M20:26
对，这个嘛，净资产收益率的表现也让我挺意外的。
Yeah, well, I've been surprised by returns on equity.
大概两期之前，Fortune 上有一篇不错的文章。
There was a good article in Fortune about 2 issues ago.
嗯，是在 Fortune 500 那一期里，具体是哪一期我记不清了。
Well, it was in the Fortune 500 issue, whenever that was.
那篇文章讨论的就是净资产收益率这个问题。
And it discussed the question of return on equity.
它提到了一些很有道理的点，比如说，把退休后医疗福利记到资产负债表上，这件事往往会让之后的净资产收益率显得更高。
And it made some good points about how the introduction of putting post-retirement health benefits on the balance sheet tends to swell equity returns subsequently.
换句话说，它会把那个——那个曲线往下移。
In other words, it moves down the— the curve.
也就是作为分母的、投入使用的总股东权益会下降。
The denominator in terms of total equity employed.
另外，还有很多所谓的大洗澡式会计处理，也就是做了不少减记和核销；如果把这些因素都算进去，我不觉得它真的已经到了百分之二十，但确实比——确实比我当年写那篇文章时预期的要高。
And there's been a lot of big bath accounting where there have been write-offs so that counting that, I don't think it has gotten to 20%, but it's higher than— it's certainly higher than I anticipated when I wrote that article.
不过我得说，在我们现在这种环境里，要让企业整体的净资产收益率长期平均接近百分之二十，在我看来是非常极端的。
And I would say that it would seem very extreme to me in a world of— like we're living in now to have— corporate returns on equity average close to the 20% rate over time.
比如说 Coke，二十五年前他们是不会回购股票的，所以本来会在企业里积累更多的股东权益。
Like a Coke, for example, where 25 years ago they would not have repurchased stock, and so they'd have piled up more equity in the business.
如果 Coke 现在还沿用一九七零年或者七五年那时候的政策，它的净资产收益率会比现在低得多。
And Coke's return on equity, if it had been following the policies of 1970 or '75, would be far less than it is now.
Coke 其实根本不需要那么多股东权益。
Coke really doesn't need equity.
再比如，General Motors 如果为退休后医疗福利计提了数以百亿美元计的准备金，这就会让 GM 的回报率看起来比过去好得多；因为过去它甚至都没有确认这些成本，所以当时账上的股东权益其实比真实的权益大得多。
To the extent that General Motors sets up many, many billions of a reserve for post-retirement health benefits, that tends to make the return on GM look a lot better than it did in the past when it wasn't even recognizing those costs and therefore had an equity that really was much larger than the true equity.
所以，确实发生了一些类似这样的事，但总的来说，我不认为在任何一种会计制度下，American 工业能长期拿到百分之二十的回报是现实的。
So, there have been some things happen like that, but all in all, I don't think under any system of accounting the 20% returns for American industry are in the cards.
Charlie？
Charlie?