Refer To：《2010-05-26 Warren Buffett.Investment, Speculation, Gambling》。

WARREN BUFFETT:

It’s a question of being, it’s the ability to inject enormous amounts of leverage into a system where leverage is dangerous. And without people fully appreciating the amount of leverage and as a handmaiden of leverage, a risk of counterparties running up huge amounts of receivables and payables. And one of the reasons stock markets work well is that you’ve got a three day settlement period. But if you have a one year settlement period–in fact, I think over in Kuwait they did some years ago, and they had a total debacle–you would have far more problems. Well, derivatives and bonds are very, very long settlement period and things can happen between when you write a contract and if you have a settlement period, there was one at Gen Re that was 100 years, very hard to predict the behavior of somebody else 100 years from now. (laughs) And derivatives present big problems. Now, if there’s only a small amount in use it doesn’t make that much difference to the system. But if they become more and more pervasive, more and more imaginative and less, and in effect very little attention being paid to them which is why I sounded a warning. I don’t think they’re evil per se, it’s just, they, I mean there’s nothing wrong with having a futures contract or something of the sort but they do let people engage in massive mischief. And the thing I found really extraordinary– and Tracy, you might give them that letter– I mean I wrote this letter in 1982, about the date–the, here, you’ve got a Commission that’s doing what before I did, you know, many years ago. And when we had those hearings after ’29 we decided leverage was dangerous for people and it could cause systemic problems when used in the stock market. And we had the Federal Reserve power to determine margin requirements. We said that was important and that if people got over leveraged in the stocks they could cause a problem not only for themselves but for others if it was done on a wide scale. And then we came along in 1982 and we in a sense opened up leverage to anybody in extreme measures and since that time, 28 years since then, I and perhaps others, but I know I pointed out at least 20 times the, really nonsense of saying somebody at the Federal Reserves telling people they can only borrow 50% against stocks or whatever the margin requirements have been at various times. And then at the same time telling them that you can go gamble, you know, in S&P futures or something, the 2% or 3% margin or whatever it might be and to this day, and I’ve talked to Congress about it and to this day we sit there with a system where the Federal Reserve is telling you how much you can borrow against stocks and we’ve got this parallel system where people can gamble anything they want virtually in terms of the most obvious one being the S&P futures. And I’ve seen no attempt by anybody to address that total contradiction. Might be a suggestion for your Commission.

Warren Buffett：

问题在于——它（衍生品）让人能够把巨量杠杆注入一个“杠杆本身就危险”的系统。而且人们并没有充分意识到这个杠杆到底有多大。与此同时，杠杆的“侍女”（handmaiden）就是交易对手风险：对手方可能滚出巨额的应收与应付（receivables and payables）。股票市场之所以运转得相对好，其中一个原因是：结算周期只有三天。但如果你的结算周期是一年——事实上我记得 Kuwait（科威特）多年前就发生过类似情况，结果彻底崩盘（a total debacle）——你会遇到多得多的问题。而衍生品和债券的结算周期往往非常非常长。在你签订合同到最终结算之间，会发生很多事情。甚至在 Gen Re（通用再保险）有一笔合约的结算周期长达 100 年——你很难预测 100 年后另一个人的行为会是什么样（笑）。这使得衍生品带来很大的问题。当然，如果衍生品的使用规模很小，对整个系统影响也没那么大。但当它们越来越普遍、越来越“花样翻新”、与此同时人们又几乎不去关注它们——本质上对它们投入的注意力极少——这就是我为什么要发出警告。我并不认为它们本身就是邪恶的（evil per se）。比如期货合约本身没什么错。但它确实让人们能够进行大规模的“捣乱/作恶”（massive mischief）。还有一件让我觉得非常离谱的事——Tracy，你可以把那封信给他们——我是 1982 年写的这封信，差不多就是那个时候——你们现在这个委员会做的事情，其实我很多年前就做过类似的思考。1929 年之后我们开过听证会，我们当时就认定：杠杆对人是危险的；当它被用于股票市场，并且规模足够大时，会带来系统性问题。因此我们赋予 Federal Reserve（美联储）决定保证金要求（margin requirements）的权力。我们认为这很重要：如果人们在股票上加了过多杠杆，不仅会害了自己，还会在大范围上害到别人。可到了 1982 年，我们某种意义上把“极端杠杆”向任何人开放了。此后 28 年里——我也许还有别人——但我知道我至少讲过 20 次：这件事荒谬透顶。荒谬之处在于：一边是 Federal Reserve 的人告诉你，你买股票最多只能借到 50%（或不同时期的其他保证金比例）；另一边他们又告诉你，你完全可以去“赌博”——比如在 S&P futures（标普指数期货）里，用 2% 或 3% 的保证金（或类似比例）去下注。直到今天——我也和国会谈过这件事——我们仍然处在这样一个体系里：美联储规定你买股票能借多少，而同时存在一个并行系统，人们几乎可以想怎么赌就怎么赌，其中最明显的例子就是标普期货。我从没看到任何人试图去解决这种彻头彻尾的自相矛盾。也许这可以作为你们委员会的一条建议。

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