And yesterday, we sold, I think it’s 4000 plus, 4500 maybe. Wait, wait, 4400. We printed 8000. We intended to print 5000, but we sold 4400 books yesterday, and we’ll have, I guess, some roughly 3600 out there today, it is kind of whimsical but accurate, and she came out with just the book. I hope she will come out with it, and then, as we went through this publishing experience, Carrie wouldn’t take a dime. But I did get her to name her; they were charity, and this Stevens Center, which takes care of all those people, and does a great many other things. It’s located about five or six miles from where we are here, south, and she has been doing a wonderful job. Her grandfather helped, Forman. Her husband now joins the board, and we are selling 20 copies of–this is a commercial place, isn’t it? We are selling 20 copies which we have sold 10 prior to the meeting. That’s all we let them sell, and we raised a few hundred thousand dollars in doing that. I think we sold one for $100,000.

昨天我们卖出了多少本呢？我想是 4000 多本，也许 4500——等一下，是 4400 本。我们一共印了 8000 本，本来只打算印 5000 本，但昨天就卖出了 4400 本，所以今天大概还剩下 3600 本左右。这本书有点随性，但内容很扎实，而她就是这样把整本书做出来了。我希望她也能出来露个面。在整个出版过程中，Carrie 一分钱都不肯收。不过我还是让她指定了一个慈善机构——Stevens Center。这个机构照顾很多需要帮助的人，同时也做很多其他事情。它就在我们这里往南五六英里的地方，而 Carrie 一直在那里做得非常出色。她的祖父曾经参与过这个机构，她的丈夫现在也加入了董事会。我们还拿出 20 本书来拍卖——这里毕竟是个商业场合，对吧？在大会之前我们已经卖出了 10 本，仅限这 10 本，就筹集了几十万美元。我想其中有一本卖到了 10 万美元。

But we limited it to 10, and the only difference in the $25 version is that Carrie and I signed them, but we saved six for yesterday, and the six brought $148,000, which is a pretty good average per book of about $20,000, and then I had them save four more. So this afternoon, when we disbanded at 1:00, the area right behind us had all the goods in the bookstore. They will sell the final four, and when they get all through, they’ll match whatever we’ve raised for the 20, and we’ll give the Stevens Center a boost both financially and in awareness.

不过我们把数量限制在 10 本。其实这些书和 25 美元的普通版本唯一的区别就是 Carrie 和我在上面签了名。我们昨天保留了 6 本，这 6 本一共卖出了 148,000 美元，平均每本大约 20,000 美元，这是一个相当不错的价格。然后我又让他们再留出 4 本。所以今天下午 1 点大会结束之后，我们身后书店区域会把所有商品摆出来，他们会把最后 4 本卖掉。等全部卖完之后，还会按我们这 20 本书筹到的金额进行配捐，这样既能在资金上，也能在公众关注度上，为 Stevens Center 提供很大的支持。

And when you look at that book, Carrie really did the whole thing. I mean, there’s a lot of information in there, and she dug her within, and she came through a couple of times, maybe to check a fact or two, but she got material from the Munger family. She did a wonderful job, and I couldn’t get her to take a penny for it. So I’m going to have to do a lot of other things in the future.

当你们翻看那本书时，你会发现 Carrie 真的是把整个项目全部做完了。里面有大量的信息，她自己做了非常深入的研究。她只来找过我几次，大概是核对一两个事实而已。她还从 Munger 家族那里获取了一些资料。她完成了一项非常出色的工作，而且我完全没办法让她接受任何报酬。所以以后我大概还得用其他方式来表达感谢。

OK. With that, I think we’ve covered all the business. Becky has questions that she’s received from all over the country, and perhaps outside the country, and she’s picked out a group of them that she has not shared with me, we will alternate questions between Becky, and the audience, which we have by zones, and that I will turn things over to Becky for the first question.

好了，到这里我想我们已经把所有开场事项都讲完了。Becky 收到了来自全国各地、甚至可能还有国外的提问，她已经从中挑选出了一部分问题，而这些问题事先并没有告诉我。接下来我们会在 Becky 提问和现场观众提问之间交替进行，现场观众是按不同区域来提问的。现在我就把话筒交给 Becky，请她提出第一个问题。

In real estate, when you make a deal, a big deal with a distressed lender, and you know, when you sign the deal, then you go into another phase, then people start negotiating more things, and more things. It’s a whole different game, and a different type of person, to some extent, enjoys the game. We did a few real estate deals that came our way in 2008 and 9, but the amount of time that they would take us compared to doing something intelligent, and probably better, and securities, there was just no comparison. I mean, in a real estate deal, every sentence is as important as a person.

在房地产交易中，当你与一家陷入困境的贷款机构达成一笔大型交易时，当你签下协议之后，其实只是进入了另一个阶段，然后人们开始继续谈判更多条款、更多细节。这完全是另一种游戏，而某种类型的人确实很享受这种游戏。我们在 2008 年和 2009 年也做过几笔送上门来的房地产交易，但与我们把同样的时间用于证券投资、去做一些更聪明、可能更好的事情相比，两者根本没有可比性。在房地产交易里，每一句话、每一个条款都非常关键。

In stocks, if somebody needs to sell 20,000 shares of Berkshire or something, they call us, and the price is right, it’s done in five seconds, and it closes all the time. In stocks, partly that’s because they’re probably having their wires or phones or whatever it is recorded as to what they’ve said, and everything but the completion rate for working on anything. In stocks, assuming you got a meeting of the minds on prices, essentially 100%. In real estate, it just begins when you agree, and it takes forever. For a guy, 94, it’s not the most interesting thing to get involved in something where the negotiations could take years. In fact, if you go all the way back to Zeckendorf in the 1960s, he was going to change the world, and Century City, out in California, is a product of this. He was sitting on top of the world with the years building.

在股票市场，如果有人需要卖出 20,000 股 Berkshire 之类的股票，他们给我们打个电话，如果价格合适，五秒钟就能成交，而且交易会立刻完成。在股票交易中，部分原因是所有的电话、电报或通信记录基本都会被记录下来，因此只要双方在价格上达成一致，成交率几乎是 100%。但在房地产交易中，当你以为双方已经达成一致时，其实才刚刚开始，而且过程会拖得非常久。对于一个 94 岁的人来说，参与一件可能需要几年时间谈判的事情，并不是特别有吸引力。事实上，如果你回到 1960 年代的 Zeckendorf，他当时觉得自己要改变世界，而加州的 Century City 就是那个时代的产物。当时他似乎站在世界之巅。

So people tend to get in trouble in that business. The banks usually don’t want to recognize it, but that takes a long time to go through the bank processes. They just got through redoing the Musk loan that he made when he was buying, three years ago, the company that’s now X, and you know, three years to work out a transaction where you’ve got parties on both sides that aren’t ready to act. We find it much better when people are just ready to pick up the phone, and you can do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business in a day. I’ve been spoiled, but I like being spoiled, so we’ll keep it that way. OK, Becky.

所以人们在这个行业里往往会陷入麻烦。银行通常不愿意立即承认问题，而银行内部的处理流程又会拖很久。比如 Elon Musk 在三年前收购现在叫做 X 的那家公司时所涉及的贷款，最近才刚刚完成重新安排。你可以想象，一笔交易双方都没有准备好行动，结果却花了三年时间才处理完。相比之下，我们更喜欢那种情况：人们只需要拿起电话，一天之内就可以完成几亿美元规模的交易。我算是被这种方式宠坏了，不过我很喜欢这种“被宠坏”的感觉，所以我们会继续保持这种做法。好了，Becky。

He turned around from being a nothing with the band that he had till he found the sound, and I have always told my kids ever since that their sound isn’t my sound, and you don’t find it necessarily on the first job you take because you got to eat, you know. But if you get lucky like I did, you find it when you’re very young, and then just keep doing it. Don’t worry too much about starting salaries, and be very careful who you work for because you will take on the habits of the people around you, so there are certain jobs you shouldn’t take. But you’ve got the greatest country in the world, and you got the greatest time in the world. So I would say that I’m handing this over to Greg.

在他找到那个“声音”之前，他和他的乐队几乎是默默无闻的，但一旦找到了，一切就完全改变了。从那以后，我一直告诉我的孩子们：他们要找的是属于他们自己的“声音”，而不是我的“声音”。你也不一定能在第一份工作里就找到它——因为你总得先养活自己。但如果你像我一样幸运，很年轻的时候就找到了，那就一直做下去。不要太在意起薪是多少，但一定要非常小心你为谁工作，因为你会逐渐染上你身边那些人的习惯，所以有些工作是你不应该去做的。不过你们生活在世界上最伟大的国家，也生活在最好的时代。所以我想我就把接下来的话交给 Greg。

You can’t even dream all the dreams that you could have about a place like Berkshire, but the big thing you have to do though, is always to be sure you can play the next day. I mean, in terms of financial activities on a meaningful scale.

像 Berkshire 这样的地方，你甚至无法想象它未来可能实现的所有可能性。但最重要的一点始终是：你必须确保自己第二天还能继续“在场上打球”。我的意思是，在具有重要规模的金融活动中，始终要确保自己还能继续参与。

There was a book about how you only have to get rich once. I mean, you don’t want to do anything but risks. If very stupid things are happening around you, you do not want to participate. If people were making more money because they’re borrowing money or they’re participating in securities that are really pieces of junk but they hope to find a bigger sucker later on, you just have to forget that. That will bite you at some point.

有一本书讲过一个道理：你只需要变富一次就够了。换句话说，你不应该去做那些可能让你彻底出局的事情。如果你身边正在发生一些非常愚蠢的事情，你不应该参与其中。如果别人因为大量借钱而赚到更多的钱，或者他们在参与一些本质上是垃圾的证券，只是希望以后能找到一个更大的“接盘者”，那你就必须把这些事情忘掉。因为这些行为迟早会反过来伤到你。

The basic game is so good, and you’ve been so lucky to be born now. I mean, if I’ve been born in 1700, I’d say, “I want to go back in the womb. What the hell with this? It’s too hard.” But now I’ve come along to do something where I can just play around all day with things I enjoy doing, and it’s a pretty wonderful life. Anything, Greg, you want to add or subtract from that.

这场“基本的游戏”本身就非常好，而你们又如此幸运，生在这个时代。如果我是出生在 1700 年，我可能会说：“我还是回到子宫里算了，这一切太难了。”但现在，我却可以每天做自己喜欢做的事情，就像整天在玩一样，这是一种非常美好的生活。Greg，你有没有什么想补充或者修正的？

[01:27:30] Greg Abel: Nothing to subtract, but I would always just say it couldn’t be more, as I’ve said in the past, more humble than honoured obviously be in this role, but to have actually been part of Berkshire. Warren, it’s now 25-plus years. I had the opportunity to be part of Berkshire and to work with you, Ajit, our board, and many other people in our company, and as you touched on when you find something like that, and you find something like that like Berkshire that’s so special, you fall in love with it, and it becomes just what you want to do every day, and it’s just an incredible opportunity. So, thank you.

[01:27:30] Greg Abel：我没有什么需要补充的。不过我还是想说，就像我以前说过的那样，能够承担这样的角色，我感到无比谦逊，同时也深感荣幸。但更重要的是，我能够真正成为 Berkshire 的一部分。Warren，到现在已经 25 年多了。我有机会成为 Berkshire 的一员，并且能和你、Ajit、我们的董事会以及公司里许多优秀的人一起工作。正如你刚才提到的，当你找到这样的地方——像 Berkshire 这样特别的地方——你会爱上它，它会变成你每天最想做的事情。这是一个难以置信的机会。所以，谢谢你。

[01:28:15] Warren Buffett:, and to the gentleman who asked the question. If you don’t find it immediately, you know, don’t starve to death in the meantime, but you will find it, and you’ll find it in the right individual. In this sense, it’s almost like finding the right person in marriage. I mean, probably some of you may have married the person you met on your first date, although I guess they don’t even have dates anymore. But you know, sometimes it pays to wait too. OK, Becky.

[01:28:15] Warren Buffett：还有对刚才提问的那位先生说一句——如果你没有马上找到那件事，也不要着急。当然，在这期间也别把自己饿死，但你最终会找到它，而且通常是通过遇到合适的人。在某种意义上，这有点像寻找婚姻伴侣。也许你们当中有人第一次约会就遇到了未来的配偶——不过我猜现在的人可能连“约会”这种事情都不太做了。但有时候，多等一等也是值得的。好了，Becky。

以外币计价资产的投资

[01:29:00] Becky Quick: This is a question from Mark Bonki and Helen Fredrickson in Rapid City South Dakota. “As the US dollar quickly loses value in relation to other foreign currencies in 2025, is Berkshire Hathaway taking steps to minimize this currency risk, and its impact on quarterly, and annual earnings? If so, please explain. I’ll just add Mary Chang, another shareholder. “Berkshire currently borrows in Japanese yen to offset its currency risk and its Japanese stock investments. In the future, will you invest in foreign currency-denominated assets unhedged?”

[01:29:00] Becky Quick：这个问题来自南达科他州 Rapid City 的股东 Mark Bonki 和 Helen Fredrickson。“随着 2025 年美元相对于其他外币快速贬值，Berkshire Hathaway 是否采取措施来降低这种汇率风险及其对季度和年度收益的影响？如果有，请解释。”另外还有一位股东 Mary Chang 的补充问题：“目前 Berkshire 通过借入日元来对冲其日本股票投资的汇率风险。未来你们是否会在不进行对冲的情况下投资以外币计价的资产？”

[01:29:36] Warren Buffett: Yeah. Well, we always have–pretty much. The Japanese situation is different because we intend to stay long in that position, and the funding situation is so cheap. I’ve attempted to some degree to match purchases against yen-denominated funding but that’s not a policy of ours. In fact, that’s the first time we’ve done that, and we’ve owned lots of securities in foreign currency. So, we do nothing in terms of the question about its impact on quarterly, and annual earnings. We don’t do anything based on its impact on quarterly, and annual earnings. I mean, there’s never been a board meeting. I can remember the conversation I had with Charlie when I said, “If we do this, our annual earnings will be this, you know, and therefore we ought to– Whether it’s accounting or with anything, the number will turn out to be what it will be. What counts is where we are five 10 or 20 years from now.

[01:29:36] Warren Buffett：是的。基本上我们一直都会投资外币资产。日本的情况有些不同，因为我们打算长期持有那些投资，而且融资成本非常低。我确实在某种程度上尝试过把日元计价的投资与日元融资进行匹配，但那并不是我们的政策。事实上，这是我们第一次这样做。过去我们也持有过很多以外币计价的证券。所以，对于汇率变化对季度或年度收益的影响，我们并不会采取任何措施。我们从来不会基于季度或年度收益的影响来做决策。我从不记得在董事会上有过这样的讨论，也不记得自己曾经和 Charlie 说过：“如果我们这么做，我们今年的收益会是多少，所以我们应该这么做。”无论是会计数字还是其他数字，它最终会是什么样就是什么样。真正重要的是我们在五年、十年或二十年之后处在什么位置。

And if you start focusing on what number you’re going to produce, you will quickly get tempted, at least based on the experience I’ve seen from viewing 20 companies. One way or another, I’ll play around with the numbers, and sometimes seriously play around with the numbers, and I’ve seen people that you know, I trust them in all kinds of other ways, but they regard playing around with numbers as perfectly okay, and that’s just not something. We just don’t think about that.

如果你开始关注你要“做出什么样的数字”，很快就会受到诱惑。根据我观察过的二十家公司经验来看，人们总会以某种方式去摆弄这些数字，有时甚至是非常严重地操纵这些数字。我见过一些人在其他方面都很值得信任，但他们却认为调整财务数字是完全可以接受的事情。而这正是我们绝不会去做的事情。我们根本不会从这个角度去思考问题。

Actually, the relationship with the yen in the last quarter resulted in certain GAAP charges, but it doesn’t make any difference. It will change next month or next year, and obviously, we wouldn’t want to own anything that we thought was in a currency that was really going to hell. That’s the big thing, we worry about with the United States currency. I mean, it’s the tendency of a government to want to debase its currency over time. There’s no system that beats that. You can pick dictators. You can pick representatives. You can do anything. But the people, there will be a push toward weaker currencies.

实际上，上个季度日元汇率变化确实带来了一些 GAAP 会计上的费用，但那并没有什么实质影响。它可能下个月就会变化，也可能明年变化。当然，如果我们认为某种货币真的会严重贬值，我们就不会持有以这种货币计价的资产。这也是我们对美国货币最担心的一点。政府往往有一种长期贬值货币的倾向。无论是哪种制度都无法避免这一点。你可以选择独裁者，也可以选择代议制政府，或者任何制度。但最终都会存在推动货币贬值的压力。

And of course, I mentioned very briefly in the annual report that fiscal policy is what scares me in the United States because it’s made the way it is, and all the motivations are doing a lot of things that will cause trouble with money, but that’s not limited to the United States. It’s all over the world, and in some places, it gets out of control regularly. As you know, they devalue it. Rates that are breathtaking and that’s continued. I mean, people can study economics, and you can have all kinds of arrangements. But in the end, if you’ve got people that control the currency, you can issue pay for money, and you will or you can engage in clipping currencies like they used to centuries ago, and there will always be people. It’s the nature of their job.

当然，我在年报里也简要提到过，在美国让我担心的是财政政策。因为制度本身的激励结构，会推动很多可能给货币带来问题的行为。不过这并不只发生在美国，而是遍布世界各地。在一些地方，情况甚至经常失控。正如你们所知道的，一些国家的货币贬值速度令人震惊，而且这种情况一直在发生。人们可以研究经济学，也可以设计各种制度安排。但归根结底，只要有人掌控货币发行权，他们就可以印钱，或者像几个世纪前那样通过削减硬币含金量的方式来贬值货币，而总会有人这样做。这几乎就是他们工作的本性。

[01:34:39] Warren Buffett: I’m not singling them out as particularly evil or anything like that, but the natural course of government is to make the currency worth less over time, and there are important consequences. It’s very hard to build checks and balances into the system to keep that from happening, and we’ve had a lot of fun here, either the first 100 days or the last 100 days, whatever you want to call it. What happens when people try to make sure that they aren’t running fiscal risks, and that the game isn’t over, and never will be over. You know, in finality, if you look up, and you search the great inflations of post-World War 2, it’s just a list that goes on forever, and the same names keep popping up, and everything. So value of currency is a scary thing, and we don’t have any great system for beating that. We do in this particular Japanese position because we expect to hold it for 50 or 100 years or more, and we will be owning something that’s denominated in the end, and easily predictable, and we’ll just as long as the carry-on is right. We’ll attempt the issue of Japanese-denominated liabilities, but that’s not because of anything we care about in terms of quarterly or annual earnings. Greg, do you have anything to say?

[01:34:39] Warren Buffett：我并不是说政府特别邪恶之类的，但政府运作的自然结果往往是让货币随着时间推移而贬值，而这会带来重要的后果。要在制度中建立足够的制衡机制来防止这种事情发生是非常困难的。无论是所谓的前一百天还是后一百天，随便你怎么称呼，人们总是在讨论财政风险、是否还能继续维持现状之类的问题。但这个“游戏”不会结束，也从来没有真正结束过。如果你去查阅二战之后的大通胀历史，你会发现那是一张永远列不完的名单，同样的国家名字一再出现。所以货币价值是一件令人担忧的事情，而我们并没有什么完美的制度能够彻底解决这个问题。在日本这项投资上情况有些不同，因为我们预计会持有 50 年、甚至 100 年以上。我们持有的是以日元计价的资产，其结果相对容易预测。只要融资成本（carry）仍然合适，我们就会继续发行日元计价的负债来匹配。但这与季度或年度收益完全无关。Greg，你有什么要补充的吗？

[01:36:11] Greg Abel: I was just going to say that relative to the question, there’s no question we were fundamentally very comfortable with investing in the five Japanese companies, and recognizing we’re investing in yen. The fact we could then borrow in yen was almost just like a nice incremental opportunity, but we are very comfortable both with the Japanese companies and with the currency we would ultimately realize, IE, in the yen.

[01:36:11] Greg Abel：我只想补充一点。就这个问题而言，我们在根本上对投资这五家日本公司非常有信心，同时也清楚我们是在投资以日元计价的资产。后来能够以日元融资，其实只是一个额外的好机会。但无论是这些日本公司本身，还是我们最终会获得回报的货币——也就是日元——我们都非常有信心。

[01:36:41] Warren Buffett: We only made, as I referred to earlier one big currency play which was connected a little bit with when I wrote that article for Fortune. We got along 12 other currencies, as I remember, only four or five of them are really big currencies. But when I say we got long, it means we’re short the dollar. So we held that position for a couple of years, and we made several billion dollars on it which was significant to us then. Charlie always felt that if you had to pick an area outside of stocks in which to invest—And he knew a lot about bonds. He knew a lot about real estate. He knew a lot about a lot of things.—But he said he thought he could make a lot of money out of being in foreign currency.

