Deep Dive on Currencies, Debt, and Inflation w/ Lyn Alden | Broken Money (TIP591)
发布时间 2023-12-02 23:45:00 来源
Here's an Egyptian pound. And this is for all purposes, a casino chip in the sense that outside of Egypt, there's almost nothing I can do with this. I can't buy goods and services with it almost anywhere. And even finding someone to convert it into local currency would be very hard in most places in the world. Yeah. And even if I could, the fees and the exchange rate would be like awful.
这是一张埃及镑。从所有目的来看，它就像是一枚赌场筹码，因为在埃及以外的地方，几乎无法用它做任何事情。几乎任何地方都无法使用它来购买商品和服务。而且，要在世界上大多数地方找到能将其换成当地货币的人也很困难。是的。而且即使我能找到，手续费和汇率也将非常糟糕。
But what things like Bitcoin and stablecoins do is they go around those prior gateways. So, Lynn, you recently published Broken Money and we already talked a lot about that. But if you'll forgive me, I would like to start talking about your wonderful book here at the top of the interview. You know, this is already my favorite book in 2023. And being a micro investor, I was surprised to see how excited it was, you know, for a book that's so macro based. And I would say I haven't been as excited about a book in macro since Delio's book, The Changing World Order, which in case someone's like, what do you mean? It's just my way of praising a book. But anyway, so Preston, I, and I, we interviewed you about Broken Money. And this was the first part was back on episode 574. But before you jumped on the call, you know, Preston and I were like, I don't know, talking for a few minutes before then. And Preston said to me that he felt that you did such a wonderful job outlining why Bitcoin was the solution to the fiat currency issues we had right now. And then you jumped on the call and I, you know, our conversation ended there. But to me, I found that to be pretty interesting because I read your book three times now and it's just getting better and better at the time I read it. And I've concluded all three times that Bitcoin is not the solution. And so this is not a question of, of discussing whether or not becomes right. Actually try not to talk about Bitcoin for the rest of the episode. But it told me about the potential confirmation biases that I might have had going into the book because I haven't changed my mind, go into the book. Even though I learned a lot, my overall conclusion was the same going out of it. And perhaps, you know, 99% of the listeners also have confirmation bias one way or another.
但比特币和稳定币等东西所做的，是绕过了这些先前的入口。所以，Lynn，你最近出版了《破碎的货币》，我们已经讨论了很多关于这个问题。但如果你原谅我，我想在采访开始时就谈谈你的精彩书籍。你知道，这已经是我2023年最喜欢的书了。作为一个微型投资者，我对这本宏观基础的书的兴奋程度感到惊讶。我可以说在宏观方面，我对一本书的兴奋程度已经超过了德里奥的《世界秩序的变化》这本书，以防某人问我是什么意思。这只是我的方式，赞美一本书。无论如何，所以Preston和我对你的《破碎的货币》进行了采访。第一部分是在第574集。但在你加入我们的通话之前，你知道，在那之前Preston和我已经聊了几分钟。Preston对我说，他觉得你在概述比特币为目前的法定货币问题提供解决方案时做得非常出色。然后你加入了通话，我们的对话就在那里结束了。但对我来说，这是相当有趣的，因为我现在已经读了你的书三遍了，每次都越来越好。而我得出的结论是，比特币不是解决方案。所以这并不是讨论比特币是否正确的问题。实际上，我尽量不在接下来的节目中谈论比特币。但这告诉了我，我在读这本书之前可能存在的一些潜在的确认偏见，因为我在读书的过程中虽然学到了很多，但总体上的结论却没有改变。也许，99%的听众也有这样或那样的确认偏见。
And so I guess this is my way of asking you, whenever you wrote the book and you might have the thesis going into the book, how do you, how do you find the right sources to go to? There might be some sources that are more in line with what you expected to find. Perhaps there are sources that are not in line what you expect to find. So how did you balance the process and stay unbiased?
所以我猜这就是我向你提问的方式，当你写这本书的时候，你可能有一个写作论点，那么你如何找到合适的资料来源呢？可能有些资料更符合你的预期。也许有些资料与你的预期不符。那么你是如何平衡整个过程并保持客观性的呢？
Yeah, it's a good question. And one thing I do with my articles in general and then the book as well is so. You know, trying to be as objective and in fact, based as possible is a big part of my brand, which is just, and it's only like that because that's an extension what I try to do. But it's something that I know that that reader's value.
是的，这是一个很好的问题。我通常在我的文章中以及这本书中所做的一件事情就是如此。你知道的，尽可能客观并以事实为依据是我品牌的重要组成部分，这只是因为它是我所努力做的事情的延伸。但我知道读者们非常重视这一点。
So something I go out of my way to be very conscious about. And another thing I do in line with that is when I build up to an argument, I show the work and I say, okay, here's all the logical steps and pieces. And so if someone's following along and let's say, you know, I'm seven steps in and they they just go to step five and they start going in it in a different view from there, then they still they might disagree with the end of the article, but they still learn a lot from the article because now they, if anything, I've refined their argument against mine, right?
所以这是我非常努力去意识到的一件事。另外，为了达到这个目的，我在推进我的论点时会展示整个思路，说明每一个逻辑步骤和要点。所以，如果有人跟进，并且，假设，我已经进行到第七步，而他们仅跟到第五步，然后从那里开始以不同的观点继续，即使他们可能不同意文章的结论，但他们仍然会从文章中学到很多东西。因为现在，他们至少强化了对抗我的论点的观点，对吗？
That they they have a clearer picture of their argument. Or that they can articulate a snare better than they could before I read the they read the article. So one thing I try to do is is basically say, okay, not just here's here's my view of the problem, but here's the whole framework that I'm going in with this. And then it's kind of like open sourcing your research, right? It's someone else can say, okay, well, I agree with this 80%, but then I diverge here. And so that actually helps me as well.
