2024-10-01 Matt Levine.Look Like a Loser, Then Win
Also Dish sold for a dollar, Sam Altman’s negging, a dentist’s tax shelter, PE recruiting, blockchain for DTCC and business-class bribery.
此外，一美元出售的 Dish，山姆·阿尔特曼的贬低，一名牙医的避税，私募股权招聘，DTCC 的区块链和商务舱贿赂。
1 October 2024 at 2:47 AM SGT
2024 年 10 月 1 日凌晨 2:47（新加坡时间）
Getting the money down 筹集资金
There’s a guy in Kentucky whose job is running volleyball tournaments and whose hobbies are (1) day-trading stocks and options and (2) talking to the media about it. I once wrote about him:
在肯塔基州有一个人，他的工作是举办排球比赛，他的爱好是（1）日间交易股票和期权，（2）与媒体谈论这件事。我曾经写过关于他的文章：
I am sorry, I am sure he has lots of profitable trades and I don’t mean to be rude, but just, statistically speaking, for equity market makers, there are few more beautiful phrases in the English language than “day trader and volleyball-programs coordinator.” If you walk into the offices of Susquehanna International Group and say “hi I am a day trader and volleyball-programs coordinator from Louisville, Ky., and I love short-dated options but I wish they were shorter-dated, can you help,” they will treat you like a celebrity and give you anything you ask for. You are their muse.
对不起，我相信他有很多盈利的交易，我并不是想无礼，但从统计学上讲，对于股票做市商来说，英语中没有比“日间交易员和排球项目协调员”更美丽的短语了。如果你走进 Susquehanna 国际集团的办公室，说“你好，我是来自肯塔基州路易斯维尔的日间交易员和排球项目协调员，我喜欢短期期权，但希望它们更短期，你能帮忙吗”，他们会把你当作名人一样对待，给你任何你想要的东西。你是他们的灵感来源。
This was a joke, in several respects. For one thing, he apparently did make a ton of money on GameStop, so who am I to criticize. Also, though, it’s not clear how much equity market makers can really target the most lucrative-seeming customers. Ideally, if you were a market maker in stocks or options, you’d ask retail brokers to send you orders from their most degenerate customers, the ones who frequently trade in large size and lose money. But practically speaking you get all the orders and you do the best you can to trade with them profitably. There are things you can do — you can give better prices to brokers whose customers are, on average, worse at trading; you can get the brokers to kick out retail traders who are too sophisticated; you can develop products that appeal to gamblers — but this is a regulated business and you have some obligation to treat all orders fairly. You can’t just trade with the people you most want to trade with. But the people you most want to trade with are, of course, the ones who trade a lot and tend to lose money.
这在几个方面都是一个笑话。首先，他显然在GameStop 上赚了很多钱，所以我有什么资格批评呢。而且，目前尚不清楚股权做市商能在多大程度上真正瞄准看似最有利可图的客户。理想情况下，如果你是股票或期权的做市商，你会要求零售经纪商向你发送来自他们最不理智客户的订单，那些经常进行大额交易并亏损的客户。但实际上，你会收到所有的订单，并尽力与他们进行有利可图的交易。你可以做一些事情——你可以给那些客户平均而言交易能力较差的经纪商更好的价格；你可以让经纪商剔除那些过于精明的零售交易者；你可以开发吸引赌徒的产品——但这是一个受监管的业务，你有义务公平对待所有订单。你不能只与那些你最想交易的人进行交易。但你最想交易的人当然是那些交易频繁且往往亏损的人。
One thing that I like about legal online gambling in the US is that it is not subject to so many constraints, so it can be clarifying about how markets work. Online bookmakers, like stock market makers, prefer to interact with customers who will bet a lot of money and lose. They prefer not to interact with customers who will bet a lot of money and win. How can they tell the difference between those two categories? Well, in the long run, the ones who win will mostly win, and the ones who lose will mostly lose, and you’ll try to keep the losers around and ban or limit the winners.
我喜欢美国合法在线赌博的一点是，它不受太多限制，因此可以阐明市场如何运作。在线博彩公司就像股票市场的做市商，更愿意与那些会下注很多钱并且输钱的客户互动。他们更愿意不与那些会下注很多钱并赢钱的客户互动。他们如何区分这两类客户呢？嗯，从长远来看，赢钱的人大多会赢，而输钱的人大多会输，你会试图留住输钱的人，并禁止或限制赢钱的人。
But in the short run things are less obvious. There is a lot of randomness in sports betting. If someone bets a lot of money and wins, do you want to cut them off there, or do you want to let them keep playing to see if they lose it all back? The answer is basically that there are a lot of behavioral tells that, to a bookmaker, signal either “this is a sophisticated advantage player who will keep winning” or “this is a degenerate gambler who got lucky once and will mostly lose.”1 And then if you are a bookmaker in a lightly regulated industry, you act on those signals. If a lucky degenerate wins, you congratulate him and encourage him to bet more. If a sophisticated advantage player wins, you shut down her account.
