M22:40
要是你刚好不走运——或者说有幸——住在 Zimbabwe，然后你决定去做跟货币相关的投资，呃，那你的家人现在可能早就离你而去了。
And if you happen to be unfortunate to live— fortunate to live in Zimbabwe and they— and you decided to make currency-related investments, uh, you know, your family would have left you by now.
那可不是个好决定。
And it was not a good decision.
几乎所有货币，随着时间推移，都会贬值。
Almost all currencies have declined in value over time.
我的意思是，几乎任何经济体系里，可能都天然存在这么一种情况：相比一种会升值的货币，使用一种会贬值的货币，操作起来更容易。
I mean, it may be then built into almost any economic system, that it will be easier to work with a value— a currency that declines in value than a currency that appreciates in value.
Japanese 的经历，可能在这一点上也能再次说明问题。
And the Japanese might reaffirm that here with their experience.
所以，从一个资产类别来看，跟货币相关的投资，不管是在 UK、United States，还是别的地方，除非我们因为持有它们能拿到特别高的回报，否则我们觉得它们没太大意义。
So as a class, currency-related investments, whether they're in the UK or the United States or anyplace else, unless we're getting paid extremely well for having them, we do not think they make much sense.
第二类投资，是你买入一些本身不产生任何东西的东西，但你希望以后会有人愿意出更高的价格从你手里接过去。
The second category of investments regard items that you buy that don't produce anything, but that you hope someone will pay you more for later on.
这里面最典型的例子就是黄金。
And the classic case of that is gold.
我以前举过这个例子，不过如果你把全世界所有的黄金——大家先别太激动——全都堆成一个立方体，它大概会是一个边长六十七英尺的立方体。
And I've used this illustration before, but if you take all of the gold in the world— don't get too excited now— and put it into a cube, it will be a cube that's about 67 feet on a side.
大概会有十六万五千到十七万吨。
It'd be 165,000 or 170,000 metric tons.
所以，如果你拥有全世界所有的黄金，你就会有这么一个边长六十七到六十八英尺的立方体。你可以搬个梯子爬到它顶上，然后你可以说，你看，我正坐在世界之巅，你知道，然后——觉得自己就是世界之王。
So you could have a cube, if you owned all the gold in the world, you could have a cube that would be 67 or 68 feet on a side, and you could get a ladder and you could climb up on top of it and you could say, you know, I'm sitting on top of the world, you know, and— think you're king of the world.
你可以，你知道，你可以拿在手里把玩，可以擦亮它，可以，你可以对它做这些事，盯着它看，但它自己什么也不会做。
You could, you know, you could fondle it, you could polish it, you could, you could do all these things with it, stare at it, but it isn't going to do anything.
对，你买那东西的时候，你唯一在做的，就是希望一年后，或者五年后，会有别人愿意花更多钱，从你手里接过一个——还是那句话——什么也做不了的东西。
Yeah, it's all you are doing when you buy that is that you're hoping that somebody else a year from now or 5 years from now will pay you more to own something that, again, can't do anything.
然后那个人又会觉得，五年之后还会有别人从他手里把这东西买走。
The person then thinks that somebody else will buy something 5 years later from him.
换句话说，你赌的不是人们现在有多害怕纸币，你赌的是，他们觉得一年后的人，会在再过两年之后有多害怕。
In other words, you're betting on not just how scared people are now of paper money, you're betting on how much they think a year from now people will be scared 2 years from then on.
Keynes 以前描述过这一整套东西，嗯，我记得是在《The General Theory》的第十二章里。他讲了一个很有名的选美比赛：这个游戏不是要选出这群人里最漂亮的女人，而是要选出别人会认为最漂亮的那个女人。
Keynes described all of this, uh, I think it was in Chapter 12 of The General Theory when he talked about this famous beauty contest where the game was not to pick out the most beautiful woman among the group, but the one that other people would think was the most beautiful woman.
然后他又把这个推到了第二层、第三层的推理。
And then he carried it on to second and third degrees of reasoning.
任何时候你买入一种自己什么也做不了、也生产不出任何东西的资产，嗯，你其实只是在赌，会不会有别人愿意为这么一个——还是一样，什么也做不了的资产——出更高的价钱。
Anytime you buy an asset that can't do anything, uh, produce anything, you're simply betting on whether somebody else will pay more for, again, an asset that can't do anything.
而且，实际上，我们在白银上也这么干过，不过白银还有工业用途。
And, and actually, we did that with silver, but silver had an industrial use.
大概十三年前吧，我买了非常多的白银。
And we— about 13 years ago, I bought a whole lot of silver.
如果你注意看的话，白银最近涨了不少。
And if you'll notice, silver's moved recently.
所以你知道，我——我的时机只不过差了大概十三年，不过你知道，也算是完美了。
So I, you know, I— my timing was only about 13 years off, but, you know, it was perfect.