他们能够对他们的论点有更清晰的了解，或者比我阅读之前能更好地表达一个陷阱。所以，我尝试做的一件事情就是，不仅仅是呈现我的问题观点，而是将整个框架与其联系在一起。这就有点像公开开源研究一样，对吧？其他人可以说，好，我同意这80%，但是在这里我不同意。这其实也对我有所帮助。
And so that's something that the book does on purpose, which is this, okay, you know, it's the past of money is the present of money in this potential future of money. And purposely, I don't put Bitcoin in the title. I purposely, you know, other than brief mentions, it doesn't come up until the final third of the book. So the first, you know, the books divided into six parts. The first two parts are most of the history of money and banking. The middle two parts are mostly kind of the way that the current system is constructed or, you know, recent memory, basically within our lifetime, our parents' lifetime is what the system looks like, how it functions. What are some of the pros and cons of it?
所以这是书中故意做的一件事，那就是，你知道的，在这个可能的未来货币中，过去的钱是现在的钱。特意地，我没有在标题中提到比特币。我特意地在书的最后三分之一之前不提及它，只是简短地提到。因此，这本书分为六个部分。前两个部分主要介绍货币和银行业的大部分历史。中间的两个部分主要介绍当前货币体系的构造方式，或者说在我们一生中，我们父母一生中，这个体系是什么样子的，它是如何运作的，有什么利弊。
And then the final, the final two parts are more about the future of money. And even like the last part is mostly not even money. It's mostly, it's mostly other things that are kind of related to money. So really, you know, Bitcoin only comes up in that, in that final third, for the most part. And so, you know, there are people that don't say you like Bitcoin and they love the first two thirds of the book.
然后最后两个部分更多地涉及到货币的未来。即使在最后一部分，大部分讨论的也不是货币，而是与货币有关的其他事物。所以实际上，Bitcoin仅在最后的三分之一中提到。因此，有人可能不喜欢Bitcoin，但他们会喜欢这本书的前两个部分。
And then even the final third, they'll say, well, I learned, I learned something about Bitcoin. I've also learned, you know, central bank due to current, you stablecoins, some privacy issues in the modern age, in the digital age. Right. So they, they, they still take away a lot from the book. And so one thing also that helps me is that because I've been providing research for a while. And because I myself, you know, there are some people that they, they find Bitcoin and they love it right away and they think, okay, I'm going to be a Bitcoin advocate now.
然后即使在最后的第三部分，他们会说，好吧，我学到了点关于比特币的东西。我也了解到了，你知道的，中央银行因为当今数字时代的稳定币和一些隐私问题。对，所以他们从这本书中仍然获得了很多收获。还有一件事情对我很有帮助，那就是因为我一直在提供研究。并且因为我自己，你知道，有些人他们发现了比特币并立刻爱上了它，然后他们想，好吧，我现在要成为比特币的倡导者了。
Whereas for me, I've been following Bitcoin since like 2010. And for multiple cycles, I was interested in it, but skeptical of it. And only really in like say, 2019, 2020, that I start to actually say, okay, this actually overcame some of my skepticism or objections now. My probability weight is now more on the side of Bitcoin. And so, but I still have all those memories of being someone who was, was critical of it. So basically to summarize all this is even though I personally have a constructive view on Bitcoin and the final third does take a pretty positive view on Bitcoin, even though we do discuss risks and things like that and alternatives.
就我个人而言，我从2010年开始就一直关注比特币。在接下来的几个周期里，我对它感兴趣，但持怀疑态度。直到2019年或2020年左右，我才开始真正认为它克服了一些我之前的怀疑和反对。现在我的概率权重更倾向于比特币了。但是我仍然记得自己曾经批评它的那些记忆。总结起来，尽管我个人对比特币持有建设性观点，最后的观点确实对比特币持有非常积极的态度，我们确实会讨论风险和替代方案。
I, I'm conscious of the fact that I have audiences from many different camps. There's people that primarily follow me for equity research, people that follow me for macro research and are not really big fans of Bitcoin or other digital assets. And then there is a big component that follows me because they like Bitcoin and they found my work and then they, they actually go the other direction. They learn more about macro after already having liked Bitcoin a lot, right?
我知道自己拥有来自许多不同阵营的听众。有些人主要追随我进行股权研究，有些人关注宏观研究而不是非常喜欢比特币或其他数字资产。还有一大部分人关注我是因为他们喜欢比特币，并且在喜欢比特币之后开始对宏观经济有更多了解，对吧？
So there's, there's multiple different audiences that I know are going to read the book. I also write the book knowing that there's people that don't know my work at all. There could be academics, there could be some of them from another country. It could be, there's also people that are reading the book, not big with my work. And I want it to just, the whole piece has to kind of stand on its own two feet. And so whatever conclusion someone takes away from the book, I want them to say, okay, this was a good book. It was well argued. It was evidenced. It provided a lot of context.
