编辑点评：彼得希夫是当今世界上顶尖的经济学家、也被人称为“预言能力最强的经济学家”。他在本次演讲中为我们分析了金融危机、房产股市泡沫等形成的原因，听来受益匪浅！

Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One
为什么我们不应对金融危机感到意外？

演讲者：彼得-希夫（Peter Schiff）

主持人约瑟夫-萨莱诺（Joseph Salerno，米塞斯研究院副院长）：

It is my great and distinct pleasure to introduce the Henry Hazlitt Lecturer, Peter Schiff.

我非常荣幸今天能够请到彼得-希夫先生。

Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, is familiar to everyone who has watched financial coverage in the last year. He is famed for being the most vocal financial economist to have perfectly predicted the crash.

欧洲太平洋资本有限公司总裁--彼得-希夫，想必每一位在去年目睹金融危机的人都对他非常熟悉。他被认为是口头预测能力最准的经济学家之一，极其精准地预言了金融崩溃。

He also happens to be a dedicated student of the Austrian school. He is the author of the prophetic Crash Proof and, most recently, The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets. Whenever he speaks about finance and economics, he also seeks to teach sound economic theory, writing for publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Today he will speak on the relationship between theory and practice in financial markets. Peter Schiff.

他也是奥地利经济学派的追随者，是两本书的作者：《美元大崩溃》，以及最新的《熊市下的投资之道》。他不只是金融与经济领域的评论家，而且还教授各种严谨的经济学理论。他的文章经常在《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》这样的媒体上发表。今天，他将为我们做一次有关金融市场理论和实践方面的演讲。有请，彼得-希夫--

【掌声】

彼得-希夫：

I just looked at the topic for my speech about thirty seconds ago before I walked in the door. But apparently I'm talking about why is it that people didn't see this coming, or should people have known that this meltdown was coming.

我在30秒之前才认真看了一下今天演讲的标题是什么......【台下传来笑声】那么我就来谈一下为什么那么多人事先都没看出来会发生金融危机，而他们本来应该能看得出来。

Is there anyone in this room that was surprised by the economic meltdown? Does anybody think it's over? Anybody? Raise your hand if you think it's over.And does anybody think that the government solutions are going to work or that they're going to help? Is there anybody? One. All right. So, I guess there's really no reason for me to speak here. I don't know that I'm going to tell anybody anything they don't know. But, if you want to indulge me, I guess I could talk about it a little bit anyway.

我想先问一下在座的各位，有没有谁对这次经济危机感到意外的？......没有？好，那么有谁觉得危机已经结束了？您可以举手，让我看一下；或者......有谁认为政府的解决方案能奏效，或对我们有所帮助？......什么？只有一个人举手？--哦，天哪！看来今天我其实没必要来这里演讲。【台下大笑】实际上我很想告诉那些什么也不知道的人。不过无所谓，只要台下的你们不觉得厌倦，那我就随便说说好了。

But I don't know why so few people seem to understand what was going to happen. I guess when you're living inside a bubble, it's very difficult to actually see what's going on, from your point. But I lived through two of them, because I'm a stockbroker. I lived through the NASDAQ bubble.And to me, at that point in time, it seemed pretty obvious what was going on, in 1997, '98, '99. It seemed obvious to me that these companies that people were touting couldn't possibly be worth the prices that people were paying. Yet nobody seemed to be able to figure that out back then.Everybody seemed to be living in this new era, and the Internet had captured everybody's imagination. To me, I couldn't see the difference between the Internet, really, and a catalog or a telephone.People were saying that everybody's going to buy everything on the Internet. Why? Why aren't people just shopping by telephone? Or why aren't they just buying everything in a Spiegel catalog? It didn't seem that it was any different.