呃，第三类资产，是那种你会根据它——根据它——将来能产出什么、能给你带来什么来估值的东西。
The, uh, the third category of asset is something that you value based on its— on its— what it will produce, what it will deliver.
你买一个农场，是因为你预期它能产出一定数量的玉米、大豆、棉花，或者别的什么。
You buy a farm because you expect a certain amount of corn or soybeans or cotton or whatever it may be.
每年都会进到你手里。
To be— to come your way every year.
然后你根据自己认为这项资产随着时间推移到底能产出多少，来决定你愿意付多少钱。
And you decide how much you pay based on how much you think the asset itself will deliver over time.
这类资产，才是我和 Charlie 喜欢的。
And those are the assets that appeal to me and Charlie.
这里面还有一个顺理成章的延伸。
Now, there's some logical follow-on to that.
如果你买下那个农场，而且你真的认真去想：它能产多少蒲式耳的玉米，多少蒲式耳的大豆，我得付给佃农多少钱，要交多少税，等等这些，你就能做出一个理性的计算。而这笔投资成不成功，在你自己心里，取决于它最后交出来的结果，是否符合你原本的预期。
If you buy that farm and you really think about how many bushels of corn, how many bushels of soybeans will it produce, how much do I have to pay the tenant farmer, how much do I have to pay in taxes, and so on, you can make a rational calculation, and the success of that investment will be determined in your own mind by whether it meets your expectations as to what it delivers.
照逻辑来说，你根本不该在乎这个农场第二天、一周后、一个月后，或者一年后，有没有人给它报个价。
Logically, you should not care whether you get a quote on that farm a day later, or a week later, or a month later, or a year later.
我们看企业也是一样。
We feel the same way about businesses.
当我们买 Iscar，或者买 Lubrizol 之类的公司时，我们不会每个星期到处去打听它的报价，然后说，你知道，它是涨了还是跌了，或者类似这种事。
When we buy Iscar, or we buy Lubrizol or whatever, we don't run around getting a quote on it every week and say, you know, is it up or down or anything like that?
我们看的是这个企业本身。
We look to the business.
我们看证券也是同样的道理。
We feel the same way about securities.
当我们买入一种可交易证券时，就算证券交易所关门关上几年，我们也不在乎。
When we buy a marketable security, we don't care if the stock exchange closes for a few years.
所以当我们看 Berkshire 的时候，我们看的是，我们拥有的这些生产性资产将来能产出什么，以及我们怎么运用这些资本去收购更多生产性资产。
So when we look at Berkshire, we are looking at what we think can be delivered from the productive assets that we own and how we can utilize that capital in acquiring more productive assets.
当然，有些时候——你知道，棉花价格翻了一倍，这让我们在 Fruit of the Loom 那边很头疼。
And there will be times, you know, cotton doubled in price, much to our chagrin at Fruit of the Loom.
但是，你知道，如果过去一年里你在对的那六到八个月持有棉花，你的本金差不多就翻倍了。
But, you know, if you owned cotton for the right 6 or 8 months in the past year, you came close to doubling your money.
但如果你把时间拉回到一整个世纪，看看长期持有棉花能不能赚钱，那它并不是一项很好的投资。
But if you go back a century and try to make money owning cotton over time, it has not been a very good investment.
所以，随便挑一种商品——原油、棉花，嗯，黄金、白银，嗯，任何这类东西——当然，棉花是有实用价值的。
So, to pick a product— crude oil, cotton, uh, gold, silver, uh, anything that— and of course cotton has utility.
黄金其实并没有什么实用价值。
Gold really doesn't have utility.
嗯，我会，我会押注那些优秀的、能持续创造产出的企业，它们会跑赢那种什么都不干的东西。
Uh, I would, I would bet on good producing businesses, uh, to outperform something that doesn't do anything.
不管拉长到多长一段时间，都是这样。
Over any period of time.
但是，价格上涨这件事本身，毫无疑问会制造出一种兴奋感。
But there's no question that rising prices create their own excitement.
所以当人们看到黄金涨了很多——我是说，如果你邻居持有一些黄金，而你觉得自己比他聪明，可你自己一点都没买，你太太还对你说，你说，你说，为什么隔壁那个笨蛋都赚钱了，而你就坐在这儿什么也不干？
So when people see gold go up a lot— I mean, if your neighbor owns some gold and you think you're smarter than he is and you didn't own any, and your wife says to you, you know, you know, how come that jerk next door is making money, you know, and you're just sitting here?
嗯，这，这就会开始影响人的行为，人们也喜欢去参与那些价格一直在涨的东西，诸如此类。
Uh, it, it can start affecting behavior, and people like to get in on things that have been rising in price and all of that.
但是从长期来看，那并不是致富的办法。
But over time, that has not been the way to get rich.
Charlie？
Charlie?