所以，我知道有多个不同的读者群体会阅读这本书。我写这本书的时候也知道有些人对我的作品一无所知。可能会有学者，可能会有来自其他国家的人。还有那些没有阅读过我作品的人。我希望整本书能够自成一体。无论读者对书中得出什么结论，我希望他们能说，这是一本好书。它论证充分，有证据支持，提供了许多背景信息。
And the book doesn't even make any like firm claims of what's going to happen. It kind of shows the branching outline of where I think things are going and why I think that one branch is helpful to support. But basically, I think the reader will take away from that what they will. Yeah, I think that there's a huge element of that. And, and you know, if we can use that as a segue into my next question, because I was, whenever I was asking you that question, it's because I'm thinking a lot about it for my own primarily equity research. But I think it's, it's an important topic to discuss regardless of what you views are on, whatever kind of asset class.
这本书甚至没有明确预测将会发生什么。它只是以分支的方式展示了我认为事情将向何处发展，以及我为什么认为某个分支有助于支持的理由。但基本上，我认为读者会从中得到他们自己的想法。是的，我认为这其中有着很重要的因素。同时，如果我们可以将其作为我的下一个问题的过渡，因为当我问你那个问题时，我主要是在为我自己的股权研究思考很多。但我认为这是一个重要的话题，无论你对什么样的资产类别持有何种观点。
But one of the challenges I face whenever I'm looking at a stock is that the both thesis are always more plentiful and the more thoughtful than the bare thesis, generally. And of course, there are good reasons for that. Because if you think that a certain stock is, is all valued or you're just not interesting, you know, very often you just quickly move on to another stock. And so unless you want to make a living out of being a, being a, a short investor, which is just rudely tough, just because your, your odds are, are against you whenever you're, you're showing things. But even if like some of those people, of course, they would give a really thoughtful short thesis, which is perfectly fine. But generally, whenever you look at, you know, you, I don't know, I kind of stuck, you might be interested in and you look it up and you see all of these wonderful old thesis that are just like you, you know, you agree and you all agree that you're all super smart because you're all bullish on that stock.
但是在我研究一支股票时，我面临的一个挑战是，往往正面的研究思路比负面的更多，也更具深度。当然，这其中有很充分的理由。因为如果你认为某支股票已经被充分估值，或者你对它没有兴趣，很多时候你会很快地转向另一支股票。所以，除非你想以做空投资者为生，因为这非常困难，因为你在展示你的观点时面临的几率是不利的。当然，即使像他们中的一些人，他们也能提供非常有深度的做空研究，这完全可以接受。但通常情况下，当你观察你可能感兴趣的股票，并发现很多关于该股票的正面看法时，你会认为它们都很出色，你们都同意，因为你们都看好那支股票，觉得自己很聪明。
How do you guess, I know you, you also invest in equities. How do you stay unbiased and explore the bare thesis of your, of your long positions, perhaps specifically about equities, but we could talk about any other asset class if you want to. Yeah, key thing I do is I purposely go and seek out, uh, disagreeing views. Um, and so it could be on seeking alpha, it could be on any other platform, it could be, you know, different analysts out there. I, if I, if there's a stock that I'm forming a bullish thesis on, or that I'm, you know, doing like a checkup on it to see if I still have bullish thesis on it, um, I will purposely go out and say, okay, what are the bears saying? What is the smartest bear article I can find on this business?
你猜对了，我知道你也在投资股票。你是怎样保持公正并探索你做多投资的基本观点，也许特别是关于股票，但如果你愿意我们也可以谈谈其他资产类别。是的，我做的关键是故意去寻找不同的观点。这可能是在Seeking Alpha上，也可能是在其他平台上，也可能是来自不同的分析师。如果有一只股票我要做多的理论，或者我正在对其进行审查以确定我是否仍然看好它，我会故意去寻找，好的，关于这个公司，有哪些空头观点？我能找到的最聪明的空头文章是什么？
It's steel manning your opposite opinion because, um, you know, my goal is not to find people that agree with me. It's to make good returns. Um, and so I need to hear the critical view of, of whatever this is, especially because any, any bullish thesis will come with risks or know what will invalidate this thesis and reading a bear article. Uh, one, it just might make you not bullish anymore. Uh, if they're right or two, they, the, the, at least she's okay. So if these, I don't agree with this article or the probabilities of this article, but if these, if these problems start to materialize, I now define them better. And I know what to look for if the bear thesis starts to manifest itself. And so my, my, my risk analysis section is now improved by the fact that I'm familiar with the bear arguments.
这是"钢化"对立意见，因为我的目标不是找赞同我的人，而是获得良好的回报。我需要听到对任何观点的批判性看法，特别是因为任何看涨的论点都会伴随风险，或是了解哪些因素可能推翻这个论点，当阅读看跌的文章时。首先，它可能让你不再看涨，如果他们是正确的；其次，至少我可以接受他们的观点。尽管我不同意这篇文章的观点或这篇文章的概率，但如果这些问题开始显现，我更清楚地界定了它们。我知道如果看空的论点开始变现，我该寻找什么迹象。因此，通过熟悉看空论点，我的风险分析部分得到了改善。
Um, and then another part is just having the humility to change your mind. I mean, one of the most famous, I think most successful trader of all time is arguably Stanley Druckenmiller and his biggest superpower is that he can just change his mind on a dime when new information comes in. He'll, he'll like, okay, he'll have a view. And then as things start to kind of shift or something new happens, he'll fully reset and be like, okay, was long bonds and now I'm short bonds. Uh, you know, things like he can, he can completely go the other direction. And while I'm not a, I don't, I don't, I have a lower portfolio turnover than a trader. It's still a similar mindset where, you know, just because the stocks going down doesn't necessarily mean you keep doubling into it because, you know, the, the thesis might just not be there anymore. You have to kind of treat every day as a new day. Whether it's equities, whether it's a macro asset, we know, whatever the, the, the investing view might be, you always have to just fully reset and just think, if I were evaluating this today with no attachment, uh, is this, is this right or wrong?
