M20:28
嗯，我倒是觉得，你应该去 Standard & Poor's 或者 Moody's 上班。
Well, I would— I think you should go to work for Standard & Poor's or Moody's.
至于 credit insurance，呃，或者 credit guarantees 这一类东西，嗯，你知道，这已经变得非常流行了，实际上这几年在那种传统保险公司、也就是 property-casualty insurance companies 里，也很流行。
The question about credit insurance, uh, or credit, uh, guarantees of one sort or another, um, you know, that's become very popular, and it's become actually popular with sort of the standard insurance, property-casualty insurance companies in recent years.
而我要说的是，很多情况下，参与这门生意的人其实并不知道自己在干什么。
And I would say that in many cases, the people participating in that business don't really know what they're doing.
保险这个行业太容易给人这种感觉了。
It's so easy in the insurance business.
这就是保险行业的诅咒。
It's the curse of the insurance business.
当然这也是它的一个好处，就是人家会因为你写出一小张纸，就把大把的钱交到你手上。
It's also one of the benefits of it, is that people hand you a lot of money for writing out a little piece of paper.
而你在那张纸上写了什么，重要得不得了。
And what you put on that piece of paper is enormously important.
可是流进来的钱，会让这事看起来特别容易。
But the money that's coming in, it seems so easy.
这就会诱使你去做非常非常愚蠢的事情。
Can tempt you into doing very, very foolish things.
我们在 Omaha 这边，十五到二十年前，也就是八十年代中期，有过这么一个情况：Mutual of Omaha，当时至少一度是世界上最大的 health and accident association，他们决定进入 reinsurance，也就是 property-casualty reinsurance 业务。
We had a situation here in Omaha 15 or 20 years ago in the mid-'80s where Mutual of Omaha, largest health and accident association in the world, at least at one point, and they decided to go into the reinsurance, property-casualty reinsurance business.
结果在非常非常非常短的时间里，他们只签了没多少份合同，却把几十年辛辛苦苦积累起来的净资产一下子抹掉了一半。
And in a very, very, very short time, they wrote not very many contracts, and it resulted in wiping out half of the net worth of everything that had been built up over many, many decades.
如果你愿意在保险里做蠢事，这个世界总会找到你。
If you are willing to do dumb things in insurance, the world will find you.
我的意思是，你甚至都不用怎么样——你哪怕坐在大西洋中央的一条小划艇上，只要低声说一句，我愿意承保这个，然后报一个愚蠢的价格，你就会看到经纪人朝你游过来，顺便说一句，连鱼鳍都会露出来。
I mean, you do not— you can be in a rowboat in the middle of the Atlantic and just whisper out, I'm willing to write this and then name a dumb price, and you will have brokers swimming to you, you know, with their fins showing, incidentally.
这行就是这么残酷。
It is brutal.
我的意思是，如果你愿意做蠢事，外面就总有人——这也可以理解——他们会找到你，而且会先把现金送到你面前。
I mean, if you are willing to do dumb things, there are people out there, and it's understandable, but they will find you, and you will get the cash up front.
你会先看到大把现金，却看不到任何损失。
You will see a lot of cash, and you won't see any losses.
然后你就会继续做下去，因为短时间内你看不到损失，于是你会承担越来越多这类业务，接着，天就会塌下来。
And you'll keep doing it because you won't see any losses for a little while, so you'll keep taking on more and more of this, you know, and then the roof will fall in.
我在年报里提到过，GEICO 在八十年代初，靠几张保单收了大概七万美元保费，他们当时觉得自己简直是在摘樱桃，挑的都是最好的，而且他们还把其中很大一部分再保出去了。
And I mentioned in the annual report how GEICO had taken in, you know, $70,000 of premiums in the early '80s for a few policies, and they thought they were just picking cherries at the time, and they reinsured a lot of it.
而到现在为止，我们已经亏了九千三百万美元。
And so far we've lost $93 million.
可当初我们最多也就只能赚七万多美元，我不知道理论上最多能亏多少，但我知道，九千三百万美元已经足够让我高度警觉了。
Now, the most we could make was $70-odd thousand, and I don't know what the most we can lose is, but I know that $93 million has gotten my attention.
