年，你认为会有多少家是中国的？我猜会更多。但我不认为会超过美国。但谁知道呢？他们取得的成就令人惊叹。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: In that list of the 20 most valuable companies that just — three are Chinese. Now if you’re looking out 30 years, you know, how many do you think will be Chinese? My guess is more. But I don’t think it will top the United States. But who knows? It’s amazing what has been accomplished.

查理·芒格：是的，确实非常了不起。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, it’s really amazing.

沃伦·巴菲特：而且他们找到了有效的方法。我的意思是，（笑）没有什么比找到有效的方法更能随着时间的推移强化信念了。我们拭目以待。但我打赌会有超过三家。不过我也打赌美国的公司数量仍会多于中国。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: And they found what works. I mean, there’s (laugh) nothing like finding something that works in order to, sort of, reinforce ideas over time. And we’ll see what happens. But I would bet there will be more than three. But I will bet the United States has more than China has, too.

20. 关于拜登1.9万亿美元刺激计划是否引发通胀，我们“不知道”

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自蒂姆·梅德利——（咳嗽）——抱歉——来自密西西比州杰克逊的蒂姆·梅德利，他自1987年起就是伯克希尔的股东。他写道：“3月19日，备受尊敬的经济学家、哈佛大学前校长和奥巴马总统时期的财政部长劳伦斯·萨默斯，批评了乔·拜登总统的1.9万亿美元美国救援刺激计划。他在接受彭博电视台采访时说：‘我更担心的是，要么我们会面临更多通胀，要么会出现一场相当剧烈的财政货币冲突。这远远超出了必要范围。’他还说：‘这是我们过去40年来最不负责任的宏观经济政策。’您怎么看？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: This one comes from Tim Medley — (coughs) — Sorry — Tim Medley in Jackson, Mississippi, who’s been a Berkshire shareholder since 1987. He writes, “On March 19th, respected economist Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University and the former secretary of the treasury under President Obama, was critical of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue stimulus plan. “In an interview with Bloomberg television he said, ‘I am much more worried that we will have more inflation or that we will have a pretty dramatic fiscal monetary collision. This goes way beyond what is necessary.’ He said also, ‘This is the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years.’ Your thoughts?”

沃伦·巴菲特：你在问我这个吗？（笑）

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: You’re asking me on that? (Laughs)

贝基·奎克：他没写具体问谁。所以，我想是台上任何一位——

原文

BECKY QUICK: He didn’t write to whom. So, I guess it’s anybody on the stage —

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我想——我想说拉里一直在读他叔叔的书（笑），也就是保罗·萨缪尔森。但是不，我认为——拉里是一个非常、非常、非常聪明的人。他是在提出各种可能性，实际上，自他3月19日——或不管具体是哪天——提出那个观点以来，现在可能已经有更多人表达了类似看法。你不能只从经济学的某一个方面看问题。如果我们真的能借出越来越多的债务，而持有成本最终变得非常低——人们曾认为日本做不到他们所做的那些事。但你知道，他们做到了——在（所罗门兄弟）那里，这曾被叫做“寡妇制造者”。人们一直在做空日本债券，但——答案是，我们不知道，但拉里的观点是一个重要的观点。而且在我看来，它很可能——与另一方的观点——同样有道理。我们不知道当前政策会导致什么结果。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I would — I would say that Larry’s been reading his uncle’s book (laughs), which was Paul Samuelson. But no, I think — Larry is a very, very, very smart fellow. And he’s laying out possibilities, which actually now have probably been voiced a little more even since that March 19th — whatever date it was — that he made that — it’s — You can’t just do one thing in economics. And if we really could shovel out more and more debt, and the carrying cost turned out to be something very low — People thought Japan couldn’t do what they’ve done. But they — you know — they — it used to be called the widow-maker around Salomon (Brothers). And people were shorting Japanese bonds, but — The answer is, we don’t know, but Larry’s view is an important view. And it’s just as good as — in my — probably — the view on the other side might be. We don’t know what happens from the present policies.

我们确实知道，正如（美联储主席）杰伊·鲍威尔前几天所说，那种认为债务占GDP的100%是某种极其危险水平的想法——现在看来并没有太大意义，而过去这曾是某种公认的智慧。我们了解到许多我们过去认为的事情并非事实。但我们还不知道的是（笑）我们现在做的事情是否正确。最好的做法是承认你不知道，并以一种无论发生什么都能获得不错结果的方式行事。这正是我们试图在伯克希尔·哈撒韦做的事情。我们不认为我们能通过宏观经济预测来赚钱。我们确实认为我们完全可以——我们完全可以相当确定，在那些不会最大化结果的（宏观）政策下，我们也能获得合理的结果，如果我们可以做那种预测的话。

原文

We do know, as (Federal Reserve Chair) Jay Powell said the other day, the idea that a hundred percent of GDP was some terribly dangerous level for — in terms of debt — that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense now, and that used to be, kind of, accepted wisdom. We’ve learned that a lot of things we thought before weren’t true. But what we haven’t learned yet (laughs) is whether what we’re doing now is true. And the best thing to do is recognize you don’t know and proceed in a way where you get a decent result no matter what happens. And that’s what we try and do at Berkshire Hathaway. We do not think we can make money by making macroeconomic predictions. We do think we can — we do think we can pretty darn — be pretty darn sure we’ll get a reasonable result under policies that will not maximize result, if we could do that sort of thing.

查理·芒格：拉里是否正确，这点完全不清楚。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: It’s not at all clear whether Larry is right or wrong.

沃伦·巴菲特：但他是个聪明人。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: He’s a smart man, though.

查理·芒格：他是个聪明人。而且他能提出这个问题也很有勇气。他几乎是唯一一个那样说话的人，这一点我很钦佩。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: He is a smart man. And it’s courageous of him to be raising it, too. He’s practically the only one talking that way, which I admire, by the way.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。这保证了他不会在政府里得到职位。（笑）

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. It guarantees he won’t get a position in the administration. (Laughs)

查理·芒格：是的。嗯，这是我钦佩他的原因之一。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes. Well, that’s one of the reasons I admire him.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.

查理·芒格：不是说在政府任职有什么问题，但我喜欢那些说出自己真实想法的人。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Not that there’s anything wrong with having a position in the administration, but I think people who kind of tell it the way they think it is, I like it.

21. “我总体上喜欢银行”，但我们“不想在银行上持有像过去那么多的仓位”

贝基·奎克：这个问题——又回到了银行业，你之前提到过。但来自瑞士的杰罗姆·博纳尔写道：“您能解释一下为什么在2020年您决定退出大部分银行股，只保留美国银行吗？您对银行业未来的看法是什么？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: This question comes — it circles back to banking, which you touched on earlier. But Jerome Bonnard from Switzerland writes, “Could you please explain why you decided to exit most of your bank stocks in 2020 except for Bank of America? And what’s your view on the future of the banking industry?”

沃伦·巴菲特：我总体上喜欢银行，我只是不喜欢我们持有的比例，考虑到如果出现糟糕结果可能带来的风险——到目前为止，我们还没有遇到这种结果。所以，我只是——而且我们持有美国银行的股份超过了10%。超过10%对银行来说——对银行比对我们的麻烦更大——会带来很多限制。我喜欢美国银行。我的意思是——我非常喜欢（CEO）布莱恩·莫伊尼汉。我也挺喜欢银行业务的，所以我们增加了美国银行的仓位，但降低了整体银行仓位。我们不想在其他任何一家银行的持股超过10%。我们也不想增加美国银行的仓位，但总的来说，我们不想在银行上持有像过去那么多的仓位。我们喜欢——美国的银行业务比10年或15年前要好得多。世界其他地方的银行业务，在某些地方，可能会让我担心。

但是我们的银行状况比10年或15年前要好得多。不过，当市场在短期内冻结时，银行拥有的最大优势（笑）是美联储在它们身后支撑着。而美联储并不是——它们不支撑伯克希尔。我们必须自己照顾自己。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: I like banks generally, I just didn’t like the proportion we had in it, compared to the possible risk if we got bad results that did not — so far, we haven’t gotten. So, I just — and I — We were over 10% of Bank of America. It’s a real pain in the neck, both to the bank —more to the banks than to us, if we go over 10%, there’s just a whole lot of — And, I like the Bank of America. I mean — and I like (CEO) Brian Moynihan very much. And I like the banking business fine, so we took that up, but we took the overall bank position down. We didn’t want to go above 10 in any of the others. And we didn’t want to increase the BofA position, but we, overall, didn’t want as much in banks as we had. We like — the banking business is way better than it was, in the United States, than 10 or 15 years ago. The banking business around the world, in various places, might worry me.

But we — our banks are in far, far better shape than 10 or 15 years ago. But when things froze for a short period of time, the biggest thing the banks had (laughs) going for them is that the Federal Reserve was behind them. And Federal Reserve is not — they’re not behind Berkshire. It’s up to us to take care of ourselves.