其实我也不明白为什么别人就看不出来。我想可能当一个人身处泡沫之中的时候，就很难发现究竟是怎么回事。就我个人而言，我经历了两次泡沫。在纳斯达克泡沫时期，我是一个股票经纪人，我很清楚那时在发生些什么，1997、1998、1999－－在我看来，那些股票被高估了许多倍，远不值投资者所付出的价钱，这是显而易见的。但当时却没人这样想，每个人都以为我们进入了"新经济时代"，互联网给了人们充足的想象空间。而那时的我却没看出互联网购物与电话购物或清单邮购有什么实质区别，他们说不久以后所有的人都会用互联网来购物了，我想不通为什么人们一定要去互联网上买东西，难道就不能通过电话采购？二者有那么大区别吗？

And I knew that the valuations they were putting on a lot of these companies, I knew they'd come out with a company, maybe it'd be Doorknobs.com, or whatever it was.And you'd say, "Well, gee, even if they sold every doorknob in the world, they couldn't possibly be worth the multiples that they're trading at." And of course they didn't even make any money selling them.And the whole idea behind so much of the e-commerce was just nonsense. The idea that it was more cost effective to individually FedEx items to people, as opposed to letting them show up and buy them and put them in their cars and leave. There's no way.There are certain items that lend themselves to online sales, but most items didn't, but it didn't matter. Everybody was going public.And people were getting rich, but none of the people were getting rich because the businesses were successful. The people were getting rich because suckers were buying their stock.The guy that started eToys lived in my apartment building in downtown Los Angeles. And I started my company, Euro Pacific Capital, about the same time he started his. He made a lot more money than I did, but he didn't make a profit.He never made a profit. But he made a lot of money because he found people to buy into his idea. And at one point, eToys was worth more than Toys "R" Us.

我知道人们在互联网公司上下了很大的赌注。记得似乎有一家做门把手（doorknob）的公司doorknob.com，就算他们能把自己生产的门把手卖给全世界所有的人，也无法让自己股票的市盈率看上去合理【台下笑】，他们不可能通过在互联网上卖这些东西来盈利。那时有如此多的电子商务支持者，他们都信奉这样一种理念：向客户邮寄东西要比直接开店更为经济，这样客户也用不着光顾店面、用不着找地方停车了。但事实并不是这样，只有少数东西是可以邮寄的，而大多数东西却不行。不过当时谁会在意这些细节，只要能找个借口上市就行了。很多人都一夜暴富，但没有人是通过成功经营一夜暴富的，他们暴富是因为投资者争先购买他们的股票。我有一个邻居在洛杉矶市区开了一家E-Toy（玩具电子商务--译者注）公司，几乎和我所在的欧洲太平洋资本公司建立于同一时间。他比我赚的钱要多得多，但他却没有盈利，他从来没有盈利过！他之所以能赚到钱是因为他成功地让人们相信他“能赚钱”。E-Toy市值最高的时候比我的公司市值的两倍还高。

I remember when I was trying to get clients, back when I was starting out at Euro Pacific Capital, and I was trying to get people to buy foreign stocks.And I remember one country I was active in was New Zealand, and I remember trying to convince people who owned shares of stocks, like Yahoo, why they should sell their Yahoo and buy a stock in New Zealand.I would point out that Yahoo was worth twice the entire country of New Zealand; every stock they had, all the real estate.I'd say, "What would you rather own, this entire country?" The dividend yield on the New Zealand stock market was over a billion dollars a year. That was the dividend yield. Yet Yahoo was trading for more than twice the value of that whole stock market.I said, "What would you rather own, this company that just got started a couple years ago, or this whole country? And you could take all the dividends." No. No one cared; they wanted Yahoo. But it was just all nonsense, but nobody saw it.Of course, after the Internet bubble burst, everybody was talking about how crazy it was. And the politicians were ready to throw people in jail and they vilified Wall Street. But it didn't last very long.

我记得在欧洲太平洋公司刚成立不久，我推荐客户购买国外公司的股票。我试图说服一位想买雅虎公司股票的客户，让他不要买雅虎，而应转买新西兰的股票。我这样对他说：“雅虎的市值相当于新西兰整个国家财富的两倍【台下笑】，包括新西兰所有的股票、所有的地产……你想拥有什么？想要新西兰整个国家-- 要知道单分红受益一项每年就有超过10亿美元，还是要雅虎这个才成立了几年的公司？投资新西兰的话你可以得到所有的红利。”但没办法，他们还是想要雅虎，不要新西兰。这当然非常荒谬，可当时却没有人意识到。互联网泡沫破灭后，所有的人都在谈论那时市场多么多么不理性、多么疯狂，一些人被送进监狱，华尔街被千夫所指。