但从短期来看，情况不那么明显。体育博彩中有很多随机性。如果有人下注很多钱并赢了，你是想就此切断他们，还是想让他们继续玩下去，看看他们是否会把钱全输回去？答案基本上是，对于博彩公司来说，有很多行为信号表明“这是一个会继续赢钱的精明优势玩家”或“这是一个走运一次但大多会输的堕落赌徒”。1 然后，如果你是一个监管较少的行业中的博彩公司，你会根据这些信号采取行动。如果一个幸运的堕落赌徒赢了，你祝贺他并鼓励他下注更多。如果一个精明的优势玩家赢了，你就关闭她的账户。
And then there is a further game in which the sophisticated advantage players try to figure out what those signals are, and then they send the “I’m a degenerate” signals, in order to fool the bookmakers into letting them play more. Bloomberg’s Ira Boudway reports:
然后，还有一个更进一步的游戏，老练的优势玩家试图弄清楚那些信号是什么，然后他们发送“我是个赌徒”的信号，以此来欺骗博彩公司让他们玩更多。彭博社的Ira Boudway 报道：
Pro bettors have recently added a wrinkle to their priming routines: They’re acting like gambling addicts. Isaac Rose-Berman recently described the practice in his How Gambling Works newsletter:
职业赌徒最近在他们的准备例行程序中增加了一个新花样：他们表现得像赌博成瘾者。艾萨克·罗斯-伯曼最近在他的《赌博如何运作》通讯中描述了这一做法：
“One pro bettor I know set up a bot which logs in to his accounts every day between 2 and 4 a.m., to make it seem like he can’t get through the night without checking his bets. Another withdraws money and then reverses those withdrawals so it looks like he can’t resist gambling.”
“我认识的一位职业赌徒设置了一个机器人，每天凌晨 2 点到 4 点之间登录他的账户，让人觉得他晚上不查看赌注就无法入睡。另一个则是先提款，然后再撤销这些提款，让人觉得他无法抗拒赌博的诱惑。”
Simulating addictive behavior, says [professional bettor Rufus] Peabody, is an effective way to get online sportsbooks to send you bonus money and keep your accounts open. This isn’t necessarily because operators are targeting problem bettors, he says; they’re simply looking to identify and encourage customers who are likely to spend—and lose—the most. This just happens to be a good way to find and enable addicts, too.
模拟上瘾行为，[职业赌徒鲁弗斯]皮博迪说，是让在线体育博彩网站给你发放奖金并保持账户活跃的有效方法。他说，这并不一定是因为运营商在针对问题赌徒；他们只是希望识别和鼓励那些可能花费最多并输掉最多的客户。这恰好也是找到并助长成瘾者的好方法。
I assume that some of these things must be urban legends and not every bookmaker is necessarily watching your account to see if you log in at 3 a.m., but the broader point is that, yes, there are some behaviors that correlate with losing a lot of money on sports betting, and bookmakers do watch for those behaviors, and if you can mimic those behaviors the bookmakers will like you, and if you can mimic those behaviors and also win then that’s a good business.
我认为这些事情中有些一定是都市传说，并不是每个博彩公司都会盯着你的账户看你是否在凌晨 3 点登录，但更广泛的观点是，确实有一些行为与在体育博彩中输钱很多相关，博彩公司确实会关注这些行为，如果你能模仿这些行为，博彩公司会喜欢你，如果你能模仿这些行为并且还赢，那么这就是一个好生意。
Dish/DirecTV
Here’s a somewhat unusual deal, a merger with a negative price:
这是一个有些不寻常的交易，一个负价格的合并：
DirecTV and Dish have agreed to combine in a deal that will create the biggest pay-TV provider in the US with about 18 million subscribers.
DirecTV 和 Dish 已同意合并，达成一项交易，将创建美国最大的付费电视提供商，拥有约 1800 万用户。
Under the terms of the transaction, DirecTV will acquire Dish TV and Sling TV from EchoStar Corp. for a nominal consideration of $1 plus the assumption of about $9.75 billion of debt, according to a statement on Monday that confirmed previous Bloomberg News reporting.