嗯，另外一部分内容是要有谦逊的态度来改变自己的想法。我的意思是，有史以来最著名、最成功的交易员之一可以说是斯坦利·德鲁肯米勒，他最大的优势在于当有新信息出现时能够随机应变，毫不犹豫地改变自己的观点。他会，他会像这样，他会有一个观点，然后当事情开始有所转变或者出现新的情况时，他会完全重新评估，并且会说，好吧，我之前看多债券现在看空债券了。你知道，他可以完全改变方向。虽然我不是一名交易员，我的投资组合周转率比交易员低，但思维方式相似，就是不能仅仅因为股票下跌就一直加仓，因为你知道，投资理念可能已经不存在了。你必须将每一天都看作新的一天。无论是股票、宏观资产还是其他投资观点，你都必须完全重新评估，并且思考，如果我今天没有任何偏见对待这个问题，这是对还是错？
And, you know, with shorts, uh, it's interesting because shorts, you know, you have to be more careful if you're short of stock. Um, and so you use kind of like stop losses. You define your point where you get out and then let it run and it may be reassessed after it's done running. And so for example, there were a couple of times where I shorted Tesla because I had a case where, okay, they're going to, they are, they are going to sell more cars, but they're overvalued and, uh, they're going to have tough times sustaining profitability. And it's funny because I would read the opposite opinion, which is like arc research, right? So they were, they had very aggressive price targets. They were talking about like a fleet of like robo taxis, uh, in a couple of years. And the funny thing is that my fundamentals were right. So I was like, I, I faded the, I was like, no, we're not going to get robo taxis by that date. Uh, and we didn't. Um, and like, they had all this thing for like robo taxi revenue and it's sure and insurance revenue. And I was like, no, none of that's going to materialize in this, uh, time horizon. Uh, and they sold about as many cars as I would have guessed. Uh, but the fun of these is the numbers, favorite arcs view. So they, they, the fundamentals were off, but the, the actual stock price reached their targets. And so when tests started hitting the, the levels that I had predefined as getting out of the position, I did. I got out of the position and the stock price ran. So I made sure not to lose any money on the, on the trade. And it did its thing. And it's like, well, you know, I don't, I don't really grew up test his valuation, but the market's going to do what the market's going to do. And I just have to step aside and this kind of let that play out.
而且你知道，关于做空的问题，嗯，有一个有趣的地方就是，你必须要更加小心，如果你缺乏库存。所以你会使用一种叫做止损的方法。你会确定一个你退出的点，然后让它去运作，等它运作完了再重新评估。比如说，有几次我做空了特斯拉，因为我有一个情况，就是，好吧，他们会卖更多的汽车，但他们的估值已经过高，他们会有难以维持盈利能力的时期。有趣的是，我会看到相反的意见，就像是ARC研究，对吧？所以他们有非常激进的价格目标。他们在谈论像是几年内会有一系列的机器人出租车。有趣的是，我的基本面分析是正确的。所以我就是，我与之背道而驰，我说，不，我们不会在那个日期之前有机器人出租车的。然后事实也的确如此。他们有许多关于机器人出租车的收入，还有保险收入的设想。但我说不，这些都不会在这个时间范围内实现。他们卖出的汽车数量大致和我预计的一样。但有趣的是，这些数字却证实了ARC的见解。所以，他们的基本面分析是错的，但实际的股票价格却达到了他们的目标。所以当特斯拉开始达到我预先定义的离开持仓位置的水平时，我就离场了。股票价格随后上涨。所以我确保在这次交易中没有亏钱。它完成了它的使命。嗯，你知道，我并不真正认同特斯拉的估值，但市场会做市场的事情。我只需要让步让它发展。
You know, another one was, um, after banks fell a lot, um, last year, which is before the March 2023 banking crisis, uh, I started to get more interested in them because they were pretty cheap. And everybody's talking about like a banking crisis blow up. And I view a lot of conditions as different than 2008. So there's a lot lower risk of major credit issues, uh, for the, at least for the big banks. Um, but there, and so, but there were a couple of things that were different. They kind of made some of that more pressure than I would have guessed, which was that the switching costs between banks are a lot lower now than they were in prior cycles. So if you look at most, uh, interest rate cycles, when the feds start raising rates, uh, normally bank deposits are really, really slow to adjust because, you know, people are kind of just locked into their bank and they're not really kind of seeking out alternatives, uh, too much. And so basically there's like a moat there. There's a stickiness there. Uh, and so they get the profit from that spread for a while before rates start even, you know, slowly kind of itching up. Uh, but in the age of mobile banking, uh, and with the sheer size of the rates move, basically industry is kind of remote quick to adjust this time. And then also when you have things like, you know, you can pull out your money with the software API, like bank runs can be quicker now just because of the way we do things. And so although I still view the case that there's not a high risk of a major kind of credit event among the major banks, I had to revap, that reevaluate my thesis around their forward profitability and things like that. Um, and so basically it's just, it's always approaching things, not tying your ego to an investment. Um, and, and then it'd be having taken the conscious choice to seek out the bearish view so that you can always articulate both sides. So they were always kind of weighing the probability which side it's going to be right in the long run.
