Until now the record for mathematical lunacy by a legislative body has been held by the Indiana House of Representatives, which in 1897 decreed by a vote of 67 to 0 that pi—the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter—would no longer be 3.14159 but instead be 3.2. Indiana schoolchildren momentarily rejoiced over this simplification of their lives. But the Indiana Senate, composed of cooler heads, referred the bill to the Committee for Temperance, and it eventually died.
迄今为止，立法机构在“数学胡闹”方面的纪录，一直由印第安纳州众议院保持：1897 年，该院以 67 比 0 的表决结果裁定，圆周率 pi——圆的周长与直径之比——不再是 3.14159，而改为 3.2。印第安纳的学童一度为生活被简化而欢呼。但由更冷静的人组成的印第安纳州参议院把法案转交给了禁酒委员会（Committee for Temperance），最终法案不了了之。
What brings this episode to mind is that the U.S. House of Representatives is about to consider a bill that, if passed, could cause the mathematical lunacy record to move east from Indiana. First, the bill decrees that a coveted form of corporate pay—stock options—be counted as an expense when these go to the chief executive and the other four highest-paid officers in a company, but be disregarded as an expense when they are issued to other employees in the company. Second, the bill says that when a company is calculating the expense of the options issued to the mighty five, it shall assume that stock prices never fluctuate.
之所以想起这段插曲，是因为美国众议院即将审议一项法案；如果通过，这项“数学胡闹”的纪录可能就要从印第安纳向东转移。第一，法案规定：一种备受觊觎的企业薪酬形式——股票期权——当授予首席执行官以及公司薪酬最高的另外四名高管时，必须计入费用；但当期权授予公司其他员工时，却可以不计入费用。第二，法案还规定：公司在计算授予这“强大五人”的期权费用时，应当假设股价从不波动。
Give the bill’s proponents an A for imagination—and for courting contributors—and a flat-out F for logic.
给这项法案的拥护者在想象力——以及讨好捐款人——方面打个 A；但在逻辑方面，只能给个彻底的 F。
All seven members of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, all four of the big accounting firms and legions of investment professionals say the two proposals are nonsense. Nevertheless, many House members wish to ignore these informed voices and make Congress the Supreme Accounting Authority. Indeed, the House bill directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to “not recognize as ‘generally accepted’ any accounting principle established by a standard setting body” that disagrees with the House about the treatment of options.
Financial Accounting Standards Board 的七位委员一致认为这两项提案荒谬至极；四大会计师事务所也全体反对，成群的投资专业人士同样如此。尽管如此，许多众议员仍想无视这些内行意见，把国会变成“最高会计权威”。事实上，该法案甚至指示 Securities and Exchange Commission：凡是某个准则制定机构确立的会计原则，只要在期权处理上与众议院意见不合，SEC 就要“不要把它认定为‘普遍接受’的原则”。
The House’s anointment of itself as the ultimate scorekeeper for investors, it should be noted, comes from an institution that in its own affairs favors Enronesque accounting. Witness the fanciful “sunset” provisions that are used to meet legislative “scoring” requirements. Or regard the unified budget protocol, which applies a portion of annual Social Security receipts to reducing the stated budget deficit while ignoring the concomitant annual costs for benefit accruals.
需要指出的是：众议院自封为投资者的终极“记分员”，却出自一个在自家账目上偏爱 Enron 式会计的机构。看看那些为了满足立法“计分”要求而设计的花哨“日落条款”（“sunset” provisions）便知一二；再看看统一预算（unified budget）做法：它把年度 Social Security 收入的一部分用来降低报表上的预算赤字，却无视与之相伴的、福利权益逐年累积所产生的年度成本。
I have no objection to the granting of options. Companies should use whatever form of compensation best motivates employees—whether this be cash bonuses, trips to Hawaii, restricted stock grants or stock options. But aside from options, every other item of value given to employees is recorded as an expense. Can you imagine the derision that would be directed at a bill mandating that only five bonuses out of all those given to employees be expensed? Yet that is a true analogy to what the option bill is proposing.