根据周一的一份声明，DirecTV 将以 1 美元的名义对价收购 EchoStar Corp.的 Dish TV 和 Sling TV，并承担约 97.5 亿美元的债务，该声明证实了彭博新闻此前的报道。
The deal is contingent upon Dish’s bondholders agreeing to take a haircut on the principal amount of the company’s debt of at least $1.568 billion, the statement shows.
该协议取决于 Dish 的债券持有人同意对公司至少 15.68 亿美元的债务本金进行减记，该声明显示。
Dish is currently part of EchoStar. It has $9.75 billion of debt and a business that is, apparently, worth about $8.2 billion. If DirecTV paid EchoStar zero dollars for Dish, it would be getting a bad deal. Somebody has to pay DirecTV $1.6 billion to take Dish. Who will pay? Not EchoStar: Dish’s debt is not guaranteed by EchoStar, so it is in some rough sense not EchoStar’s problem. EchoStar could just hand Dish over to its creditors without putting another penny into it.
Dish 目前是 EchoStar 的一部分。它有 97.5 亿美元的债务，而其业务显然价值约 82 亿美元。如果 DirecTV 以零美元的价格从 EchoStar 手中收购 Dish，那将是一笔糟糕的交易。有人必须支付 DirecTV 16 亿美元来接手 Dish。谁会支付呢？不是 EchoStar：Dish 的债务不由 EchoStar 担保，所以从某种意义上说，这不是 EchoStar 的问题。EchoStar 可以直接将 Dish 交给其债权人，而不再投入一分钱。
On the other hand, if the creditors — the holders of that $9.75 billion of Dish bonds — got Dish, what would they do with it? Probably not turn it around and make it worth more than $8.2 billion. And so those bonds have traded at low prices. Bloomberg tells me that the 5.125% bonds due 2029 ($1.5 billion of the total) were trading at about 56 cents on the dollar a week ago. The math is something like “this business is worth less than the amount of debt it has outstanding, nobody will pump more money into it, and eventually it will go bankrupt and not have enough assets to pay off the debt.”
另一方面，如果债权人——持有价值 97.5 亿美元 Dish 债券的人——得到了 Dish，他们会怎么处理？可能不会扭转局面并使其价值超过82 亿美元。因此，这些债券以低价交易。彭博社告诉我，2029 年到期的 5.125%债券（总额 15 亿美元）一周前的交易价格约为每美元 56 美分。数学计算类似于“这项业务的价值低于其未偿债务的金额，没有人会向其注入更多资金，最终它将破产，并且没有足够的资产来偿还债务。”
And then along comes DirecTV, which also operates a pay-TV network, wants to add Dish, and is as far as I know worth more than $0:
然后，DirecTV 也经营一个付费电视网络，想要收购 Dish，据我所知，它的价值超过 0 美元：
DirecTV is owned by AT&T Inc. and joint-venture partner TPG Inc. In connection with Monday’s deal, TPG will acquire the 70% stake in DirecTV that it doesn’t already hold from AT&T in a $7.6 billion in cash transaction.
DirecTV 由 AT&T 公司和合资伙伴 TPG 公司共同拥有。根据周一的交易，TPG 将以 76 亿美元的现金交易收购其尚未持有的 DirecTV 70%的股份。
That suggests that DirecTV is worth about $11 billion. Maybe, under DirecTV’s management, the Dish business could be worth more than zero too. But right now it’s worth less than zero, so someone needs to pay DirecTV to take it. And the obvious candidates are Dish’s creditors: If they’re willing to take a haircut on their bonds, to accept less than 100 cents on the dollar, then the deal can work. And since the bonds are worth 56 cents on the dollar without a deal, there is some room to negotiate.
这表明 DirecTV 的价值约为 110 亿美元。也许在 DirecTV 的管理下，Dish 的业务也可能价值不止于零。但现在它的价值低于零，所以需要有人付钱给 DirecTV 来接手。而显而易见的候选人是 Dish 的债权人：如果他们愿意在债券上做出让步，接受不到一美元兑 100 美分的价格，那么交易就能达成。而由于债券在没有交易的情况下价值 56 美分，所以还有一些谈判的空间。
And so that’s the plan: Dish and DirecTV announced this deal, but it is contingent on the Dish bondholders taking a haircut. They launched a bond exchange offer, and DirecTV can abandon the deal if not enough bondholders take it. The way the exchange offer works is that you exchange $100 of old Dish bonds into $100 of new Dish bonds, but if the merger actually closes (getting through regulatory review, etc.), then your $100 of new bonds poof into some lesser amount of new, post-merger bonds. In the case of those 5.125% bonds due 2029, they poof into $60 of post-merger bonds. (Shorter-dated bonds have less of a haircut; the 5.25% bonds due 2026 get back 93 cents on the dollar. If every single bond takes the exchange offer, the total haircut would be about $1.86 billion, so the required $1.57 billion would be about an 85% success rate.)