你知道的，还有一件事是，嗯，去年在银行大幅下跌之后，也就是2023年3月之前的一次银行危机，我开始对银行产生了更多兴趣，因为它们非常便宜。而且每个人都在谈论银行危机的爆发。我认为现在的很多条件与2008年不同，所以至少大型银行面临的主要信用问题风险要低得多。但是也有一些不同的因素，它们增加了一些压力，这超出了我所预料的。其中一个就是现在银行之间的切换成本比之前的周期要低得多。因此，如果你看一下大多数利率周期，当美联储开始加息时，银行存款往往非常缓慢调整，因为人们基本上就固守于自己的银行，没有太多寻求其他选择。所以基本上存在一个垄断，一段时间内他们会从这种利差中获利，甚至在利率开始缓慢上升之前。但在移动银行和利率变动幅度巨大的时代，行业基本上迅速调整了这一次。此外，你还可以通过软件API提取资金，这就意味着银行逃底现在可能更快，因为我们的操作方式发生了变化。所以虽然我仍然认为主要银行不太可能发生重大的信用事件风险，但我不得不重新评估他们前瞻性盈利能力和其他因素的观点。所以基本上，无论面对何种投资，我们要始终保持对待事物的态度，不要将自己的自尊心与投资挂钩。而且，要有有意识地寻求悲观观点的选择，这样你就可以始终表述两种观点。这样我们就可以始终权衡长期来看哪一方更可能是正确的。
You know, it's really interesting that you mentioned the, uh, the drug miller, um, framework before, because I think that is the goal standard, uh, where you just change your mind on a dime. It's also extremely difficult to do that because we all have recency bias. So, uh, we hear something and then all of a sudden it seems way more important than it probably is.
你知道吗，你之前提到的“药品米勒（drug miller）”框架真的很有趣，因为我认为这是目标标准，在其中你可以立刻改变想法。但同时这也非常困难，因为我们都会受到近期偏见的影响。所以，我们会听到某些事情，然后突然觉得它比实际重要得多。
And so, um, one way to safeguard yourself, which is ironically the very opposite of drug and miller, but if you know, if you don't have that skill set and few words do, uh, there are also a Campbell of investors who forced themselves to, for example, not sell a stock two years after they made it or three years, whatever kind of limit you have, just not to be susceptible to recency bias. But that has the advances up again, not being susceptible to a recent device, but also has the, the, the, these events of, they could come something that would just completely destroy your thesis. And in this case, you're just still stuck, you know, holding the back.
因此，嗯，保护自己的一种方法，很讽刺的是与贾德和米勒截然相反，但如果你知道，如果你没有那种技能集合，而只有少数人有，嗯，也有一部分投资者迫使自己不在买入一个股票后的两年或三年内出售，无论你设定了什么样的限制，只是为了不容易受到最近发生事件的影响。但这也会带来一个问题，就是不容易被最近的偏见所影响，但也有可能发生某些完全毁掉你的投资理念的事件。在这种情况下，你仍然被困住，你知道，无法摆脱。
So, um, it was just, it was just very interesting to hear how you, uh, went about that. Yeah, there are, there are, there are research that show, for example, that like some of the best performing brokerage accounts are people who have like got locked out of their account or have like passed away. And like the stocks just keep, you know, doing their things because people have a tendency to over trade to sell the lows to buy the highs. And, and if you just kind of take out that behavior, things often work out, you know, that could certainly work well if you're managing position size carefully.
嗯，嗯，听到你是如何处理这个问题的，真的很有意思。是的，有研究显示，例如，一些表现最好的经纪账户是那些被锁住了或者去世的人。而且这些股票就继续做它们的事情，因为人们往往有过度交易、低价卖出、高价买入的倾向。如果你能摆脱这种行为，事情往往会有好结果，当然前提是你要小心地管理你的持仓规模。
You know, if you say, okay, I'm going to put, you know, uh, I'm going to get 50 stocks, 2% each, you know, and I'm going to make sure I don't sell for two years and I'll reevaluate the thesis then because the worst case scenario is that, you know, part, a couple slices your portfolio do very poorly. Um, whereas if you're taking more concentrated positions, obviously you have to watch that close. You have to be more dynamic with your, with your positioning. So it really kind of comes down to investor temperament, portfolio strategy and things like that. But the point is to always be, be objective and to, like not just accidentally come across the views that disagree with you, but make it part of your checklist that you actively seek out views that disagree with your thesis, um, so that you're not blindsided by them.
你知道，如果你这样说，好吧，我打算投资，你知道，嗯，我要买50只股票，每只占2%，你知道，然后我会确保在两年内不卖出，并在那时重新评估论点，因为最坏的情况是你的投资组合中有一些部分表现很差。但是，如果你选择更为集中的仓位，显然你必须密切关注。你的仓位需更具灵活性。所以这实际上取决于投资者的性格、投资组合策略等等。但关键是始终客观地思考，并不只是偶然地接触到与你观点相左的观点，而是把它们纳入你的清单中，积极寻找与你的论点相反的观点，这样你就不会被它们蒙蔽。
We talked about last time, um, how you would have a different incentive to fight a war in a fiat currency or a non-fian versus a non-fian currency world. You know, for example, whenever you had a gold standard, uh, you had to finance a war by say, increasing taxes, uh, lowering your expenses, uh, you know, which are things that are not that popular to do. And so not being on a fiat currency can give you an incentive, perhaps not to wait to war, but, um, what we have now is in a situation where, you know, you get tax through inflation. Um, and so, you know, the expenses will be paid by, by money printing and we all get taxed through that.
