THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS OF 2008
2008经融危机
Recognizing that I was stretchedwouldn’t by itself be enough to slow the flow of things coming at me,especially in the investment area at what proved to be a time of historicturbulence.
Because too often I had beenpainfully surprised by different types of events that hadn’t happened to mebefore but happened in other times or other places—like the currencydevaluation of 1971, or the debt crisis in the early 1980s—I’d developed oureconomic and market principles to be timeless and universal. In other words, Iknew that we needed to understand all important economic and market movements,not just those that happened to me, and to make sure the principles we wereusing to position ourselves would have worked in all past times and all othercountries.
As a result, back in the early2000s, we had included a “depression gauge” in our systems that specified theactions we should take if a certain configuration of events began to play outin a way indicating a heightened risk of a debt crisis and depression. In 2007,this gauge indicated that a bubble of debt was nearing its bursting pointbecause the costs of debt service were outpacing projected cash flows. Becauseinterest rates were so close to 0 percent, I knew that central banks could notease monetary policy enough to reverse the downturn the way they had in priorrecessions. This was the exactconfigurationthat had led to past depressions.
My mind and gut flashed back tomy 1979–82 experience. I was now both thirty years more knowledgeable and awhole lot less confident. While the dynamic in the economy seemed clear to me,I was much less sure I was right. I remembered how clearly it had seemed to methat the debt bust I’d been expecting in 1982 would sink the economy—and howpainfully wrong I had turned out to be.
That experience also drove me tolearn a lot more about debt crises and their effects on the markets, and Iresearched and traded through a number of them, including the Latin Americandebt crisis in the 1980s, the Japanese debt crisis of the 1990s, the blowup ofLong-Term Capital Management in 1998, the bursting ofthe dot-com bubblein 2000, and the falloutfrom the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. With the helpof my teammates at Bridgewater, I took history books and old newspapers andwent day by day through the Great Depression and the Weimar Republic, comparingwhat happened then with what was happening in the present. The exercise onlyconfirmed my worst fears: It seemed inevitable to me that large numbers ofindividuals, companies, and banks were about to have serious debt problems andthat the Federal Reserve couldn’t lower interest rates to cushion the blow, aswas the case in 1930–32.
My fear of being wrong pushed me
to seek out other smart folks to poke holes in my view. I also wanted to walk
key policymakers through my thinking, both to stress-test it and to make them
aware of the situation as I saw it, so I went to Washington to speak with
people in both the U.S. Treasury and the White House.Though they were polite, what I was presenting seemed too far-fetched to them,especially when by all outward indications the economy seemed to be booming. Mostof them didn’t go very deep into our reasoning or calculations before theydismissed them, with one exception: Ramsen Betfarhad, Vice President DickCheney’s deputy assistant of domestic policy. He worked through all our numbersand was concerned by them.
Because everything wesaw lined up and we couldn’t find anyone who could refute our views, weprepared our clients’ portfolios by balancing our positions in a way that therewould be considerable upside and limited downside in the portfolios if we wereright and putting in a backup plan in case we were wrong. Though we thought wewere well prepared, we were as worried about being right as we were about beingwrong. The prospect of the world economy going over a waterfall was scary toall of us because of what it might mean to those who weren’t protected.
As in 1982, whenconditions deteriorated and circumstances increasingly transpired as we’dpredicted, policymakers began to pay more attention to us. Betfarhad had mecome to the White House to meet with him. Tim Geithner, president of the NewYork Fed, asked to see me as well. I brought Bob, Greg, and a young analystnamed Bob Elliott to a lunch meeting with Geithner. We walked him through thenumbers and he literally turned white. When he asked me where we’d gotten themfrom, I told him they were publicly available. We’d just put them together andlooked at them in a different way.
Two days after ourmeeting with Geithner, Bear Stearns collapsed. That didn’t trigger much worryfor most people or for the markets, though it was a sign of what was to come.It wasn’t until six months later in September, when Lehman Brothers collapsed,that everyone else connected the dots. At that point the dominoes fell fast,and though they couldn’t contain all the damage, policymakers, most importantlyFed chairman Ben Bernanke, reacted brilliantly to create “a beautifuldeleverageing” (i.e., away of lowering debt burdens while keeping economic growth positive andinflation low).8
To make this longstory short, we navigated this period well for our clients, anticipating marketmoves and avoiding losses. Our flagship fund made over 14 percent in 2008, ayear when many other investors recorded losses of more than 30 percent. We wouldhave done even better had we not feared being wrong, which led us to balanceour bets instead ofarrogantlyand foolishly putting more chips at stake. But I had no regrets because I hadlearned that it wasn’t smart to bet that way. While in this case we would havemade more money if we were less balanced, we certainly wouldn’t have survivedand succeeded long enough to be in such a position if we’d approached ourinvestments in that way.
The 2008 debt crisiswas another one of those like the one in 1982, which were both like many morebefore them and many more that will come. I enjoyed reflecting back on mypainful mistakes and the value of the principles they gave me. When the nextbig one comes along in twenty-five years or so, or who knows when, it will probablycome as a surprise and cause a lot of pain unless those principles are properlyencoded in algorithms put into our computers.