所以这就是计划：Dish 和 DirecTV 宣布了这笔交易，但这取决于 Dish 债券持有人接受减记。他们发起了一个债券交换要约，如果没有足够的债券持有人接受，DirecTV 可以放弃这笔交易。交换要约的运作方式是将 100 美元的旧 Dish 债券兑换成 100 美元的新 Dish 债券，但是如果合并真的完成（通过监管审查等），那么你的 100 美元新债券将变成一些较少金额的新合并后债券。对于那些 2029 年到期的 5.125% 债券，它们将变成 60 美元的合并后债券。（期限较短的债券减记较少；2026 年到期的 5.25% 债券每美元可收回 93 美分。如果每一张债券都接受交换要约，总减记将约为 18.6 亿美元，因此所需的 15.7 亿美元约为 85% 的成功率。）
Also there are “exit consents”: To take the deal, bondholders will have to vote to strip the old bonds of collateral, guarantees and “substantially all of the covenants and certain events of defaults.” And so if you don’t take the exchange offer (and the haircut), you are left with 100 cents on the dollar of much worse bonds.
还有“退出同意”：为了接受交易，债券持有人将不得不投票剥夺旧债券的抵押品、担保以及“几乎所有的契约和某些违约事件”。因此，如果你不接受交换要约（以及减记），你将剩下价值 100 美分的更差的债券。
And so for the Dish bondholders, the choices are (1) take the deal, get a haircut, but have a better chance of getting your (post-haircut) money back eventually or (2) reject the deal and take your chances with Dish on its own.2 Sixty cents on the dollar is more than 56, so maybe there’s a deal to be done, though Bloomberg tells me those bonds traded at around 66 today so maybe not.
因此，对于 Dish 的债券持有人来说，选择是（1）接受交易，承受损失，但最终有更好的机会收回（损失后的）资金，或者（2）拒绝交易，自己承担与 Dish 的风险。2 每美元六十美分比五十六美分多，所以也许有交易可做，尽管彭博社告诉我这些债券今天的交易价格大约是六十六美分，所以也许不行。
We have talked around here about the “capital solutions” business, a jolly euphemism for credit investors helping finance companies by taking value from other credit investors: A hedge fund will go to a company and say “I’ll lend you more money if you agree not to pay back some of your previous lenders.” This can often seem messy and zero-sum, but it isn’t always. The core idea of it is that there is some valuable business here, and giving it more financing will help it survive and thrive and create value and employ workers and so forth. And the way to generate that financing is at the expense of other, previous lenders who maybe had too optimistic a view of how much the business was worth. This is that, but for mergers and acquisitions.
我们在这里讨论过“资本解决方案”业务，这是一个愉快的委婉说法，指的是信贷投资者通过从其他信贷投资者那里获取价值来帮助公司融资：对冲基金会去找一家公司，说“如果你同意不偿还部分之前的贷款人，我会借给你更多的钱。” 这通常看起来很混乱且零和，但并不总是如此。其核心思想是，这里有一些有价值的业务，给予更多的融资将有助于其生存、发展、创造价值、雇佣工人等等。而产生这种融资的方式是以其他、之前的贷款人为代价的，他们可能对业务的价值持过于乐观的看法。这就是这样，但用于并购。
OpenAI 开放人工智能
The place you want to reach in your career is where you work for a company and you are like “you know what, I am just so rich, I don’t want you to pay me anymore, it’s fine, I’ll work for free,” and your bosses are like “nope, sorry, we insist, we cannot allow you to work here for less than $10 billion.” And then you’re like “ohhhhhhhh fine, fine, fine, I do love working here, and if there’s really no other way, I guess I will take the $10 billion.” Nothing remotely like this has ever happened to me in my life but here’s Sam Altman:
你想在职业生涯中达到的地方是你为一家公司工作，然后你就像“你知道吗，我实在是太有钱了，我不想让你们再付我钱了，没关系，我会免费工作的，”而你的老板们则说“不，不好意思，我们坚持，我们不能允许你在这里工作少于 100 亿美元。” 然后你就像“哦，好吧，好吧，我确实喜欢在这里工作，如果真的没有其他办法，我想我会接受这 100 亿美元。” 在我生活中从未发生过任何类似的事情，但这是 Sam Altman：
On Thursday, Altman told some employees that there were “good reasons” he shouldn’t take equity, though he didn’t elaborate. And he said investors were pushing for an equity grant to align his financial interests with those of OpenAI, said someone who heard the comments.