22. 巴菲特拒绝解释购买威瑞森股票的想法

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自洛杉矶的马特。“您最近购买了威瑞森的大量股份。出于教育目的，您能解释一下这项投资背后的想法吗？总的来说，许多人将电信公司视为‘哑管道’，它们必须大量投资于资本支出，建设5G基础设施，却只能让其他科技公司（如Facebook、Uber、Airbnb和DoorDash）利用并攫取从该基础设施中创造的大部分价值。”

原文

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from Matt in Los Angeles. “You recently purchased a large stake in Verizon. For educational purposes, could you please explain your thinking behind this investment? In general, many people see telecoms as dumb pipes that have to spend heavily on CapEx, building out the 5G infrastructure, only for the other tech companies to take advantage and capture most of the value created from the infrastructure, like Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, and DoorDash.”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我认为他对这个情况分析得很好。但我们不从事解释（笑）我们为何持有某只股票的业务，因为我们可能还会买入更多，或者卖出，或者谁知道会怎样。所以，他得靠自己了。但听起来他自己非常有能力把这个问题想清楚。（笑）

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think he’s analyzed the situation well. But we are not in a — in the business of explaining (laugh) why we own a stock, which we either might buy more of, or sell, or who knows what. So, he’s on his own. But he sounds like he’s very capable of thinking it through very well himself. (Laughs)

23. 我们不花时间思考如果法律改变会发生什么

贝基·奎克：斯拉文·武科布拉特写道：“参议员乔什·霍利（密苏里州共和党人）最近提出了一项新的反垄断提案，将禁止市值超过1000亿美元的公司进行并购。虽然这项立法不太可能通过，但加强反垄断监管可能对伯克希尔构成实质性风险。伯克希尔的董事会是否已经讨论过，如果伯克希尔被禁止收购受控企业，长期来看公司会发生什么？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: Slaven Vukobrat writes in, “Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) recently unveiled a new antitrust proposal that would ban mergers and acquisitions by firms with a market capitalization over a hundred billion dollars. “While this legislation is unlikely to go through, increasing antitrust regulation could represent a material risk for Berkshire. “Has Berkshire’s board already discussed what would happen to the company over the long term if Berkshire was to be prevented from acquiring controlled businesses?”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我们没有专门讨论过这个。但董事会非常、非常、非常清楚伯克希尔在做什么——为什么这样做——你知道，我们在配置资本方面是怎么想的。但是我们可以——你知道——每个人都知道，如果你改变反垄断法，可能会改变伯克希尔的处境。如果他们改变税法，也可能会改变伯克希尔的处境。你知道，有很多事情，我们可以花几个小时讨论。但最终，你知道，某种事情改变的概率是22.3%吗？（笑）这是在董事会会议上打发时间的好方法，如果你作为董事每年能拿到三四十万美元，你可能想花时间做这种事。但我们真的不关注这个。关于伯克希尔，最重要的是他们如何保护文化，如何确保如果CEO选错了人，你能做些什么。董事会面临的最大风险就是选错了CEO。

我曾在20个董事会任职，这种情况不止一次发生。有时，要解雇他们是一个可怕的问题。你知道，年复一年，——如果有个持异议者进来，那是另一回事，但如果你就坐在那里，每年拿三四十万美元，而首席执行官时不时提议给你加薪（笑）——如果他是个好人，正在尽力而为，情况就更糟了。（笑）但是——我们不会花很多时间——我们可能会在私人层面上考虑，但我们不会让很多人去——我们希望他们更多了解BNSF的运营情况，（CEO）凯蒂（·法默）的表现如何，以及KCS（堪萨斯城南方铁路收购竞争）这件事是否会对我们造成实质性损害等等。

我们真的不会，也许除了私下里，开始讨论，例如，如果这个或那个预测在2050年实现，会有什么影响。查理？

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we don’t discuss that as a specific. But the board is very, very, very familiar with what Berkshire does — why they do it — you know, how we think in deploying capital. Buy we could — you know — Everybody knows that if you change the antitrust laws, it can change things for Berkshire. If they change the tax laws, it can change things for Berkshire. You know, there’s a lot of things, and — we can spend hours discussing them. But in the end, you know, is it a 22.3% risk that, you know, something changes? (Laughs) It’s a good way to fill the time at board meetings, and if you’re getting three or four hundred thousand dollars a year as a board director, you might want to spend your time doing that. But we really don’t focus on that. The main thing about Berkshire is how they preserve the culture, how they make sure that if you get the wrong person as the CEO, you can do something about it. That’s the biggest risk a board has is if you pick the wrong CEO.

And I’ve been on 20 boards and it’s happened more than once. And sometimes it’s a terrible problem to get rid of them. You know, years go by and, you know — If a dissident comes in, it’s one thing, but if you just sit there and you collect your three or four hundred thousand a year and the chief executive keeps proposing you get increases (laughs) from time to time — And it’s worse yet if he’s a nice person, you know, doing his best. (Laughs) It’s — but — we’re not going to spend a lot of time — we may do it on a personal basis, but we’re not going to take a lot of people and — We want them to know more about what’s going on with BNSF and how (CEO) Katie’s (Farmer) doing and whether the KCS (Kansas City Southern railroad acquisition contest) thing can injure us in any material way and so on.

And we really don’t, except maybe on a private side, we don’t start talking about, you know, what the effects will be in 2050 if this projection or that projection is met. Charlie?

查理·芒格：没什么要补充的。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Nothing to add.

24. 对伯克希尔快速承保巨大风险能力的需求减少

贝基·奎克：这个问题是唐·格雷厄姆在会议期间提出的，基于你今天早些时候说的一些话。他说：“为什么沃伦说伯克希尔快速承保巨大风险的能力不再像过去那样是一项有价值的资产了？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: This question was sent in by Don Graham during the meeting, based on something you said earlier today. And he says, “Why does Warren say Berkshire’s ability to insure enormous risk quickly is a less valuable asset than it used to be?”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，因为需求减少了。基本上是这方面的原因。就拿9/11之后那段时期来说，我记得——我可能在细节上有点记错——但国泰航空，例如，我记得他们如果不在下周一之前拿到保单，就无法在香港降落。嗯，我们可以做到。我的意思是，阿吉特（·贾因）打电话给我，他想一个价格，我想一个价格。（笑）然后——我们就能做到。如果出险，我们能够承担损失。我记得他们曾经就西尔斯大厦找过我们，那是——之后，你知道，没人知道——他们不知道是否到处都可能被放置炸弹。突然之间，他们想要更多的保险。我们给了他们一个价格。所以，那种环境并没有持续下去。我的意思是，有些时候，我认为——也许是AIG，当汉克·格林伯格在那里的时候，他也会做同样的事情。

但并没有10个或20个人——而且他们在某些情况下需要很大的保额。我们能够偿付。他们知道，如果他们买了保险，一旦出事，我们会开出支票，而且支票一定能兑现。（笑）阿吉特，你也许有一些——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, because the demand is less, I mean, basically on that. If you take a period like happened after 9/11, I remember — I may be wrong on the details a little on this — but Cathay Pacific, for example, they couldn’t land in Hong Kong, as I remember, unless they had an insurance policy by Monday of the following week. Well, we can do it. I mean, Ajit (Jain) calls me up and he thinks of a price and I think of a price. (Laughs) And then — But we can do it. We can take the loss if it happens. They called us on the Sears Tower, I think, back — then after the, you know — nobody knew — They didn’t know whether, you know, bombs might be placed all over. And they wanted more insurance all of a sudden. And we gave them a price, and — So, that thing — that sort of an environment hasn’t really persisted. I mean, there were times, I think — perhaps AIG, when Hank Greenberg was there, he would do the same thing.

But there weren’t — 10 or 20 people — and they needed big limits, in some cases. And we were good for it. And they knew that if they bought insurance and it happened that we’d write a check and it would clear. (Laughs) Ajit, you might have some —

阿吉特·贾因：是的。除了需求方面，供应方面的竞争也变得激烈得多。有很多人能够提供大额保额——虽然不如我们多——但他们可以组织一个辛迪加项目，很轻松就能凑出10亿美元。所以我们拥有的那个竞争优势，我们仍然有，但它不再像过去那样重要了。

原文

AJIT JAIN: Yeah. In addition to the demand side, the supply side has become a lot more competitive as well. There are a lot of people who can put up big limits — not as much as we do — but they can syndicate a program and put up a billion dollar very easily. So that competitive advantage we had, we still have, but it’s no longer as big a deal as it used to be.

25. 阿贝尔：对卡夫亨氏CEO感到“满意”

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自苏格兰的一位股东，他想知道沃伦、查理和格雷格对卡夫亨氏过去12个月表现（相对于疫情前令人失望的表现）的看法。你们对卡夫亨氏当前和长期前景有何看法？

原文

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from a shareholder in Scotland who wants to know Warren, Charlie, and Greg’s views on how Kraft Heinz has performed over the last 12 months compared to the disappointing performance pre-COVID. And what are your current and longer-term views on Kraft Heinz’ prospects?

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我认为格雷格在董事会里。所以，他——（笑）我不认为我们有资格对卡夫亨氏给出建议。你知道，多年前，在亨氏交易时，我们实际上与3G公司进入了一种半正式的合作伙伴关系，后来又与合作伙伴一起收购了卡夫。他们做得比——他们履行了自己的职责。我们做了我们当初承诺要做的事情，即成为一个财务伙伴。他们更多的是运营伙伴，或者我们在某种程度上参与任何重大决策，他们会听取我们的意见。但在卡夫亨氏股票方面，我们不发表任何意见——这需要别人来评估。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think that Greg’s on the board. So, he — (laughs) I don’t know that we’re in a position to give advice on Kraft Heinz. You know, we entered a, in effect, a semi-formal partnership with 3G many years ago when it was just the Heinz deal, and then went on to acquire Kraft with our partners. And they’ve done more than — they hold up their share of things, you know. And we do what we said we’d do going in, which is to be a financial partner. And they’re more of the operating partner, or we participate, to a degree, in any big decisions, and that they would listen to us. But we’re not making any — in terms of Kraft Heinz stock — that’s up to somebody else to evaluate.