[01:36:41] Warren Buffett：我们其实只做过一次比较大的外汇投资，那次和我当年为 Fortune 写的那篇文章有一点关系。我们当时买入了大约 12 种其他货币，如果我没记错的话，其中只有四五种是真正的大型货币。当我说“做多这些货币”时，其实意味着我们是在做空美元。我们持有那个头寸大约两年，从中赚了几十亿美元，在当时对我们来说已经是相当大的收益了。Charlie 一直认为，如果你必须在股票之外选择一个投资领域——他对债券、房地产以及许多其他领域都很了解——他觉得在外汇市场上是有可能赚很多钱的。

We’ve done it once. It’s not inconceivable that we would do it again, but it’s unlikely, there could be things happen in the United States that would make us want to own a lot of other currencies, and I suppose if we made some very large investment, European country or some, there might be a situation where we would do a lot of financing in their currency, but it was something that just was sort of obvious to do. In the Japanese situation where we had the ability to borrow yen at a very, very low carrying cost, and we felt very good about the income we’d been receiving from these securities.

我们确实做过一次这样的事情。未来再做一次并非完全不可能，但可能性也不大。当然，如果美国发生某些情况，让我们觉得有必要大量持有其他货币，那也有可能发生。或者如果我们在某个欧洲国家进行非常大的投资，也可能会出现需要大量以当地货币融资的情况。不过在日本这个案例中，事情其实非常简单明了：我们能够以非常低的成本借入日元，同时我们对这些证券带来的收入也非常满意。

If the present condition–which it won’t, I mean, it never does— prevail for decades and decades, we would probably keep doing the same sort of thing, but things change in the world too, so don’t take that as a prediction. OK. Section 6.

如果当前这种情况——虽然它从来不会长期保持不变——能够持续几十年，我们大概会继续做类似的事情。不过世界总是在变化，所以不要把这当作一种预测。好了，第六区。

对新兴市场的建议

[01:39:22] Dash from Mongolia: Good morning, Warren, and Greg, Ajit, thank you so much for hosting this event. It’s good to be here. My name is Dash, and I’m from the great country of Mongolia. A little bit of background about my country. Mongolia is an emerging market and a landlocked country sandwiched between Russia, and China. But we are reaching history, and minerals, and have a full democracy, and a growing economy. Last week, we hosted our second annual Mongolia Investor conference in New York to attract investors like yourself. I know you needn’t give advice informally to government leaders such as South Korea, China, and India. What advice would you give to government business leaders of emerging markets like Mongolia to attract institutional investors like yourself? It would be great if you had long-term plans for exposure to emerging markets as a hedge or an opportunistic investment. Lastly, I welcome all of you to Mongolia, and my country’s folks would be very happy if you could make it to our Economic Forum this July.

[01:39:22] 来自蒙古的 Dash：早上好，Warren、Greg、Ajit，非常感谢你们举办这次会议，很高兴来到这里。我叫 Dash，来自伟大的国家蒙古。简单介绍一下我们的国家。蒙古是一个新兴市场国家，也是一个夹在俄罗斯和中国之间的内陆国家。我们拥有悠久的历史、丰富的矿产资源，同时是一个完全民主的国家，经济也在增长。上周我们在 New York 举办了第二届蒙古投资者大会，希望吸引像你们这样的投资者。我知道你曾经向 South Korea、China 和 India 等国家的政府领导人提供过一些非正式的建议。如果像蒙古这样的新兴市场希望吸引像你这样的机构投资者，你会给政府和商业领袖什么建议？如果 Berkshire 在未来有长期配置新兴市场资产的计划，无论是作为对冲还是机会型投资，那将非常令人鼓舞。最后，我也欢迎你们来到蒙古，如果你们今年七月能参加我们的 Economic Forum，我们国家的人民一定会非常高兴。

[01:40:52] Warren Buffett: Thank you. Yeah, I have trouble planning a trip to Council Bluffs, which is just a few miles from here, but it takes an optimist. Actually, I met a fellow here at the annual meeting probably 20 years ago or more who did a lot of Mongolia, and he did very well in Mongolia, and actually moved there for quite a while. I would say that if you’re looking for advice to give the government over there is to develop a reputation for having a solid currency over time. I mean, we don’t really want to go into any country where we think there’s a chance, I mean, a significant probability of runaway inflation. It’s just too hard to figure.

[01:40:52] Warren Buffett：谢谢你。说实话，我连计划去离这里几英里的 Council Bluffs 都有困难，不过这需要一点乐观精神。其实大约二十年前，我在这个股东大会上遇到过一个人，他在蒙古做了很多投资，而且做得非常成功，甚至在那里住过相当长一段时间。如果你希望给你们政府一些建议，我会说：要逐渐建立一种“货币稳定”的声誉。我们并不愿意进入那些我们认为存在较大概率出现失控通胀的国家，因为那样的环境实在太难判断。

The other people figured out ways to make money in hyperinflationary situations, but that’s not our game, and I don’t think I’d play it well. So, that would be a factor with us. The chances are we won’t find anything in Mongolia that fits our size requirements aside from that. But like I say I think my friend that I met here 20 years ago has done very well in Mongolia. If the country develops their reputation for being business-friendly, and currency-conscious. You know, I think that bodes very well for the residents of that country, particularly if it has some other natural assets that it can build around.

有些人确实能够在恶性通胀的环境下找到赚钱的方法，但那不是我们的游戏规则，而且我也不认为自己擅长那种环境。所以这是我们会考虑的重要因素。当然，从规模角度来看，我们很可能找不到符合 Berkshire 投资规模要求的蒙古项目。不过正如我刚才说的，我二十年前认识的那位朋友在蒙古做得非常成功。如果一个国家能够逐渐建立起“对商业友好”和“重视货币稳定”的声誉，我认为这对那个国家的居民来说是非常有利的，尤其是当这个国家还拥有可以依托发展的自然资源时。

I don’t know that much about the minerals there or anything of the sort, but I mean, who would have bet on the United States in 1790? We didn’t have to have perfection. We just had to be better than the other guy for quite a while. We started out with nothing, and we ended up with close to 25% of the world’s GDP, faster growth rates, generally sounder recurrences, and all kinds of things. So I wish you well. OK, Becky.

我对蒙古的矿产资源了解并不多，但换个角度想想，1790 年时谁会押注美国呢？我们当时并不需要做到完美，只需要在相当长的一段时间里比别人稍微好一点就够了。我们最初几乎一无所有，而后来却发展到接近全球 25% 的 GDP，更快的增长速度，以及总体上更稳健的货币体系等等。所以我祝你们好运。好了，Becky。

私募股权的“竞争”

[01:43:53] Becky Quick: This question is from Peter Shen in New Jersey. It’s for Mr. Buffett and Mr. Jain. In recent years, large private equity firms like Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR have aggressively expanded into insurance, raising permanent capital, managing float, and aiming to replicate the model that Berkshire pioneered decades ago, given that these firms are now directly competing for insurance assets, often using higher leverage and more aggressive investment strategies, how do you view their impact on Berkshire’s insurance operations and underwriting discipline? Do you believe that the private equity model poses risks to policyholders in the broader financial system, and has this competition made it more challenging for Berkshire to find, and price insurance opportunities safely, and profitably today?

[01:43:53] Becky Quick：这个问题来自新泽西的 Peter Shen，提问对象是 Buffett 先生和 Jain 先生。近年来，像 Blackstone、Apollo 和 KKR 这样的大型私募股权公司正在积极进入保险行业，通过募集永久资本、管理浮存金，并试图复制 Berkshire 几十年前开创的模式。考虑到这些公司现在正在直接竞争保险资产，并且往往使用更高杠杆和更激进的投资策略，你们如何看待它们对 Berkshire 保险业务和承保纪律的影响？你们是否认为私募股权模式在更广泛的金融体系中可能给保单持有人带来风险？这种竞争是否让 Berkshire 在今天更难找到并安全、盈利地定价保险机会？

[01:44:43] Ajit Jain: OK. Yeah. Part of the question is very easy. There’s no question that private equity firms have come into this space, and we are no longer competitive in this space. We used to do a fair amount in this space. But in the last three to four years, I don’t think we’ve done a single deal. Now you are to separate this whole segment into two separate segments. One is the property casualty end of the business and the life end of the business. The private equity firms that you mentioned are all very active in the life end of the business, not the property casualty end of the business. You are right in identifying the risks these private equity firms are taking on both in terms of leverage, and in terms of credit risk, and while the economy is doing great, credit spreads are low. These private equity firms who’ve taken the assets from very conservative investments, and I wouldn’t say high octane, but they’ve certainly invested these assets in situations where they get a lot more return on the investment, and as I said, as long as the economy is good, and credit spreads are low, they will make money. They’ll make a lot of money because of leverage. However, there is always the danger that at some point, the regulators might get cranky, and say, you know, you’re taking too much too much risk on behalf of your policyholders, and that could end in tears. We do not like the risk-reward that these situations offer, and therefore, we put up the white flag, and said, you know, we can’t compete in this segment right now.

[01:44:43] Ajit Jain：好的，这个问题的一部分其实很容易回答。毫无疑问，私募股权公司已经进入了这个领域，而在这个领域我们现在已经没有竞争力了。过去我们在这个领域做过不少业务，但在过去三到四年里，我认为我们一笔交易都没有做。现在需要把这个行业分成两个部分来看：一个是财产与意外险业务（property casualty），另一个是寿险业务（life insurance）。你提到的这些私募股权公司主要活跃在寿险领域，而不是财产险领域。你指出的风险也是正确的：这些私募股权公司承担了更高的杠杆风险和信用风险。在经济表现良好、信用利差较低的时候，这些策略会显得非常成功。这些公司把资产从非常保守的投资中转移出来——我不会说是极端激进的投资，但确实是投向能够获得更高回报的资产。正如我所说，只要经济状况良好、信用利差较低，他们就会赚钱，而且因为使用杠杆，他们会赚很多钱。不过始终存在一种风险：在某个时点，监管机构可能会变得非常严格，说你们为保单持有人承担了过多风险，而那可能会以非常糟糕的结果收场。我们不喜欢这种风险回报结构，因此我们选择举白旗，承认在这个细分市场上目前无法竞争。

[01:46:32] Warren Buffett: There are people who want to copy Berkshire’s model, but usually they don’t want to copy it by also copying the model of the CEO having all of this money in the company forever. I mean, they’ve got a different equation. They’re interested in—and that’s capitalism. But they have a whole different situation, and they probably have a somewhat different fiduciary feeling about what they’re doing. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t work. If it doesn’t work, they go on to other things. If what we do here at Berkshire doesn’t work, I spend the end of my life regretting what I’ve created. So it’s just a whole different personal equation. There is no property casualty company that can basically replicate Berkshire that wasn’t the case at the start. I mean, at the start, we just have National Indemnity a few miles from here, and anybody could have duplicated what we had, but that was before Ajit came with us in 1986, and at that point, the other fellow should have given up. Yeah, Station 7, please.

[01:46:32] Warren Buffett：有些人想复制 Berkshire 的模式，但他们通常不愿意复制这样一个事实：CEO 把几乎全部财富长期放在公司里。换句话说，他们面对的是完全不同的激励结构。他们追求的是另一种模式——这也是资本主义的一部分。但他们的处境完全不同，而且他们对受托责任（fiduciary duty）的理解也可能有所不同。有时候这种模式会成功，有时候不会。如果失败了，他们可以转去做别的事情。但如果 Berkshire 失败了，我余生都会为自己创造的东西而感到遗憾。所以这在个人层面上是完全不同的一种关系。没有任何一家财产险公司能够真正复制 Berkshire 的模式。不过一开始情况并不是这样。最初我们只有一家离这里几英里的 National Indemnity，当时任何人都可以复制我们的模式。但那是在 Ajit 1986 年加入我们之前，而在那之后，其他人其实就应该放弃了。好了，第七区。

给年轻投资者的建议

[01:48:17] Marie: Hi, my name is Marie. I’m from Melrose, MA Thank you for the time today. As a young person interested in investing like myself. I would love to hear your insights, Mr. Buffett. What were some pivotal lessons you learned early in your career, and what advice do you have for young investors who are looking to develop their investment philosophy? Thank you.

[01:48:17] Marie：你好，我叫 Marie，来自 Massachusetts 的 Melrose。感谢今天给我提问的机会。作为一个像我这样对投资感兴趣的年轻人，我很想听听你的见解，Buffett 先生。在你职业生涯早期，有哪些关键的经验教训？对于那些正在建立自己投资哲学的年轻投资者，你有什么建议？谢谢。

[01:48:45] Warren Buffett: Those are good questions. I wish I thought of them myself earlier in my life. Who you associate with it’s just enormously important, and don’t expect you’ll make every decision right on that. I mean, you’re going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people that you work with, that you admire, that become your friends.

[01:48:45] Warren Buffett：这些都是很好的问题。我真希望自己在更早的时候就想过这些问题。你和谁在一起，这件事极其重要。当然，不要指望你在这方面的每一个决定都会是正确的。但总体来说，你的人生会沿着那些与你共事、你所敬佩、并最终成为你朋友的人所走的方向发展。

I mentioned a few fellows who have died in the last couple of years. Well, all of those people were people, if they were working together on something ten-thousandth the size of Berkshire, I mean, they’d be the kind of people you choose. There are people who will make you want to be better than you are, and you want to hang out with people who are better than you are, and that you feel are better than you are, because you’re going to go in the direction of the people that you associate with, and that’s something you’ll learn.

我刚才提到过去几年去世的几位朋友。那些人，如果他们一起经营的是一家规模只有 Berkshire 一万分之一的小公司，他们仍然会是你愿意选择共事的人。有些人会让你想变得比现在更好，你应该和那些比你更优秀、至少你认为比你更优秀的人在一起，因为你最终会朝着你所交往的人群的方向发展，这一点你迟早会体会到。

Of course, you’ve learned late in life. It’s hard to really appreciate how important some of those factors are until you get much older. But when you’ve got people around you, like Tom Murphy, Sandy Gottesman, and Walter Scott, then you’re just going to live a better life. If you just go out and look, and somebody is just making a lot of money, and decide you’re going to try, and copy them or something of the sort. So I would try to be associated with smart people, too, where I could learn a lot from them.

当然，这些事情往往要到人生比较晚的时候你才真正理解。只有当你年纪更大时，你才会真正意识到这些因素的重要性。如果你身边有像 Tom Murphy、Sandy Gottesman 和 Walter Scott 这样的人，你的人生就会过得更好。相反，如果你只是看到某个人赚了很多钱，然后决定去模仿他们，那就完全是另一回事了。所以我会尽量和聪明的人在一起，这样我可以从他们身上学到很多东西。

I would try to look for something that I would do if I didn’t need the money. I mean, what you’re really looking for in life is something where you’ve got a job that you’d hold if you didn’t need the money, and I’ve had that Charlie out for a very, very long time. All the fellows that I named had it. Every one of those I named, always did more than their share, and they thought like they never sought more than their share of the credit. They just behave the way you’d like anybody you work with, and when you find them, you treasure them, and when you don’t find them, you still keep doing whatever causes you to eat or enables you to eat but you don’t give up on looking around, and you will find people do wonderful things for you.

我会去寻找一种工作——即使不需要钱，我也愿意去做的那种。人生真正要寻找的是一种你即使不需要收入也愿意从事的事业。Charlie 和我已经拥有这样的事业非常非常久了。我刚才提到的那些人也都是这样。他们每个人都做得比自己应做的更多，但从不试图获得超过自己应得的荣誉。他们的行为方式正是你希望与你共事的人应有的样子。当你找到这样的人时，你会珍惜他们；如果暂时没有找到，你仍然要继续做能让自己生活下去的事情，但不要放弃寻找，因为最终你会遇到那些会对你的人生产生巨大积极影响的人。

So, I mentioned earlier that you know, going down to GEICO, and knocking on the door when the door was locked. I mean, who knows what was behind that doorway? I went in, and in 10 minutes, I found the man who was going to be just wonderfully helpful to me. Of course, if somebody’s going to be helpful to you, you want to try to figure out ways to be helpful to them so you get a compounding of good intentions and good behaviour, and unfortunately, you can get the reverse of that in life, too.

我刚才提到过，当年我去 GEICO，在门锁着的时候敲门。谁知道那扇门后面会是什么呢？我走进去，10 分钟之内就遇到了一个人，他后来对我产生了极大的帮助。当然，如果有人愿意帮助你，你也应该想办法去帮助他们，这样好意和良好行为就会像复利一样不断积累。当然，人生中也可能出现相反的情况。

I was lucky to have a good environment for living that kind of life, and other people, you know, have a whole different environmental situation, they have to overcome it. But don’t feel guilty about your good luck if you’ve got it. If you live in the United States, there are 8 billion people in the world, and there are 330 million in the United States, you’ve already won the game to a great degree, and then just keep making the most of it. But you don’t want to associate with people or enterprises that ask you to do something or tell you to do something that you shouldn’t be doing. That’s one of the problems.

我很幸运，成长在一个适合过这种生活的环境中。而有些人处在完全不同的环境，他们必须先克服很多困难。但如果你拥有好运，不要为此感到内疚。如果你生活在 United States，世界上有 80 亿人口，而 United States 只有 3.3 亿人，从很大程度上说你已经赢在起点上了。接下来只需要尽量把这种优势发挥出来。但有一点很重要：不要和那些要求你做不该做的事情的人或企业在一起，这是人生中的一个重要问题。

I mean, different professions select for different types of people. It’s interesting to me that in the investment business, many people get out of it after they’ve made a pile of money. If you really want something that you’ll stick around for, whether you need the money– Greg doesn’t need the money, Ajit doesn’t need the money, remotely, but they enjoy what they do, and they’re so damn good at it. I’ve had the advantage of seeing how that works over time. The best manager I ever knew, and there’s a lot of contention for who that would be, but actually was Tom Murphy Sr, who lives in his almost 98, and I’ve never seen anybody who could get the potential out of other people more than Murph.

不同的职业会吸引不同类型的人。我觉得很有意思的一点是，在投资行业里，很多人在赚到一大笔钱之后就离开了这个行业。如果你真的想找到一件能长期坚持的事情，那应该是即使不需要钱你也愿意做的事情。Greg 并不需要钱，Ajit 也完全不需要钱，但他们非常享受自己正在做的事情，而且他们在这方面做得非常出色。我有机会长期观察这一点是如何发挥作用的。我见过的最优秀的经理人——虽然很多人会争论这个问题——其实是 Tom Murphy Sr，他现在已经接近 98 岁了。我从来没有见过有人像 Murph 那样能够把他人的潜力激发出来。

If you want to become a better person, you want to work for Tom Murphy, and there are all kinds of successful people who really don’t bring that to the party. I’m not saying that’s the only way to succeed. I think it’s the most pleasant way to succeed for sure. The Berkshire experience is pretty dramatic. I mean, to operate with Sandy Gottesman from 1963 until he died a couple of years ago, Walter Scott for 30 years. You really can’t miss it. You’ll learn all the time. You’ll not only learn how to be successful in business, you’ll learn how to be successful in life. So, that’s my recommendation, and for some reason, apparently, you live longer too. It’s pretty amazing, I mean, these people I’m talking about, including myself, I mean, I’d like to attribute it to this, and a few other things, but I think a happy person lives longer than somebody that’s doing some things that they don’t really admire that much in life. OK. Let’s move on to, I guess, it’s Becky next.

如果你想成为一个更好的人，你应该为 Tom Murphy 这样的人工作。当然，也有很多成功人士并不具备这种品质。我并不是说这是唯一成功的方式，但我认为这肯定是最愉快的一种成功方式。Berkshire 的经历就非常典型。从 1963 年开始，我和 Sandy Gottesman 一起合作，直到他几年前去世；我和 Walter Scott 合作了 30 年。在这样的环境里，你几乎不可能不成长。你会不断学习。不仅学会如何在商业上取得成功，也会学会如何在人生中取得成功。所以这就是我的建议。而且似乎还有一个额外的好处：你可能活得更长。确实很神奇，我刚才提到的那些人，包括我自己，我愿意把这一点归因于这些因素，还有其他一些原因。但我确实认为，一个快乐的人通常会比那些每天做着自己并不真正认同的事情的人活得更久。好了，我们继续，下一个问题应该是 Becky。

近期市场波动中的买入

[01:57:08] Becky Quick: The first quarter ended March 31st, and it did show that Berkshire’s cash pile expanded from the end of last year. But the greatest market turmoil came in April. Martin Devine, a shareholder from Scotland who is attending the meeting today, wants to know, “Has the recent market volatility presented Berkshire with opportunities?” Martin just wrote in an addendum in the last 40 minutes or so, pointing out that you mentioned Berkshire almost invested $10 billion recently and wanted to know if you could talk more about that.

[01:57:08] Becky Quick：第一季度在 3 月 31 日结束，数据显示 Berkshire 的现金储备相比去年年底进一步增加。但市场最大的动荡出现在 4 月。今天来到现场的一位来自 Scotland 的股东 Martin Devine 想知道：“最近的市场波动是否给 Berkshire 带来了投资机会？”Martin 在过去大约 40 分钟里刚刚补充了一个问题，他提到你刚才说 Berkshire 最近差点投资了 100 亿美元，他想知道你是否可以进一步谈谈这件事。

[01:57:40] Warren Buffett: I can give you a good answer to the second part, which is no. But $10 billion wouldn’t have done that much. That’s the other side and another side of it. What has happened in the last 45 days, 100 days, whatever you want to pick up, whatever this period has been, it’s really nothing. There have been three times since we acquired Berkshire that Berkshire has gone down 50% in a fairly short period of time. Three different times. Nothing was fundamentally wrong with the company at any time, but this was not a huge move. The Dow Jones average hit 381 in September 1929. It got down to 42, so that’s by going from 100 to 11. This has not been a dramatic bear market or anything of the sort. I mean, as I pointed out, I’ve had 250 trades per day for many years. I’ve been old enough to trade stock. I’ve got 17,000 or 18,000 trading days. There have been plenty of periods that are dramatically different from this.