周四，奥特曼告诉一些员工，他有“充分的理由”不应该获得股权，但他没有详细说明。他说，投资者正在推动给予他股权，以使他的财务利益与 OpenAI 的利益保持一致，据一位听到这些评论的人士称。
Altman also said a Wednesday news report that he might get a 7% stake in the new OpenAI was “ludicrous.”
奥特曼还表示，周三的一则新闻报道称他可能会在新的 OpenAI 中获得 7%的股份是“荒谬的”。
We talked about this last week: There have been reports that, as OpenAI becomes a for-profit company, it might give Altman (its co-founder and chief executive officer, who currently owns no equity) a 7% stake worth about $10 billion. I surmised that this was not something he wanted, but something the investors wanted: “He is the founder and CEO of a hot startup, and the founder and CEO of a hot startup is supposed to own equity. Not just for his sake — not just so that he can be rich — but to align incentives.” And here is Altman saying that: He doesn’t want the $10 billion, but the investors are insisting.
我们上周谈过这件事：有报道称，随着 OpenAI 成为一家盈利公司，它可能会给予 Altman（其联合创始人兼首席执行官，目前没有任何股权）约 10 亿美元的 7%股份。我推测这不是他想要的，而是投资者想要的：“他是一家热门初创公司的创始人兼首席执行官，而热门初创公司的创始人兼首席执行官应该拥有股权。不仅仅是为了他自己——不仅仅是为了让他变得富有——而是为了对齐激励。”而 Altman 在这里说：他不想要这 100 亿美元，但投资者坚持。
Nobody in history has ever been better at, like, business negging than Sam Altman. He got OpenAI to a $150 billion valuation in part by going around saying “oh no, nobody should allow us to build our product, we’re going to destroy humanity,” and now he is allegedly going to get handed a $10 billion stake in OpenAI because he’s going around saying “oh no, nobody should give me equity, that’s ludicrous.”
历史上没有人比萨姆·阿尔特曼更擅长商业贬低。他让 OpenAI 的估值达到 1500 亿美元，部分原因是到处说“哦不，没人应该允许我们开发我们的产品，我们会毁灭人类”，而现在据说他将获得 OpenAI 的 100 亿美元股份，因为他到处说“哦不，没人应该给我股权，那太荒谬了。”
Dentist tax shelter 牙医避税方案
A crude way to think about it is that there are mass-market financial products, like index funds, that are marketed to middle-class investors and are fine. And there are high-end financial products, like hedge funds and venture capital, that are marketed to institutions and the very rich, and are fine. And then there are the bad versions of high-end financial products, like investing in bad hedge funds and bad private companies, which have the cost and opacity of high-end finance but with bad performance. Those are marketed to dentists. I mean, that is the stereotype, and I have indulged in it before, and it’s rude, and every so often dentists email me to object. But it’s the stereotype for a reason. If you are rich and sophisticated, but not too rich or too sophisticated, then you are in the sweet spot for a lot of people who want to market complicated, expensive, terrible financial products to you.
一个粗略的想法是，有一些大众市场的金融产品，比如指数基金，它们面向中产阶级投资者进行营销，并且很好。还有一些高端金融产品，比如对冲基金和风险投资，它们面向机构和非常富有的人进行营销，并且也很好。然后还有一些高端金融产品的糟糕版本，比如投资于糟糕的对冲基金和糟糕的私人公司，这些产品具有高端金融的成本和不透明性，但表现却很差。这些是面向牙医营销的。我的意思是，这是刻板印象，我以前也曾沉溺其中，这很无礼，偶尔会有牙医给我发邮件表示反对。但这是有原因的刻板印象。如果你很富有且很有见识，但不是太富有或太有见识，那么你正处于很多人想要向你推销复杂、昂贵、糟糕的金融产品的最佳位置。
Usually these products are private investment opportunities, but the Wall Street Journal reports:
通常这些产品是私人投资机会，但《华尔街日报》报道：
Ryan Ulibarri, a family dentist in Fort Collins, Colo., is in tax trouble that could take a big bite of his time and money.
瑞安·乌利巴里是科罗拉多州柯林斯堡的一名家庭牙医，他正面临税务问题，这可能会耗费他大量的时间和金钱。
In late August, a Denver grand jury indicted him on six criminal counts for using an “abusive-trust tax shelter” to hide more than $3.5 million of taxable income he earned from 2017 to 2022. He allegedly underpaid more than $1 million of tax over that period. …
8 月底，丹佛大陪审团以六项刑事罪名起诉他，指控其使用“滥用信托避税”手段隐瞒 2017 年至 2022 年间超过 350 万美元的应税收入。据称，他在此期间少缴了超过 100 万美元的税款。
While most Americans aren’t in the market for tax shelters, the allegations in this case are a reminder of what can happen when taxpayers ignore professional advice and common sense on taxes. They also show how easy it can be for people who want to slash their taxes to delude themselves.