格雷格·阿贝尔：是的。沃伦，我想补充的唯一一点是，我认为我们对他们任命米格尔（·帕特里西奥）担任（CEO）这一强有力管理层感到非常放心。他在卡夫亨氏组建了一个非常好的团队。因此，我们对现有的领导层和管理团队感到满意。他们在推进过程中非常专注于执行，优化资本结构，并降低债务结构。因此，对现有团队的前进道路非常满意——

原文

GREG ABEL: Yeah. The only thing I would add, Warren, is I think we’re very comfortable with the fact that they put a strong manager in place in (CEO) Miguel (Patricio). And he’s put a very good team in place at Kraft Heinz. So, we’re pleased with the leadership and management team in place. They’re very focused on how they’re executing as they’ve gone forward and rationalizing their capital structure and managing down their debt structure. So, very pleased with the path forward with the existing team —

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我们对——感觉更好了——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, we feel better about the —

26. 首席执行官们为公司创造的“神话”的危害

沃伦·巴菲特：其中之一——这是一个更广泛的话题，但——其中一个话题——我甚至可能会在未来的年度报告中写到——是人们对自己组织的神话所引发的问题。我已经在很多不同的形式中多次看到这种情况。在某种程度上，这个问题在过去二三十年里变得更加突出，因为CEO通常——和投资者关系（听不清）一起工作——他们说，我们必须与分析界保持持续联系。当然——所以他们每隔几个月就去，重复关于他们公司的某些事情，这变成了某种教条。没有人会在CEO说了某件事两个月后，再去说，嗯，其实那不是真的。（笑）他们不会自相矛盾或改变方向。所以，如果你有了这些神话——它们可以以许多不同的方式出现。我可以举很多例子，但这里不说了。

正如我告诉我在美国企业界的朋友们，我真的不会告发他们。（笑）但是有很多神话从一个CEO传到下一个CEO。继任CEO能说那个挑选了他的人走错了方向，或者他一直告诉我们一些不完全真实的事情吗？他做不到。你知道，然后他开始重复这些说法。这会导致巨大的错误。但是不说例子就很难讲清楚故事，而我不喜欢举例子。（笑）所以，我们以后再看我什么时候写这件事。查理，你也许有一些想法。我们——他——他在很多事情上都有身临其境的第一手经验——他曾在我没任职过的董事会任职。而且这不仅局限于商业领域。它延伸到教育领域，甚至更广，很多领域。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: One of the — this is a more general subject, but — One of the subjects— I might even write about it in one of the future annual reports — is the problems caused by the myths that people have about their own organization. And I’ve seen that so many times in various forms. And to some extent, the problem has become accentuated in the last 20 or 30 years because the CEO often — and works with the investor relations (unintelligible) — and they say well, we have to have constant contact with the analyst community. And of course — so they go on every couple of months, and they repeat certain things about their company, and it becomes part of, sort of, the catechism. And nobody’s going to go on two months after the CEO has said one thing and say, well, actually that really isn’t the way. (Laughs) They’re not going to contradict themselves or change course. And so, if you get these myths — and they can occur in a lot of different ways. I could give a lot of examples, which I won’t do.

As I tell my friends in corporate America, I’m really not going to squeal on them. (Laughs) But there’s a lot of mythology that gets handed down from one CEO to the next. Can the succeeding CEO say the guy that picked him, you know, was on the wrong course, or, he’s been telling us something that isn’t really quite true. He can’t do it. You know, and then he starts repeating it. And it leads to enormous errors. But it’s hard to tell the story without giving examples, and I don’t like to give examples. (Laughs) So, we’ll see when I write about it sometime. Charlie, you’ve probably got some thoughts. We’ve — He’s been – he’s had a ringside seat at a lot of — he’s been on boards that I haven’t been on, I mean. And it doesn’t just extend to business. It goes beyond that into education, into — well, a lot of areas.

查理·芒格：真正有趣的是，你一直喋喋不休地说的东西，你是在不断强化它，即使它是错的。所以，人类历史上我最喜欢的一句话之一是伟大的英国演员塞德里克·哈德威克爵士说的。他说：“我当了好演员太久了，以至于在任何话题上我都不知道自己真正的想法是什么。”我认为这种情况发生在很多人身上。而且几乎每个政治家都是如此。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: What’s really interesting, is the way you prattle out all the time, you’re pounding back in even if it’s wrong. And so, one of my favorite remarks in the history of human remarks was by Sir Cedrick Hardwicke who was a great British actor. And he said, “I have been a great actor for so long, that I no longer know what I truly think on any subject.” And I think that happens to a lot of people. And it happens to virtually every politician.

沃伦·巴菲特：而且它会被嵌入公司——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: And it gets embedded in corporate —

查理·芒格：会被嵌入等等——

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Gets embedded and so on —

沃伦·巴菲特：问题在于，现在CEO们讲话如此频繁。所以，如果他们有一些关于公司的疯狂言论，并且不断重复，下属们不会去反驳。正如查理刚才所说，过了一段时间，他们自己就信了。这很危险。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: And the trouble is now, the CEOs speak out so often. So, if they’ve got some crazy thing that they’re saying about their company and they keep repeating it, the subordinates aren’t going to contradict it. The — and as Charlie just said, they just believe it after a while. And it’s dangerous.

查理·芒格：是的。当然，年轻人在接受通识教育后会得到这些想法，并认为上帝给他们开了天眼。他们和那些政客一样疯狂。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. And of course, the young people get these ideas after their liberal educations and think that God has given them direct insights. And they’re just as crazy as the politicians.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，有些老人也有这些想法。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, there’s some old people that have them, too.

查理·芒格：是的，嗯——（笑声）但是老年人已经疯了。但是——

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, well — (Laughter) But the old people are already crazy. But —

沃伦·巴菲特：他们死得更快，所以——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: They’re going to die sooner, so —

查理·芒格：我们有我们的老年疯狂。年轻人得到的是新的疯狂。（笑声）

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: We have our old insanities. The new insanities, the young get. (Laughter)

27. 为什么伯克希尔的Haven合资企业输给了医疗成本的“绦虫”

贝基·奎克：好了，这个问题来自比尔·贝格利，他说：“能告诉我们伯克希尔、摩根大通和亚马逊之间关于调查美国医疗保健现状的合资企业（Haven）发生了什么吗？我唯一读到的是它被解散了。你们从这次努力中学到了什么教训吗？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: All right, this question comes from Bill Begley, who said, “Could you tell us what happened to the (Haven) joint venture between Berkshire, JPMorgan, and Amazon to investigate what could be done about the current state of medical health care in the United States? The only item I read was that it was disbanded. Do you have any lessons to be learned from your effort?”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我们学到了很多关于改变一个占GDP 17%的行业有多困难（笑）。我们学到了——我们实现了一个较小的目标，这个目标可能对我们来说甚至比摩根大通或亚马逊更重要，因为我们对自己的体系了解得不如他们多。他们知道——他们的运营更集中。因此，我们获得了一些好处，我们审视了我们目前拥有的60或70个不同的业务。这是一个例子，某种程度的集中化，至少在其某些方面，可以节省真正的资金。我的意思是，我们发现了低效率之处。就像我说的，我们可能比其他两个合作伙伴节省得更多，因为他们更了解自己的情况。我们发现了一些我们做的蠢事。所以，我们觉得物有所值。但是，从改变一个如此多的人拥有既得利益的事物的全局来看——还有一个额外的因素，非常有趣。

这有一个巧妙之处，可以追溯到一个叫比尔兹利·拉姆尔的人——没有直接联系。没人听说过比尔兹利·拉姆尔，但他在1941年提出了预扣税的想法。所以，人们不再需要在4月15日写支票，并思考他们有多恨他们的政客、政府和一切，他们实际上把它看作一种圣诞俱乐部，涉及到多付，当最终付款到期时，他们甚至能收到一张支票。所以，当你不自己写支票时，你知道——你可能知道公司的健康福利对你来说每年值1万美元或1.5万美元，可能公司要花那么多钱——但公司可能花那么多钱——但你并不直接看到。所以，公司支付了。坐在我旁边等候室里的人，他们不是坐在那里想我是否负担得起，或者这会产生什么影响？

他们通常都在某种计划之下——当然不总是这样。但他们不认为，如果公司不支付这些，公司可以把这些钱作为额外补偿支付给他们。但当然，奇怪的制度是，公司支付的话可以抵扣税款。但如果你自己买保险支付，我不认为你能抵扣。所以，这是大多数人不视为自己成本的东西。他们还挺喜欢的。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we learned a lot about the difficulty of changing around an industry (laughs) that’s 17% of GDP. And we’re — we leaned — We accomplished a lesser objective, which was probably more important to us, even, than either JPMorgan or to Amazon, because we knew less about our own system than they did. They knew — they’re a more centralized operation. So, we got some benefits in the sense that we looked at 60 or 70 different operations we had presently. And that’s one case where a certain amount of centralization, at least in certain aspects of it, can save real money. I mean, we found inefficiencies. And like I say, we probably saved more than the other two partners because they knew their situation better. We found some dumb things we were doing. So, we got our money’s worth. But in terms of the big picture of changing something that so many people have a vested interest in doing — and there’s one additional factor to it, which is really interesting.

There’s an ingenious aspect to it that goes back to a fellow named — which didn’t have any direct connection — but Beardsley Ruml. And nobody’s ever heard of Beardsley Ruml, but Beardsley Ruml, in 1941, came up with the idea of the withholding tax. So, people instead of April 15th having to write a check and thinking how much they hated their politicians, and hated the government and everything else, they actually looked at it as kind of a Christmas club, and there were overpayments involved, and they actually got a check when the final payment came due. So, when you aren’t writing the check yourself, you know — you may know that the health benefit from your company is worth $10,000 a year to you or 15,000, and may cost them that much, but — it may cost the company that much — but you don’t see it. So, the company pays it. And most of the people in that waiting room sitting next to me when — they are not sitting there thinking about whether I can afford to do this, you know, or what’s this going to do?

They’re generally under some kind of a plan — not always, obviously. But they don’t think that if the company wasn’t paying them that, they could pay them that in additional compensation. But of course, the weird system is the company gets a deduction if they pay it. But if you pay it yourself on a policy, I don’t believe you get a deduction. So, it’s something that most of the people are not seeing as a cost to them. And they like that pretty well.