呃，在这种游戏里，你根本承受不起犯错。
Uh, when you're playing in a game like that, you can't afford to make a mistake.
我的意思是，真正致命的就是犯错——一次错误，或者几次彼此相关的错误，就像你刚才提到的，因为这些东西确实是相关的。
I mean, it's the mistake— a single mistake or a few mistakes that are correlated, as you've mentioned, because these things do correlate.
几次错误，就能毁掉一辈子的积蓄。
A few mistakes will overcome a lifetime of savings.
我的意思是，这种生意就是——做对的时候，你在每一美元上可能只赚几美分；可一旦做错，亏掉的钱会大得惊人。
I mean, it is— you will make a few cents on the dollar when you're right, and you will lose incredible sums when you're wrong.
而在 credit insurance 里，很多人到处去做信用担保——他们是根据评级来担保的，他们会说，好，我们来担保一大堆 single-A rating 的信用，或者我们搭建这些 structured arrangements，里面装的都是 A-rated credits。
And in credit insurance, when you go around guaranteeing— a lot of people went around guaranteeing credits based on ratings, and they said, well, we'll guarantee a whole bunch of single-A ratings, or we'll create these structured arrangements that involve A-rated credits.
他们还会拿出很多研究，说 A-rated credits 每年的违约率是百分之多少多少，你还可以一路回溯到三十年代，拿出各种 back-tested arrangements。
And they would use a lot of studies that would show that X percent of A-rated credits defaulted per year, and you go back to the '30s and all these back-tested arrangements.
但这里的问题，就像提问者说的，是 correlation。
But the problem with that is what the questioner mentioned is correlation.
一旦情况变糟，各种原本谁都想不到会相关的东西，都会一下子变得高度相关。
And when things go bad, all kinds of things correlate that no one ever dreamed correlated.
当然，在债务这个领域里，出现的情况是这样的：比如说，一大堆 telecom 或者 energy 公司，它们的评级看起来都差不多，但彼此之间的相关性非常非常高，所以你其实并没有获得分散化。
And what you had, of course, in the debt field was you had a whole bunch of, say, telecoms or energy companies that were all rated similarly, but they were correlated in a huge way, and you weren't getting a diversification.
你得到的其实是一种集中，而且——你自己还没意识到。
You were getting a concentration that would— you didn't realize.
没有什么比没有被识别出来的风险集中更致命了，但这种事一直都在发生。
And there's nothing more deadly than unrecognized concentrations of risk, but it happens all the time.
所以我会说，我们会看到一个 Baa 信用，因为有人给它做担保，被增级成 AAA 信用，而担保方可能只收十到十五个 basis points，但市场收益率的利差却可能有一百个 basis points。
So I, I would say we see a Baa credit enhanced to a AAA credit by somebody guaranteeing it, and they may guarantee it for 10 or 15 basis points, and yet the spread in market yield might be 100 basis points.
这在我们看来并不聪明。
That does not strike us as smart.
关于 AAA 评级，我还想说一点。
And I would say this about the AAA rating.
那些——它们在赔付能力这一项上可能有 AAA 评级，但我认为它们整体上并不算是通常意义上的 AAA。
Those— they have a AAA rating for claims-paying, but they don't carry, I don't think, general AAAs.
我觉得美国现在只剩下八家或者九家 AAA 了。
There's only, I think, 8 or 9 AAAs left in the United States.
Berkshire Hathaway 是其中之一。
Berkshire Hathaway is one of them.
但我相信，另外只有一家保险公司，也就是 AIG，嗯，剩下的就是其他大概半打公司。
But I believe there's only one other insurance company, which is AIG, uh, and then there's half a dozen other companies.
所以这些公司在信用层面上，并不和 Berkshire 属于同一个级别，市场也并不认为它们和 Berkshire 是同一级别。
So those companies are not in the same class credit-wise as Berkshire, nor are they recognized as being in the same class.
但我想说的是，按一百四十比一这样的比例去做信用保险，嗯，在某个时候，你是可能惹上大麻烦的。
But I would say you could get into a lot of trouble at 140 to 1, uh, at some point, uh, insuring credits.