虽然大多数美国人并不需要避税措施，但此案中的指控提醒我们，当纳税人忽视专业建议和税务常识时会发生什么。它们还显示了那些想要大幅减少税款的人自欺欺人是多么容易。
“People see a complex structure and think, ‘This is what rich people do to reduce their taxes,’ ” says Bryan Skarlatos, a criminal tax attorney with Kostelanetz. “But a complex structure with no business purpose is often a sign of fraud to the IRS.”
“人们看到一个复杂的结构，就会想，‘这就是富人用来减少税收的方法，’”Kostelanetz 的刑事税务律师布莱恩·斯卡拉托斯说。“但一个没有商业目的的复杂结构往往是国税局认为欺诈的标志。”
From the indictment:
从起诉书：
To use the Abusive-Trust Tax Shelter, clients nominally assigned nearly all of their business income to a sham business trust to create the illusion that the income assigned to the sham trust was not earned by the client. In reality, however, the client continued to retain full use and control over the income assigned to the sham business trust. The sham business trust then distributed its income to a second sham trust (referred to as a “family trust”), which, in turn, distributed its income to a third sham trust (referred to as “charitable trust”). On trust tax returns, each trust in the series reported deductions and distributions matching or exceeding its income, and the sham charitable trust purportedly “donated” any remaining income to a purported tax-exempt private family foundation. Finally, funds “donated” to the private family foundation would be “loaned” to the client’s business, business trust, or family trust so that the client could retain full control and beneficial use of those funds. As a result, the clients avoided paying income taxes on nearly all of their business income.
为了使用滥用信托避税策略，客户名义上将几乎所有的业务收入分配给一个虚假的商业信托，以制造出这些收入并非由客户赚取的假象。然而，实际上，客户继续完全使用和控制分配给虚假商业信托的收入。然后，虚假的商业信托将其收入分配给第二个虚假信托（称为“家庭信托”），而后者又将其收入分配给第三个虚假信托（称为“慈善信托”）。在信托的纳税申报中，系列中的每个信托都报告了与其收入相匹配或超过其收入的扣除和分配，而虚假的慈善信托则声称将任何剩余收入“捐赠”给一个所谓的免税私人家庭基金会。最后，“捐赠”给私人家庭基金会的资金将被“借给”客户的企业、商业信托或家庭信托，以便客户可以完全控制和受益于这些资金。结果，客户几乎避免为其所有的业务收入缴纳所得税。
Uh, right, sure, if you earn all of your income through a business, and that business assigns all its profits to a trust, and that trust assigns all of its money to another trust, and that trust assigns all its money to a third trust, and that trust “donates” all its money to a foundation, and that foundation “lends” all of its money to you, then (1) you still have all the money and (2) you have said many of the words that people actually say when they are setting up functioning tax shelters. But not all of them, and not in the right order. You have a thing that looks like a tax shelter that a sophisticated billionaire might use, but isn’t.
呃，对，当然，如果你通过一个企业赚取所有收入，并且该企业将所有利润分配给一个信托，而该信托将所有资金分配给另一个信托，而该信托将所有资金分配给第三个信托，而该信托将所有资金“捐赠”给一个基金会，而该基金会将所有资金“借给”你，那么（1）你仍然拥有所有的钱，（2）你已经说出了许多人在设立有效避税措施时实际会说的话。但并不是所有的话，也不是按正确的顺序。你有一个看起来像是一个复杂的亿万富翁可能会使用的避税措施，但实际上不是。
Is private equity unethical? 私募股权不道德吗？
Not, you know, all the business stuff. Just the recruiting. Here’s Jamie Dimon:
不是你知道的所有商业事务。只是招聘。这是杰米·戴蒙：
“I know a lot of you work at JPMorgan, you take a job at a private equity shop before you even start with us,” Dimon told a crowd of undergraduate business school students. “I'm going to say something a little different, okay, because I didn't talk about character. The most important thing about people's character, I think that's unethical. I don't like it.”
“我知道你们中很多人在摩根大通工作，在你们甚至还没开始为我们工作之前就去了一家私募股权公司，”戴蒙对一群本科商学院的学生说。“我要说一些有点不同的话，好吗，因为我没有谈论品格。我认为关于人品最重要的是，我认为那是不道德的。我不喜欢这样。”
What percentage of incoming JPMorgan investment banking analysts will have jobs lined up at private equity firms within their first month of starting at JPMorgan? Not 100%, I mean, but a lot, including most of the really good ones? I see where Dimon is coming from: It is weird to start a new job having already committed to leaving it in two years, and JPMorgan probably does want some of its best new analysts to stick around to become senior bankers. But at this point the market structure sort of is what it is, and it is odd for Dimon to go around saying “oh yes most of our junior bankers are unethical.”