查理·芒格：没开玩笑。（笑声）

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: No kidding. (Laughter)

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。嗯，但这和联邦所得税的情况一样。我的意思是，从政府的角度来看，转向预扣制度是一个天才之举。如果没有这个，想想看4月15日那天有多少人得坐下来写一张相当大额的支票。他们会很生气。（笑）他们不会喜欢，而现在他们没有这种感觉。所以，我们面对的是——你知道，这是一个显而易见的问题。但你也——人们通常喜欢他们的医生。他们不喜欢医疗费用占GDP 17%这个事实。但一个是某种模糊的东西，另一个对他们来说非常非常真实。社区里最有声望的人都在医院董事会里。而且，你知道，很多人——对这个系统相当满意。所以，我们在这方面没有取得进展。我们仍然在医疗保健上支付GDP的17%。没有一个主要国家超过11%。

在这次疫情中，你知道，我们的死亡率——或者说死亡总数——占总人口的比例——远高于世界其他地区。不是每个国家都这样，但远高于，所以——你知道，我们花了更多的钱，却得到了更差的结果，就这次疫情而言，以人均死亡人数来看。现在，这可能不是最终的结果——

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Oh, Warren, even though you shot at and missed, you were at least shooting at an elephant. The cost of health care in Singapore is 20% of what it is in the United States. And their medical system works better. So, you were shooting at a huge elephant. But as you found out, it’s very hard to — people get very enthusiastic about losing part of their income.

WARREN BUFFETT: Oh, yeah. No, I said we were fighting a tapeworm —

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. You were —

WARREN BUFFETT: — in the American economy and the tapeworm won. (Laughs)

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, the tapeworm — the tapeworm —

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.

CHARLIE MUNGER: That’s exact — good, wonderful phrase, the tapeworm — I’ll have to copy that.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, it wasn’t a phrase we were looking — but — (Laughter)

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自俄克拉荷马州塔尔萨的马克·布莱克利。“这是给沃伦和查理的。当我们讨论伯克希尔时，我们经常关注保险业务和最大的非保险业务，即您在2019年提到的‘红杉’。然而，伯克希尔拥有大量子公司业务，其中大部分从未被提及。伯克希尔是否会在某个时候变得规模过大而难以管理？我们是否应该对伯克希尔大部分公司缺乏信息感到担忧？是否会有那么一天，伯克希尔变得过于庞大和复杂？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: This question comes in from Mark Blakley in Tulsa. “This is for Warren and Charlie. When we discuss Berkshire, we often focus on the insurance operations and the largest non-insurance businesses, the “Redwoods,” as you mentioned in 2019. “However, Berkshire owns a large number of subsidiary businesses, most of which are never mentioned. Is there a point at which Berkshire becomes too large to manage? And should we have any concern over the lack of information for most of Berkshire’s companies? Is there a time that could come when Berkshire’s too large and complex?”

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，它确实规模太大，无法做某些事情了，这是肯定的。我的意思是，你知道，不是——我们不能花时间去找1亿美元规模的收购对象，但是——我们在沃斯堡有一家很棒的公司（TTI）。我们有一位杰出的人（保罗·安德鲁斯）在经营它，他最近去世了。但他经营得很好——他在15年前把它卖给了我，然后基本上就一直自己经营着，你知道。我甚至找不到去那家公司的路。我们还有一家很棒的公司，生产休闲车（Forest River），总部在印第安纳州的埃尔克哈特。我们15年前收购了它。我从未去过那里，你知道。也许有个人在壁橱里编造数字，每个月寄给我。但我觉得我对这个业务了解得很清楚。但我从未见过它。经营它的人（彼得·利格尔）喜欢经营它。他也喜欢我别插手。

他让格雷格（·阿贝尔）参与的程度比我多一点点，因为——（笑）但是——我们有一个系统，适用于优秀的业务和优秀的管理者。我们需要去发现他们。但是当我们发现他们时，也需要去培养他们。如果你遇到像保罗·安德鲁斯这样的人，他经营着TTI，从零开始，绝对是从零开始，没人听说过他，而在为我们经营期间，利润增长了八倍。他很快乐。员工们很快乐。他是个了不起的人。我们很快乐。我会在年底打电话给他，我会说，保罗，你知道，这个地方——你干得非常出色，你该加薪了——他说——或者发奖金——他会说，“嗯，我们明年再谈这个，沃伦。”我的意思是，他就是热爱——他热爱这个业务。我热爱伯克希尔。他热爱这个业务。

我让他填写一堆关于（笑）他用了多少碳或别的什么报告，不会带来任何好处。你知道，认为像保罗·安德鲁斯这样的人会做出反社会行为（笑）或类似的事情，那是荒谬的。我们希望能有更多这样的人。显然，随着我们规模变大，收购他们会变得更难。但我们现在手上还有几家。我不认为我们已经收购了最后一家，从长远来看。但我短期内肯定看不到任何机会。不过，通过回购股票，我们对现有业务的兴趣正在一点点增加。所以，我们的股东每年都拥有这些公司更多的股份——假设我们在进行回购，这取决于价格。查理？

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, it’s too large to do certain things, that’s for sure. I mean, you know, it’s not — we can’t spend our time looking for a hundred million-dollar acquisitions, but — We have a couple — a wonderful company (TTI) in Fort Worth. And we had a marvelous man running it (Paul Andrews), and he died recently. But he ran it — he sold it to me 15 years ago, and he just basically ran it, you know. And I couldn’t find my way to the company. We’ve got this terrific company that makes recreational vehicles (Forest River), the Elkhart — based in Elkhart, Indiana. And we bought it 15 years ago. I’ve never been there, you know. Maybe there’s some guy in a closet just making up numbers to send to me every month. But I feel I understand the business pretty well. But I’ve never seen it. And the fellow that runs it (Peter Liegl) likes running it. And he likes me keeping my nose out of it.

And he’ll let Greg (Abel) in a little more than he’ll let me because — (laughs) But it’s — we’ve got a system that will work with wonderful businesses and wonderful managers. And it’s up to us to find them. But it’s also (up to) us to nurture them when we find them. And if you get somebody like Paul Andrews, who ran TTI, and who built it from nothing, absolutely nothing, and nobody ever heard of him, and the earnings have octupled during the period that he ran it for us. And he was happy. The employees were happy. He was a wonderful man. We were happy. And I would call him at the end of the year, and I’d say, Paul, you know, this place is — you’re shooting the lights out and everything, and you should take a raise — and he said — or bonus — he’s say, “Well, we’ll talk about that next year, Warren.” I mean, he just loved — he loved the business. I love Berkshire. He loved the business.

And I wasn’t going to add anything by having him fill out a bunch of reports about (laughs) how much he’s using in the way of carbon or anything. You know, it’s just — it’s ridiculous to think of a guy like Paul Andrews behaving in an antisocial manner (laughs) or anything of the sort. And we’d love to have more of those. And obviously, if we get bigger, they get harder to buy. But we’ve got a number in the place. And I don’t think we’ve bought our last one, over time. But I certainly don’t see anything in the near future at all. But we’re intensifying our interest a little bit in the ones we have by repurchasing shares. So, our shareholders own more of those companies every year while we’re — assuming we’re repurchasing shares, which is price-sensitive. Charlie?

查理·芒格：是的。我不认为我们变得规模太大而无法管理，因为我们与美国几乎所有其他大公司都不同，我们极度分权。我们下放了如此多的权力，子公司拥有如此大的自主权，只要这个体系有效，我们就可以长期持续下去。我要说的是，到目前为止，我们的分权带来的好处多于弊端。但似乎没有人模仿我们。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. I don’t think we’re getting too big to manage, because we’re different from practically every other big corporation in the United States, in that we are so excessively decentralized. We have decentralized so much, and we have so much authority in the subsidiaries, that we can keep doing it for a long, long time, as long as it keeps working. And I would say, so far, that our decentralization has caused more benefits than defects. But nobody seems to copy us.

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，但这是千真万确的。不过我要说，分权（笑）除非有正确的文化相伴，否则是行不通的。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, but that’s absolutely true. But I would say this. Decentralization won’t work (laughs) unless you have the right kind of culture accompanying it.

查理·芒格：是的，但我们有。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, but we do.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我们有。但是——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, we do. But —

查理·芒格：但是格雷格会——

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: But Greg is —

沃伦·巴菲特：——这取决于文化。我的意思是——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: — and it’s dependent on it. I mean —

查理·芒格：格雷格会——格雷格会保持这种文化。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: And Greg will — and Greg will keep the culture.

沃伦·巴菲特：如果我们有——如果我们有一种文化，高层的人试图在未来五年内为自己赚大钱，那是行不通的。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: If we’d had the — if we had a culture of people who were trying to make a lot of money for themselves in the next five years at the top, it would not have worked.

查理·芒格：不，当然不行。文化是其中的一部分。但假设我们保持这种文化，它可以持续很长时间。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, of course not. And the culture is part of it. But assuming we keep the culture, it can go on quite a ways.

沃伦·巴菲特：非常非常长的时间。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: For a long, long time.

查理·芒格：非常非常长的时间。我认为这可能会让所有人惊讶。顺便说一句——

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Long, long time. I think it may amaze everybody. And by the way —

沃伦·巴菲特：查理（听不清）——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie (unintelligible) —

查理·芒格：——罗马帝国之所以能存在那么久，是因为它非常分权。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: —the Roman Empire worked as long as it did because it was so decentralized.

沃伦·巴菲特：就像查理对我说的，你不会知道的。（笑）

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: As Charlie says to me, you won’t know. (Laughs)

29. “你必须真正热爱你的业务”

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自凯文·杨。是问阿吉特和格雷格的。“沃伦每天都花时间阅读，他偏爱的读物是年度报告。你们俩每天都如何度过？你们读什么？你们如何审查投资决策？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from Kevin Young. It’s for Ajit and Greg. “Warren spends his days reading, and his literature of choice is annual reports. How do each of you spend your days? What do you read? And how do you review investment decisions?”