我并不反对授予期权。企业应当使用任何最能激励员工的薪酬形式——无论是现金奖金、夏威夷旅行、限制性股票授予还是股票期权。但除了期权之外，员工获得的任何其他有价值的东西都会被记录为费用。你能想象一项法案如果规定：在所有发给员工的奖金中，只有其中五笔必须计入费用，会遭到怎样的嘲笑吗？然而，这恰恰就是这项期权法案所提出方案的真实类比。
Equally nonsensical is a section in the bill requiring companies to assume, when they are valuing the options granted to the mighty five, that their stocks have zero volatility. I’ve been investing for 62 years and have yet to meet a stock that doesn’t fluctuate. The only reason for making such an Alice-in-Wonderland assumption is to significantly understate the value of the few options that the House wants counted. This undervaluation, in turn, enables chief executives to lie about what they are truly being paid and to overstate the earnings of the companies they run.
同样荒唐的，是法案中的一段条款：要求公司在给“强大五人”所获期权估值时，必须假设公司股票的波动率为零。我投资了 62 年，至今还没见过一只不波动的股票。作出这种《爱丽丝梦游仙境》式假设的唯一目的，就是把众议院“愿意计入费用”的那少数期权的价值大幅压低。而这种低估反过来又让首席执行官得以撒谎——隐瞒自己真实拿到的报酬，并夸大其所经营公司的盈利。
Some people contend that options cannot be precisely valued. So what? Estimates pervade accounting. Who knows with precision what the useful life of software, a corporate jet or a machine tool will be? Pension costs, moreover, are even fuzzier, because they require estimates of future mortality rates, pay increases and investment earnings. These guesses are almost invariably wrong, often substantially so. But the inherent uncertainties involved do not excuse companies from making their best estimate of these, or any other, expenses. Legislators should remember that it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.
有人声称期权无法精确估值。那又怎样？会计里到处都是估计。谁能精确地知道软件、公司飞机或机床的使用寿命？而养老金成本更“糊”，因为它需要估计未来的死亡率、薪酬增长以及投资收益。这些猜测几乎总是错的，而且往往错得很离谱。但不确定性本身，并不能成为公司不去尽最大努力估计这些（或任何其他）费用的理由。立法者应当记住：大致正确胜过精确错误。
If the House should ignore this logic and legislate that what is an expense for five is not an expense for thousands, there is reason to believe that the Senate—like the Indiana Senate 107 years ago—will prevent this folly from becoming law. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has firmly declared that accounting rules should be set by accountants, not by legislators.
如果众议院无视这一逻辑，立法规定“对五个人是费用、对成千上万人就不是费用”，那么我们有理由相信：参议院会像 107 年前的印第安纳参议院一样，阻止这种愚蠢之举成为法律。参议院银行委员会主席 Senator Richard Shelby（R-Ala.）已经坚定表态：会计规则应由会计师制定，而不是由立法者制定。
Even so, House members who wish to escape the scorn of historians should render the Senate’s task moot by killing the bill themselves. Or if they are absolutely determined to meddle with reality, they could attack the obesity problem by declaring that henceforth it will take 24 ounces to make a pound. If even that friendly standard seems unbearable to their constituents, they could exempt all but the fattest five in each congressional district from any measurement of weight.
即便如此，那些不想在历史学家笔下遭人嘲笑的众议员，也该自己先把这项法案扼杀掉，让参议院根本无须出手。或者，如果他们铁了心要“干预现实”，也可以从肥胖问题下手：宣布从今往后，一磅等于 24 盎司。要是连这么“友好”的标准选民都受不了，那他们还可以规定：每个国会选区里，除最胖的五个人之外，其他人一律免于任何体重测量。
In the late 1990s, too many managers found it easier to increase “profits” by accounting maneuvers than by operational excellence. But just as the schoolchildren of Indiana learned to work with honest math, so can option-issuing chief executives learn to live with honest accounting. It’s high time they step up to that job.
在 1990 年代末，太多经理发现：通过会计手法提高“利润”，比通过卓越经营更容易。但正如印第安纳的学童学会了使用诚实的数学一样，那些发放期权的首席执行官也完全可以学会接受诚实的会计。他们早就该站出来，把这份工作做好。
The writer is chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., a diversified holding company, and a director of The Washington Post Co., which has an investment in Berkshire Hathaway.
作者为 Berkshire Hathaway Inc.（一家多元化控股公司）的首席执行官，同时也是 The Washington Post Co. 的董事；该公司持有 Berkshire Hathaway 的投资。
Reprinted with the permission of the Washington Post.
经 Washington Post 授权转载。