[01:57:40] Warren Buffett：关于第二个问题，我可以给出一个很明确的答案：没有。不过 100 亿美元本身也不会产生多大的影响，这也是事情的另一面。过去 45 天、100 天，或者你想选的这段时间里发生的事情，其实根本算不上什么。自从我们接管 Berkshire 以来，Berkshire 的股价曾经有三次在相当短的时间里下跌 50%。三次都是这样。当时公司的基本面并没有任何问题，但股价就是出现了那样的波动。1929 年 9 月，道琼斯指数曾达到 381 点，后来跌到 42 点，相当于从 100 跌到 11。这次的情况根本算不上什么戏剧性的熊市。正如我之前说过的，多年来我平均每天大约进行 250 笔交易。我从能够交易股票开始到现在，大概经历了 17,000 或 18,000 个交易日。在这期间，出现过很多比现在剧烈得多的时期。

I mean, the day I was born, the Dow Jones was 240, and that was August 30th, 1930, and between that and the low, it went from 240 to 41. So, if people think that it made a really major change, it didn’t. If it had gone up 15% instead of down 15%, people would take that with remarkable grace. But if it makes a difference to you whether your stocks are down 15% or not, you need to get a somewhat different investment philosophy. The world is not going to adapt to you, you’re going to have to adapt to the world.

我出生那天，道琼斯指数是 240 点，那是 1930 年 8 月 30 日，而后来最低跌到 41 点。所以，如果有人认为最近的波动是一次重大变化，那其实并不是。如果股市上涨 15% 而不是下跌 15%，人们往往会非常从容地接受。但如果股票下跌 15% 就让你难以承受，那么你需要建立一种完全不同的投资哲学。世界不会为你而改变，你必须去适应这个世界。

You will see a period in the next, certainly in the next 20 years, you’ll see a period that will be in. Somebody in the market described it one time as a “hair curler” compared to anything you’ve seen before. I mean, it just happens periodically. The world makes big, big, big mistakes, and surprises happen in dramatic ways. The more sophisticated the system gets, the more the surprises can be out of the right field. That’s part of the stock market, and that’s what makes it a good place to focus your efforts. If you’ve got the proper temperament for it, and a terrible place to get involved. If you get frightened by markets that decline and get excited when stock markets go up, I don’t mean to sound particularly critical. I mean, I know people have emotions, but you’ve got to check them at the door when you invest. OK. Station 8, please.

在未来 20 年之内，你一定会看到一次市场波动——有人曾把这种波动形容为“让头发都卷起来”的那种级别，比你之前见过的都要剧烈。这种事情会周期性发生。世界会犯非常非常大的错误，而且常常以非常戏剧性的方式出现。系统越复杂，意外事件就越可能从完全出乎意料的地方冒出来。这就是股票市场的一部分，这也是它之所以值得投入精力研究的原因——前提是你具备合适的性格。如果你没有这种性格，那这里就是一个非常糟糕的地方。如果市场下跌时你会恐慌，而市场上涨时你又会兴奋，我并不是要特别批评这种情绪。我知道人都会有情绪。但在投资时，你必须把这些情绪留在门外。好了，第八区。

人生中的重大挫折或低谷

[02:01:37] Peter Chan: Good morning, Mr. Buffett, Mr. Greg, and Mr. Ajit. My name is Peter Chan. I’m from Shanghai, China. This is my first time attending this shareholders’ meeting. I would like to ask a question about the wisdom of life. Have you ever encountered any major setbacks or low points in your life, and how did you get through, and overcome them? Thank you very much.

[02:01:37] Peter Chan：早上好，Buffett 先生、Greg 先生、Ajit 先生。我叫 Peter Chan，来自中国上海。这是我第一次参加这次股东大会。我想问一个关于人生智慧的问题。你在人生中是否遇到过重大的挫折或低谷？你是如何度过并克服这些困难的？非常感谢。

[02:02:08] Warren Buffett: Well, everybody gets setbacks, and some people have particularly bad luck in that respect, and others get through with fairly minor setbacks. Charlie had setbacks. I had setbacks, and it’s part of life, and they’re not fun. I don’t have any great advice for you about having the time of your life while you’re having some major setbacks, but it comes with a lifetime. You certainly have a setback when you die. So everybody’s got setbacks guaranteed to them. But some people get, and I mean, it is no laughing matter in a sense, because people get extraordinary bad luck, and other people get extraordinary good luck.

[02:02:08] Warren Buffett：每个人都会遇到挫折。有些人在这方面运气特别差，而有些人一生只经历比较小的挫折。Charlie 遇到过挫折，我也遇到过。这是人生的一部分，而且并不好受。我也没有什么特别高明的建议，可以让你在遭遇重大挫折时仍然过得非常愉快。但这是人生不可避免的一部分。最终每个人都会遇到最大的挫折——死亡。所以挫折是每个人都必然会遇到的。不过有些人的运气特别差，这确实不是可以轻松一笑的事情，因为有的人会遭遇极端的坏运气，而有的人则会拥有极端的好运气。

Usually, the people who get good luck don’t really think it was so much luck as themselves. Think that you’re less likely to have it in terms of medical problems. In terms of, you know, various things in life. I mean, you were born at a good time. If you look all the way through the history of China, when would you rather have been born? You know, 100 years ago, 500 years ago, a thousand years ago or now? You know it’s just hands down. You’d be lucky. If I came from 20 generations of shepherds, I think I get kind of tired of my life just looking at these sheep every day. But you know, we can sit here, and I can watch Nebraska. Not quite play the same game of football that we played 20 years ago.

通常那些拥有好运的人，并不会把它归因于运气，而更容易认为是自己的能力。比如说在医疗条件方面，在生活的很多方面。想一想，你出生在一个非常好的时代。如果回顾中国的整个历史，你更愿意出生在什么时候？100 年前？500 年前？还是 1000 年前？答案几乎毫无悬念——当然是现在。如果我来自 20 代牧羊人的家庭，我想我每天看着羊群，可能早就厌倦了那样的生活。但现在我们可以坐在这里，我还可以看 Nebraska 的橄榄球比赛——虽然和 20 年前的比赛也不完全一样。

But I mean, everything in life has been made so much better that you’ve got to figure that you do a lucky straw by staying in the womb for a couple hundred thousand years, and then just emerging it at the right time. So I would focus on the things that have been good in my life rather than the bad things that have happened. Bad things do happen, but it can often be a wonderful life. You could get terrible breaks in it. So far, that really hasn’t happened. But it happened with some of my friends, but he gets some bad breaks from time to time. But for 94, I’ve been able to drink whatever I want to drink.

总体来说，生活中的一切都比过去好了太多。如果把人类历史看成几十万年的时间，那么就像你在子宫里待了几十万年，然后恰好在最好的时间出生一样。所以我更愿意关注我人生中好的事情，而不是那些不好的事情。当然，坏事确实会发生，但人生依然可能非常美好。你可能会遭遇非常糟糕的打击。到目前为止，我自己并没有遇到那样的情况，但我的一些朋友确实遇到过。而对我来说，94 岁了，我仍然可以喝任何我想喝的东西。

They predict all kinds of terrible things for me, but it hasn’t happened yet. If you look at what pro football players are making now, and everything compared to what they were making 30 or 40 years ago, you can say, well, isn’t that wonderful? But if you look at the lifespan of professional athletes, after a while, you get to decide that you’re better off if you really weren’t the first one chosen to be on the baseball team or the basketball team, or anything else.

人们曾经预测我会遇到各种糟糕的健康问题，但到现在为止还没有发生。如果你看看现在职业橄榄球运动员赚的钱，再和 30 或 40 年前相比，你会觉得那真是太好了。但如果你再看看职业运动员的平均寿命，过一段时间你可能会觉得，其实当年没有被选进棒球队、篮球队之类的，也许反而更好。

Charlie, and I, and I think I speak for the others to some extent, that we never did, we never really exercised that much or did anything. We have been carefully preserving ourselves for years. So look at the bright side of things to the extent that you can. You’re lucky enough you’re here today. You’re healthy, and you come from a long distance, and you’re getting a chance to learn more about something that interests you, and compare that with the situation a couple of hundred years ago that you would have been offered. So anyway, that’s enough moralizing. OK, Becky.

Charlie 和我——我想在某种程度上也代表其他几位——其实从来没有做过太多运动之类的事情。我们这些年一直在“精心保存自己”。所以尽可能多看看生活中光明的一面。你已经很幸运了：今天能够坐在这里，身体健康，从很远的地方来到这里，还有机会学习更多你感兴趣的事情。如果把这种情况和几百年前的人相比，你就会发现差别有多大。好了，我的说教就到这里。Becky。

自动驾驶汽车与 GEICO

[02:07:10] Becky Quick: This question comes from Himanshu Bindal for Ajit and Warren. “Autonomous vehicles are already driving across roads in American cities with no driver involvement. How do Warren, and Ajit think about any disruption risk from these autonomous vehicles to GEICO’s auto insurance business, which is built around understanding, and underwriting human drivers? Wouldn’t what we call auto insurance today just become a product liability for autonomous vehicles and autonomous software companies?

[02:07:10] Becky Quick：这个问题来自 Himanshu Bindal，提问对象是 Ajit 和 Warren。“自动驾驶汽车已经在美国城市的道路上行驶，而且没有驾驶员参与。Warren 和 Ajit 如何看待自动驾驶汽车对 GEICO 汽车保险业务的潜在冲击？GEICO 的业务是建立在理解和承保人类驾驶行为的基础上的。如果自动驾驶普及，今天所谓的汽车保险是否会变成针对自动驾驶汽车制造商和自动驾驶软件公司的产品责任保险？”

[02:07:45] Warren Buffett: Well, Ajit.

[02:07:45] Warren Buffett：Ajit，你来说吧。

[02:07:47] Ajit Jain: Yeah, there’s no question that insurance for automobiles is going to change dramatically once self-driving cars become a reality. The big change that we will see is what you identified. Most of the insurance that is sold, and bought revolves around operator errors, how often they happen, how severe they are, and therefore what premium we ought to charge. To the extent these new self-driving cars are most safe, and are involved in fewer accidents, that insurance will be less required. Instead, it will be substituted by, as you mentioned, product liability. So we at GEICO, and elsewhere certainly try to get ready for that switch where we move from providing insurance for operator errors and be more ready to provide protection for product errors, and errors, and omissions in the construction of these automobiles.

[02:07:47] Ajit Jain：毫无疑问，一旦自动驾驶汽车真正成为现实，汽车保险行业将发生巨大变化。最大的变化正如你所提到的。现在绝大多数汽车保险，都是围绕驾驶员的错误来定价：错误发生的频率是多少、严重程度如何，因此我们应该收取多少保费。如果自动驾驶汽车更安全、事故更少，那么这种保险需求就会减少。相应地，它会被另一种保险所替代——正如你所说的，产品责任保险。因此 GEICO 以及我们其他业务，也在努力为这种转变做好准备：从为驾驶员错误提供保险，逐渐转向为产品缺陷、以及汽车制造过程中的错误和疏漏提供保障。

[02:08:56] Warren Buffett: Yeah, we expect a change in all our businesses and good thing we did— Charlie pushed me into it, but if I’d settle for being in New England textiles, you know, and even though it worked well for 70 years or so prior–the world changes. If the game didn’t change at all, it really wouldn’t be very interesting. If every time you swung the baseball, you hit a home run in the game, it wouldn’t be interesting. If every time you hit a golf ball, you had a hole-in-one, it wouldn’t be interesting. So the fact that there will be things you have to think about all the time as you go along, and you’ll make mistakes, and all that, and then that’s really part of the fun. I mean, your brain would turn to mush if you didn’t have a few problems now, and then.

[02:08:56] Warren Buffett：是的，我们预计所有业务都会发生变化。好在我们早就开始适应这种变化——是 Charlie 推着我去做的。如果当年我满足于只做 New England 的纺织生意，即使那项业务在之前 70 年里都运行得很好，世界还是会改变的。如果游戏规则从不改变，那其实一点意思也没有。如果你每次挥棒打棒球都打出本垒打，那就没意思了。如果你每次打高尔夫球都是一杆进洞，那也不会有意思。所以在前进过程中总会遇到新的问题，需要思考，也会犯错，这其实正是其中的乐趣所在。如果生活中从来没有问题，你的大脑反而会变成一团浆糊。

So, auto insurance will change, although it’s remarkable how little it has changed. But it’s only been around since, you know, for relatively a short time. Who knows what we’ll be doing in transportation a hundred years from now? Going back a couple of hundred years ago, who could have predicted the United States would look like what it does, and people would move like they do, and people would enjoy themselves like they do? I mean, it’s a dynamic world, and the biggest thing we have to worry about, unfortunately, is that we’ve learned how to destroy the world.

因此，汽车保险一定会发生变化，尽管令人惊讶的是，它到目前为止其实变化并不大。但这个行业存在的时间本来就不算长。谁知道 100 年以后交通方式会变成什么样？如果回到几百年前，谁能预测今天的美国会变成现在这样，人们会以这样的方式移动、生活和娱乐？世界是不断变化的，而不幸的是，我们现在最大的担忧之一，是人类已经学会了如何毁灭这个世界。

We’ve got this wonderful world, which now we know that there are eight countries that, and probably a ninth coming, that can destroy it. We don’t have what I would consider necessarily the perfect people leading each one of the nine or some of the nine countries. When Einstein came up with the E=mc² in 1905. He didn’t dream of the fact that mass could be converted into energy in a way that would change the world.

我们拥有这样一个美好的世界，但现在我们也知道，已经有八个国家——很可能还会有第九个——拥有能够毁灭这个世界的能力。而在这些国家中，并不一定都是我认为“完美”的领导人。1905 年 Einstein 提出 E=mc² 时，他并没有想到质量能够以一种改变世界的方式转化为能量。

When I was born in 1930, knowing about the law of physics that Einstein had come up with 25 years earlier, nobody, to my knowledge, had thought about what can this do to change warfare in the future. Literally, it wasn’t thought. Einstein didn’t think about it at that point, and then in 1939, Roosevelt got a letter around the month before Germany moved into Poland. He then got it around August 1st. The most famous letter in history was from Leo Szilard. Leo Szilard couldn’t get his letter in front of Roosevelt, because whoever heard of Leo Szilard? But he got Einstein to sign it.

当我在 1930 年出生时，Einstein 在 25 年前提出的这个物理定律已经存在，但据我所知，当时几乎没有人想到它会如何改变未来的战争。事实上，根本没有人认真思考过这一点。Einstein 自己当时也没有这样想。后来到了 1939 年，在 Germany 入侵 Poland 前大约一个月，Roosevelt 收到了一封信，大约是在 8 月 1 日左右。这封信后来成为历史上最著名的信件之一，是 Leo Szilard 写的。Leo Szilard 无法直接把信递到 Roosevelt 面前——因为谁听说过 Leo Szilard 呢？于是他让 Einstein 在信上签名。

Roosevelt probably understood about as much about physics as I do, so he didn’t understand it. But he understood that Einstein signed. So he calls in—General Groves may not have been general then—and said we should do something about this, and all we did was learn how to destroy the world, and we needed to do it. Germany had Heisenberg. He looked like he was ahead of us, and we couldn’t put that genie back in the bottle.

Roosevelt 对物理学的理解大概和我差不多，所以他并不真正理解其中的科学内容。但他知道这封信上有 Einstein 的签名。于是他召集人——当时的 Groves 可能还不是将军——并说我们应该对此采取行动。结果我们所做的事情，就是学会了如何毁灭这个世界，而且当时我们确实必须这么做。Germany 那边有 Heisenberg，看起来他们在这个领域走在我们前面，而一旦这个“精灵”被放出来，就再也无法被装回瓶子里。

The world does change, and we’ve got wonderful things. But we have a guy in North Korea. If we criticize his haircut, who knows what he might decide to do? What does North Korea need nuclear weapons for? I mean, can that be a good thing in the world? But they’re not going to go away. So it’s a world of change, and we are enjoying incredible change that’s contributed to everybody in this room living so much better than people were living a couple of hundred years ago. We haven’t changed human beings very much so far. We’ve certainly changed weapons of mass destruction but we haven’t made much progress with the human race.

世界确实在不断变化，我们拥有许多美好的事物。但现实是，我们还有 North Korea 这样的国家。如果我们批评一下他们领导人的发型，谁知道他会做出什么决定？North Korea 为什么需要核武器？这真的会是世界上的一件好事吗？但这些武器也不会消失。所以世界一直在变化，而我们也正在享受这种变化带来的巨大进步——今天坐在这个房间里的每个人，生活都远远好于几百年前的人类。不过，人类自身其实并没有发生太大的改变。我们确实大幅改变了大规模杀伤性武器，但在人类本身的进步上，其实并没有取得太多进展。

We’ll see what happens with that, but in the meantime, we’ll see changes in auto insurance, too, of course. That will be more, and it is easier for us to deal with it than it was when we had to deal with the problems of turning textiles in New England, and you deal with the world as it develops, and like I say, everybody here is living in the luckiest period. Enjoy your luck, and you still try to figure out the answers to what’s going to happen, and all insurance as we go along, we’ve done pretty well. There are a few big problems in insurance, and I don’t know how the insurance industry adapts to them, particularly, but that makes the game interesting.

未来会怎样，我们还要继续观察。不过与此同时，汽车保险行业当然也会发生变化。而相比当年我们处理 New England 纺织业务的问题，现在应对这些变化其实要容易得多。你必须随着世界的发展去应对变化。正如我所说，在座的每个人其实都生活在人类历史上最幸运的时代。享受你的好运，同时也继续思考未来会发生什么。到目前为止，在保险行业我们做得还不错。当然保险行业也存在一些巨大的问题，我也不确定整个行业将如何应对这些挑战，但这正是这个“游戏”有趣的地方。

[02:15:51] Ajit Jain: I’d just like to add we talked about the shift to product liability into protection for accidents that take place because of an error, in terms of how the product was designed or supplied. The only thing I want to add is in addition to that shift, I think what we’ll see is a major shift where the number of accidents that take place and need to be provided for will drop dramatically because of automatic driving. But on the other hand, the cost per repair every time there’s an accident. The cost of repairing, and bringing everything back to where it used to be would go up very significantly because of the amount of technology that’s going into the car. How those two variables interact with each other in terms of the total cost of providing the insurance, I think, is still an open issue.

[02:15:51] Ajit Jain：我想补充一点。我们刚才谈到了从“驾驶员错误责任”向“产品责任”转移，也就是为由于产品设计或制造缺陷导致的事故提供保障。除此之外，我认为还会发生另一个重要变化：随着自动驾驶技术的发展，需要赔付的事故数量很可能会大幅下降。但另一方面，每一次事故发生时的维修成本会显著上升，因为汽车中包含的技术越来越复杂。把车辆修复到原来的状态所需要的成本会明显增加。因此，这两个变量——事故数量下降与单次维修成本上升——最终如何相互作用，并决定整个保险体系的总成本，目前仍然是一个未解的问题。

[02:16:47] Warren Buffett: I’ll give you two interesting figures to ponder. When I walked into GEICO’s office in the 1950s. The average price of a policy was around 40 bucks a year. It varies all over the law depending on location. It’s pretty easy to get up to $2000, and depending on how urban your areas are, and everything, you can get them considerably higher. During that same time, the number of people killed in auto accidents has fallen from roughly six per 100 million miles, rather than a little over one.

[02:16:47] Warren Buffett：我给你两个值得思考的数字。20 世纪 50 年代，当我第一次走进 GEICO 的办公室时，一份汽车保险的平均保费大约是每年 40 美元。当然，不同地区差异很大。现在很容易就达到每年 2000 美元，如果是在城市地区，价格甚至还会更高。与此同时，在这段时间里，每行驶 1 亿英里的交通死亡人数，从大约 6 人下降到了略高于 1 人。

So cars become incredibly safer, and it costs 50 times as much down or thereabouts to buy an insurance policy. So, when people talk about the developments in car driving and all that sort of thing, it’s a lot easier sometimes. I mean, the Buck Rogers aspect of it, people look at it, but they don’t actually think of what really happens to the math of the business. The auto insurance industry has been a huge growth industry, and for that matter, homeowners’ insurance prices in Nebraska have doubled in the last 10 years. Adjusted for general inflation, and convective storms.

汽车变得极其安全，但保险价格却大约上涨了 50 倍。所以当人们谈论汽车技术的发展时，很多时候只关注那些像 Buck Rogers 科幻故事一样的部分，却没有真正思考这些变化对商业数学意味着什么。汽车保险行业实际上一直是一个巨大的增长行业。同样，Nebraska 的房屋保险价格在过去 10 年里也已经翻了一倍——即使在考虑通货膨胀和强对流风暴等因素之后也是如此。

It just going on to terror, and it is still unprofitable to write home homeowners insurance in Nebraska after doubling the price in the last 10 years. So, it’s very hard to predict what these big changes mean, and you just have to keep thinking all the time, but you don’t want to read some research report that says the world’s coming to an end or the world’s going to be wonderful because of this or that. There are about 50 other developments going on at the same time that you need to think about, and that you need to keep observing as you go along.