阿吉特·贾因：嗯，在我的工作中，我花很多时间阅读经纪人和其他人发给我们的交易方案，阅读他们的提议，尝试分析，并形成观点，判断这是否是我们感兴趣的东西。我补充一点，我不花很多时间阅读年度报告，因为我本身不从事选股的工作。但在跟踪保险行业的动态方面，这是我90%阅读内容的方向。格雷格？

原文

AJIT JAIN: Well, in my job, I spend a lot of my time reading deals that people — brokers and people — send us, reading what they’re proposing, trying to analyze them, and having a point of view, whether it is something that is of interest to us or not. I might add, I do not spend a lot of time reading annual reports because I’m not in the stock picking business per se. But in terms of keeping track of what’s going on in the insurance business, that’s what 90% of my reading is all about. Greg?

格雷格·阿贝尔：是的。一般来说，一天中，我阅读的重点是围绕我们的业务，以及它们所在的行业。我试图了解竞争对手在做什么。这些业务的基本风险是什么？它们将如何被颠覆？然后总是回到，我们是否正在根据这些风险（包括我们业务内部和行业内的风险）合理配置资本？所以，很多时间花在这上面。随着知识的积累，就是与相关子公司的管理团队反复交流，并不断微调，这是真正的方法。

原文

GREG ABEL: Yeah. So generally, in a day, what I’m going to focus on when I’m reading is really around our businesses, what industries they’re in. I’m trying to understand what our competitors are doing. What’s the fundamental risks around those businesses? How they’re going to get disrupted. And then it always comes back to, are we allocating our capital properly in those businesses, relative to the risks we’re seeing, both in our business and in the industry? So, a lot of time spent on that. And as that knowledge is built, it’s sharing it back and forth with our management teams of those relevant subsidiaries, and sort of fine-tuning it, is really the approach.

沃伦·巴菲特：这两位先生吸收信息的能力都非常强。我是说，他们有——一方面，他们对它非常感兴趣。我的意思是，你知道，这是他们的事业。所以我对他俩都感到惊讶，他们几乎什么都知道。（笑）而且——他们乐在其中。我的意思是，他们没有在考虑下一步能否在某家大公司得到职位之类的。基本上，我们想留住的人，没有人离开我们。但你真的必须热爱你的业务。这会产生巨大的不同。这意味着我们必须创造让这种热爱得以蓬勃发展的条件。而它在很多——很多——组织中是不会蓬勃发展的。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Both of these fellows can absorb information to an extraordinary degree. I mean, they have — and for one thing, they’re terribly interested in it. I mean, you know, and it’s theirs. So, I’m amazed at both of them, the degree (to) which they just, sort of, know everything. (Laughs) And — but they enjoy it. I mean, they’re not thinking about whether they’ll get the next job that opens up at some huge place or anything like that. Nobody leaves us, you know, basically, the ones we want. But you really got to kind of be in love with your business. And that makes a huge difference. And that means that we’ve got to have the conditions that allow that love to flourish. And it wouldn’t flourish under many — under many — with many organizations.

30. Robinhood鼓励金融市场的“赌博”

贝基·奎克：这个问题来自内布拉斯加州的罗伯特·迈尔斯。“关于交易应用程序。您如何看待Robinhood和其他交易应用程序，或金融科技公司，让所有年龄段和经验水平的人都能参与股市？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: This question comes from Robert Miles in Nebraska. “The trading apps. What do you think about Robinhood and other trading apps, or fintech companies, enabling all ages and experience to participate in the stock market?”

沃伦·巴菲特：（笑）嗯，我期待着阅读Robinhood的S-1文件——这是你在准备发行证券时向SEC提交的重要文件。它——你知道，它已经成为赌场方面的一个非常重要的部分——赌场集团——在过去一年或一年半里加入了股市。我想说的是，当他们说不对客户收费时，我担心他们如何处理收入来源。我的意思是，你知道，我——看着他们如何描述这点会很有趣。我的意思是，但是——但是他们吸引了——也许他们的目标就是吸引——但他们吸引了，我记得读过，他们12%或13%的赌场参与者是在交易（期权）看跌和看涨期权。我查了一下苹果，你知道，未平仓的7天和14天看涨期权数量。我确信其中很多来自Robinhood。

那是一群人在——他们是在赌苹果股票未来7天或14天的价格。你知道，这并没有什么——没有任何违法之处。也没有什么不道德。但是——我不认为你能围绕做这种事的人建立一个社会。我的意思是，如果我们一群人被困在一个荒岛上，知道永远不会得救，而我是其中一员，我说，好吧，我在这边设立交易所。（笑）我会交易我们的玉米期货等等——我认为——一个非常富有的社会能够在多大程度上奖励那些懂得利用——本质上，是利用——大众（不仅仅是美国公众，而是全世界公众）的赌博本能的人——你知道，这不是成就中最令人钦佩的部分。但我认为美国总体上取得的成就是相当令人钦佩的。（笑）而且我认为，实际上，美国公司已经被证明是人们存钱和储蓄的好地方。

但它们也是非常好的赌博筹码。如果你迎合这些赌博筹码，当人们口袋里第一次有钱时，你告诉他们一天可以做30、40或50笔交易，而且你不收任何佣金，但你在出售你的订单流或其他东西，我——我希望我们不要有更多这种情况，我就这么说。我会很有兴趣阅读招股说明书。查理？

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: (Laughs) Well, I’m looking forward to reading the S-1 on Robin — that’s the big thing you file with the SEC when you’re going to be offering securities., and — It’s — you know, it’s become a very significant part of the casino aspect — of the casino group — that has joined into the stock market in the last year or year and a half. And I do want to say I’m concerned of how they handle the source of income when they say they don’t charge the customer anything. I mean, you know, I’m — it’ll just be interesting to watch how they describe it. I mean, but — But they — they have attracted — maybe set out to attract — but they have attracted, I think I read where 12 or 13% of their casino participants were dealing in (option) puts and calls. I looked up on Apple, you know, the number of seven-day calls and 14-day calls outstanding. And I’m sure a lot of that is coming through Robinhood.

And that’s a bunch of people writing — they’re gambling on the price of Apple over the next seven days or 14. There’s nothing, you know — there’s nothing illegal about it. There’s nothing immoral. But — I don’t think you’d build a society around people doing it. I mean, if a group of — a group of us landed on a desert island, and we knew we would never be rescued, and I was one of the group, and I said, well, I’ll set up the exchange over here. (Laughs) And I’ll trade our corn futures and everything around — I think — I think the degree to which a very rich society can reward people who know how to take advantage, essentially, of the gambling instincts of the — not only the American public — worldwide public — it’s, you know, it’s not the most admirable part of the accomplishment. But I think what America’s accomplished is pretty admirable overall. (Laughs) And I think actually, you know, American corporations have turned out to be a wonderful place for people to put their money and save.

But they also make terrific gambling chips. And if you cater to those gambling chips when people have money in their pocket for the first time, and you tell them they can make 30 or 40 or 50 trades a day, and you’re not charging them any commission, but you’re selling your order flow or whatever, it — I hope we don’t have more of it, I’ll put it that way. And I will be interested in reading the prospectus. Charlie?

查理·芒格：嗯，这简直就是在公牛面前挥舞红旗。（笑声）我认为，这样的东西竟然能吸引文明人和正派公民的投资，这实在是太糟糕了。这是非常错误的。我们不想靠卖对人们有害的东西来赚钱。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, that is really waving the red flag at the bull. (Laughter) I think it’s just God-awful that something like that would draw investment from civilized men and decent citizens. It’s deeply wrong. We don’t want to make our money selling things that are bad for people.

沃伦·巴菲特：但是各州也在做这种事，通过彩票。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: But we’ve got the states doing it with the lottery, you know.

查理·芒格：不，但那也很糟糕。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, but that’s bad, too.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我知道。我理解，但我是说——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, I know. I understand, but I’m saying —

查理·芒格：那非常糟糕。那非常糟糕——

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: That’s very bad. That’s very bad —

沃伦·巴菲特：一旦你——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Once you —

查理·芒格：这是问题之一。做这些事正在变得体面。各州和Robinhood一样糟糕。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: That’s one of the things that’s wrong with it. It’s getting respectable to do these things. The states are just as bad as Robinhood.

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，从某种意义上说，它们更糟糕。我的意思是，它们实际上是在向——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, in a sense they’re worse. I mean, they’re really taxing the —

查理·芒格：我知道——我知道，我知道。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: I know it’s — I know, I know.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。它们在征收希望税。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. They’re taxing hope.

查理·芒格：不仅如此——

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: Not only that —

沃伦·巴菲特：而且它们从我这里和查理那里收到的税并不比它们从——

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: And they don’t get much in the way of taxes from me and Charlie than they do —

查理·芒格：美国的各州取代了黑手党，成了数字游戏的经营者。事情就是这样。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: The states in America replaced the Mafia as the proprietor of the numbers game. That’s what happened.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Yep.

查理·芒格：他们把黑手党推到一边，说那是我们的生意，不是你们的。这并没有让我为我的政府感到自豪。

原文

CHARLIE MUNGER: They pushed the Mafia aside and said that’s our business, not yours. Doesn’t make me proud of my government.

沃伦·巴菲特：我小时候，我父亲（霍华德·巴菲特）在国会工作。议会办公大楼里实际上就有一个数字赌注跑腿的人。（笑）

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: When I was a kid, my dad (Howard Buffett) was in Congress. They had a numbers runner in the House office building (laughs), actually.