The whole thing was, in a year or two, we just moved right from that stock-market bubble, almost seamlessly, into the real-estate bubble, and nobody could see that there was any similarities.There was one. Somebody recently put together another one of those Peter Schiff videos. There was one that somebody made, this "Peter Schiff Was Right" video that was on YouTube that I know about a million three hundred thousand people have seen.But someone else put together a CNBC version of that recently and I happened to watch it. And there was one particular clip he put on with me and Mark Haynes, and I'm talking to him about this impending collapse and the economy and the real-estate market.And Mark Haynes just says to me, he says, "Peter, bubbles are like a once in a lifetime occurrence, we just had one." He said, "Do you expect me to believe that we have another one within ten years?"

但是好景不长，几乎在同一时间，人们就从纳斯达克泡沫，迅速转向了房市泡沫，而没人看出两者的相似之处！有人剪辑制作了一部名为《彼得-希夫是对的》（Peter Schiff was right）的视频，放在了YouTube上，大约有130万左右的点击量，我无意中看见其中有一段我在CNBC电台的访谈，我说房市泡沫即将破灭，经济会遭遇崩溃，但主持人马肯（Marcaine）问我：“希夫，我常听说，一个人一生只会经历一次泡沫，我们才刚刚经历过一次！难道在不到十年的时间里我们会再经历一次？【台下笑】”
And he was just incredulous that there could be another bubble so close to the stock-market bubble. But, of course, they were really interrelated. It was almost like the same bubble, because we never really had the fallout from the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble.We simply replaced one bubble with a bigger bubble, and we postponed the consequences of the unwinding of the imbalances until right now. And, of course, we're still trying to postpone it.But I think, at this point, the damage has been so great and the problems are now so huge that I don't think there's another economic rabbit they can pull out of their hat at this point. We're just going to have to face it now.

显然他认为十年之内发生两次泡沫有些不可思议，但事实上这两个泡沫的关联性很强，你完全可以把它们看作一个泡沫。因为当纳斯达克泡沫破灭后，我们并没有被允许出现一次像样的经济衰退，而是用一个更大的房市泡沫取而代之，从而把后果或债务的清偿拖到日后。虽然现在我们仍然试图在做同样的事情，但这次市场受到的伤害如此严重，问题如此巨大，以致很难再找出一个拖延的手段了。因此我们不得不面对现实。

And, basically, what happened is, why did we have a stock-market bubble?We had a stock-market bubble because the Federal Reserve was too easy; they were too loose in the 1990s. Interest rates were too low, we created too much money, and that fed the investments in the stock market.And we had a lot of malinvestments. Companies were created that never should have existed. They were created not because they could generate a profit, but because they could go public, because investors wanted these stocks. It didn't matter that they couldn't make money.

为什么会有股市泡沫？因为美联储在1990年代的货币政策过于宽松，利率太低，创造出了过多的货币。这推动了股票市场的投资，其中有许多是不良投资。在这期间出现了许多没有盈利能力，原本不应该存在的公司。这些公司之所以能成立，不是因为它们有本事通过经营赚钱，而是因为它们能上市，因为投资者特别想要股票，而根本不在意这些公司能不能赚钱。

So what did they do? They took land, labor, and capital; they took all the factors for production, and they combined them in ways that actually destroyed value.But it didn't matter, because these companies got financing. The Fed made the financing cheap, so they were able to flourish. They were able to flourish despite the fact that they were losing money. The saying used to be, they'd lose money on every sale but they'd make it up on volume.And, so, but as long as they could raise money. And when I was working at Euro Pacific Capital, I would see deals and people would send me prospectuses on new companies they wanted to fund.

公司的人做了什么？他们把土地、劳动力、厂房集聚在一起，虽然这一组合未必合适，甚至降低了生产能力，但是却取得了融资的资格，美联储的货币政策使得融资非常便利。这样他们就兴旺了，虽然一直在做赔钱的买卖，但还是能兴旺。不是有句俗话吗：“卖一件亏一件，但是赚得盆盈钵满”（We lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume）【台下大笑】我很清楚这些人所关心的只是能否融资，我明白这些是因为那时我还是欧洲太平洋公司的调研部经理，分析公司的盈利能力和发展前景是我的工作。