有多少进入摩根大通投资银行的分析师在入职的第一个月内就已经在私募股权公司找到了工作？我不是说100%，但确实有很多，包括大多数非常优秀的分析师。我明白戴蒙的意思：在已经承诺两年后离职的情况下开始一份新工作确实很奇怪，而摩根大通可能确实希望一些最优秀的新分析师留下来成为高级银行家。但在这一点上，市场结构就是这样，而戴蒙到处说“哦，是的，我们大多数初级银行家都是不道德的”确实很奇怪。
Blockchain blockchain blockchain区块链 区块链 区块链
If you walk into a bank chief executive officer’s office and shout “AI, AI, AI,” will she throw money at you? There do seem to be a lot of artificial intelligence-driven projects at banks and financial firms. That, you know … do stuff? Broker chatbots? Foreign exchange market making? It seems plausible to think that there are a lot of pattern-recognition-type problems in finance that could efficiently be addressed by modern artificial intelligence technologies
如果你走进一家银行首席执行官的办公室，大喊“AI，AI，AI”，她会给你扔钱吗？银行和金融公司似乎确实有很多人工智能驱动的项目。那些，你知道的……做事情？经纪人聊天机器人？外汇市场做市？似乎可以合理地认为，金融领域有很多模式识别类型的问题，可以通过现代人工智能技术有效解决。
Meanwhile. In 2017 if you shouted “blockchain!” at a bank CEO she would definitely fling money at you, and people respond to incentives, so a lot of people shouted “blockchain!” at a lot of financial industry CEOs, and a lot of financial blockchain projects were announced. But it was often very hard to articulate what a blockchain could do, for traditional financial firms, that a regular database couldn’t. And now for the next few years you will read occasional articles to the effect of “remember that blockchain project? lol no.” Here’s one:
同时，在 2017 年，如果你在银行 CEO 面前大喊“区块链！”，她会绝对向你抛钱，人们会对激励做出反应，所以很多人在很多金融行业的 CEO 面前大喊“区块链！”，并宣布了许多金融区块链项目。但通常很难清楚地说明区块链能为传统金融公司做什么，而普通数据库不能。而在接下来的几年里，你会偶尔读到一些文章，其内容是“还记得那个区块链项目吗？哈哈，不。”这里有一个：
Two years ago, a behind-the-scenes giant in U.S. financial markets went live with one of Wall Street’s biggest and most ambitious blockchain initiatives.
两年前，美国金融市场的幕后巨头启动了华尔街最大、最具雄心的区块链项目之一。
Known as Project Ion, the effort aimed to use blockchain to revolutionize settlement of stock trades, when buyers fork over the cash and get share certificates. Firms ranging from big banks like JPMorgan Chase to trading app Robinhood got involved. But it didn’t catch on, a person familiar with the project said, and the firm at the center of the effort, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp., quietly ended the effort late last year.
被称为“离子计划”的这项努力旨在利用区块链来革新股票交易的结算，即买家支付现金并获得股票证书。包括摩根大通在内的大型银行以及交易应用程序 Robinhood 等公司都参与其中。但据一位熟悉该项目的人士透露，这项努力并未流行开来，而处于该努力中心的公司，即存管信托与结算公司，于去年年底悄然结束了这项努力。
Sure. On the other hand, “DTCC announced a pilot in which firms used U.S. Treasuries as collateral on a blockchain, showing that counterparties in trades could take legal possession of collateral instantly if the other side of a trade defaulted,” so hope springs etc.