31. 伯克希尔子公司正经历意外的高通胀

贝基·奎克：我将代表费城的克里斯·弗里德提问，这个问题可以请台上任何一位回答——“从伯克希尔子公司的原材料采购来看，你们是否看到通胀开始上升的迹象？”

原文

BECKY QUICK: I will ask this question from Chris Fried from Philadelphia, and whoever wants to take on this stage — “From raw material purchases by Berkshire subsidiaries, are you seeing signs of inflation beginning to increase?”

沃伦·巴菲特：我来回答这个问题。然后，我想格雷格可以补充更多——我们看到了非常显著的通货膨胀——这非常有趣。我的意思是，我们在涨价。人们也在向我们涨价。而且这被接受了。我的意思是，并不是——如果我们——嗯，你知道，以房屋建筑为例。我的意思是，你知道，成本——我们有九家住宅建筑商，除了我们的预制房屋业务——还有——运营，这是全国最大的。所以，我们确实做了很多房屋建筑。（笑）成本一直在涨，涨，涨。钢铁成本，你知道，每天都在上涨。工资上涨紧随其后。我的意思是，UAW签的是三年合同，我们也有三年合同。但是，如果你在通用汽车或其他地方购买钢材，你每天都要支付更高的价格。所以，这是一个经济——真的——火热的——经济。

而我们没有预料到这一点。我的意思是，我们所有的公司，当它们被允许复工时，你知道，对于各种业务——我们关闭了家具店，我之前提到过。你知道，它们平均关闭了大约六周。他们不知道重新开业后会发生什么。而且，你知道，他们无法阻止人们购买东西。而且如果我们说，好吧，没问题，（笑）因为其他人也无法交付，我们也没法交付。我们会等三个月左右。但是积压订单越来越多。然后我们以为当去年8月左右600美元的补助停止时，情况会结束。但它一直持续。并且持续，持续，持续。我拿到了数据。每周我都打电话——或者（内布拉斯加家具城董事长）厄夫·布鲁姆金打电话给我——我们逐日回顾芝加哥、堪萨斯城和达拉斯三家不同门店的情况。

就是停不下来。人们口袋里有钱。他们支付更高的价格。当地毯价格在一两个月后上涨时，你知道——他们宣布了4月份涨价——我们的成本在上涨。供应链全部乱套了，你知道，（笑）对各种各样的人来说都是如此。但这是一种购买——几乎是一种购买狂潮，除了某些你暂时还无法购买的领域。你知道，你真的无法购买国际航空旅行，而且——所以，资金正从经济的一小部分转移到其他部分。每个人的口袋里都有更多现金，除了——与此同时，你知道，对一部分人来说，情况很糟糕。这个——你知道，这套西装——我几乎一整年都没穿过西装了。这意味着我们附近的干洗店倒闭了。我的意思是，没人拿西装去干洗。也没人拿白衬衫去我妻子去的那家店。

小企业主——如果你没有外卖和送餐服务的话——你就完蛋了。另一方面，如果你有外卖设施，那——你知道，冰雪皇后的同店销售额增长了很多。它们适应了。但是——这绝不是一个价格敏感的经济，目前绝对不敏感。我不知道这具体如何体现在不同的价格指数中。但通胀的程度比人们六个月前预期的要高得多——要高很多。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Let me answer that. Then, I think Greg can give more — We’re seeing very substantial infla — it’s very interesting. I mean, we’re raising prices. People are raising prices to us. And it’s being accepted. I mean, it’s not — if we get — well, you know, take home building. I mean, you know, the cost of — we’ve got nine home builders, in addition to our manufactured housing thing — and then — operation, which is the largest in the country. So, we really do a lot of housing. (Laughs) The costs are just up, up, up. Steel costs, you know, just every day, they’re going up. There hasn’t yet been — because the wage stuff follows. I mean, the UAW writes a three-year contract, we got a three-year contract. But if you’re buying steel at General Motors or someplace, you’re paying more every day. So, it’s — it’s an economy, really — it’s red-hot, I mean.

And we weren’t expecting it. I mean, all our companies, when they — they thought when they were allowed to go back to work, you know, at — for various operations — we closed the furniture stores, I mentioned. You know, they were closed for six weeks or so, on average. And they didn’t know what was going to happen when they opened them. And, you know, they can’t stop people from buying things. And we can’t deliver them if they say, well, that’s OK, (laughs) because nobody else can deliver them, either. And we’ll wait for three months or something of the sort. But the backlog grows. And then we thought it would end when the $600 payments ended in, I think, you know, around August of last year. It just kept going. And it keeps going, and it keeps going, and it keeps going. And I get the figures. Every week I call — or (Nebraska Furniture Mart Chairman) Irv Blumkin calls me — and we go over day-by-day what happened at the three different stores in Chicago

Title: 2021年股东大会

第五部分/共五部分

沃伦·巴菲特：已有人动议并附议，提名博萨内克女士动议中提到的14位人士担任董事。提名已准备就绪，可以付诸表决。汉堡先生，当你准备好时，请提供阿米克女士初步报告中的投票结果。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: It has been moved and seconded that the 14 individuals named in Miss Bosanek’s motion be elected as directors. The nominations are ready to be acted upon. Mr. Hamburg, when you are ready, you may provide the voting results from Miss Amick’s preliminary report.

马克·汉堡：阿米克女士报告称，截至上周四晚间收到的代理投票委托书中，代理持有人对每位提名人的投票数不少于473,474票。阿米克女士的报告还指出，该数字超过了所有已发行的A类股和B类股总票数的过半数。报告还称，特拉华州法律要求的投票精确计票证明将随本次会议纪要一同存档。

原文

MARC HAMBURG: Miss Amick has reported that the ballot of the proxy holders in response to proxies that were received through last Thursday evening cast not less than 473,474 votes for each nominee. Miss Amick’s report also states that this number exceeds a majority of the number of the total votes of all Class A and Class B shares outstanding. The report also states that the certification required by Delaware law of the precise count of the votes will be placed with the minutes of this meeting.

沃伦·巴菲特：谢谢，汉堡先生。14位提名人已当选为董事。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you Mr. Hamburg. The 14 nominees have been elected as directors.

41. 气候变化股东提案

沃伦·巴菲特：接下来的两项事务涉及两项股东提案，每项提案均载于可通过BerkshireHathaway.com查阅的代理声明中。如果你们尚未阅读这些提案，请访问BerkshireHathaway.com，因为这些提案很有意思。提案人的观点在那里阐述得很清楚，我认为我们的观点也已阐明。欢迎你们阅读。回到正题，第一项提案要求公司发布一份年度评估，说明公司如何管理物理性和过渡性的气候相关风险与机遇。董事们已建议股东投票反对该提案。现在，我将请联邦爱马仕的代表蒂姆·尤曼斯先生发言，介绍该提案。我想我们已经与尤曼斯先生连线。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: The next two items of business relate to two shareholder proposals that are each set forth in the proxy statement that can be accessed at BerkshireHathaway.com. If you haven’t read those proposals, just go to BerkshireHathaway.com, because they’re interesting proposals. And the proponents’ views are set forth well there, and I think our views are set forth. And I welcome you reading it. To get back to the script, the first proposal requests that the company publish an annual assessment addressing how the company manages physical and transitional climate-related risks and opportunities. The directors have recommended that the shareholders vote against the proposal. I will now recognize Tim Youmans, a representative of Federated Hermes to present the proposal. I think we’re connected up with Mr. Youmans.

蒂姆·尤曼斯：我感谢主席——感谢董事会主席和各位股东。我是蒂姆·尤曼斯，联邦爱马仕北美EOS负责人，今天代表提案的共同发起方——联邦爱马仕、加州公共雇员退休系统（CalPERS）、魁北克储蓄投资集团（CDPQ）以及我们共同的数百万最终受益人——出席。在过去一年多的时间里，母公司对于共同发起方要求讨论其缺乏气候相关财务信息披露的请求一直未予回应。为了与母公司进行某种对话，我们共同提交了一项提案，要求伯克希尔·哈撒韦董事会每年发布一份报告，评估公司如何管理物理性和过渡性的气候相关风险与机遇，包括对子公司和母公司在重大方面进行气候相关的财务报告，董事会如何监督整个企业的气候相关风险，以及母公司及其子公司设定与将气候变化限制在远低于2度目标相符的科学性温室气体减排目标的可行性。

原文

TIM YOUMANS: I thank the chair — I thank the chair of the board and fellow shareholders. I’m Tim Youmans, Lead North America EOS at Federated Hermes, here today on behalf of item two cosponsors Federated Hermes, CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, and CDPQ, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, and our combined millions of ultimate beneficiaries. For well more than a year, the parent company has been unresponsive to the co-sponsors’ requests to discuss the parent company’s lack of climate-related financial disclosures. In order to have some kind of dialogue with the parent company, we have co-filed a proposal that Berkshire Hathaway’s board issue a report annually assessing how the company manages physical and transitional climate-related risks and opportunities, including climate-related financial reporting, where material, for subsidiaries and for the parent company, how the board oversees climate-related risks for the combined enterprise, and the feasibility of the parent company and its subsidiaries establishing science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets consistent with limiting climate change to well below 2 degrees.