I remember one I got from a small Internet company that was, I don't remember. They were - I don't know if it was a browser or whatever they were, or a service where you go on the Internet, a provider. I don't even remember what they did.But it was a small start-up, and they had their prospectus and they were coming around looking to raise money. And they were trying to raise, I don't know, five or ten million dollars. They weren't public yet. But they were selling a little small piece of their company, so they were valuing their company at about fifty million dollars.Now, these guys were in their twenties. They probably started the company less than a year ago. I remember saying, "Well, how could you possibly think your business is worth fifty million dollars?"I said, "You have no assets, you've got no revenues, you've got no customers. It's like, you don't have anything. I could recreate your entire business from scratch myself for next to nothing. And yet you want me to pay you five million dollars to get five percent of this thing? Why would I do that?"

那时我遇到了一家小型公司，好像是做浏览器还是防火墙什么的……具体是做什么的我忘了，总之是一家很小的公司，他们想募集500万到1000 万美元的资金，那时还没有上市。这么小的一家公司，却将自己的价值标记为5000万美元。他们的总裁是一个20岁出头的年轻人，成立这家公司可能还不到一年的时间。我问他：“你凭什么认为你的公司值5000万美元？你们没有资产，没有收入，甚至没有客户！【台下笑】你们什么也没有......要知道，我什么也不需要，就可以自己重新组建你们现在的一切，你想让我付500万美元，就是为了得到你们10%的股本？为什么我要这么做？”

And all they kept telling us, "Well, you don't understand, we're going to go public, and you're going to make a lot of money."And I said, "You think you're going to find people to pay even more than this in a public offer? How are you ever going to make any money?"But that was the concept. And he said, "Well, you know, you don't understand how the stock market works." I was like, "I understand how business works and I understand that you guys are not worth fifty million dollars because you started an Internet company last week."But this is how it was working for a while. It was crazy.

那小伙子说：“你不知道，我们有办法上市。【台下笑】能赚到许多钱。”我问他：“你的意思是说在公开市场上有人会愿意出更高的价钱买你们的股票？这可能吗？人们甚至都不知道你们是怎样盈利的。”他们其实就是在炒作概念，那小伙子过了一会儿看着我说：“你不懂股票。”【台下大笑】我当然懂股票，也懂经营，我知道你们这些人加在一起不值5000万美元，因为你们上周才成立的这家互联网公司。这就是那段时间发生的事，非常疯狂。
But I got the same things. During the real-estate bubble, I remember, I was renting houses - and I'm still renting my house now in Connecticut - and I would go and I would go to houses for rent.And I remember one time I went and there was a house for rent. I looked at it and the realtor was there. And, apparently, the person who was renting it out was an investor who just bought the place.And I asked them what was the rent. I forget what it was. Maybe it was $4,000 a month, whatever it was for this place. And I knew, I said, "Well, what'd the guy pay for this? What'd he pay?" I said, "Well, how could he make any money renting it out to me? Isn't this going to lose money? Doesn't he have negative cash flow?"He said, "Well, yeah, he loses a couple thousand dollars a month." And I said to him, "But you recommended this as an investment?" He said, "Yeah."

在房市泡沫中，我也有类似经历。你们知道，我一直选择租房，现在还在康涅迪克州租房子住。我找到了一幢比较中意的房子，想谈谈房租。很明显，业主刚刚买下这幢房子用来投资。我问他租金是多少，可能是每月4000美元吧，具体我也记不清了。我还很好奇地问他买这幢房子的月供以及其他开销加在一起大约多少，问他为什么要租给我，这真的是一笔合算的投资吗？还是每月会有负的现金流？他说：“是的，即使租给你我每月也要多支出几千美元。”【台下大笑】

But why would you recommend, as an investment property, a property that has a negative cash flow? Why would you have him buy it?"And he said, "Well, you don't understand, this property's going to appreciate. This property could double in the next couple years."And I said, "Why? Why would it double? You can't even cash flow it positive at the price it's at now. How's it going to go up in value?"And I said, "Real estate is a function of rents." And then the guy said to me - same thing - he said, "You don't understand real estate." He was telling me that rents don't matter to real estate.Just like when I was telling people to buy stocks, they were telling me dividends don't matter. I'm buying this stock because it's going to go up. Well, why should it go up? It doesn't even pay a dividend. Who would buy it?