情况甚至变得越来越严重。即使在过去 10 年里保费已经翻倍，在 Nebraska 承保房屋保险仍然是不赚钱的。所以要预测这些重大变化最终意味着什么是非常困难的。你只能不断思考这些问题，但不要因为某一份研究报告就相信世界即将毁灭，或者世界会因为某个技术而变得完美。与此同时还有大约 50 种其他变化正在发生，你也必须一边前进一边持续观察。

You never reach an answer in this business. You reach a point of action that you take but we try to get into as high probability things as we think we can do, and play the game in the same way, but it will be different than you think.

You should wake up every morning, and think about that, too, if you’re in the business of managing businesses.

如果你从事的是经营企业的工作，那么每天早上醒来时都应该思考这些问题。

经营收益

[02:19:51] Greg Abel: Warren, as we approach the break. Would you like to address the operating earnings?

[02:19:51] Greg Abel：Warren，在我们进入休息之前，你是否想谈一谈经营收益？

[02:19:56] Warren Buffett: Oh, yeah. We released our 10-Q this morning. We always try to do it on a Saturday, so nobody gets a jump on other people. We just have three simple charts. You’ll see that our insurance underwriting income was down dramatically for the first quarter, and last year was as good a year as you’ll see in insurance. And it’s always unpredictable insurance, but everything broke our way. The insurance industry’s way last year, prices are down this year. Risks are up this year. So, you don’t have to figure out what the answer is on that. We do have unusual advantages in the insurance business that can’t really be replicated by our competition.

[02:19:56] Warren Buffett：是的。我们今天早上发布了 10-Q。我们总是尽量在星期六发布，这样就不会有人比别人更早获得信息。报告里只有三张非常简单的图表。你们会看到，今年第一季度我们的保险承保利润大幅下降，而去年是保险行业少见的好年份。保险本身一直是不可预测的，但去年几乎所有事情都朝着有利于我们的方向发展。今年的情况则相反：价格下降了，风险上升了。所以这类事情其实不需要过度解读。我们在保险业务中确实拥有一些非常特殊的优势，而这些优势是竞争对手很难复制的。

That doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to get advantages we don’t have. But we’ll try to replicate anything that seems better. I wouldn’t talk about her insurance business as much as I do unless I really thought we had some really permanent advantages in a very, very large industry. We just announced within the last 24 hours that we, Zurich, and Chubb, have arranged a joint operation to be the writer of really large sums that very few people can do.

这并不意味着竞争对手不会努力获得他们没有的优势。而我们也会努力复制任何看起来更好的做法。如果我没有真正相信我们在这个规模非常巨大的行业里拥有一些长期性的优势，我就不会如此频繁地谈论我们的保险业务。在过去 24 小时里，我们刚刚宣布，我们与 Zurich 和 Chubb 共同成立了一项联合业务，专门承保那些金额非常巨大的保险项目，而能够承保这种规模风险的公司其实非常少。

And of course, we’ve got to write about the right price in terms of liability. But we can do that sort of thing without blinking, and anybody who wants to do it wants to get us in it. So anyway, our investment income did not change that much because we have a float that grows a little bit, which gives us more money for investment, and then we have retained earnings, which grow. So we would expect in a year to have like 40 billion or more that we’ll build up investments unless we find things to do with it.

当然，在责任险方面我们仍然必须以合适的价格承保。但这类业务我们可以毫不犹豫地参与，而任何想做这种大规模承保的人，通常都会希望我们参与其中。至于投资收益方面，变化并不大，因为我们的浮存金会持续增长，这意味着我们有更多资金可以投资；同时我们的留存收益也在增加。因此，如果没有找到新的投资机会，我们每年大约会新增 400 亿美元或更多的可投资资金。

So the investment income rates on treasuries are less than– they were short-term bills, I should say or less than they were before. So you had that negative effect pulling it down, but not that much, and we had more money. So we came up with a little more in the way of earnings. The railroad is earning a little more than last year. But it’s not earning, but it should be earning at the present time, and that’s solvable, and it’s getting solved, and it’s still an incredible asset for Berkshire.

目前国债投资收益率——准确说是短期国债收益率——比之前略低，因此对投资收益产生了一些负面影响。不过影响并不大，因为我们拥有更多资金，所以总体收益仍然略有增长。铁路业务的利润比去年略高，但仍然没有达到它在当前环境下本应达到的水平。不过这个问题是可以解决的，而且正在解决之中。无论如何，它仍然是 Berkshire 一项非常重要的资产。

The energy company last year was having particular problems, and those were absent this year. So those earnings are up, and then among our range of general businesses, they were pretty much a push, and I think you did a little calculation the other day on how many were up, and how many were down.

能源业务去年遇到了一些特殊问题，而今年这些问题已经不存在了，所以利润有所上升。至于我们其他的一系列普通业务，总体来说基本持平。我记得前几天你还算过，有多少公司利润上升，有多少公司下降。

[02:23:30] Greg Abel: Of our 49 that we measured closely, 21 or up, and 28 were down. So you can tell it was really a mixed quarter when you go across the non-insurance operating businesses.

[02:23:30] Greg Abel：在我们重点跟踪的 49 家公司中，有 21 家利润上升，28 家下降。所以从非保险业务整体来看，这确实是一个好坏参半的季度。

[02:23:50] Warren Buffett: The next slide. I’m getting a five-minute warning here, but for the long ball now. It shows our financial condition, which continues to hold a lot more. Cash, and US. Treasury Bills, I would like, but that’s simply a question of what opportunities occur, and if you get real opportunities every five or six years, you know, you have to be patient. Charlie always pointed out that we made most of our money. I’m above about eight or nine ideas over 50 years, and we talked about it every day, and we read every report, and we did everything else but if you think you can get an idea day from listening to your Frederick Booker or doing a lot of reading of the financial information published, forget it, because every now, and then you get extraordinary opportunities, and most of the time, you don’t have much of an edge. So, we also have on that thing our float, which continues to build. There’s no property casualty company that has our float, Ajit?

[02:23:50] Warren Buffett：下一张图。我现在收到一个五分钟的提醒，但从长期来看，这张图展示了我们的财务状况。我们的现金和 US Treasury Bills 仍然很多——事实上我希望能少一点，但这完全取决于是否出现投资机会。如果真正的机会每五六年才出现一次，那么你就必须保持耐心。Charlie 一直指出，在过去 50 年里，我们的大部分钱其实来自大约八到九个投资想法。我们每天都在讨论问题、阅读各种报告、做很多研究，但如果你认为通过听某个专家演讲或者大量阅读公开的金融信息，就能每天得到一个投资点子，那就算了吧。真正的机会只是偶尔才会出现，而大多数时候你并没有太大的优势。另外，我们的浮存金也在持续增长。Ajit，没有哪家财产险公司拥有像我们这样规模的浮存金，对吧？

[02:25:21] Ajit Jain: Yeah, clearly we are head and shoulders above anyone else.

[02:25:21] Ajit Jain：是的，很明显我们远远领先于其他任何公司。

[02:25:25] Warren Buffett: Yeah. So, that is money that, as long as we’re writing it in an underwriting profit, is absolutely free money, and we would expect that over a 50 or 100-year period, we would be able to say the same thing. But there will be years when you have a very bad underwriting record, and it will lead to the float earnings. But so far in the last 20 years, I think we’ve only had one underwriting loss?

[02:25:25] Warren Buffett：没错。所以只要我们的承保业务是盈利的，这些资金实际上就是免费的资金。我们预计在未来 50 年甚至 100 年里仍然可以这样说。当然，有些年份承保结果会非常糟糕，那会影响浮存金带来的收益。但在过去 20 年里，我记得我们只有一年出现了承保亏损，对吧？

[02:26:07] Ajit Jain: If you look at the entire range, including life insurance, our cost of flow to 2.2% negative, that means we’ve got the float plus somebody has given us 2.2% of that of cash.

[02:26:07] Ajit Jain：如果把所有保险业务都算上，包括寿险，我们的浮存金成本是负 2.2%。这意味着我们不仅得到了浮存金，而且还有人额外付给我们相当于浮存金 2.2% 的钱。

[02:26:23] Warren Buffett: Yeah, it’s like running a bank where people leave their money with you, and you pay a minus 2.2%, and you don’t have any check clearing or anything else. We run our business actually with a different mindset than any other P&C company, I think, probably, in the world.

[02:26:23] Warren Buffett：是的，这就像经营一家银行，人们把钱存到你这里，而你支付的利率是负 2.2%，而且还不需要处理支票清算之类的事情。我认为我们经营保险业务的思维方式，和世界上几乎所有其他 P&C 公司都不同。

I wouldn’t be talking about it if I thought they duplicated. The final pages on share repurchases, and clearly we haven’t made any, we have not made share repurchases so far this year. If Berkshire buys Berkshire shares, and repurchases, we’ve now paid more than you will pay. If you buy Berkshire shares. I don’t think people generally know that, but there is a tax that was introduced a year or so ago where we pay 1%, and that not only hurts us because we pay more for it than you do pay. It’s a better deal for you than for us.

如果我认为其他公司能够复制这一点，我就不会谈论它了。最后一页是关于股票回购。显然，今年到目前为止我们没有进行任何回购。如果 Berkshire 回购 Berkshire 的股票，我们现在实际上要比你们购买股票支付更多的成本。很多人可能不知道这一点，因为一两年前引入了一项税收——我们在回购时要支付 1% 的税。这不仅意味着我们比你们支付更高的成本，对投资者来说反而比对我们更划算。

But it is actually for some of our investing companies quite substantially. Tim Cook has done a wonderful job. I mean, really wonderful job running Apple. But he spent a hundred billion dollars roughly in a year repurchasing shares, and there’s a 1% charge attached now, so that’s a billion dollars a year. He buys Apple stock which we like compared to what you pay. It doesn’t sound like much, but well, a billion dollars sounds like a lot still. But there are people that want to increase that particular rate dramatically, and we won’t read about it or anything like that, but it’s slightly less attractive than it was before, and we will only buy in our shares if we think that they are almost certainly underpriced as valued very conservatively.

对于我们的一些投资公司来说，这个影响其实相当大。Tim Cook 在经营 Apple 方面做得非常出色，真的非常出色。但他一年大约花费 1000 亿美元进行股票回购，而现在要支付 1% 的税，这意味着每年大约 10 亿美元的成本。他回购 Apple 股票的价格与投资者支付的价格相比并没有差别。听起来 1% 好像不多，但 10 亿美元仍然是一笔很大的钱。而且还有一些人希望大幅提高这一税率。我们不会对此公开抱怨，但回购确实变得比以前稍微没那么有吸引力了。只有当我们认为 Berkshire 股票几乎肯定被低估——而且是按照非常保守的估值标准来看——我们才会进行回购。

We get that opportunity occasionally, but the higher that charge goes that the federal government charges us for doing it unless we are able to do a repurchase. So on that happy note, we will rejoin at 11:00, and then we’ll continue until 1:00. In the meantime, enjoy yourself, and I think all our stores are still open, So, ring the cash register.

这种机会偶尔会出现。但如果联邦政府对回购征收的费用越来越高，我们进行回购的意愿自然也会降低。好了，在这样一个愉快的话题下，我们将在 11 点重新开始会议，并继续到 1 点。在这段时间里大家可以好好逛一逛，我想我们的商店现在还都开着门，所以欢迎大家多多消费。

[00:00:00] Warren Buffett: OK, everyone. OK, we’re ready to go, and I’m going to lead off by actually recommending a movie. I know that’s why you came, but I would recommend all of you. You go to Amazon Prime—I’ve got no financial interest in this— but you go to Amazon Prime. Click on a documentary called Becoming Katharine Graham. It’s an incredible story from 50 or so years ago. And to some extent, I had the good luck to be kind of a viewer of some American history that I think is fascinating. So if you feel that I have misled you can write me a note, and I promise to report how many didn’t agree with it, but click on Becoming Katharine Graham, and you’ll see a story of a remarkable story of American history. There are a good many portions in there who lived for that period didn’t know about at the time. I don’t think every American citizen ought to watch it. So with that I hope you all spend some more money out there and in our friendly shops. We will go to Station 9.

沃伦·巴菲特：各位好，我们准备开始了。我想先推荐一部电影。我知道你们就是为这个来的。我建议大家去 Amazon Prime——我在这件事上没有任何经济利益——在 Amazon Prime 上点击一部纪录片，叫《Becoming Katharine Graham》。这是一个发生在大约50年前的非凡故事。在某种程度上，我很幸运，曾经亲眼见证过一段我认为非常迷人的美国历史。如果你们看完之后觉得我误导了你们，可以给我写信，我保证会统计有多少人不同意。不过你们去点开《Becoming Katharine Graham》，你会看到一段非常精彩的美国历史故事。里面有很多情节，即使是当时生活在那个时代的人，当时也并不知道。我认为每一位美国公民都应该看看这部片子。好，希望你们一会儿也能在外面的商店多花点钱。我们现在转到9号提问点。

沃伦·巴菲特从格雷格·阿贝尔学到了什么？

[00:02:33] Robert: Hi, Warren. My name is Robert, and I’m a shareholder from Toronto, Canada. So, Warren, three years ago, Charlie Rose asked your question to the effect of what you wanted to be remembered for. And your reply was, “He was a teacher.” So in that spirit, Greg, I’m curious to hear maybe a story of where you learned something very, you know, profound from Warren. I’m sure you learned many things, but if there is a story that kind of comes up in your mind, we’d love to hear it, and vice versa, if we have the time. Warren, what’s something that you may be learned from Greg? Thank you.

Robert：你好，Warren。我叫 Robert，是来自加拿大多伦多的一名股东。三年前，Charlie Rose 曾问过你一个问题，大意是你希望别人怎样记住你。当时你的回答是：“他是一位老师。”在这个背景下，我很好奇，Greg，也许你可以讲一个故事，说说你从 Warren 那里学到过什么非常深刻的东西。我相信你学到的东西一定很多，但如果有一个特别让你印象深刻的故事，我们很想听听。如果时间允许，也想听听相反的情况——Warren，你有没有从 Greg 那里学到过什么？谢谢。

[00:03:14] Warren Buffett: Yeah, I will turn this over to Greg in just one second, but now the main thing I’d like to be known for is old age.

沃伦·巴菲特：好，我马上把这个问题交给 Greg，不过现在我最希望被人记住的一件事是——我活得很老。

[00:03:25] Greg Abel: Well, Warren is obviously a remarkable teacher and I benefit from that every day and as I’ve already touched on for many years, I’m fortunate that if I had to be remembered as something right now, obviously, I want to be remembered as a great father, but equally, a coach and that goes to family, friends and just being involved with the kids I coach in hockey or baseball or whatever it may be.

Greg Abel：Warren 显然是一位非常杰出的老师，我每天都从他那里受益。正如我之前提到的，多年来我一直很幸运。如果现在要说希望别人怎样记住我，当然，我希望首先被记住的是一个好父亲；但同样，我也希望被记住是一名教练——无论是对家人、朋友，还是对我在冰球、棒球等运动中指导的那些孩子们而言。

[00:07:25] Warren Buffett: Yeah, that’s one thing we’ve really never talked about here, but I spend more time looking at balance sheets than I do income statements and Wall Street really doesn’t pay much attention to balance sheets, but I like to look at balance sheets over an 8 or 10 year period before I even look at the income account. There are certain things that are harder to hide or play games with on the balance sheet than you can with the income statement. I mean, neither one gives you the total answer on anything, but you still want to understand what the figures are saying and what they don’t say and what they can’t say and what the management will like them to say, that the auditors wouldn’t like them to say.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，这其实是我们以前很少在这里谈到的一件事。我花在看资产负债表上的时间，比看利润表的时间还要多。而华尔街其实并不太重视资产负债表。在我看利润表之前，我通常会先看一家公司的资产负债表，往往要回看8年到10年的时间。有些东西在资产负债表上比在利润表上更难隐藏，也更难做手脚。当然，这两张报表都不能给出完整的答案，但你仍然要去理解这些数字在说什么、没有说什么、不能说什么，以及管理层希望它们表达什么，而审计师却不会允许它们表达什么。

And I mean, there’s just a lot to be learned, and you do learn more from balance sheets in my view than most people give them credit for. I’m not worried about being remembered for that, people don’t remember. Well, they don’t remember enough about Katharine Graham, for example, in terms of this story that shaped America in many ways. Certainly, had just all kinds of impact, and I think I mean history is so fascinating, and Charlie was probably the best person you could imagine in what he learned. Charlie was never satisfied with just superficial things about any subject. He really wanted to understand it, and he always would tell me not to take a position on anything until you can describe the arguments against it better than the person who is arguing with you. That you should be able to argue their case better than they can.

这里面其实有很多东西可以学。在我看来，从资产负债表里学到的东西，往往比大多数人愿意给予它的评价要多得多。我倒不在乎别人是否会因为这一点记住我，因为人们其实记不住太多事情。比如说，人们对 Katharine Graham 的记忆就远远不够，而她的故事在很多方面塑造了美国，产生了极其深远的影响。我认为历史本身是非常迷人的。而在学习这件事上，Charlie 可能是你能想象到的最出色的人之一。Charlie 从不满足于对任何事情只有表面的理解，他总是想真正把它弄明白。他经常告诉我，在你能够把反对你观点的一方的论证讲得比对方自己还要好之前，不要对任何事情轻易下结论。也就是说，你应该能够把对方的观点论证得比他们自己还好。

He was a remarkable teacher and but so and so with those other fellows I mentioned. And, of course, my dad was an incredible teacher. So you make the most of the people you meet who are going to make you a better person, and probably forget about the rest to quite an extent. OK, let’s move on to number 12. Becky, here. Next.

他是一位了不起的老师，而我之前提到的那些人也同样如此。当然，我的父亲也是一位非常了不起的老师。所以，你要尽可能珍惜那些会让你成为更好的人、让你不断进步的人，而对其他人，大体上就不必太在意了。好，我们继续，下一个问题是12号提问点。Becky，下一个。

Greg Abel 对资本配置的看法

[00:10:25] Becky Quick: This question comes from David Rubin, a shareholder from Scottsdale, AZ. It’s a question for Greg. “We’ve heard over the decades and are familiar with Warren and Charlie’s investment thesis and their circle of competence. During the first ten years after taking over as CEO, Greg will be tasked with allocating more capital during that time than Berkshire has had to allocate in its history. Given this, I’d like to hear from Greg about his views on capital allocation, particularly into new businesses.”

Becky Quick：这个问题来自亚利桑那州 Scottsdale 的股东 David Rubin，是问 Greg 的。“几十年来，我们一直在听 Warren 和 Charlie 的投资理念，也很熟悉他们的能力圈概念。在 Greg 接任 CEO 后的前十年里，他需要配置的资本规模，可能会超过 Berkshire 历史上任何时期。基于这一点，我想听听 Greg 对资本配置的看法，尤其是对于进入新业务的资本配置。”

[00:10:59] Greg Abel: Sure. It’s very fortunate when you think of Berkshire again, and we’ve talked about this where we start from and clearly touch on the investment in the related investment allocation, but we start from where great place where we’ve got a great culture within the business. We have values that we as a management team and really as defined by Warren and those of Charlie and everybody associated with the business, got great values that really set Berkshire up well for the future, and obviously as we deploy capital and allocate capital, it’s critical to Berkshire as we go forward and equally it’s around managing risk.

Greg Abel：当然。当你再想一想 Berkshire 的时候，其实我们是从一个非常有利的起点出发。我们之前也谈到过这一点——我们在考虑投资以及相关资本配置时，是从一个拥有极其优秀企业文化的地方开始的。作为管理团队，我们有一套价值观，而这些价值观主要是由 Warren、Charlie 以及所有与这家公司相关的人所塑造的。这些价值观为 Berkshire 的未来奠定了非常坚实的基础。显然，当我们部署资本、进行资本配置时，这对 Berkshire 的未来至关重要，而同样重要的是对风险的管理。

But when I think of our values, there are a couple that are absolutely critical. One will maintain the reputation of Berkshire and that of our company. I view that in investing or how we operate things across each of our businesses, that will always be a priority and something that will ensure it is in the forefront of our minds. I think equally, as we then look at our— back to Warren’s balance sheet comment—we will have a fortress of a balance sheet. I thought Sue Decker, our lead director, said it well yesterday. We’ve got a significant set of cash right now, but it’s an enormous asset to have that, and that will continue to be a philosophy. When we can deploy it, we’ll deploy it well.

当我想到我们的价值观时，有几条是绝对关键的。第一条是维护 Berkshire 以及我们公司的声誉。无论是在投资上，还是在我们运营各项业务时，这始终都会是优先考虑的事情，并且会一直放在我们思考的最前面。同样，当我们回到 Warren 刚才提到的资产负债表问题时，我们会始终保持一张“堡垒式”的资产负债表。我觉得我们的首席独立董事 Sue Decker 昨天说得很好。我们现在拥有大量现金，这本身就是一项巨大的资产，而这也会继续成为我们的理念。当有机会可以部署这些资金时，我们会把它用在合适的地方。

But equally, we do recognize it as a strategic asset and it allows us to weather the difficult times and at the same and not be dependent on anybody. So, again, that will be an investment philosophy. We will remain Berkshire, and we will never be dependent on a bank or some other party for Berkshire to be successful. I would then touch on allocation of capital being absolutely critical, but with that comes management of risk and understanding risk, and that falls upon all our managers, insurance, non-insurance, but we’ll bring that across Berkshire.