我们要求这份年度评估遵循气候相关财务信息披露工作组（TCFD）的建议。董事会辩称，由于公司以异常分散的方式管理其运营业务，且几乎没有集中或整合的业务职能，因此董事会认为该股东提案与伯克希尔的文化不符。共同发起方指出，尽管伯克希尔有其文化和分散的管理模式，但股东只能购买合并后母公司实体的股份。不能单独购买各个子公司的股份，而这些子公司可能有或没有董事会在其反对声明中引用的气候信息披露。该公司拥有超过一千亿美元的现金等价物。共同发起方，以及54万亿美元气候行动100+投资者联盟中的许多成员，希望母公司投入更多资源用于可持续发展，并减轻气候变化和能源转型的财务影响。公司的可持续发展网站仅包含15个子公司的链接。我们注意到母公司共有60家子公司。对于认为可持续发展风险（尤其是气候风险）可能对母公司长期未来前景具有重大影响的股东而言，这种信息披露是不充分的，当然，我们也承认公司过去强劲的财务表现。

原文

We ask that the annual assessment follows the recommendations of the task force on climaterelated financial disclosures, TCFD. The board argues that since it manages its operating businesses on an unusually decentralized basis, and there are few centralized or integrated business functions, the board believes that the shareholder proposal is inconsistent with Berkshire’s culture. The co-sponsors note, despite Berkshire’s culture and decentralized management, shareholders can only purchase shares in the combined parent company entity. Shares cannot be purchased in the individual subsidiaries that may or may not have the climate disclosures that the board cites in its opposition statement. The company has more than a hundred billion dollars in cash equivalence. The co-sponsors, and many in the $54 trillion climate action 100-plus investor coalition, want the parent company to put more resources into sustainability and in mitigating the financial impact of climate change and the energy transition. The company’s sustainability website consists only of links to 15 subsidiaries. We note the parent company has 60 subsidiaries. This is insufficient disclosure to shareholders who think that sustainability risks, especially climate risks, may be material to the parent company’s long-term future prospects, of course, recognizing the company’s strong past financial performance.

毫无疑问，气候变化以及向低碳经济的能源转型对经济构成了系统性风险。公司的审计师德勤在其网站上表示：“气候变化不是一个选择，而是数十亿个选择。我们都被迫采取行动。”德勤并未在公司审计中评估气候变化相关的财务影响。当共同发起方问及为何气候变化影响被排除在像伯克希尔这样的审计之外时，德勤未能提供任何有意义的答复。前伯克希尔董事比尔·盖茨在他的新书中表示：“公司需要承担更多风险以避免气候灾难”，并且“股东和董事会成员必须更愿意分担这种风险，向管理层明确表示，即使明智的投资最终未能成功，他们也会支持。”这是盖茨的立场，而伯克希尔主席是盖茨基金会的三位受托人之一。我们要求董事会承担文化风险，进行适度的集中化，以发布年度气候相关财务评估。我们都需要立即采取行动，以限制气候变化对我们长期可持续性的影响。

原文

No doubt, climate change and the energy transition to a low-carbon economy pose a systemic risk to the economy. The company’s auditor, Deloitte, says on its website, “Climate change is not a choice, it’s billions of them. We are all compelled to act.” Deloitte does not assess climate change-related financial impacts in the company’s audit. When asked by the co-sponsors why climate change impacts are excluded from audits like Berkshire’s, Deloitte failed to provide any meaningful reply. In his new book, former Berkshire director Bill Gates says, “Companies accepting more risk is needed to avoid climate disaster,” and “shareholders and board members will have to be more willing to share in this risk, making it clear to executives that they’ll back smart investments even if they don’t ultimately pan out.” This is the Gates position, and the chair is one of three Gates Foundation trustees. We ask the board to take the cultural risk for a modest degree of centralization needed to issue the annual climate-related financial assessment. We all need to take action now to limit climate change impact on our long-term sustainability.

我们强烈敦促伯克希尔·哈撒韦股东支持第二项提案，因为气候风险可能对母公司具有重大影响。我们有一个问题要问主席。您是否愿意改变主意，以个人股份投票支持第二项提案？谢谢。

原文

We strongly urge Berkshire Hathaway shareholders to support item two, as climate risk may be material to the parent company. And we have a question for the chair. Will you please change your mind and vote your personal shares in support of item two? Thank you.

沃伦·巴菲特：谢谢你，尤曼斯先生。该提案现已可以付诸表决。汉堡先生，当你准备好时，请提供阿米克女士初步报告中的投票结果。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you, Mr. Youmans. The proposal is now ready to be acted upon. Mr. Hamburg, when you’re ready, you may provide the voting results disclosed in Miss Amick’s preliminary report.

马克·汉堡：阿米克女士的报告指出，截至上周四晚间收到的代理投票委托书中，代理持有人对该动议投了131,376票赞成，385,336票反对。由于反对票数超过了就该事项正确投票的所有A类股和B类股总票数的过半数，该动议未获通过。特拉华州法律要求的投票精确计票证明将随本次会议纪要一同存档。

原文

MARC HAMBURG: Ms. Amick’s report states that the ballot of the proxy holders in response to proxies that were received through last Thursday evening cast 131,376 votes for the motion and 385,336 votes against the motion. As the number of votes against the motion exceeds a majority of the number of votes of all Class A and Class B shares properly cast on the matter, the motion has failed. The certification required by Delaware law of the precise count of the votes will be placed with the minutes of this meeting.

沃伦·巴菲特：谢谢，汉堡先生。提案未能通过。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you, Mr. Hamburg. The proposal fails.

42. 员工多元化股东提案

沃伦·巴菲特：第二项股东提案要求伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司每年发布报告，评估其多元化和包容性工作。董事们已建议股东投票反对该提案。现在，我将请播放“种善因”组织代表梅雷迪思·本顿提供的录音带，以介绍该提案。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: The second shareholder proposal requests that Berkshire Hathaway companies annually publish reports assessing their diversity and inclusion efforts. The directors have recommended that the shareholders vote against the proposal. I will now ask that the audiotape provided by Meredith Benton, a representative of As You Sow, be played to present the proposal.

梅雷迪思·本顿：大家好。我是梅雷迪思·本顿。我代表非营利倡导组织“种善因”发言，同时我也是咨询公司Whistle Stop Capital的首席执行官。我正式提出第三项提案，要求伯克希尔·哈撒韦报告其如何评估多元、公平和包容工作，包括董事会评估其多元化和包容性项目有效性的过程，以及如何评估与招聘、晋升和留任相关的目标、指标和趋势。如果伯克希尔大部分运营单位没有管理其多元化项目，这意味着什么？这意味着伯克希尔公司正在错过包容性工作文化所能带来的好处，例如，根据研究，可以接触顶尖人才、优秀员工，更好地理解消费者偏好，更均衡的领导技能组合，知情的战略讨论，以及改进的风险管理。多元化和包容性报告的最佳实践已经存在，并且在公司之间日益标准化。伯克希尔公司可以通过其合并的EEO-1表格发布其员工队伍构成。该表格已经提交给平等就业机会委员会，因此公司无需额外努力来收集或核对数据。

原文

MEREDITH BENTON: Hello. I am Meredith Benton. I am speaking on behalf of the nonprofit advocacy organization, As You Sow, and I am also the CEO of the consultancy Whistle Stop Capital. I formally move proposal number three, asking for Berkshire Hathaway to report on how it assesses diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, including the process that the board follows for determining the effectiveness of its diversity and inclusion programs, and how it assesses goals, metrics, and trends related to recruitment, promotion, and retention. What would it mean if the majority of Berkshire’s operating units weren’t managing their diversity programs? It would mean that Berkshire companies are missing out on the benefits that an inclusive workplace culture can provide, such as, according to the studies, access to top talent, to good people, better understanding of consumer preferences, a stronger mix of leadership skills, informed strategy discussions, and improved risk management. Best practices in diversity and inclusion reporting exist and are increasingly standardized across companies. Berkshire companies can publish their workforce composition through their consolidated EEO-1 form. This form is already submitted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, so it requires no additional effort on behalf of the companies to collect or reconcile.

这是一种普遍不受欢迎的表格，但它是标准化的，公司通常会发布其EEO-1表格，并附上对其内部结构和方式的解释。标普100指数中有72家公司公开分享或承诺分享此表格。据我所知，目前没有一家伯克希尔公司这样做——一家都没有。发布员工队伍构成数据类似于一份详述某一时点多元化的资产负债表。正如资产负债表本身不足以确定公司的财务实力一样，EEO-1表格本身也不足以评估DEI（多元、公平、包容）项目的有效性。公司的包容性数据，即多元化员工的招聘、留任和晋升率，也必须公开。投资者需要全面了解伯克希尔员工的实际体验。理论上，公司应该希望分享其留任数据。如果是一家好公司，人们会想留下，他们也应该希望分享其晋升数据。如果是一家招聘优秀员工并善待他们的公司，这些优秀员工会随着时间的推移，在导师指导和经验积累下得到晋升。

原文

It is a universally disliked form, but it is standardized, and companies will often publish their EEO-1 along with an explanation of their own internal structures and ways. Seventy-two of the S&P 100 companies publicly share, or have committed to share, this form. To my knowledge, no Berkshire company currently does — not one. The release of workforce composition data is akin to a balance sheet detailing diversity at a single point in time. Just as a balance sheet would by itself be insufficient to identify the strength of a company’s financials, so, too, the EEO-1, by itself, is insufficient in assessing effectiveness of DEI programs. The company’s inclusion data, the hiring, retention, and promotion rates of diverse employees must also be shared. Investors need to have a full understanding of the actual experience of Berkshire employees. In theory, companies should want to share their retention data. If it’s a good company to work for, people want to stay, and they should want to share their promotion data, in theory. If it’s a company that hires good people and treats them well, those good people will ascend, with mentorship and time.