上次我们谈到，呃，如果在现有货币制度（法定货币）和非法定货币的世界中，你会有不同的动机来参与战争。举个例子，当你拥有黄金标准时，你必须通过增税、降低开支等方式来筹资战争，而这些做法并不受欢迎。所以不使用法定货币可能会给你一个动机，可能不会等待战争的爆发，但目前我们面临的情况是，你通过通胀缴税。所以，你知道，开销将由印钞来支付，而我们所有人都要为此缴税。
Um, so you have this wonderful argument for a non-fian monetary system, which is, you have fewer wars. But my question is more about incentives. If we had this world, what would prohibit a country from reverting back to a fiat currency, why the, the war was fought, which has happened multiple times in the past? Um, because what we also seen is that the, the winning side could, can then impose their monetary system on the defeated country after the war.
嗯，所以你对一种非金融货币体系有着很好的论证，即可以减少战争。但我的问题更多涉及激励措施。如果我们拥有这样的世界，有什么能阻止一个国家重新恢复到法定货币，即为了之前发生过多次的战争？因为我们也看到过的是，战胜方在战后可以在被打败的国家强制实施他们的货币体系。
Yes, I have two main, uh, kind of answers to that. And, and they, they kind of come across different lines. So one would be that the whole reason why that, that dilution works is because it's non-transparent. Right. So for example, when we went into, when the US went into the Iraq war, uh, we didn't pay taxes for it. Um, we didn't change anything major about our money system for it. And just over years and decades, we've racked up trillions of dollars of kind of dilution, interest expense, uh, all these other things that kind of now we, we, we, we, we, you know, now when people talk about the physical budget, the physical deficits and things like that, they're always talking about Trump and Biden, all this reasons he buys.
是的，我对这个问题有两个主要的回答。它们在不同的方面产生了影响。所以一个原因是这个稀释工作的整个原因是因为它是非透明的。比如，当美国进入伊拉克战争时，我们没有为此支付税款。我们没有对我们的货币体系做出任何重大改变。而且经过多年和几十年的时间，我们积累了数万亿美元的稀释、利息支出以及其他一些因素。现在当人们谈论财政预算、财政赤字等问题时，他们总是在谈论特朗普、拜登以及其他原因。
It's not talking about stuff like, you know, decisions 20 years ago that compounded into where we are now, right? And so it's kind of like that, that obfuscation and delay. Now, if you had to change the monetary system to go into the war, that'd be, that would violate the whole purpose of trying to do this opaquely. It'd be more in your face. Right. So anytime a country has to kind of change its monetary system and say, okay, it's, it's now we're going to revert to fiat and dilute people. Uh, well, now they get a cost to that war that they weren't paying before. So it's kind of like a change that is actually definable and discussable. Whereas we didn't really have that.
这不是指的，你知道的，20年前的决策导致了我们现在的境地，对吧？所以就像那样，就是那种混淆和延误。如果你必须改变货币体系来参与战争，那就会违背试图以模糊不清的方式进行的整个目的。这将更加明目张胆。好吧。所以每当一个国家不得不改变其货币体系，并宣布“好吧，现在我们要回归法定货币并稀释人民财富”的时候，呃，现在他们要承担起之前没有支付的战争费用了。所以这就像是一种可以被定义和讨论的变化。而我们之前并没有这种情况。
Um, the other one would be to point out that just technologies, um, challenging now is, it's a different environment. And so for like a lot of countries are having trouble. And I think this is only going to accelerate in the next five, 10 years as liquidity of these things gets bigger.
嗯，另一个要指出的是，现在技术的挑战已经变成了一个不同的环境。许多国家正在面临困难。我认为在接下来的五到十年里，随着这些技术的流动性越来越大，这个问题只会加剧。
But countries now have a tough time imposing their own currency on their own people. I mean, Lebanon and Argentina and Turkey, if a currency gets bad enough, people now have a lot more options to escape from it. And so, uh, and this is where it's not just Bitcoin, but it's also things like stablecoins. You know, money is like a market good in this sense, especially with globally. Um, but that has been kind of contained by the fact that until recently technology was able to silo those pretty efficiently.
目前，各国在迫使本国人民接受自己的货币方面遇到了困难。我的意思是，黎巴嫩、阿根廷和土耳其，如果一种货币贬值到一定程度，人们现在有更多的选择逃离它。所以，嗯，这里不仅仅是指比特币，还包括稳定币之类的东西。在这种意义上，货币就像市场商品一样，尤其是在全球范围内。但直到最近，技术能够相当有效地将其隔离。
So if you think about a country, there's really only kind of two main ways to get money and in, in or out of it. One is physical airports, ports of entry, but you can only bring so much cash or gold with you. Uh, so you're very tightly controlled there, in or out. Uh, number two would be bank wire transfers. Uh, but again, they're, you know, they're all government controlled. Uh, and of course there's FinTech things, but they're just, they're overlays on top of the banking system anyway. Um, and so all of that is, is controlled. There's two major ways to get money in or out of a country.
所以，如果你考虑一个国家，实际上只有两种主要的方式可以进出金钱。一种是通过物理机场、入境口岸，但是你只能携带有限的现金或金器。所以，在进出时你将受到严格的监管。第二种方式是银行电汇。但是同样，它们都受到政府的控制。当然，还有金融科技等东西，但它们只是银行系统顶层的覆盖层。所以，所有的这些都受到控制。进出一个国家的主要途径只有两种。
Uh, and so for example, like I know a, uh, Egyptian videographer and he'll, he does work for foreign, uh, customers and he charged in dollars, but by the time the money hits his account, it's an Egyptian pounds. There's like a, there's a financial barrier there. Uh, that is, you know, it, you know, it's hard to access these other monies, um, in these environments.