但同样，我们也把这笔现金视为一种战略性资产。它让我们能够在困难时期安然度过，同时不依赖任何人。因此，这也将继续成为我们的投资哲学。我们会保持 Berkshire 一贯的方式，我们绝不会依赖银行或其他机构来维持 Berkshire 的成功。接下来我想说的是，资本配置本身是绝对关键的，但与此同时也必须伴随着对风险的管理和对风险的理解。这不仅是我的责任，也是我们所有管理者的责任——无论是保险业务还是非保险业务——而这种理念会贯穿整个 Berkshire。

The other value I would touch on, but that really relates to where I’m going, is that, ultimately, we have a great set of operating companies that do produce significant cash flows. Be it in the insurance companies creating flow or various non-insurance companies producing significant cash flows on an annual basis. We intend to continue to ensure that’s the strength of Berkshire as we go forward. It’s absolutely critical to our long-term success. Now, with those cash flows and with the float, and then equally as touched on, we have significant resources already in our balance sheet. We’ll really continue to move forward with a very similar philosophy, or it’s an identical philosophy to what we’ve had currently and for the past 60 years.

我还想提到的另一条价值观，其实与我接下来要说的内容密切相关，那就是：我们最终拥有一组非常优秀的运营公司，它们能够持续地产生大量现金流。无论是保险业务产生的浮存金，还是各类非保险业务每年产生的大量现金流，这些都是 Berkshire 的核心力量。随着我们继续向前发展，我们会确保这一点始终是 Berkshire 的基础，这对我们的长期成功至关重要。现在，凭借这些现金流、这些浮存金，以及我们资产负债表上已经拥有的大量资源，我们未来会继续沿用与过去60年非常相似、甚至可以说完全相同的投资哲学。

We’ll start by looking at those opportunities within our business. And by that, I mean, within our insurance, non-insurance businesses. Are they properly capitalized and have the opportunity to manage their business, and will that continue to exist? They’ll operate in an autonomous way. But in the end, Berkshire still manages the capital that will go into those businesses or what potentially will come out of those businesses. Equally, the next opportunity is to acquire businesses in their totality or 100%. There are great times when we can do that. Warren touched on. We had one that was interesting in the last quarter, the $10 billion acquisition, but again, the value relative to the risk has to be right. And if it’s right, we want to own it. If it’s not the time, there’ll be another time to own assets like that.

我们首先会从自己体系内部寻找机会。也就是说，在我们的保险业务和非保险业务中寻找机会。这些业务是否拥有合适的资本结构？是否有机会继续良好地经营？未来是否仍然具备这样的条件？这些公司会以自治的方式运营。但最终，Berkshire 仍然负责管理流入这些企业的资本，或者从这些企业中流出的资本。同样，另一类机会是收购整个企业，也就是100%的股权。有些时候会出现很好的机会。Warren 刚才提到，上个季度我们就有一个很有意思的机会——大约100亿美元的收购。但归根结底，价值与风险之间的关系必须是合理的。如果这个关系是正确的，我们就希望拥有它；如果现在不是合适的时机，总会在未来某个时间再次出现类似的资产。

Then there’s the opportunity to own pieces of companies through equity. But as Warrens always highlighted, and again, this will be our approach to how we think around those companies. Though we own a piece of the company. We own a piece of that cash flow. We own a piece of their balance sheet. It’s not just a share certificate. And as we approach that, really, we’ll approach it with the thought that we’re going to own this company for the long term. It’s again understanding what—be it the 100% company or the 1% company. Do we thoroughly understand, and do we have a strong view of what the economic prospects of those companies will look like? And Warren said it earlier, five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, if we don’t have a view of that, we won’t be investing, be it 100% or 2% of a company through equities.

还有一种机会，就是通过股票持有公司的部分股权。但正如 Warren 一直强调的，这也会是我们看待这些公司的方式：当我们拥有一家公司的部分股权时，我们实际上拥有的是这家公司的一部分现金流，也拥有它资产负债表的一部分，而不仅仅是一张股票证书。因此，当我们做这样的投资时，我们会以长期持有这家公司的心态来思考。无论是100%拥有一家企业，还是只拥有1%的股份，我们都必须真正理解这家公司，并且对它未来的经济前景有清晰而坚定的判断。正如 Warren 之前说过的，五年后、十年后、二十年后，这家公司会是什么样子？如果我们对这个问题没有清晰的看法，那么无论是收购100%的公司，还是通过股票持有2%的股份，我们都不会投资。

We have to thoroughly understand what those prospects look like, and associated with understanding those prospects, we need to understand the underlying risk of the businesses and it’s really the investment philosophy and how Warren and the team have allocated capital for the past 60 years. It will not change, and it’s the approach we will take as we go forward.

我们必须彻底理解这些企业未来的前景，而在理解这些前景的同时，也必须理解这些业务背后的风险。这其实就是过去60年来 Warren 和团队进行资本配置的投资哲学。这个哲学不会改变，而这也将是我们未来继续遵循的方式。

[00:17:47] Warren Buffett: I don’t want to go on too long on this, but this is important because it’s very obvious that the country, for example, needs an incredible improvement, rethinking, redirection, even to some extent. We’ve outgrown what would be the model that America should have. And in a sense, it’s a problem something akin to the interstate highway system, where you needed the power of the government really to get things done because it doesn’t work so well when you get 48 or 50 jurisdictions that each have their own way of thinking about things. Of course, in World War Two, we called in people at a dollar an hour, and we knew we had to turn out ships like crazy, and we knew that we had to convert Ford Motor from being a car manufacturer into an aircraft manufacturer in a matter of days, not weeks, not months.

沃伦·巴菲特：我不想在这个问题上讲得太久，但它确实很重要。因为很明显，例如这个国家在很多方面都需要巨大的改进，需要重新思考，甚至在某种程度上需要重新调整方向。我们已经成长到了一个阶段，原本适用于美国的发展模式可能已经不再完全适合了。从某种意义上说，这有点像当年建设州际高速公路系统的问题——那时确实需要政府的力量才能把事情完成，因为当48个或50个州各自按照自己的方式行事时，事情往往很难顺利推进。当然，在第二次世界大战期间，我们曾经以每小时一美元的工资动员大量人力，我们知道必须疯狂地生产舰船，同时我们也知道必须在几天之内，而不是几周或几个月，把 Ford Motor 从一家汽车制造商转变为一家飞机制造商。

There are certain really major investment situations where we have capital like nobody else has in the private system. We have particular knowhow in the whole generation and transmission arena. The country is going to need it. But we have to figure out a way that makes sense from the standpoint of the government, from the standpoint of the public, and from the standpoint of Berkshire, and we haven’t figured that out yet. I don’t know whether Greg wants to even explain a few of the major problems, but that is a clear and present use of hundreds of billions of dollars. You know, you have people that set up funds and say, they’re getting paid for just assembling stuff. But that’s not the way to handle it. The way to handle it is to have some kind of government-private industry cooperation similar to what you do in a war. I don’t think when they were doing the highway system, that the government set up his own guys that were going to pour a whole cement or anything like that, but they you needed a cooperation and we’re at that point, I think in terms of energy, but I don’t think we’ve made any progress particularly. Tell us more about that.

在某些真正重大的投资领域，我们拥有私人体系中几乎无人可比的资本规模。同时，在发电和输电这一整套体系中，我们也拥有相当专业的经验。这个国家未来会需要这些能力。但我们必须找到一种方式，使其从政府的角度、公众的角度以及 Berkshire 的角度来看都是合理的，而目前我们还没有完全找到这样的方式。我不知道 Greg 是否愿意解释一下其中的一些重大问题，但这确实是一个明确而现实的领域，需要投入数千亿美元的资本。现在有些人设立基金，说他们只是把一些东西拼装在一起就能赚钱，但那不是解决问题的方式。真正的方式应该是政府和私人产业之间形成某种合作，就像战争时期那样。我不认为当年建设州际高速公路系统时，政府是自己组建一批人去浇筑所有水泥之类的工程，而是需要一种合作机制。我认为在能源领域，我们现在也到了类似的阶段，但到目前为止，我觉得我们并没有取得什么实质性的进展。Greg，你可以多讲一点吗？

[00:21:02] Greg Abel: Yeah. And I think these are not unique in that it’s sort of reflective of where we’re at. There will be very significant investment opportunities across a variety of industries. As Warren touched on in the electric industry or the energy space, we obviously know that well with our existing business. The capital required to meet the long-term needs of what’s currently projected as demand is enormous and we as Berkshire we’ll be in a good position to help address those needs, but the model around it and the risks that need to be addressed to deploy that type of capital will be different than they are today.

Greg Abel：是的。我认为这些问题并不是孤立的，它们其实反映了我们当前所处的阶段。未来在很多行业中都会出现非常重大的投资机会。正如 Warren 刚才提到的，在电力行业或更广泛的能源领域，我们凭借现有业务对这一领域非常熟悉。为了满足目前预测的长期需求，需要投入的资本规模是巨大的，而 Berkshire 在帮助满足这些需求方面将处于一个非常有利的位置。但围绕这种投资所需要的商业模式，以及在部署如此规模资本时必须应对的风险，将会与今天的情况有所不同。

[00:21:53] Warren Buffett: Yeah, the muscle of the federal government will be needed. But the test of whether you can have 48 or 50, depending on the nature of things, jurisdictions that are cooperating to do something that has opposition–we’ll have opposition in every single state. And if they took in the vote during World War 2 or they took a vote on the Interstate Highway system, it would have been slowed down to an incredible degree. So the question is how to use the strengths of this country to actually turn it into what it should be capable of or self-preserving in a republic with 48 connected and a couple of unconnected States.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，这需要联邦政府的力量。但真正的考验在于：在48个或50个司法辖区之间（具体取决于问题的性质），能否让它们合作去完成一件会遭遇反对的事情——而且几乎每一个州都会有反对声音。如果当年在第二次世界大战期间，或者在建设州际高速公路系统时，让每个地方都去投票表决，那么整个过程都会被拖慢到令人难以置信的程度。所以问题在于，如何利用这个国家的优势，把它真正变成它应该能够达到的样子，或者说在一个由48个相互连接、还有几个不相连的州组成的共和国中实现自我维持和发展。

It will be interesting to see what happens, but we do have capital, and we actually have some knowledge that very few places have. I mean, that we know what the games are about, but putting together that energy with knowledge and with capital and everything is it’s just not easy. It should be something that we’re capable of in the country, but the country was not designed in a certain way; it was not designed for having 48 different jurisdictions that could mess up anything that we’re attempting to do. During wartime, it’s one thing to get agreement, but during peacetime, it’s a different problem. That’s going to be one for the next generation, but it’s important. OK, station 10.

未来会发生什么将会很有意思。我们确实拥有资本，而且我们在某些方面的知识和经验也是极少数地方才拥有的。也就是说，我们知道这个游戏是怎么运作的。但要把这种能力、知识和资本结合起来并不容易。从理论上说，这是这个国家应该能够做到的事情，但这个国家的制度设计并不是为了应对48个不同司法辖区可能随时破坏任何计划的局面。战争时期达成共识是一回事，而在和平时期则是完全不同的问题。这将是下一代需要面对的问题，但它确实非常重要。好，10号提问点。

如何进入 Berkshire Hathaway 工作

[00:24:00] Darcus Tang: Good morning, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Abel. I’m Dorcus Tang. I’m 14 years old. My father, Roy Tang MGRTCO, brought me here for two consecutive years. And I promise I will come back every year since I queue up at 2:00 in the morning for every meeting you hold. My dad owned BRKA shares, and he said I need to work hard to earn my peace of BRKB. We are both from China, Hong Kong, and I would like to ask, what’s the essential element for a global teenager like me if we want to be part of Berkshire like Mr. Greg Abel? What piece of knowledge should I learn so you will hire me in the future?

Darcus Tang：早上好，Buffett先生和Abel先生。我叫Darcus Tang，今年14岁。我的父亲 Roy Tang MGRTCO 已经连续两年带我来到这里。我保证以后每一年都会再来，因为每次你们开股东大会，我都会凌晨两点就开始排队。我的爸爸持有 BRKA 的股票，他说我需要努力工作，才能赚到属于自己的 BRKB。我们来自中国香港。我想问的是，如果像我这样的全球青少年，希望将来能像 Greg Abel 一样成为 Berkshire 的一员，最重要的要素是什么？我应该学习哪方面的知识，才能让你们将来愿意雇佣我？

[00:25:03] Warren Buffett: If you’re talking about the future, you better talk to Greg. So we’ll let Greg answer that.

Warren Buffett：如果你谈的是未来，那你最好问 Greg。所以我们就让 Greg 来回答这个问题。

[00:25:08] Darcus Tang: My final words. Finally, Mr. Buffett, I learned a lot from this meeting, and of course, I will come here every year, and I wish you could attend as many as possible, as you and Mr. Charlie Munger, the most respectful people, have inspired me and my father a lot. I wish you happiness and health, and maybe one day in the future we can make the world more prosperous altogether, like you said. Thank you.

Darcus Tang：最后我想说几句话。Buffett先生，我从这次会议中学到了很多。当然，我以后每一年都会再来。我也希望您能尽可能多地继续参加这些会议，因为您和 Charlie Munger 先生都是最值得尊敬的人，给我和我的父亲带来了很多启发。我祝您幸福和健康，也希望有一天在未来，我们能够像您所说的那样，一起让这个世界变得更加繁荣。谢谢。

[00:25:43] Warren Buffett: OK. Thank you.

Warren Buffett：好的，谢谢。

[00:25:53] Greg Abel: Well, I think your dad, your dad said it best. He highlighted that to become part of Berkshire to own some Berkshire shares, you’re going to have to work hard, and I think hard work takes all of us a long way in life, and I would never diminish that there are a lot of things that matter in life. But if you start with a great work ethic and have that attitude that you want to contribute, you’re going to go a long ways in life and you’ll find great enjoyment because as Warren said, if you work hard, you’re going to find the things you love in life and it’ll lead to that and we truly look forward to the day you’re part of Berkshire. Thank you.

Greg Abel：我觉得你的爸爸已经说得很好了。他强调了一点，如果你想成为 Berkshire 的一员、拥有 Berkshire 的股票，你就必须努力工作。我认为努力工作会把我们每个人带得很远。我当然不会否认，人生中还有很多事情同样重要。但如果你从一开始就拥有良好的工作习惯，并且抱着想要做出贡献的态度，你在人生中会走得很远，而且会从中获得很大的乐趣。正如 Warren 所说，如果你努力工作，你最终会找到自己真正热爱的事情，而人生也会因此走向那个方向。我们也非常期待有一天你能成为 Berkshire 的一员。谢谢。

[00:26:44] Warren Buffett: Keep a lot of curiosity and read a lot, as Charlie would say. OK, Becky.

Warren Buffett：保持强烈的好奇心，多读书，就像 Charlie 常说的那样。好，Becky。

野火责任问题

[00:26:54] Becky Quick: This question comes from Matthew Tisak in Layton, UT. He said, “Please discuss your strategy on how to protect our company from future liabilities due to wildfires blamed on our electric utility companies out West.”

Becky Quick：这个问题来自犹他州 Layton 的 Matthew Tisak。他问：“请谈谈你们的策略：如何保护公司免于未来因美国西部电力公司被指责引发野火而产生的责任风险？”

[00:27:09] Warren Buffett: Well, that’s a very good question. We’ve made some mistakes in the past when we bought PacifiCorp in 2005. Walter Scott, David Sokol, and myself—three guys who were capitalists at heart, and we’re dealing with our own money. But we made a mistake by not carving it up into the seven states that we were buying. It came with an aggregation where it wasn’t state by state, and we kept the same structure, and that was a big mistake. Well, every part of the country is going to need electricity, and there are going to be places where privately held electric utilities would be very foolish to operate and how that gets resolved. In a democracy, we will find out. But those are the facts as they stand now, I would say. Greg?

Warren Buffett：这是一个非常好的问题。我们过去确实犯过一些错误。2005年我们收购 PacifiCorp 的时候，Walter Scott、David Sokol 和我——三个本质上都是资本主义者的人——在用自己的钱做决定。但我们犯了一个错误，就是没有把这家公司按我们进入的七个州进行拆分。当时它是一个整体结构，而不是按州划分的结构，我们保持了原来的结构，这其实是一个很大的错误。无论如何，美国每一个地区都需要电力，但在某些地方，由私人拥有的电力公司继续经营可能会变得非常不理性。至于这个问题最终会如何解决，在一个民主制度下，我们迟早会知道。但从目前来看，现实情况就是如此。Greg？

[00:28:28] Greg Abel: The risk around the wildfires, i.e. do the wildfires occur, they’re not going away, and we know that, and the risk probably goes up each year. So what can we do to reduce the risk of it impacting our system and our underlying assets, and unfortunately, the liabilities with such events? We can change that and manage that. We can’t eliminate the risk, but we can reduce that. And that’s where we’ve got our teams in the West, but we really are approaching it across all our energy infrastructure, because the reality is the wildfires have now occurred in Texas. They’ve had a variety of them throughout the US, and we’re all very focused on how we manage that risk.

Greg Abel：关于野火的风险，也就是说野火本身会不会发生，这个问题其实很清楚——它不会消失，而且我们也知道这种风险很可能每年都在增加。那么我们能做的，是如何降低这种风险对我们系统和基础资产的影响，以及由此带来的责任风险。我们无法消除这种风险，但可以降低它。这也是为什么我们在美国西部部署了专门的团队，但实际上我们是在整个能源基础设施体系中都采取这种方式。因为现实是，野火现在不仅出现在西部，在德州也发生过，在美国很多地方都出现过。所以我们都非常关注如何管理这种风险。

How we manage it is we start by addressing the actual assets, how we’re maintaining them and where we invest them, or invest in them. So we try to make sure that they’re either not causing the fire or potentially even hardening the system as to what they can withstand. We start with the operational focus. We then take it even further, and this is something Warren and I’ve discussed many times, that the utilities started to recognise when we have these unusual weather events. And Warren touched on what’s been happening in Nebraska with storms, but they’re equally occurring or significant events occurring out West.

我们管理这种风险的方式，是首先从资产本身入手：如何维护这些资产，以及我们在哪些方面进行投资、如何进行投资。我们的目标是确保这些设备不会成为引发火灾的原因，同时也让整个系统更加坚固，能够承受更极端的环境。我们从运营层面开始着手。然后我们进一步推进这一点，这也是我和 Warren 多次讨论过的：当出现异常天气事件时，电力公司必须重新思考如何运营系统。Warren 刚才提到 Nebraska 的风暴情况，而在美国西部同样也在发生类似甚至更严重的事件。

But when we have those, we’ve gotten very, very good at saying, OK, we have to manage the system differently. We’ll potentially deenergize because there’s likely to be an event. But the one thing we hadn’t tackled, and this is very relevant to the one significant event we had back in 2020 in PacifiCorp, is that we didn’t deenergize the system as the fire was approaching. Because our employees and the whole management team have been all their whole lives to keep the lights on and the last thing they want to do is turn those lights off and have a system deenergized.

当这些极端情况出现时，我们现在已经越来越擅长做出判断：我们必须用不同的方式来管理系统。例如，在可能发生重大事件时，我们可能会选择提前断电。但有一件事我们当时没有做到，而这与 PacifiCorp 在2020年发生的一次重大事件密切相关，那就是当火灾逼近时，我们并没有及时让系统断电。原因在于，我们的员工和管理团队一辈子接受的训练都是“保持电力供应”，他们最不愿意做的事情就是关掉电源、让整个系统断电。

After those events and as we really looked at how we’re going to move forward in managing the assets and reducing that risk, we have clearly recognized as a team that we have to deenergize those assets. So now, as we get fires encroaching at a certain number of miles, we deenergize because we do not want to contribute to the fire, nor obviously harm any of our consumers or contribute, unfortunately, if there’s a death. And that’s really where we had to take our team that we’re managing at different risks now. It’s not about keeping the lights on, it’s about protecting the general public and ensuring the fire does not spread further. So we’ve gone as far as that, and I’ll stand corrected on this one, but we’re probably the one utility or across our utilities that does that today, and we strongly believe that. Becky?

在那些事件之后，当我们认真思考未来如何管理这些资产以及如何降低风险时，我们整个团队已经非常清楚地认识到：在必要的时候，我们必须让这些设施断电。因此，现在当火势在一定距离范围内逼近时，我们会主动切断电力，因为我们不希望成为火灾的诱因，也不希望伤害任何用户，更不希望在最糟糕的情况下导致人员死亡。这意味着我们必须让团队适应一种不同的风险管理方式。过去的理念是“保持电力供应”，而现在更重要的是保护公众安全，并确保火势不会进一步扩大。我们已经把这项措施推进到了这样的程度，如果我说得不完全准确的话也可以纠正，但据我所知，在电力行业中，我们可能是目前最积极采取这种做法的公司之一，而且我们对此非常坚定。Becky？

[00:31:46] Becky Quick: Can I just follow up on that? Doesn’t that open you up to other risks if you shut down your system, a hospital gets shut down, somebody dies?