翻译：
意识到我即便全力开动也不足以使涌向我的事情瞒下来，尤其投资领域已经被证明是一股历史狂流。
因为太多时候我会被突然而来的以前没发生在我身上而可能在其他人那里发生地事情痛苦惊讶，就像1971年的大衰败，或者1980年代早期的债务危机—我已经有了我们自己的一套经济和市场原则接近无时限和通用型。另一方面讲 我知道我们需要理解所有中药店经济和市场活动，不仅仅是那些发生在我身上的，并确认我们在用的这些原则能准确定位我们过去的工作和生活。
结果是在2000年早期，我们已经有了自己的一套“经济萧条测计量表”当某些特定的动作发生时我们应当采取的特定的组合活动开始运作了，当高度风险的债务危机和2007年的经济萧条已经出现预兆，这个计量表显示了债务的泡沫接近破裂点inwei债务成本的增长速速超过了现金流。因为利息接近于0，我知道中央银行在自己优先撤出的反转下降趋势前 不会实行轻松的货币政策。这正是造成过去经济萧条的结构。
这一次我的智力和精神又闪回到1979-1982那时候的体会。现在的我有着长达30年的丰富的知识和差不多满格的自信，经济的波动仿佛对我是透明的，我几乎肯定我是对的。我清晰地记得1982年我期待的债务危机会让经济跌入低谷，而后来证明我是多麽的离谱。
那次的经验使我学到了大量的关于债务危机和对市场影响的知识，我研究和参与了一定数量的债务危机，包括1980年代的拉丁美洲债务危机，1990年代的日本债务危机，1998年长期资本的崩盘，2000年的互联网泡沫，2001年的世贸大厦恐怖袭击事件。在我的伙伴的帮助下，我拿到了历史材料和老的报纸，找到关于经济大萧条和魏玛共和国的日报，把过去和现在发生的事件做对比。实验仅仅证实了我最糟糕的恐惧：似乎无法避免，巨多的企业、公司、银行都存在严重的债务问题，而美联储没有降低利率去缓和打击，就像1930-32年间那样。
这种不好的感觉驱使我寻找其他聪明的家伙找找我的漏洞。我也想通过自己的思考找到关键决策制定。压力测试并使他们对我看到的情况作出反应，所以我去了华盛顿通美国财政局和白宫领导人对话。尽管他们都非常有礼貌，但显然他们觉得我提出的都是牵强附会，不可理喻的，尤其所有证据都显示经济将崩溃。大多数人并没有深刻理解我的推理或者推测，直到他们被解散，有一个例外：拉姆森，副总统迪克赫尼的国内政策助理代表。我同我们所有人一道工作，开始担心经济奔溃。
因为我们看到的所有事情都摆在那里，没发现什么人能反驳我们的观点，我们为客户准备的方案通过如果我们正确则有经得起推敲的上升和能接受的下降，如果我们是错误的则有备用计划来平衡我们的位置。尽管我们觉得已经准备的非常完备了，我们还是患得患失。世界经济态势就像经过瀑布一样可怕，因为对那些还没有防护的机构而言非常可怕。
1982年，当局势更加恶化，周边开始加速泄露就像我们曾经预计的那样，决策者开始更加关注我们。倍特福德让我去白宫会面。提姆盖斯纳—纽约联邦政府的主席想要尽快见到我。我带着鲍勃，格雷格和一个叫鲍勃艾利奥特的年轻的分析师与盖斯纳共进午餐。我们一起回顾了一些数据，盖斯纳脸变白了，当他问我我们是从哪里得到这些数据的，我告诉他那些数据都是公开的。我们只是把他们收集到一起然后从不同的方式分析。
两天后，比亚斯特恩崩盘了。那还没有引起大多数人的担心，市场也没有，尽管那是即将到来的预兆。直到6个月后差不多九月，当雷曼兄弟崩盘的时候，其他所有与互联网相关的人在那个点开始快速下跌，尽管他们不包括所有的破坏，决策者，最重要的联邦主席本伯南克反应巨大制造了一个“一个漂亮的去杠杆化”（低负债而使经济增速积极，通货低）。
长话短说，我们来快速领略这段时期，预估市场动向，避免损失。2008年我们的旗舰基金超过14%的，而其他投资者记录超过30%的损失。如果不是害怕犯错我们本可以做的更好，这样我们就能平衡债务而不是蛮横的愚蠢的将更多的筹码放到热市。但我没有后悔，因为我已经知道这样做并不明智。同时在这种情况下我们本可以赚更多的钱如果我们少一点平衡，我们确定不会存活和成功那么久足以到达如此地步，如果我们以哪种方式运营我们的投资。
2008债务危机就像1982年的翻版，两者很多地方相似，更多相似的还会接着到来。我喜欢回顾过去我的那些沉痛的过失，以及因此带来的原则的价值。当25年后或者差不多的时间，或者有人能发现当下一个巨大的危机来临，也许意外来临造成大量损失直到那些原则被以算法的形式正确的输入我们的电脑程序中。
读后感：
作者终究没有写明2008债务危机的发生原因，而是含糊的点名他早就发现了并乘机大赚了一笔，而美国政府依然后知后觉，也许是故意的。
雷曼兄弟倒台，次贷危机泡沫破裂，大量银行和个人、公司破产，而政府趁机降息，稳定局势，还能再抄底。
中国这次和美国的经融战依然要小心美国的加息，升值，引发中国的经济危机的企图。