嗯，例如，我认识一个埃及的摄影师，他为外国客户工作，并以美元计费，但是当钱款到达他的账户时，已经是埃及镑了。这在财务上存在一道障碍，也就是说，很难在这些环境中获取其他货币。
And so let's use Egypt as example, you know, if you're one of the 105 billion people in Egypt, you're in this, you know, little currency monopoly. Um, and the money supply is growing by 20% a year. Um, and it's not that they're fighting wars, but it's instead that they're doing major, uh, infrastructure projects, like they're building whole new cities, uh, that is, you know, kind of government decreed, right? So it's not really based on market forces. It's based on government decree. So they're getting external debt to do it. Um, they are diluting the money supply greatly to do it. So people are kind of paying for it without necessarily being taxed forward or really just, it's just kind of constantly draining.
因此，我们以埃及为例，你知道，如果你是埃及的1050亿人之一，你就处在这个小小的货币垄断中。嗯，货币供应每年增长20%。他们不是在打仗，而是进行一些大型基础设施项目，比如建设全新的城市，这是政府下达的命令，而不是市场力量驱动。因此他们借外债来实施这些项目。为了实施这些项目，他们大大稀释了货币供应。所以人们在不需要向前缴税的情况下为此付出代价，或者说，这种代价就像是在持续不断地被耗竭。
So everybody in that country has to try to keep up with the money supply growth that's happening. If you're not getting a 20% raise every year, if you're not a small business raising your price, it's 20% a year. If you're not a landlord raising your rent on your tenants 20% a year, you're getting diluted. You're becoming a smaller share of that monetary network and you're probably losing, say, dollar global purchasing power. If you're not kind of aggressively trying to keep up with that dilution treadmill that's happening.
所以在那个国家，每个人都要努力跟上货币供应的增长。如果你每年没有获得20%的加薪，如果你不是一个提高价格的小企业，它是每年20%。如果你不是一个提高房租的房东，每年对租户加20%，那么你的份额就会被稀释。你在这个货币网络中所占比例变得更小，你可能会损失购买力。如果你不积极试图跟上这种稀释循环，那就会处于劣势。
And, you know, until pretty recently, there's not that many ways to get out of that currency bubble. Like I actually, I have, um, like here's an Egyptian pound, right? 200 Egyptian pounds. And this is for all purposes, a casino chip in the sense that outside of Egypt, there's almost nothing I can do with this. It's, I can't buy goods and services with it almost anywhere. And even finding someone to convert it into local currency would be very hard in most places in the world. Like I'm in New Jersey. I wouldn't even know where to begin trying to get this into dollars. Yeah. And even if I could, the fees and the exchange rate would be like awful. It's got extremely low sale ability. It basically be about as hard as converting a casino chip arguably harder. It's like a, there's a casino in Singapore.
然后，你知道，直到最近，没有多少途径可以摆脱货币泡沫。比如说，我实际上有一张埃及镑，200埃及镑。从所有方面来看，它就像是一张赌场筹码，因为在埃及以外的地方，我几乎不能用它购买商品和服务。而且在世界上大多数地方，要找到可以兑换成当地货币的人也非常困难。比如说我在新泽西，我甚至都不知道从哪里开始试着把它兑换成美元。是的，即使我能兑换，费用和汇率也会很糟糕。它的可售性非常低。基本上，它几乎和兑换赌场筹码的难度差不多，甚至更难。就像新加坡有个赌场一样。
You know, it's like, what am, if I had a chip here, what am I going to do with it? That's kind of the situation. But what things like Bitcoin, stablecoins do is they go around those prior, uh, gateways. And so for example, if there's a Nigerian graphic designer and I want to pay her, she can show me a QR code on a video call, like where we're having now, or she can send me an email or DM and I can pay her. And it can be in whatever currency she wants. It could be in Bitcoin. It could be in dollar stable coins. It could be in gold back stablecoins. Those exist. It could be, you know, whatever kind of global competition money she wants, I can actually send it to her and she has it now in a way that goes around her local banking system.
你知道的，就像如果我这里有个芯片，我会拿它做什么呢？就是这种情况。但是比特币、稳定币等东西所做的就是绕过之前的那些门槛。比如说，如果有一个尼日利亚的平面设计师，我想付款给她，她可以通过视频通话给我展示一个QR码，就像我们现在使用的方式一样，或者她可以给我发邮件或信息，我可以给她付款。而且付款可以使用她想要的任何货币，比如比特币、美元稳定币、以及黄金支持的稳定币等等。这些都是存在的。无论她想要什么样的全球竞争货币，我都可以实际地给她，而且她以一种绕过她所在地的银行系统的方式获得了这笔款项。
And so we see increasingly Argentinian attorney, I think, is a stablecoin in Bitcoin.
因此，我们越来越多地看到阿根廷律师，我认为，正在比特币方面稳定硬币。
Turkey is doing that Lebanon. I mean, they basically hyperinflated and people kind of just forcibly dollarized.
土耳其正在做黎巴嫩做过的事情。我的意思是，他们基本上发生了超级通货膨胀，人们强制性地以美元进行交易。
And so, you know, if we imagine a world where from the beginning, if we could just like teleport gold to each other, you know, if we just, if I could just mentally think and teleport gold to you, it would have been very hard for governments to ever impose fiat currencies on us, right?