Becky Quick：我能继续追问一下吗？如果你们关闭电力系统，不是也会带来其他风险吗？比如医院停电、有人因此死亡？

[00:31:55] Greg Abel: You know, fortunately, that’s something that we do deal with a lot because we have power outages that occur by accident. So when we look at critical infrastructure because it’s an excellent point, and we’re constantly reevaluating it, and we do receive a lot of feedback from our customer groups as to how we manage that. But that is something we deal with on a more routine basis than we’d ever like. The lights go out, and we have to make sure the hospitals stay on, emergency units can respond and all that. But there is a risk there.

Greg Abel：幸运的是，这其实是我们经常面对的问题，因为电力系统本身就可能发生意外停电。因此，当我们评估关键基础设施时——你提的这个问题非常重要——我们一直在不断重新评估这些情况，同时也从客户群体那里获得很多反馈，了解我们应该如何管理这些问题。但这种情况其实比我们希望的要更常见：停电会发生，而我们必须确保医院能够继续运行、应急系统能够响应等等。当然，这其中确实存在风险。

So then we spend a lot more time educating the consumers and our consumer groups, our customers. OK, this is what will happen. We need to understand your unusual situations and how we can best tackle them, again. So we just don’t take on another liability. So there’s a lot around deenergization. Then, just to take it to the last step, and Warren touched on that, in general on energy policy, we have to work with our States and our regulators to ensure this was never a risk we took on or envisioned when we were investing in utilities, nor would any of the investors who’ve invested in other energy companies. You were in a very set return for taking on a very set defined risk associated with that asset, and this has gone well beyond that.

因此，我们现在花更多时间去教育消费者、我们的客户群体，让他们了解：在某些情况下会发生什么。我们需要了解他们的特殊情况，并找到最合适的应对方式，以避免承担新的责任风险。因此，“主动断电”已经成为我们风险管理的重要部分。再往更深层次说，就像 Warren 刚才提到的，从整体能源政策的角度来看，我们必须与各州政府和监管机构合作。因为这种风险在我们当初投资电力公司的时候从未被设想过，也不是其他能源公司的投资者所承担的风险。当初的投资逻辑是：你承担一组明确界定的风险，并获得一组相应确定的回报，而现在的情况已经远远超出了那个范围。

We don’t earn the type of returns, nor can you earn a large enough return to take on this risk. So it’s not just about solving the return side. We really have to solve the risk side, which means we work with our regulators, we’re working with our state legislators to get to the right answer, and that will be an ongoing process. There are no silver bullets out there, but every day our teams across utilities are working hard to reduce that risk, recognizing the fundamental risk of the wildfires is not going away.

我们目前获得的回报并不足以承担这种规模的风险，而且即使提高回报，也不可能高到足以覆盖这种风险。因此问题不仅仅是回报率的问题，更重要的是必须解决风险本身。这意味着我们需要与监管机构合作，与各州立法机构合作，找到正确的解决方案，而这将是一个持续的过程。没有所谓的“灵丹妙药”，但我们在各地电力公司的团队每天都在努力降低这种风险，同时也清醒地认识到：野火这一根本性风险并不会消失。

[00:33:58] Warren Buffett: There are some problems that can’t be solved, and we shouldn’t be in the business of taking your money, investors’ money and tackling things that we don’t know the solution for. You can present the arguments, but it’s a political decision when you are dealing with states or the federal government. If you’re in something where you’re going to lose, the big thing to do is quit.

Warren Buffett：有些问题是无法解决的，而我们不应该拿着投资者的钱，去处理那些我们根本不知道解决方案的问题。你当然可以提出各种论证，但当事情涉及州政府或联邦政府时，最终就是一个政治决策。如果你处在一个注定会输的局面里，最重要的事情就是退出。

If you do present your case as well as you can, and everything else, but if you don’t hold the pen in the end, you know we don’t have any business taking your money and doing dumb things with us. We can do our best to explain what the intelligent things are, but it’s your money. So it’s very hard to tell on that. I have all the questions about politically determined decisions that are going to go to court in many cases, but you know that it doesn’t make sense. We know what we think a sensible system would be, and we ought to explain what we think it is and do our best to get our position because it’s pro-social. They have the right solution to have it. But the right solution, for example, in the Interstate, wasn’t to let 48 states each decide their own way of doing it, and award contractors the jobs. You know, there are some problems that can’t be solved, and we are not in the business of trying to solve insolvable problems.

即使你已经尽力把自己的立场讲清楚，但如果最终不掌握决定权，那么我们就没有理由拿着投资者的钱去做一些愚蠢的事情。我们当然可以尽力解释什么是理性的做法，但那毕竟是投资者的钱。因此在这种情况下，很难判断事情最终会如何发展。我经常遇到各种由政治决定的问题，很多情况下最终都会进入法院，但你其实也知道，这种方式并不合理。我们知道一个理性的体系应该是什么样，我们也应该把自己的看法解释清楚，并尽最大努力去争取我们的立场，因为那是对社会有益的。但真正正确的解决方案——比如当年的州际高速公路系统——并不是让48个州各自按照自己的方式去决定怎么做、各自去分配工程合同。确实有一些问题是无法解决的，而我们并不是一家去解决不可解决问题的公司。

But then the problem we have, of course, is that the people who work for you, that’s their job. So they want to have reasons to keep going, and those are tough choices if you’re managing, but that’s why they have managers.

[00:36:29] Greg Abel: Hey, Warren. Can I just add, because you touched on something really important there, that effectively is, for example, with the utilities and the wildfires. we can’t just become the insurer of last resort. And that we’re going to cover any costs and all costs irrespective of what occurred. And that’s a little bit of the situation we’re in right now with our largest challenge, the 2020 wildfire, there were four fires occurring at a challenging time.

Greg Abel：Warren，我想补充一点，因为你刚才提到了一个非常关键的问题。比如在电力公司和野火的问题上，我们不能变成“最后的保险人”，不能无论发生什么情况、无论原因是什么，都承担所有成本。而目前我们面临的最大挑战之一——2020年的那场野火——其实就带有这种性质。当时在一个非常困难的时期，同时发生了四场火灾。

One, we’ve always asserted was a lightning strike that was not inside our service territory. The fire burned into our service territory, and we became responsible for that fire, effectively, through the courts, and we’ve continued to hold firm that we’re not responsible for that. Rightfully, I mean, we didn’t contribute to it, and we didn’t initiate it, nor did we feel we ever contributed to it.

其中有一场火灾，我们一直坚持认为是由雷击引起的，而且并不发生在我们的服务区域内。只是后来火势蔓延进入了我们的服务区域，结果通过法院的判决，我们被认定要为这场火灾承担责任。而我们始终坚持认为这并不合理，因为这场火灾既不是我们引起的，我们也没有对它的发生做出任何贡献，我们也不认为我们的行为在任何程度上促成了它的发生。

Again, if you look at the risks that are there, we have to manage through things like that. We’ll get through that litigation. We’re happy to report, for example, on that one. After five years, the Oregon Forestry Department has come out and said the fires, the other fires we did have that we were able to manage and extinguish, did not contribute to that fire. And that fourth fires the largest fire of the four, it’s 60% of the claims. We’re five years into effectively getting that information into the courts.

再说一次，如果你看这些风险本身，我们必须学会在这样的环境下进行管理。关于那起案件，我们仍然在应对相关诉讼。不过有一点值得说明：在五年之后，Oregon Forestry Department 已经发布结论，表示当时发生的其他几场火灾——那些我们确实参与管理并成功扑灭的火灾——并没有对那场火灾造成影响。而那第四场火灾，也是四场中规模最大的一场，占到了全部索赔金额的60%。到目前为止，我们已经花了五年的时间，才把这些信息逐步提交到法院体系中。

Now that will outline our legal strategy obviously going forward, but it’s things we’re dealing with, but we continue to learn from this as a utility in the industry. So we’re in very much each of the legislatures, as I said, making sure we get a clear definition where liability falls, what the economic damages be, but most importantly, what the non-economic damages be. And with the thought, we can’t be the insurer of last resort. We just can’t be responsible for everything that happens in a state.

这些事实显然会影响我们未来的法律策略。但与此同时，这也是我们正在面对的现实问题，而作为一家电力公司，我们也在不断从这些事件中学习。因此，我们正在与各州立法机构密切合作，确保在法律上能够清楚界定责任归属：哪些属于责任范围、经济损失如何界定，而更重要的是非经济损失如何界定。我们的基本立场是，我们不能成为“最后的保险人”。我们不可能为一个州里发生的所有事情承担责任。

[00:38:43] Warren Buffett: If we want to do it with our own money, we can do it, but we’re not going to do things with your money that we think are stupid. You ought to get rid of us if we do. It’s easier to do stupid things with other people’s money than it is with your own money. That’s one of the problems the government has, generally. We don’t want to bring it to private enterprise.

Warren Buffett：如果我们愿意用自己的钱去做这些事情，那当然可以。但我们不会拿着投资者的钱去做我们认为愚蠢的事情。如果我们真的这么做了，你们就应该把我们赶走。用别人的钱做愚蠢的事情，比用自己的钱做愚蠢的事情要容易得多，这其实也是政府经常面临的一个问题。我们不希望把这种问题带到私人企业中来。

But it is important that the United States have an intelligent energy policy, just as it was important during World War II that we learned how to make ships instead of cars extremely fast. We figured out the answer. We combined private enterprise with the power of government. But how feasible is that in a democracy? You know, it was clearly obvious during World War II what needed to be done, and we did it. But it’s not so clear when you have 330 million people all arguing their own self-interest, and of course deciding what will happen and having the people often who are making the decisions, reacting as they did 20 years earlier, when they don’t really bear the responsibility for the decision. Anyway, that’s management, and we’ll do our best. Station 11.

但美国确实需要一套理性的能源政策，就像在第二次世界大战期间，我们必须迅速学会从制造汽车转向制造舰船一样。当时我们找到了答案：把私人企业的能力与政府的力量结合起来。但在一个民主制度下，这种事情到底有多可行呢？在第二次世界大战期间，大家都非常清楚应该做什么，于是我们就去做了。但当一个国家有3.3亿人口，每个人都在为自己的利益发声，并且共同决定事情的走向时，情况就没有那么清晰了。而且很多做出决策的人，往往只是按照20年前形成的思维方式行事，却并不真正承担这些决策的责任。总之，这就是管理需要面对的问题，我们会尽力而为。11号提问点。

如何与 Warren Buffett 见面

[00:40:37] Alitia Burek: Hello, my name is Alitia Burek, and I’m from Poland, but I currently live in Chicago. This question is on behalf of an inspiring man that I know, Wid Ahmed, who’s here with us today. Mr. Buffett, nearly 74 years ago, on a cold Saturday in January 1951. You travelled 8 hours by train from New York to Washington. You went all the way on nothing but hope that someone might teach you more about the insurance industry.

Alitia Burek：大家好，我叫 Alitia Burek，来自波兰，现在住在芝加哥。这个问题是替一位让我非常敬佩的人提的，他今天也在现场，名字叫 Wid Ahmed。Buffett 先生，大约74年前，在1951年1月一个寒冷的星期六，你坐了8个小时的火车，从纽约到华盛顿。你之所以一路前往，仅仅是怀着一个希望：也许会有人愿意教你更多关于保险业的知识。

Arriving at GEICO’s office to find the doors locked. You persisted until a janitor led you inside. You credit that meeting with Lorimer Davidson for the insurance float. That was the rocket fuel behind Berkshire’s success. In 2011, when I was 15, I wrote to you with similar determination, asking to meet. You kindly rolled back, saying you had only 3000 days left and more pressing priorities.

当你到达 GEICO 办公室时，发现大门是锁着的。但你没有放弃，一直坚持，直到一位清洁工把你带进办公室。你后来把与 Lorimer Davidson 的那次会面归功为你理解保险浮存金的关键时刻，而那正是 Berkshire 成功背后的“火箭燃料”。2011年，当我15岁时，我也带着类似的决心给你写信，请求见面。你很友好地回信，说你大概只剩下3000天时间，还有更重要的事情需要处理。

Well, Mr. Buffett, it’s now been 5000 days since you replied. And so, inspired by your persistence in 1951 and the tenacity of Mrs. B, humbly renewed my request for just a quarter of the time Davey gave you—a single hour in your office. You may wonder why it must be you have often shared an anecdote about a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz, who said to you once, “Warren, I’m very slow to make friends because when I look at someone, I ask myself, would they hide me?” You said that the number of people who would hide you was the best test of a life well-lived. Well, I believe that at this meeting you don’t have 40,000 shareholders, but you have 40,000 people who would hide you. You are a testament to a life extraordinarily well lived. Yet even you have not fully witnessed this transformative power of a client–

那么，Buffett 先生，自从你回信以来，现在已经过去了5000天。所以，受到你1951年那种坚持精神以及 Mrs. B 的坚韧启发，我再次谦卑地提出请求：只需要 Davey 当年给你的时间的四分之一——也就是在你办公室的一小时。你也许会好奇为什么必须是你。你曾经讲过一个故事：一位从奥斯维辛集中营幸存下来的波兰犹太人曾对你说，“Warren，我交朋友非常慢，因为当我看着一个人时，我会问自己：如果需要，他们会不会把我藏起来？”你说过，愿意把你藏起来的人有多少，是衡量一个人是否活得有价值的最好标准。我相信，在今天这个会场里，你不是拥有4万名股东，而是拥有4万人愿意把你藏起来的人。你本身就是一个活得极其成功的人生的证明。但即便如此，你可能仍然没有完全见证这种由客户所带来的巨大力量——

[00:42:28] Warren Buffett: I’ll let you write my biography, but I think that’s the point of your question.

Warren Buffett：我看还是让你来写我的传记吧，不过我想这就是你问题的重点了。

[00:42:35] Alitia Burek: So respectfully, I ask again, Mr. Buffett, before Father Time wins, will you please grant Wid Ahmed an hour of your time or any time you can dedicate? Thank you so much for your time.

Alitia Burek：所以我再次恭敬地请求，Buffett 先生，在时间最终战胜一切之前，你是否愿意给 Wid Ahmed 一小时的时间，或者任何你能够安排的时间？非常感谢你。

[00:42:49] Warren Buffett: Thank you, and I will say this to grant an hour to everybody of the 40,000 here. We’ll have an interesting time the rest of my life. But I will give you one tip. I found that when I was very young, and these companies were offbeat, they didn’t have investor relations departments then. Almost every CEO would see me because they figured they’d never see me again, and they weren’t getting calls like that.

Warren Buffett：谢谢你。我可以这么说，如果我要给在场这4万人每人一个小时，那么我余下的人生会变得非常“有意思”。不过我可以给你一个建议。我发现当我非常年轻的时候，那些公司当时还比较小众，而且那时还没有投资者关系部门。几乎每一个CEO都会愿意见我，因为他们觉得以后大概也不会再见到我了，而且当时他们也很少接到类似这样的电话。

I would ask two questions, as I would have to explain to them, it’s not a bad idea, incidentally. If you’re going to walk into somebody’s office and you say you want 10 minutes of their time, take an hourglass and stick it on the desk of the person you’re talking to and turn it up. So it’s going to go for 10 minutes and just say you’re going to get, you’re going to leave in 10 minutes. Unless they ask you to stay, and that’s the terms.

我通常会问两个问题。在问之前我会先解释一下，其实这也是一个不错的方法。如果你走进某个人的办公室，说只需要占用他们10分钟时间，那就带一个沙漏，把它放在对方桌子上，然后把它翻过来。沙漏正好计时10分钟，你就告诉对方：10分钟一到我就离开，除非你主动让我继续待下去。这就是基本的规则。

But then once you have that—If they’re in the coal business, we’ll say, which happened to be one that I was interested in 70 years ago or so—they just ask one question that if they were to be stuck on a desert island and they had to own only one of their competitors stocked during the 10 years, which one would it be and why?

接下来，如果对方是做煤炭行业的——那正是我大约70年前感兴趣的行业之一——我只会问一个问题：如果你被困在一个荒岛上，在未来10年里只能持有你某一个竞争对手的股票，你会选哪一家？为什么？

And then after they give you the answer, you ask the same thing if you would be short your net worth while you were on that island, which would it be, and why? Because every manager likes to talk about their competitors. They’re like a bunch of school kids when they get into talking about their competitors.

等他们回答之后，你再问第二个问题：如果在那座荒岛上，你必须用自己的全部净资产去做空一家竞争对手，你会选哪一家？为什么？因为每一个管理者其实都很喜欢谈论竞争对手。一旦谈起竞争对手，他们就像一群小学生一样。

I probably learned more about various industries by just making sure that they didn’t think I’d stay too long, and that in the meantime, they would have the floor and talk about their competitors. I kept my own mouth shut in those days.

我大概就是通过这种方式学到了很多行业知识：首先让他们相信我不会待太久，同时让他们一直占据话语权去谈论竞争对手。而我当时基本上只是闭嘴听。

They’ve departmentalised investor relations. All companies of size, frankly, now. So you’ve got, you know, 3000 companies or whatever they have, and they all have departments, and each one of them has an Investor Relations department practically. And their job is to say, This is the best thing you can do today is buy our stock. We’ll let the whole concept is totally idiocy. But it’s a big business, and it gets bigger, and the Investor Relations department gets bigger, and it’s what we have now.

现在情况不同了，大公司几乎都设立了 Investor Relations（投资者关系）部门。实际上几乎所有规模稍大的公司都有这样的部门。现在大概有三千家左右上市公司，每一家基本都有一个投资者关系部门。而他们的工作就是告诉你：今天最好的事情就是买我们的股票。我认为这种整个体系其实是完全荒谬的。但它已经变成了一门很大的生意，而且规模越来越大，投资者关系部门也越来越庞大，这就是现在的现实。

But do a little of your own work, your own way. But Berkshire Hathaway has got plenty of material out there for you to read, and when you get through reading it all, you’ll know way more than most of the people who work at Berkshire.

不过，你完全可以用自己的方式做一些独立的研究。Berkshire Hathaway 已经公开了大量资料供大家阅读。如果你把这些材料都读完，你对 Berkshire 的了解很可能会超过公司里大多数员工。

So you don’t need a personal interview. If we take an hour times even the 40,000 people we may have here, plus Becky’s many listeners and viewers, it just doesn’t work. So I admire your effort, but you’ll just have to settle for that, as the admiration that you get in this. OK. Becky.

所以其实不需要一次个人面谈。如果我们给在场的4万人每人一个小时，再加上 Becky 的听众和观众，这件事根本不可能实现。所以我很欣赏你的努力，但你恐怕只能把今天得到的这份赞赏当作结果了。好了，Becky。

BHE 的估值

[00:47:04] Becky Quick: This is a question that you touched on in a lot of ways, and the last answer from before, but I did get this question from a few different people. So I’d like to ask it. Ricardo Briz, a long-time shareholder based in Panama, says that he was very happy to see Berkshire acquire 100% of BHE. It was done in two steps, one in late 2022, 1% was purchased from Greg Abel for $870 million, implying a valuation of BHE of $87 billion. And then two, in 2024, the remaining 8% was purchased from the family of Walter Scott Jr. for $3.9 billion, implying a valuation of $48.8 billion for the enterprise. That second larger transaction represented a 44% reduction in valuation in just two years. Ricardo writes that PacifiCorp’s liabilities seemed too small to explain this. Therefore, what factors contributed to the difference in value for BHE between those two moments in time?

Becky Quick：这个问题其实在你刚才的回答中已经间接涉及到，但我确实从几位不同的人那里收到了类似的问题，所以还是想再问一次。来自巴拿马的长期股东 Ricardo Briz 表示，他非常高兴看到 Berkshire 最终收购了 BHE 的100%股权。这个过程分两步完成：第一步是在2022年底，从 Greg Abel 手中购买了1%的股份，价格是8.7亿美元，这意味着当时 BHE 的估值约为870亿美元。第二步是在2024年，从 Walter Scott Jr. 家族手中购买剩余的8%股份，价格为39亿美元，这意味着企业估值约为488亿美元。第二笔规模更大的交易意味着在短短两年内估值下降了44%。Ricardo 认为 PacifiCorp 的相关负债似乎不足以解释这么大的估值差异。因此，在这两个时间点之间，究竟是什么因素导致了 BHE 估值出现如此大的变化？

[00:48:06] Warren Buffett: We don’t know how much we’ll lose out on PacifiCorp and decisions that are made, but we also know that certain of the attitudes demonstrated by that particular example, I’ve got analogues throughout the utility system and there’s a lot of States that so far have been very good, decent to operate in. And there are some, now, they’re rat poison.

Warren Buffett：我们目前还不知道在 PacifiCorp 这件事上最终会损失多少，这要取决于未来做出的各种判决。但我们已经看到，在这个案例中所表现出来的一些态度，其实在整个公用事业体系中都有类似的例子。有很多州目前仍然是非常好的经营环境，但也有一些州，现在几乎可以说是“老鼠药”。

As Charlie would say, to operate in that knowledge was accentuated. When we saw what happened in the Pacific Northwest and it’s accentuated by what we’ve seen as to how utilities have been treated in certain other situations. And then on top of that, it wasn’t just a direct question of what was involved at PacifiCorp. It’s an extrapolation of a societal trend.