目前，标普500指数中70%的公司都在某种程度上分享多元化和包容性数据——70%。而伯克希尔公司中只有22%在任何程度上分享了这些数据，并且只有四家伯克希尔公司以任何有意义的深度谈及工作场所公平。伯克希尔在这方面是一个严重的异类。伯克希尔以其高度去中心化著称。其各业务单元独立运营。然而，如果一个议题没有被总部视为重要，我们能期望运营单元将其列为优先事项吗？事情是这样的：巴菲特先生、芒格先生、董事会成员以及总部团队，你们每个人可能确实真诚地招聘、指导并晋升最合适的人选，无论其性别、种族、民族、性取向或任何不可改变的特征。但我们不能断定这是你们每一位员工、经理和招聘主管的心态。伯克希尔总部不能被动地坐等，寄希望于各个独立单元自行解决工作场所中的偏见和歧视问题。需要积极的管理、主动的关注。在反对该提案的声明中，董事会表示：“巴菲特先生，伯克希尔的董事长兼CEO，已在过去50多年里为伯克希尔及其员工定下了基调。”声明还指出：“巴菲特先生一贯反对任何可见或不可见的压制多元化或宗教包容的努力。”巴菲特先生对他自己的公司以及更广泛的商界拥有非凡的影响力。他反对压制多元化的努力。鉴于此，我们请求他以自己独特的语言和独特的方式果断站出来，详细说明多元化和包容性对他的公司有多么重要，他怀有哪些期望，他期望看到哪些努力，以及将使用哪些指标来判断成功。行动胜于言语，但在此事上的沉默本身就意味深长。谢谢。

原文

Seventy percent of the S&P 500 currently share diversity and inclusion data at some level — 70%. Only 22% of Berkshire companies do, at any level, and only four Berkshire companies speak to workplace equity with any meaningful depth. Berkshire is a serious outlier here. Berkshire’s famously decentralized. Its units operate independently. Yet, if an issue isn’t conveyed as important from headquarters, can we expect it to be prioritized by an operating unit? Here’s the thing. Mr. Buffett, Mr. Munger, board members, and the team headquarters, you may each individually truly and genuinely hire, mentor, and promote the best people for the job regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any immutable characteristic. But we can’t conclude that this is the mindset of each of your employees, managers, and hiring directors. Berkshire headquarters can’t sit passively and hope that their independent units are addressing bias and discrimination in their workplace. Active management, proactive attention, is needed. In its statement in opposition to the proposal, the board said, “Mr. Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and CEO, has set the tone at the top for Berkshire and its employees for over 50 years.” It also states, “Mr. Buffett has a record of opposing efforts seen or unseen to suppress diversity or religious inclusion.” Mr. Buffett holds extraordinary influence over his own companies and over the broader business community. He opposes efforts to suppress diversity. Given that, we ask for him to step forward decisively, in his own inimitable words, in his own inimitable way, to detail how important diversity and inclusion is to his companies, the expectations he has, and the efforts he expects to see, the metrics that will be used to judge success. Actions speak louder than words, but silence here speaks volumes. Thank you.

沃伦·巴菲特：谢谢。该提案现已可以付诸表决。汉堡先生，当你准备好时，请提供阿米克女士初步报告中的投票结果。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you. The proposal is now ready to be acted upon. Mr. Hamburg, when you are ready, you may provide the voting results disclosed in Miss Amick’s preliminary report.

马克·汉堡：阿米克女士的报告指出，截至上周四晚间收到的代理投票委托书中，代理持有人对该动议投了124,842票赞成，391,662票反对。由于反对票数超过了就该事项正确投票的所有A类股和B类股总票数的过半数，该动议未获通过。特拉华州法律要求的投票精确计票证明将随本次会议纪要一同存档。

原文

MARC HAMBURG: Ms. Amick’s report states that the ballot of the proxy holders in response to proxies that were received through last Thursday evening cast 124,842 votes for the motion and 391,662 votes against the motion. As the number of votes against the motion exceeds a majority of the number of votes of all Class A and Class B shares properly cast on the matter, the motion has failed. The certification required by Delaware law of the precise count of the votes will be placed with the minutes of this meeting.

沃伦·巴菲特：谢谢，汉堡先生。提案未能通过。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you, Mr. Hamburg. The proposal fails.

43. 会议休会

黛比·博萨内克：我动议——

原文

DEBBIE BOSANEK: I move —

沃伦·巴菲特：博萨内克女士？好的。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Miss Bosanek? Yeah.

黛比·博萨内克：我动议本次会议休会。

原文

DEBBIE BOSANEK: I move that this meeting be adjourned.

女性声音：我附议休会动议。

原文

FEMALE VOICE: I second the motion to adjourn.

沃伦·巴菲特：休会动议已收到并附议。本次会议休会，我只想补充最后一点，我真的希望，而且我认为可能性非常大，我们明年能在奥马哈举行会议。我希望看到伯克希尔股东创纪录的出席人数，我们期待着——我们真的期待着——在奥马哈与你们见面——我想那将是明年4月30日，但具体日期我们稍后确定。所以，感谢你们的观看，我们明年见，希望是在奥马哈。

原文

WARREN BUFFETT: Motion to adjourn has been made and seconded. This meeting is adjourned, and I would just like to add one final comment that I really hope, and I think the odds are very, very good that we get to hold this next year in Omaha. And I hope that we get a record turnout of Berkshire shareholders, and we look forward to — we really look forward — to meeting you in Omaha — I guess it’ll be next April 30th, but we’ll be sure of that date a little later. So, thank you for watching and we will see you next year, and hopefully, in Omaha.

Table of contents

2021年股东大会

第一部分/第五部分

2021年股东大会

上午场

1. 开场致辞

2. 查理·芒格介绍：他在同一栋房子里住了62年

3. 格雷格·阿贝尔介绍：他打冰球

4. 阿吉特·贾因介绍：他对保险学了很多

5. 我们都曾在奥马哈住过

6. 阅读10-Q，但不要关注净利润

7. 给新投资者的教训：非凡的事情可能发生

8. 给新投资者的教训：挑选赢家并不”像听起来那么容易”

9. 问答环节开始

10. “我仍然不想买入航空业”

16. 阿贝尔详述伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源在气候变化方面的行动

16. Abel details Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s actions on climate change

17. “我们在可再生能源和输电方面的投入远超任何公用事业公司”

17. “We’ve spent far more than any utility” on renewable energy and transmission

18. 保险子公司已为“不愉快的意外”做好准备

18. Insurance subsidiaries are prepared for “unpleasant surprises”

19. “沃伦和我没必要在每件小事上都达成一致”

19. “Warren and I don’t have to agree on every damn little thing we do”

20. 他们不像巴菲特和芒格那样亲密，但阿贝尔和贾殷有良好的工作关系

20. They’re not as close as Buffett and Munger, but Abel and Jain have a good working relationship

21. 巴菲特为BNSF辩护，称其与联合太平洋公司具有竞争力

21. Buffett defends BNSF as competitive with Union Pacific

22. “我们将拥有老龄化速度最慢的管理层”

22. “We will have the slowest-aging management”

23. 前进保险最近表现更好，但GEICO正在追赶

23. Progressive has been better lately, but GEICO is catching up

24. 巴菲特承认出售部分“非凡的”苹果股票“可能是个错误”

24. Buffett admits “probably a mistake” to sell some shares of “extraordinary” Apple

25. 如果利率保持如此低位，高飞的科技股“非常非常便宜”

25. High-flying tech stocks are “very, very cheap” if interest rates stay so low

30. 为什么我们有时会买不太看好的股票

30. Why we sometimes buy stocks we’re not wild about

31. 芒格：伯尼·桑德斯无意中赢得了反对财富不平等的斗争

31. Munger: Bernie Sanders has accidentally won his fight against wealth inequality

下午场

1. 动机决定股票回购的道德性

Afternoon Session

1. Motivation determines the morality of share repurchases

2. 税法变更不会影响伯克希尔不分红的立场

2. Tax law change wouldn’t affect Berkshire’s no-dividend stance

3. 巴菲特投了拜登的票，但不想在会议上谈论税收

3. Buffett voted for Biden but doesn’t want to talk taxes at the meeting

4. 芒格谈增税：“基本上反资本主义是个错误”

4. Munger on tax hikes: “Mistake to be basically anti-capitalist”

5. 芒格谈税收：“各州赶走最富有的公民是愚蠢的”

5. Munger on taxes: “It is stupid for states to drive out their wealthiest citizens”

6. “所有公司税上调都转嫁给消费者”是“虚构的”

6. It’s “fiction” that all corporate tax hikes are passed on to consumers

7. 巴菲特：我希望我的钱用于慈善，而不是减少国债

7. Buffett: I’d like my money to go to philanthropy rather than reduce the national debt

8. 保险业对疫情风险“完全定价过低”

8. Pandemic risk was “totally underpriced” by insurance industry

9. 伯克希尔的COVID-19保险赔付将“远远高于”目前16亿美元的储备

9. Berkshire COVID-19 insurance payouts will be “a lot, lot higher” than current reserve of $1.6 billion

10. 收购堪萨斯城南方铁路不会对BNSF产生巨大影响

10. Kansas City Southern acquisition won’t have huge impact on BNSF

11. 成功的收购自然会成为业务中更大的一部分

11. Successful acquisitions naturally become a bigger part of the business

12. 任何企业的首要“风险因素”是管理不当

12. Top “risk factor” for any business is getting the wrong management

13. 巴菲特效仿政治人物，回避比特币问题

13. Buffett follows politician’s lead and dodges Bitcoin question

14. 芒格：“当然，我讨厌比特币的成功”

14. Munger: “Of course, I hate the Bitcoin success”

15. 我们的德州能源提案可能不是最好的，但比马斯克的好

15. Our Texas energy proposal may not be the best, but it’s better than Musk’s

2021年股东大会

第4/5部分

20. 关于拜登1.9万亿美元刺激计划是否引发通胀，我们“不知道”

21. “我总体上喜欢银行”，但我们“不想在银行上持有像过去那么多的仓位”

22. 巴菲特拒绝解释购买威瑞森股票的想法

23. 我们不花时间思考如果法律改变会发生什么

24. 对伯克希尔快速承保巨大风险能力的需求减少

25. 阿贝尔：对卡夫亨氏CEO感到“满意”

26. 首席执行官们为公司创造的“神话”的危害