当然。另一方面，“DTCC 宣布了一项试点计划，其中公司使用美国国债作为区块链上的抵押品，表明如果交易的另一方违约，交易对手方可以立即合法拥有抵押品”，所以希望仍在等。
Pointsmaxxing 点数最大化
We talked on Thursday about the indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams for bribery, in which the bribes were paid in the form of business-class travel on Turkish Airlines. I mentioned that, as bribes go, this is an unusually non-fungible and limited-use currency: Business-class flights on Turkish Airlines are a nice way to get to Turkey, but they are not a great way to get to, for instance, Paris (where Adams actually flew via Istanbul), or Easter Island (where he tried). And they’re an even worse way to, like, pay for housing or whatever. I wrote:
我们在星期四谈到了纽约市市长埃里克·亚当斯因贿赂被起诉的事情，其中贿赂是以土耳其航空公司的商务舱旅行形式支付的。我提到，作为贿赂，这是一种异常不可替代且用途有限的货币：土耳其航空公司的商务舱航班是去土耳其的不错方式，但它们不是去巴黎（亚当斯实际上是经伊斯坦布尔飞往巴黎）或复活节岛（他尝试去的地方）的好方式。而且它们更不适合用来支付住房或其他费用。我写道：
I am sure some of my pointsmaxxing readers will reply “oh man I could retire early and buy a mansion with unlimited free Turkish Airlines flights,” but for normal people like me and Eric Adams, unlimited free Turkish Airlines flights wouldn’t even cover all of our air travel needs.
我相信我的一些积分狂热读者会回复“哦，我可以提前退休并买一座豪宅，还能享受无限次免费的土耳其航空航班”，但对于像我和埃里克·亚当斯这样普通的人来说，无限次免费的土耳其航空航班甚至无法满足我们所有的航空旅行需求。
But the Wall Street Journal did this joke better and actually called up some pointsmaxxers to get them to make fun of Adams’s Turkish Airlines flights:
但是《华尔街日报》把这个笑话做得更好，实际上联系了一些积分达人，让他们取笑亚当斯的土耳其航空航班：
“It’s mind-blowing to someone in the points and miles world that this is the business class you would go out of your way to fly,” said [Adam] Morvitz, founder and CEO of point.me, a points and miles search aggregator and booking service. “We’re talking about a business class where if you’re in a window seat you still have to step over your neighbor to get to the bathroom.” …
“对于积分和里程世界的人来说，这种商务舱让人感到震惊，你会特意去乘坐这种航班，”point.me 的创始人兼首席执行官亚当·莫维茨说，这是一家积分和里程搜索聚合和预订服务公司。“我们谈论的是一种商务舱，如果你坐在靠窗的座位上，你仍然需要跨过邻座才能去洗手间。” …
“If you’re going to get indicted in large part because you were taking illicit upgrades to business class, at least do it with an airline that has a better product,” said Jason Rabinowitz, a New Yorker who co-hosts an aviation podcast for the plane-tracking site Flightradar24, on X. ….
“如果你因为非法升级到商务舱而被起诉，至少选择一家产品更好的航空公司，”住在纽约的杰森·拉比诺维茨在 X 上说，他是飞机追踪网站 Flightradar24 航空播客的联合主持人。
I feel like they are missing the point? It’s not like someone came to Adams and handed him a sack full of money and he had to use the money as efficiently as possible to book business-class travel to Europe. Someone (allegedly) came to Adams and handed him free Turkish Airlines flights, and he had to turn those flights into bribery as efficiently as possible. It’s a harder problem!
我觉得他们好像没抓住重点？这并不是说有人来到亚当斯面前，递给他一袋钱，然后他必须尽可能高效地使用这笔钱预订商务舱飞往欧洲。有人（据称）来到亚当斯面前，递给他免费的土耳其航空公司航班，然后他必须尽可能高效地将这些航班转化为贿赂。这是一个更难的问题！
Things happen 事情发生
New titans of Wall Street: How trading firms stole a march on big banks. The Giant Hedge Fund That Hates Risk and Still Wins. Harvard’s Not-So-Smart Money: Two Decades of Poor Returns and Rich Pay. The Mavericks of Metals Are Back, Rocking a $15 Trillion Market. Epic Games Sues Google, Samsung Over Alleged App-Store Scheme. Quant Hedge Funds Face More Margin Calls as Chinese Stocks Surge. The $1.7 Billion Takeover Brawl Fueled by a Fear of China. Lombard Odier Dumped Entire China Allocation, Won’t Buy Rebound. Fidelity Slashes Mobile Deposit Limits Following Fraud Wave. The Big Shift From Salaries to Bonus-Based Pay. Industry and ESG.
华尔街的新巨头：交易公司如何抢在大银行前面。讨厌风险却仍然获胜的巨型对冲基金。哈佛的不太聪明的钱：二十年的糟糕回报和丰厚薪酬。金属界的特立独行者回来了，撼动了一个 15 万亿美元的市场。Epic Games 因涉嫌应用商店计划起诉谷歌和三星。量化对冲基金面临更多追加保证金通知，因中国股市飙升。17 亿美元的收购争斗因对中国的恐惧而加剧。Lombard Odier 抛售了全部中国配置，不会买入反弹。Fidelity 在欺诈浪潮后削减了移动存款限额。从工资到基于奖金的薪酬的大转变。行业和ESG。
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