正如 Charlie 会说的，这些事情让我们对风险的认识更加清晰。当我们看到太平洋西北地区发生的情况时，再加上我们在其他一些场合看到的公用事业公司所受到的对待，这种认识就更加明显了。而且，这不仅仅是 PacifiCorp 本身的问题，它实际上反映出了一种更广泛的社会趋势。

Secondly, we also had a decision we didn’t expect at all in the real estate business. Those kinds of things can change values, and courts can change values. It’s a lot easier to make those decisions when you just own marketable securities than when you own businesses.

第二，我们在房地产行业也遇到了一个完全没有预料到的判决。类似这样的事情会改变资产价值，法院的判决也会改变价值。当你持有的是可以随时交易的证券时，做出买卖决定要容易得多；但当你持有的是一家企业时，情况就完全不同了。

I’ve made plenty of those decisions as I’ve watched what has happened in various industries and companies over 70 years. But Greg made the decision, which was fine with us, to get out. He had no knowledge of what was going to be happening in either the real estate field or the utility field, and we’re not in the mood to sell any business of it.

在过去70年里，我看着各个行业和公司发生变化，也做过很多类似的判断。不过 Greg 当时决定退出（出售他持有的股份），我们对此完全没有意见。他当时并不知道房地产行业或公用事业行业后来会发生什么变化。而对我们来说，我们并没有打算出售这些业务。

But Berkshire Hathaway Energy is worth considerably less money than it was two years ago, based on societal factors, and that happens in some of our businesses. It certainly happened to our textile business. The public utility business is not as good a business as it was a couple of years ago, and if anybody doesn’t believe that thing, look at Hawaiian Electric and they look and look at Edison in the current wildfires situation in California and their societal trends.

Oh, I just got a note here on my monitor that says, “The books are now sold out.” So you spend your money on other things. Here’s fudge. This is what I’m eating.

哦，我刚刚在显示器上收到一条提示，说“书已经卖完了”。所以你们可以把钱花在别的东西上，比如这里的软糖。我现在就在吃这个。

But that’s the explanation—values change, and they don’t always change upwards. When we made the deal with Greg, we would have been happy to buy out the Scott family at that price, and when we needed to deal with the Scott Company, we wouldn’t have been happy to pay Greg the price he received. But that’s like Berkshire shares we bought in stock at X, and we buy in stock at less than X if conditions change. Over the years, we pay more and more because it builds in value, but it doesn’t do it in a straight line.

但这就是原因——价值是会变化的，而且并不总是向上变化。当我们当初和 Greg 做交易的时候，如果当时能以那个价格把 Scott 家族的股份买下来，我们会非常乐意。而当后来需要和 Scott 家族交易的时候，如果要用当初 Greg 得到的价格去买，我们就不会愿意了。这就像 Berkshire 自己的股票一样：有时候我们在价格 X 回购股票，如果环境发生变化，我们也可能在低于 X 的价格回购。长期来看，我们通常会支付越来越高的价格，因为企业价值在增长，但这个过程并不是一条直线。

I would say that our enthusiasm for buying public utility companies is different now than it would have been a couple of years ago. That happens in other industries, too, but it’s pretty dramatic in public utilities. And it’s particularly dramatic in public utilities because they are going to need lots of money. So, if you’re going to need lots of money, you probably ought to behave in a way that encourages people to give you lots of money, and then we will see where we go. We’d like to see Public Utilities do well, but our responsibilities to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. OK, station 1, again.

我会说，现在我们对于收购公用事业公司的热情，已经和几年前不一样了。这种变化在其他行业也会发生，但在公用事业行业里尤其明显。而之所以特别明显，是因为这个行业未来需要大量资本。如果你需要大量资金，那你就应该以一种能让投资者愿意提供资金的方式行事，然后我们再看看事情会发展到哪里。我们当然希望公用事业公司能够经营得很好，但我们首先要对 Berkshire Hathaway 的股东负责。好了，再回到1号提问点。

Berkshire Hathaway 的盈利能力

[00:52:50] Brevi Panila: Dear Warren, dear Greg and dear fellow owners, it’s such a pleasure to be here. My name is Brevi Panila. I was born in Communist Albania, but I’m now teaching economics in London, England. The wonderful writing of Warren and Charlie has significantly shaped my thinking and teaching. I thank you both very much for the many insights over the years. Warren often writes about the importance of Berkshire’s earning power to owners. My question is what was in your estimate of Berkshire’s earning power in the latest fiscal year? It will be great if you can comment on any significant items that either increased or decreased the earning power as compared to the reported net income measures for Berkshire. Thank you.

Brevi Panila：亲爱的 Warren、Greg 以及各位股东，很高兴来到这里。我叫 Brevi Panila，出生在共产主义时期的阿尔巴尼亚，现在在英国伦敦教授经济学。Warren 和 Charlie 的精彩文字对我的思考和教学产生了深远影响，非常感谢你们多年来分享的洞见。Warren 经常在信中谈到 Berkshire 的“earning power”（盈利能力）对股东的重要性。我的问题是：在最近一个财年，你估计 Berkshire 的盈利能力大概是多少？另外，如果可以的话，也希望你能谈谈与报告的净利润相比，有哪些重要因素提高或降低了 Berkshire 的实际盈利能力。谢谢。

[00:53:34] Warren Buffett: Well, I think our underlying earning power was affected negatively here a while back by what happened in the utility field. I think that our earning power was not enlarged by any large acquisitions that come along, but they come along periodically. So we will see something at some point that—Well, on the one that was 10 billion, we would have added to earning power. I mean, why else would we do it?

Warren Buffett：我认为，我们的基础盈利能力在一段时间前受到了一些负面影响，主要是因为公用事业领域发生的那些事情。另外，我们最近也没有通过大型收购来明显扩大盈利能力，不过这种收购是会周期性出现的。所以未来某个时候我们会看到这样的机会。比如那笔100亿美元规模的交易，如果完成的话，当然会增加我们的盈利能力——否则我们为什么要做这笔交易呢？

So that’s very situational, and of course it depends so much on what the general market is doing and what interest rates are doing and what psychology is doing. We will make our best deals when people are the most pessimistic. You know that’s been true ever since I was born in 1930. When I was born, things got much more attractive over the next two years, and apparently, I didn’t do anything about it then. But you know, that was the opportunity of a lifetime, and I blew it by worrying about the kid in the next crib or something.

所以这些事情是高度情境化的，很大程度上取决于市场整体情况、利率水平以及市场心理。我们通常是在市场最悲观的时候做出最好的交易。自从我1930年出生以来，这一点一直如此。实际上，我出生后的两年里，投资环境变得极其有吸引力，但显然那时我什么也没做。那其实是一个千载难逢的机会，但我当时可能只顾着担心隔壁摇篮里的那个小孩之类的事情。

Over my lifetime, you know, I’ve had fabulous opportunities sometimes, and they happen because humans are human. I’m fearful of all kinds of things. I don’t want to try to be one of the launders and walk on a tiny strip between a couple of twin towers or something or whatever it may be, but I don’t get fearful of things that other people get afraid of in a financial way.

在我的一生中，我有时会遇到极好的机会，而这些机会之所以出现，是因为人类就是人类。我也会害怕很多事情，比如让我像那些表演者一样在两座摩天大楼之间的一条细钢索上行走，我肯定不会去做。但在金融方面，我不会因为别人害怕的事情而害怕。

And you know the idea that if Berkshire went, let’s say Berkshire went down 50% next week, I would regard that as a fantastic opportunity, and then it wouldn’t bother me in the least, and most people aren’t, they just react differently.

It’s not that I don’t have emotions, but I don’t have emotions about the prices of stocks. I mean, those decisions get all the way to my brain, whereas emotions can get bogged down somewhere.

并不是说我没有情绪，而是我不会对股票价格产生情绪反应。关于股票的判断会直接进入我的大脑，而不是被情绪所左右。

So Berkshire will increase its earning power over time, as we retain money, I mean, we are doing things, making decisions every day, people are working or retaining earnings. We will build the earning power, but it won’t be coming in any even stream, and it certainly won’t be matched dollar for dollar on either the upside or the downside in market prices, and that’s what makes it a good business, and you know the investment businesses that everything isn’t properly appraised and the sillier other people get, the better your opportunities get. OK, Becky.

所以随着我们持续保留利润，Berkshire 的盈利能力会随着时间逐渐增长。每天都有人在工作、在做决策、在创造收益，这些都会不断积累并增强我们的盈利能力。但这种增长不会是均匀平滑的，它也不会在股价上以一比一的方式体现，无论是上涨还是下跌都不会如此。而正是这种不完全被市场正确定价的情况，使投资业务变得有吸引力——因为其他人越是愚蠢，你获得好机会的可能性就越大。好了，Becky。

投资大型科技公司

[00:57:13] Becky Quick: This question comes from Achit Patel, and it’s about the big-cap technology stocks. In the 2017 annual meeting, you said Warren, you really don’t need any money to run these companies and referred to them as ideal businesses, referring to the big tech companies, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon. With all of those companies now announcing massive capital investment endeavours and around AI ambitions, have you rethought the above comment just in terms of them being asset-light and what you think of them as a result?

Becky Quick：这个问题来自 Achit Patel，关于大型科技公司股票。在2017年的股东大会上，Warren 你曾经说过，这些公司几乎不需要什么资本就能运营，并把它们称为理想的商业模式，指的就是像 Apple、Alphabet、Microsoft 和 Amazon 这样的科技巨头。现在这些公司都宣布了围绕 AI 的大规模资本投资计划，在这种情况下，你是否重新思考过之前关于它们“轻资产”的评价？你现在如何看待这些公司？

[00:57:47] Warren Buffett: Well, it’s always better to make a lot of money without putting up anything than to make a lot of money by putting up a lot of money.

Warren Buffett：从商业角度来说，如果能在几乎不投入资本的情况下赚很多钱，肯定比投入大量资本才能赚到同样的钱要好得多。

So, a business that takes no capital to speak of—Coca-Cola. The finished product, which has gone through bottling companies and everything, takes a lot of capital. But in terms of selling the syrup or the concentrate that goes into it, it doesn’t take a lot of capital. So one is a fabulous business, and one is a, yeah, it depends where it is and everything like that. Coca-Cola is popular in every place. But some places, and I mean, if you’re in the bottling business, it costs real money. You have real trucks out there, and you have all kinds of machinery, and you have capital expenditures coming up.

比如说像 Coca-Cola 这样的业务，从某种意义上说几乎不需要资本。最终的成品饮料——经过装瓶公司生产并配送到市场——其实需要大量资本。但如果你只看出售糖浆或浓缩液这一环节，本身并不需要太多资本。所以其中一个环节是极好的生意，而另一个就要看具体情况了。Coca-Cola 在世界各地都很受欢迎，但如果你是在做装瓶业务，那就需要实实在在的资金投入：需要卡车、各种设备，还要不断进行资本支出。

We’ve got businesses that take very little capital that make really high returns on capital, and the ones the politicians talk about are making high returns, actually aren’t making high returns, in terms of capital. Property casualty insurance is kind of a rare business because you need capital as a guarantee fund that you will keep your promises, but you can use it to buy other low-intensive capital.

我们拥有一些资本投入很少但资本回报率非常高的业务。而那些政客经常批评“赚取高回报”的行业，实际上从资本投入的角度看并没有那么高的回报。财产与意外险是一种比较特殊的生意，因为你需要资本作为保证金，以确保你能够履行赔付承诺，但与此同时，你可以利用这些资本去投资那些资本密集度较低的业务。

I mean, you can buy Apple, and that would support that business. So that can be a pretty good business, and that’s one of the reasons we’ve done well over time.

比如你可以用这些资金去买 Apple 的股票，而这实际上支持了整个保险业务模式。因此这类业务可以非常优秀，这也是我们长期表现不错的原因之一。

It’ll be interesting to see how much capital intensity. There’s more capital intensity going on with the magnificent 7 than there was a few years ago. I mean, basically, Apple has not really needed any capital over the years and its repurchased shares that dramatic amount of reduction. Whether that world is the same in the future or not is something.

未来这些公司的资本密集度会变成什么样会很有意思。现在“Magnificent 7”这些公司比几年前确实投入了更多资本。比如 Apple，过去很多年几乎不需要额外资本，而且它还大量回购股票，使股本规模大幅减少。但未来是否仍然是同样的情况，还有待观察。

Hollywood’s answer was always to get their money from other people to put up the capital. A lot of people have gotten very rich in the country by essentially figuring out how to get others to put up the capital, and that’s what people do in the money management business. They get very, very rich because they get an override on other people’s capital.

Incidentally, if all of you were paying 1% for investment management fees at Berkshire last year, you would have paid $8 billion for managing, and you really wouldn’t have had to do it, but investment management is a very good game because other people put up the capital and you charge them for the capital, whether they do well or not. And then you can charge them a lot more if they do well.

顺便说一句，如果去年在座的所有人都向 Berkshire 支付1%的投资管理费，那么你们一共会为管理服务支付80亿美元，而实际上你们根本不需要这么做。但投资管理确实是一门非常好的生意，因为别人提供资本，而你可以对这些资本收取费用，无论投资表现好坏都可以收费。如果投资表现好，你还可以收取更多费用。

I mean it’s a well-designed business for the people who practice it, and who can blame them, I mean, that is capitalism. I saw that in operation when I was working at Solomon, but I didn’t need to see it. I knew it existed anyway. The trick in life is to get somebody else’s capital, get an override on it. Charlie and I decided it wasn’t too elegant the business after a while, but we were not criticizing the efficacy of it. It just didn’t appeal to us after a while. I did it for 12 years, though, or something.

我的意思是，对于从事这门生意的人来说，这其实是一个设计得很好的商业模式。谁又能责怪他们呢？这就是资本主义。我在 Salomon 工作的时候亲眼见过这种模式的运作，但即使没有看到，我也知道它一直存在。人生的诀窍之一，就是拿到别人的资本，然后在这笔资本之上抽取一层“提成”。Charlie 和我后来觉得这种生意在某种程度上不太优雅，但我们并不是批评它的有效性。只是过了一段时间之后，这种事情对我们来说不再那么有吸引力了。不过我自己也做过大概12年这样的事情。

The one difference that Charlie and I did from other people is that we put all our own money in and did it so we really did share the losses with our own capital, but we got an override on other people’s capital. And that’s been people have made advances where they get the override on other people’s capital without putting up any of their own capital to speak of. And that’s a very good business, but it can lead to a lot of abuse.

Charlie 和我与很多人的一个不同之处是：我们把自己的全部资金也投入进去，因此如果出现损失，我们自己的资本也会承担损失。但同时，我们也在别人的资本之上获得了“提成”。而后来有些人把这种模式进一步发展，他们可以对别人的资本收取提成，却几乎不需要投入任何自己的资金。从商业角度看，这是一门非常好的生意，但它也很容易产生很多滥用的情况。

Greg, you’ve watched capital management in the United States, and would you say that Canada’s behind or any in that respect?

Greg，你一直在观察美国的资本管理体系。在这方面，你会不会觉得加拿大落后一些？

[01:03:02] Greg Abel: Well, I think when it comes to their capital system, Warren, it’s very comparable. There’s no question other than as we know, I mean I think the US as far as having a capitalist system, it would be tough to be touched by any country, and when I think of Canada, there’s just certain responsibilities or obligations that the government wants to take on and aren’t going to leave with the public sector. And that’s just a decision that’s made by society or by the Canadian people, or if you look at another country, Australia or wherever it may be, it’s different. But when I think of capitalism, that drive is there and the desire to, you know, allocate capital properly. It’s very similar.

Greg Abel：从资本体系的角度来看，Warren，我认为两者其实非常接近。毫无疑问，美国在资本主义体系方面几乎很难被其他国家超越。但如果看加拿大，会有一些责任或义务是政府希望自己承担的，而不会完全交给私人部门。这其实是社会的选择，是加拿大人民做出的决定。如果你再看看其他国家，比如澳大利亚，每个国家的安排都会有所不同。但从资本主义本身来说，那种动力依然存在，也同样有一种希望把资本有效配置的愿望，在这一点上其实是非常相似的。

[01:03:56] Warren Buffett: It’s produced wonders in the United States if you think about it. But originally, with the Rockefellers and Kennedys and Carnegies and all that, they actually put up money to build a steel mill, whatever it may have been, with refineries and pipelines and all that sort of thing. They put up money to do it. Now the trick is to use other people’s money, basically. And you know you can’t blame human beings for behaving like humans, but you should be aware of what their motivations are. Capitalism in the United States has succeeded like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s a combination of this magnificent cathedral, which has produced an economy like nothing the world’s ever seen. And then it’s got this massive casino attached.

Warren Buffett：如果你仔细想一想，资本主义在美国创造了令人惊叹的成就。但最初的时候，比如 Rockefellers、Kennedys、Carnegies 这些人，他们是自己拿出钱来建钢厂，或者建炼油厂、铺设管道之类的基础设施。他们是真正投入资本去建设这些东西。现在的诀窍基本上是使用别人的钱。你当然不能责怪人类按照人类的方式行事，但你必须清楚他们的动机是什么。美国的资本主义取得的成功是前所未见的。它像一座宏伟的大教堂，创造了世界历史上从未见过的经济体系。但与此同时，它旁边还附带着一个巨大的赌场。

So you got the cathedral and the casino, and then the casino, everybody’s having a good time, and there’s lots of money changing hands and everything. You’ve got to make sure the cathedral gets fed, too, because of the temptation. And the temptation is very high now to go over to the casino where people say, you know, we’ve got magic boxes and all kinds of things that will do wonderful things for you. That’s where people are happiest. That’s where you get the most promised to you. That’s where the most money is for the people who are pushing things.

于是你就同时拥有了“教堂”和“赌场”。在赌场里，每个人都玩得很开心，钱在不断地流转。你必须确保“教堂”也能得到足够的资源，因为诱惑实在太大了。现在这种诱惑尤其强烈，人们都愿意跑到赌场那边，因为在那里有人会告诉你：“我们有神奇的机器，有各种各样能为你创造奇迹的东西。”在那里，人们最快乐；在那里，你会得到最多的承诺；在那里，那些推动这些事情的人也能赚到最多的钱。

The balance between the capital and the casino and the cathedral is very important that the United States in the next 100 years make sure that the cathedral is not overtaken by the casino, because people really like to go to casinos. And it’s just so much more fun. They bring bells, and when you win, they bring you drinks and everything else, and it’s designed to move money from one pocket to another. In the cathedrals, they are basically designing things that will be producing goods and services for 300 and some million people, like it’s never been done before in history.

在未来一百年里，美国必须保持“资本、赌场和教堂”之间的平衡，确保教堂不会被赌场所取代。因为人们真的很喜欢去赌场。那里更有趣：有铃声响起，当你赢的时候他们会给你端来饮料，一切都设计得非常吸引人。本质上，它只是把钱从一个口袋转移到另一个口袋。而在“教堂”里，人们是在设计和建造真正的东西——为三亿多人口生产商品和服务，这在历史上从未以这样的规模发生过。

That’s an interesting system we developed, but it works. It dispenses rewards in what seems like a terribly capricious manner. I mean, the idea that people get what they deserve in life, and it’s hard to make that argument. But if you argue with that, any other system always seems to work better; the answer is we haven’t found one. So we’ll leave it to the next generation to send me the answer by Ouija board or whatever. OK. Station 2.

这是一个非常有意思的体系，但它确实运转起来了。它分配回报的方式看起来非常随意。比如说，人们在生活中得到他们应得的一切——这种说法其实很难成立。但如果你反对这一点，说其他制度会更好，问题是：到目前为止，我们还没有找到更好的制度。所以这个问题就留给下一代去解决吧，也许他们可以通过通灵板（Ouija board）之类的方式把答案告诉我。好了，2号提问点。

早期影响

[01:07:18] Patrick Nester: Hi, my name is Patrick Nester. I am 13 years old and from Tampa, FL. I’m here with my brother John, who’s 15, and my dad. Thank you for hosting this meeting. This is my first ever shareholder meeting. My question is what high school class or activity helped influence you to who you are today as the greatest investor of all time?

[01:07:18] Patrick Nester：你好，我叫 Patrick Nester，今年13岁，来自佛罗里达州 Tampa。我今天和我15岁的哥哥 John 以及我的父亲一起来到这里。感谢你们举办这次会议，这是我第一次参加股东大会。我的问题是，在高中时期，有哪一门课程或者哪一项活动，对你后来成为今天这样的投资者产生了最大的影响？

[01:07:45] Warren Buffett: Well, that’s a good question. The teachers you get in your life have an incredible impression on you, and a lot of them are the formal teachers you have, but some are informal teachers too. I mean, I’ve learned from certain employers so much. You really hope you’re learning from everybody, and you find that it was well-intentioned and there’s had a lot of experience. I had a lot of good luck in that, but I would say that where I was really lucky was my dad was in the investment business, so I would go down on Saturday and I’d wait for him to go to lunch with and I’d read the books that were around there, that nobody else have ever read.