然后我问他，你真的认为这是一项“投资”？一个每月带给你负现金流的东西，你还称它为“资产”？为什么你要买这幢房子？“你不懂，”业主说：“这房子能升值，过几年它的价格就会翻倍。”我问他“为什么，凭什么能翻倍？你甚至现在都不能用它来覆盖你的成本，让现金流为正。凭什么它会升值？”我告诉他房价应该是关于房租的函数，可他望着我说：“你不懂房地产。”【台下大笑】他认为房租多少无所谓，正如那些股票投资者认为公司分红多少无所谓一个道理。股民都认为股票会涨，可是公司不分红，股票凭什么会涨？谁会买这些东西？

I did the same thing, when I rented my apartment. After I got divorced, I was renting an apartment in Stamford, and — beautiful apartment, right on the water. I had my boat there. Beautiful views of the Sound. Right on the corner.Great unit, beautiful building. I had a concierge. It had a pool; it had covered parking; it was a security building; it had racquetball courts, had a gym with a trainer on staff; a lot of amenities.Right next door, there were maybe 20-year-old townhomes for sale. And I went to one of the open houses just for kicks.And there was a unit on sale, whatever they wanted, five or six hundred thousand dollars for this unit, that was about the same square footage as what I was renting, but it had no view of the water; it was dark, it was old, there was no security; it had none of the amenities. Yet the property taxes and maintenance fees alone were like a thousand dollars a month.

我在斯坦福也租过房子。非常漂亮的公寓，可以看见美丽的海景和日落，公寓的设施很齐全，有游泳池、停车场、壁球馆、健身房……什么都有，保安措施也做得很到位。而它的隔壁是一幢20多年的又破又旧的房子正在挂牌出售，要买下这幢房子，月供和隔壁我租的那间的租金相差无几，每月四五千美元，但这里看不见海景，没有保安措施，什么附属设施也没有，而光物业税与维护的费用可能每月就超过1000美元。

And by the time I would have paid the mortgage, if that's how I financed it, I would have been spending more money per month to live in one of these little places than this really nice apartment that I was renting, right next door.And I asked the realtor, I said, "Why would anybody buy this place? You can just rent right next door. There's more units available; I know, I just rented." And the lady said to me, "Well, but when you rent, when you move out, you're not going to have any equity."I said, "Well, what do you mean?" She says, "Well, when you buy this property, then it appreciates, and then you can sell it when you move out and you make money."And I said, "Well, why the hell should it appreciate? Didn't you understand? It's already overpriced; you can rent right next door. Why should it go up?" And she said, "Well, that's how real estate works."

因此如果真要贷款买下这幢破房子，每月的开销肯定比隔壁那间好房子的租金要高。我问房产经纪人：“你认为会有人买这幢破房子吗？隔壁那间要好得多，我知道的，因为我就在隔壁租着住。”那位女士说：“你可以租，但是哪天你搬出去，你不会得到任何资产。”我问她：“你什么意思？”她说：“你如果把房子买下来，那么等它升值以后再搬出去把房子卖了，就可以赚钱。”我问：“为什么它会升值？你不明白吗，它的价格已经被高估了，因为你可以住隔壁，那幢房子比这个好得多。”【台下笑】她说：“房价本来就是只升不降的。”【台下大笑】

I said, "So, you mean the way real estate works is I have to sacrifice; I have to turn down the opportunity to live in a really nice place; I live in this dump for a while and because I did that, I make money. And somebody else is going to come to me a year or two from now and overpay by even more and say, 'I don't want to live in that nice place next door, I'd rather pay more to live here because this is going to appreciate'."And they totally forgot what real estate meant. Real estate's a place to live. But everybody thought it was going to go up, so they were all crazed.

我想她的意思是说，我应该牺牲自己住隔壁好房子的机会，然后在这间破旧不堪的房子里住一段时间，只要熬过这段时间，我就能赚到钱。一两年以后就会有人来主动登门对你说：“我也不想住隔壁那间好房子，我愿意出更高的价格买下你现在这件破房子，因为它会升值！”这些人完全忘记了房子的根本作用是什么。房子是用来让人住的。然而非常奇怪的是，每个人都以为房子会永远升值。