[01:07:45] Warren Buffett：这是一个很好的问题。你一生中遇到的老师会对你产生非常深刻的影响，其中很多是你在学校里遇到的正式老师，但也有一些是非正式的老师。比如说，我从一些雇主那里学到了很多东西。你总是希望能从每个人身上学到东西，而且通常他们都是出于善意，并且拥有丰富的经验。我在这方面非常幸运。不过要说最幸运的一点，是我的父亲就在投资行业工作，所以每到星期六，我就会去他的办公室等他一起去吃午饭，在那段时间里，我会翻阅办公室里摆着的那些书——那些几乎没有别人会去读的书。

And they just talk to me, numbers talk to me, and I could never get my feel of them, and then I discovered the public library and I read every book there was on investments, literally, in the Omaha Public Library on 19th at Harney. I enjoyed learning about that. Unlike Charlie֫, if Charlie was reading about electricity, he would want to know everything that Thomas Edison knew and more and that goes with the same thought process and understand how everything worked. I didn’t care how it worked; I just cared whether it worked, and that’s a limitation. I’m confessing here. I’m not bragging.

这些数字对我来说就像在“说话”，我一直对它们非常有感觉。后来我发现了公共图书馆，于是我把 Omaha Public Library（在19街和Harney街）的所有投资类书籍几乎都读了一遍，真的是每一本。我非常享受学习这些内容。和 Charlie 不一样，如果 Charlie 在研究电学，他会想要知道 Thomas Edison 知道的一切，甚至更多，他会按照同样的思维方式去弄清楚所有事情是如何运作的。而我并不在乎它们是如何运作的，我只关心它们是否有效。这其实是一种局限。我是在坦白这一点，并不是在炫耀。

As Charlie would say, people would always ask, “If you could only have lunch with one person, living or dead, who would it be?” And Charlie said, “I’ve already had lunch with all of them because I’ve read all their books.” And he really did it. I think having curiosity and actually finding sympathetic teachers is very useful. I ran into a couple of teachers that both in high school and college. In fact, I would say that I went to three different universities. I went to high school in Washington, and at each place I found about two or three really outstanding people, and I just spent my time with them and didn’t pay much attention to the other classes. I was lucky to find something that really fit me very early on.

正如 Charlie 常说的，人们经常会问：“如果你只能和一个人共进午餐，无论他是生是死，你会选择谁？”Charlie 的回答是：“我已经和他们所有人都共进过午餐了，因为我读过他们所有的书。”而且他真的做到了。我认为，保持好奇心，并且找到那些真正愿意教你、与你契合的老师，是非常有价值的。我在高中和大学时都遇到过几位这样的老师。事实上，我上过三所不同的大学。我在 Washington 上高中，而在每一个地方，我都会找到两三位非常杰出的人，然后我就把大部分时间花在和他们相处、向他们学习上，而对其他课程并没有太多关注。我很幸运，在很早的时候就找到了真正适合自己的东西。

If my ambition had been to become a ventriloquist or, you know, whatever the hell it might have been and it wouldn’t work. You know, even I just spent hours and hours and hours, and I would have been any good when I got through. So I don’t believe that. I think there was a book that talked about spending 10,000 hours as something. I could spend 10,000 hours tap dancing, and you’ll throw up if you watch me.

如果我的志向是成为一名腹语表演者，或者别的什么奇怪的职业，那很可能根本行不通。即使我花上无数个小时练习，最后也未必会做得好。所以我并不完全相信那种说法。有人写过一本书，说只要在某件事情上投入一万小时就能成为专家。但我就算花上一万小时练习踢踏舞，你们看了可能还是会想吐。

If I spend 10 hours reading Ben Graham. I would be damn smarter when I got through. So minds are really, really different. I watch great bridge players, and I watch great physicians. I mean, people really, really, really have different talents. I think you’re supposed to have 88 billion cells in your brain. I’m not sure that all of mine are flashing bright lights. But you are different from anybody else. My dad always used to tell me that you know you’re something different, it may not be good, but you find your own path.

如果我花10个小时去读 Ben Graham 的书，读完之后我肯定会聪明得多。所以人的大脑真的是非常非常不同的。我看那些伟大的桥牌选手，也看那些优秀的医生，人们确实拥有完全不同的天赋。我想人的大脑大约有880亿个神经细胞。我不确定我所有的细胞都在闪闪发光。但每个人都和别人不同。我父亲过去常对我说，你就是某种不同的人，这种不同未必一定是好事，但你要找到属于自己的道路。

You will find the people in school who want to talk to you. People who teach, in general. They love having a young student who’s actually really interested in the subject, and they’ll spend extra time with you. They’ll do all kinds of things, and I ran into that. And Graham and Dodd at the Columbia, well, they’ve treated me like a son, basically, but I was interested in what they’re saying, and they found it kind of entertaining. I was so interested. So look around at what really fascinates you. I wouldn’t try and be somebody else. You’ll find the teachers at a school, and you’ll find some outstanding people who are teachers.

在学校里，你会遇到一些愿意和你交流的人。一般来说，老师都很喜欢遇到一个真正对学科感兴趣的年轻学生，他们会愿意花额外的时间帮助你，会为你做很多事情。我就遇到过这种情况。在 Columbia 时，Graham 和 Dodd 基本上像对待自己的儿子一样对待我，但那是因为我真的对他们讲的内容非常感兴趣，而他们也觉得我这种兴趣挺有意思的。所以你要看看什么事情真正让你着迷。我不会建议你去试图成为别人。你在学校里会找到一些老师，其中会有一些非常杰出的人。

At least 10 people would have had huge impacts on my life, and every one of those positive, you know, because I got selected in the sense, and a number of people really like helping younger people. I’ve found that in school. And probably it helps to look a little bit lost at all. You need help, but I was at my school experiences, we’re good, but really very good, but I attribute it much more to the individual, to the institutions. OK, I’ve already told you more than I know. So we’re going to Becky, you’re next.

至少有10个人对我的一生产生了巨大的影响，而且每一个都是正面的。某种意义上说，是我“选择了他们”，而且确实有不少人非常喜欢帮助年轻人。我在学校里就发现了这一点。也许看起来有点迷茫反而有帮助——那样别人会知道你需要帮助。总体来说，我的学校经历很好，非常好，但我把更多的功劳归因于具体的人，而不是那些机构。好了，我已经讲得比我知道的还多了。接下来 Becky，你继续。

[01:14:17] Becky Quick: This question comes from Scott Williams in Portland, OR. He said, “Do you think the net benefit of DOGE will be positive or negative for the long-term health of the United States?”

[01:14:17] Becky Quick：这个问题来自俄勒冈州 Portland 的股东 Scott Williams。他问：“你认为 DOGE 对美国长期健康状况的净影响会是正面的还是负面的？”

[01:14:29] Warren Buffett: Well, why don’t you give me a hard one? I think that bureaucracy is something that is amazingly prevalent and contagious, even in our capitalist system and the big corporations. Overwhelmingly, most of them look like they could be run better. I’m sure Berkshire does in many respects. And the government is the ultimate. So it really doesn’t have any checks on it. That’s why it scares you to some extent about what the future of the currency will be, because they can print currency and if you have people that get elected by promising people things and that doesn’t mean that they aren’t sincere about all kinds of items, but there’s no politician that says to anybody that, “I really think you have bad breath and if you don’t mind would just step over that away from me.” It just doesn’t happen.

[01:14:29] Warren Buffett：为什么不给我一个更难的问题呢？我认为官僚体系是一种极其普遍而且具有传染性的现象，即使在我们的资本主义体系和大型企业里也是如此。绝大多数组织看起来其实都可以被管理得更好。我相信 Berkshire 在很多方面也是如此。而政府则是这种现象的终极体现，因为它几乎没有真正的制衡机制。这也是为什么人们在某种程度上会担心货币的未来，因为政府可以印钞。如果一些人通过向公众承诺各种好处而当选，这并不意味着他们在很多事情上不是真诚的，但从来没有哪个政客会对别人说：“我觉得你有口臭，如果不介意的话，请站远一点。”这种事情是不会发生的。

I think the problem of how you control revenue and expenses in government is the one that is never fully solved and has really hurt dramatically many civilizations. I don’t think we’re immune to it, and we’ve come close to it. But if you tell me how in the democracy you go in and really change things, you know, we’re operating at a fiscal deficit now that is unsustainable. Over a very long period of time, we don’t know whether that means two years or 20 years because there’s never been a country like the United States, but you know that, “If something can’t go on forever, it will end.” The quote is from Herbert Stein, a famous economist.

我认为政府如何控制收入和支出这个问题，从来没有被彻底解决过，而且在历史上严重伤害过许多文明。我不认为美国对此是免疫的，我们其实也曾经接近过这种情况。但如果你问，在一个民主制度下，如何真正改变这些事情，那是非常困难的。我们现在的财政赤字是不可持续的。从长期来看，我们不知道这意味着两年还是二十年，因为历史上从未有过像美国这样的国家。但有一句话是确定的：“如果某件事情不可能永远持续下去，它最终一定会结束。”这句话来自著名经济学家 Herbert Stein。

We are doing something that is unsustainable, and it has the aspect that it becomes uncontrollable to a certain point. I mean, essentially, you just give up on it. And Paul Volcker, you know, kept that from happening in the United States. But we came close multiple times. We still had very substantial inflation in the United States, but it’s never run away yet, and that’s not something you want to try and experiment with because it feeds on itself.

我们正在做的事情是不可持续的，而且在某个阶段，它会变得无法控制。到了那个点，人们实际上就会放弃控制。Paul Volcker 曾经阻止这种情况在美国发生，但我们也多次接近那个边缘。美国仍然经历过相当严重的通货膨胀，但还从未完全失控。而这种事情是绝对不应该拿来做实验的，因为一旦开始，它会自我强化。

So I wouldn’t want the job of trying to correct what’s going on in revenue and the expenditures of the United States, with roughly a 7% gap when probably a 3% gap is sustainable and then the further away you get from that, the more you get to where the uncontrollable begins and I think that it’s a job I don’t want, but it’s a job I think should be done and Congress does not seem good at doing it.

所以我绝不会想去承担那个职责——去纠正美国目前收入与支出之间的问题。现在的缺口大约是7%，而可能只有3%左右才是可持续的。你离这个水平越远，就越接近失控的边界。这是一项我不想做的工作，但我认为它必须有人去做，而国会看起来并不擅长完成这件事。

We’ve got a lot of problems always as a country, but this is one we bring on ourselves. We have a revenue stream, a capital-producing stream, a brains-producing machine like the world has never seen. And if you picked a way to screw it up, it would involve the currency. That’s happened a lot of places. In theory, you would make it so there was a substantial downside for anybody that screw things up. There is a downside, there’s upside. It’s the problem of the most successful company in the history of the world. At this point, we have a little room to go and solve. With that, I’ll shut up and go on to Station 3.

作为一个国家，我们总是会面临很多问题，但这个问题是我们自己造成的。我们拥有世界上前所未见的收入体系、资本创造体系和人才培养体系。如果你想找到一种把这一切搞砸的方法，那往往就是通过货币体系。历史上很多地方都发生过这种事情。理论上，你应该设计一种制度，让那些把事情搞砸的人承担巨大的代价。现实中确实既有代价也有回报。这有点像世界历史上最成功的一家公司所面临的问题。目前我们还有一些时间来解决它。好了，我就说到这里，接下来转到3号提问点。

公平的资本主义

[01:20:19] Sasha: Hello, Mr. Buffett. My name is Sasha from Germany. And first of all, I want to thank you because you made such a great impact on my life and the lives of the people I love, and that’s priceless. Mr. Buffett, imagine it’s 1776. And you’re sitting alongside Benjamin Franklin, helping to shape the foundation of a new nation. What core economic principles would you advocate for building a fair, resilient and opportunity-driven capitalism society, one that supports long-term prosperity for future generations?

[01:20:19] Sasha：您好，Buffett先生。我叫 Sasha，来自德国。首先我想感谢您，因为您对我以及我所爱的人产生了巨大的影响，这是无法用金钱衡量的。Buffett先生，假设现在是1776年，而您正和 Benjamin Franklin 坐在一起，帮助为一个新国家奠定基础。为了建立一个公平、有韧性、充满机会的资本主义社会，并支持未来世代的长期繁荣，您会主张哪些核心经济原则？

[01:21:12] Warren Buffett: Well, that’s a good question, but I would probably say to Ben Franklin, you just keep thinking and don’t talk to me because you’ll come up with some better ideas than I will. He was an incredibly remarkable person. I mean, he’s almost probably the last person to have a grasp of every aspect of activity in the country. He invented all kinds of things, and he incidentally—We were talking about the power of compound and that sort of thing–he left a will that left some money to Philadelphia and another sum to Boston that would serve as an example for a couple of hundred years. You know the power of compounding and all kinds of things that he was so far ahead of his time that the best thing I could do if I were under that tree with him was to get out of his way and let him keep thinking.

[01:21:12] Warren Buffett：这是一个好问题，但如果我真的和 Benjamin Franklin 坐在一起，我大概会对他说：你继续思考吧，不要跟我讨论，因为你一定会想出比我更好的主意。他是一个极其非凡的人。我想，他可能是最后一个几乎能理解国家各个领域活动的人。他发明了各种各样的东西，而且顺便说一句——我们刚才谈到复利的力量之类的话题——他在遗嘱里留下一笔钱给 Philadelphia，又留下一笔给 Boston，用来作为一个持续几百年的复利示范。他在很多事情上都远远走在时代之前，所以如果我当时和他一起坐在那棵树下，我能做的最好的事情就是让开一点，让他继续思考。

He saw the problems that success could bring to a society as well as other problems, I mean, more immediate problems in all kinds of fields, but the problems of how to take 8 billion people, because there’s no way we can separate ourselves from the rest of the world. We can be an example for the rest of the world, and I think it behooves us since we have had all this good fortune in this country, and we do have a pretty good system.

他不仅看到了社会成功之后可能带来的问题，也看到了各个领域中更直接的现实问题。其中一个问题就是：在一个拥有80亿人口的世界里，人类社会该如何运作，因为我们不可能把自己和世界其他地方隔离开。我们可以成为世界的一个榜样。我认为，既然这个国家拥有这么多好运，而且我们确实拥有一个相当不错的制度，那么我们就有责任这样做。

I don’t think you get very far by lecturing the world on how. You were the one who should tell them what they should do with our lives. I think you get a certain amount of resentment when just a few hundred years ago, a whole different group of countries were running the world and now you start giving them advice, and I think it’s a real mistake in communication and persuasion to lecture a bunch of people where you just won the game.

我认为，通过对世界各国说教、告诉他们应该怎样生活，你不会走得太远。毕竟就在几百年前，是另一批国家在主导世界，而现在你突然开始对他们指手画脚，这很容易引发反感。从沟通和说服的角度看，当你刚刚赢得了这场“游戏”，却去对别人说教，这通常是一个很大的错误。

I would advise Ben to figure out how to win the game and keep a certain amount of humility at the same time. And I would tell him to try and design a system that doesn’t invent too many things that can destroy the planet. You know, they become uncontrollable once you get them out there. There was no alternative to us developing the atom bomb, but the expansion of the number of people who have the ability from one to eight, and nine, probably pretty soon, with Iran. I mean, that’s a mistake. This society just could not afford to make, I mean, solve the problem in nine variables instead of simply one.

我会建议 Benjamin Franklin 去思考如何“赢得这场游戏”，同时保持一定程度的谦逊。我还会告诉他，尽量设计一种制度，不要不断创造出那些能够毁灭地球的技术。一旦这些东西被释放出来，它们就很难再被控制。当年我们研发原子弹，其实没有别的选择，但现在拥有这种能力的国家已经从一个扩展到了八个，甚至很快可能到九个，比如 Iran。这个发展本身就是一个错误。人类社会原本只需要处理一个变量的问题，现在却变成了要处理九个变量的问题，而这种复杂度是这个社会难以承受的。

Now it’s totally understandable. My dad was in Congress when the atom bomb was first used, it’s amazing how Sam Rayburn kept the House of Representatives uninformed because they are supposed to appropriate all the money and 435 congressmen there and they had no idea they were probating money for Los Alamos or what was going on in Chicago or what was going on in Tennessee.

现在回头看，这一切是可以理解的。我父亲在原子弹第一次被使用的时候正好在国会任职。当时 Sam Rayburn 竟然能够让众议院完全不知情，这其实很令人惊讶。按制度来说，国会必须批准所有经费拨款，众议院有435名议员，但他们根本不知道自己正在为 Los Alamos 的项目拨款，也不知道 Chicago 或 Tennessee 正在进行什么样的事情。

But anyway, we do have a society that is far beyond anything that Ben Franklin dreamed of. It’s moving in the right direction. Towards solving some problems the way we made the kind of broad declarations about all men being created equal, etc. Then we did some of the things we did, but generally speaking, we moved in the right direction, but we faced problems. I don’t know how Ben Franklin would attack the problem of what you do once you get weapons of mass destruction in many hands, and when you essentially look at the world and something where there are winners and losers.

但无论如何，我们今天的社会已经远远超出了 Benjamin Franklin 当年能够想象的任何东西。总体来说，它是在朝着正确方向前进。比如我们曾经提出“人人生而平等”这样的宏大宣言，尽管后来又做过一些相互矛盾的事情，但总体而言，社会还是在向正确方向发展。不过我们也面临很多问题。我不知道如果 Benjamin Franklin 面对今天的世界——当大规模杀伤性武器掌握在越来越多国家手中、当世界呈现出明显的赢家和输家的格局时——他会如何处理这样的问题。

And that the winners humiliate the losers and do all kinds of things. I’ll let the people are a lot younger here. I’ll let them figure out the answers on that, but it’s still the most wonderful. There’s never been anything you could dream of like what happened in the United States. So it’s the best place and the best time to be alive by miles in the street. Just think of a couple of hundred years ago, and somebody yanking out a few of your teeth and pouring whiskey down you. I mean, it’s subsistence and particularly in this Midwest, just imagine waiting till the Missouri froze over every year just to see whether you get your wagon across, and maybe they have a pregnant woman in the back.

而且很多时候，赢家还会羞辱输家，做出各种各样的事情。至于这些问题，我还是把答案留给在场更年轻的一代去思考吧。但无论如何，这仍然是一个非常了不起的时代。历史上从来没有出现过像美国这样的发展。毫无疑问，这是有史以来最好的生活地点，也是最好的生活时代。想想两百年前的情况——有人拔你的牙齿，只能给你灌点威士忌止痛。那时候人们基本上只是维持生存而已。尤其是在美国中西部，你可以想象每年都要等 Missouri 河结冰，才能看看是否能把马车运过去，而马车后面可能还坐着一位孕妇。

It’s just amazing what has happened of a positive nature during my lifetime. And then the question, how do you keep it in? How do you improve it? I do think that the fundamentals of it all, though, are having a currency that does not get debased. What that does to the stability of a society where all the people that trust their government get screwed and all the people that figure out ways to profit from it become rich or richer. I don’t think you want a society that operates in that manner. So anyway. Let’s see, that was Section 3. So we’re going to Becky, right?

在我这一生中，人类社会已经发生了大量积极而惊人的变化。接下来的问题是：我们如何保持这些成果？又如何继续改进它？我认为其中最根本的一点，是拥有一种不会被不断贬值的货币。如果货币被破坏，会对社会稳定产生极大的影响——那些信任政府的人会被伤害，而那些懂得利用这种体系漏洞的人则会变得越来越富有。我不认为一个社会应该以这种方式运作。好了，我们看看，现在是第三部分了。那么 Becky，接下来轮到你了，对吧？

People want a manager that they admire, and they’re not going to admire them if those people profess to behave in one manner and behave in another manner. It’s easier for an organization to see its quality move downward than it upward. I mean, if the boss behaves badly, it causes everybody to behave badly. I mean, that is really catching. It’s not as catching on the way in upper management, but if the manager is doing a little things to grease his own situation, pretty soon— Let’s say you’re running a retail establishment—pretty soon, all the employees are telling their friends that they get a discount. If their friend wants something, they’ll put it on their account and then get the discount. Once you start deviating downward, it is really contagious and it’s hard to rebuild, so you really need someone who behaves well on top and is not playing games for their own benefit.

人们希望拥有一个他们真正钦佩的管理者。如果一个人嘴上说一套，行为却是另一套，人们是不会真正尊敬他的。一个组织的质量往下滑，比往上提升要容易得多。也就是说，如果老板行为不端，就会让所有人都跟着行为不端。这种事情的传染性非常强。虽然在高层之间未必那么容易传染，但如果一个经理开始做一些小动作，为自己谋取一点额外好处——比如说你经营一家零售店——很快所有员工就会告诉朋友他们能拿到折扣。如果朋友想买东西，他们就会把账记在自己名下，然后享受折扣。一旦开始往下偏离，这种行为会迅速蔓延，而且很难再重新建立起良好的文化。所以你真正需要的是一个在顶层行为端正、不为自己谋私利的人。

And we get a lot of managers that bend over backwards not to do that sort of thing, and then we get a few that bend over forwards. If you get enough companies, you’re going to get a lot of forms of behaviour, and Greg does something about it, and I’ve generally been lax in doing something about it, but he’s done a way better job with that than I have. OK. Station 4.

我们有很多经理人会非常小心地避免任何可能被看作占公司便宜的事情，当然，也有少数人恰恰相反，总是往前凑着去占便宜。当你的公司数量足够多时，各种各样的行为都会出现。Greg 在这方面会采取行动，而我通常对这些事情比较宽松，但他在处理这些问题上做得比我好得多。好了，Station 4。