所以，你知道的，如果我们能够想象一个从一开始就可以相互传送黄金的世界，你知道的，如果我只要在脑海中想一下，就能把黄金传送给你，政府要想向我们强行实行法定货币就会非常困难，对吧？
Because fiat currencies materialized because they were solving a problem. So the banking system, uh, fixed a lot of the shortcomings of gold, which was its verification, its portability issues, its securely keeping it.
法定货币的出现是因为它们解决了一个问题。银行系统解决了黄金的许多缺点，包括黄金的验证问题、携带问题以及安全保管问题。
So we put our gold in the banks and it all got centralized and abstracted and, you know, lever 20 to one.
所以我们将黄金存入银行，一切都集中和抽象化了，你知道的，杠杆比例为20比一。
Uh, and then with that, I'll blue up. They just said, okay, it's not gold backed anymore, but keep using the bank ledgers.
然后，我就会爆炸了。他们只是说，好吧，不再以黄金为后盾了，但继续使用银行账簿。
And so it's kind of like a series of steps one at a time, most of which were solving a problem. And then we got rug pulled.
所以，这有点像一系列逐步进行的步骤，其中大部分都是为了解决问题。然后我们遇到了困难。
Um, whereas if from the beginning, if gold was just effective enough, that we could just kind of beam it to each other, it never would have materialized in this fiat currency sense.
嗯，如果从一开始，金子的效力仅仅足够，我们可以互相传输它，它就不会以货币形式存在了。
And so the way I would argue that going forward is that now that technology is good enough that people can send money to each other. And it could, again, it could be Bitcoin, it could be stable coins, it could be gold back stable coins, whatever the, whatever money is, is winning on the market in a global sense, people can send that to each other now.
因此，我认为未来的发展方式是，现在技术已经足够成熟，使人们可以相互发送资金。这可以是比特币，也可以是稳定币，或者是以黄金为背书的稳定币，只要是市场上在全球范围获胜的货币，人们现在都可以互相发送。
They can self custody it if they want to pretty effectively, pretty cheaply and pretty securely. Um, and it's hard for governments, either a local government or a foreign government to, to pose that on people, you know, basically that they have now have multiple tools to go around those in a way that we're not here before.
如果他们想的话，他们可以相当有效、相当廉价且相当安全地自行保管。嗯，政府很难对人们施加强制，无论是本地政府还是外国政府，基本上他们现在有多种工具可以规避这些限制，这是以前没有的。
And so I think both in terms of, I think if you give this another five, 10, 15 years, people will become increasingly normalized to the idea that they can access global assets now in a way that they could not until pretty recently, you needed both, you know, Bitcoin's a little bit around 15 years, stable coins have been around for like half of that.
所以我认为，从两方面来看，如果再给这个想法五年、十年或十五年的时间，人们将会越来越习惯于能够以一种以前无法实现的方式访问全球资产。你需要知道的是，比特币出现了大约15年，而稳定币的存在时间只有它的一半左右。
But really only in the past five years have their size and liquidity been relevant at all for, you know, most people. And even then, I mean, that's still the early adopter phase.
但实际上，直到过去五年，它们的规模和流动性对大多数人而言才有意义。即便如此，我指的是，那仍然是早期采用阶段。
If the size and liquidity of those types of markets and the user experience and the regulatory frameworks get better and better, those things just increase, I think become normalized. And it becomes hard to say, okay, I know, I know you, you'd like holding Bitcoin or dollar stable coins or you know, whatever, but we're gonna find a way to take that away for you and impose our fiat currency. It's like, well, good luck, right?
如果那些市场的规模和流动性以及用户体验和监管框架变得越来越好，这些事情只会增加，我认为它们会变得正常化。而且很难说，好吧，我知道，我知道你喜欢持有比特币或美元稳定币，无论怎样，但我们会找到一种方式让你放弃它们，使用我们的法定货币。这就像是，祝你好运，对吧？
So the whole reason that dilution and, and, you know, kind of bank sanction and things like that work is because they're not really levered on the individual person. It all kind of happens behind the scenes and it's non-transparent and things change slowly. But when you give people the power themselves, it's hard to go out and try to take that back.
所以稀释和银行制裁之类的措施之所以有效，主要是因为它们并不直接针对个人。这些事情大多在幕后进行，缺乏透明度，并且变化缓慢。但当人们获得自己的权力时，要试图夺回这种权力变得困难。
And we even see, for example, Nigeria is an interesting case study. They, you know, they shut off banking access to all the cryptocurrency exchanges. So they don't even try to make cryptocurrency illegal, but they say, okay, you know, because they can't enforce that, really. So they said they say, okay, the banking system can't send money to crypto exchanges.
就拿尼日利亚来说吧，他们是一个有趣的案例研究。他们取消了所有加密货币交易所的银行访问权限。因此，他们甚至没有试图将加密货币定为非法，因为他们无法执行。所以他们说，好吧，银行系统不能将资金转账给加密货币交易所。
We're going to introduce a CBDC. So they've introduced the eNyra, I believe it was 2021. They started phasing out cash. Like they basically reduced the amount you can get from ATMs pretty sharply and kind of reducing the supply of bills.
我们计划引入数字货币。因此，他们在2021年推出了eNyra。他们开始逐步淘汰现金。基本上大幅削减了从自动取款机可以取出的金额，并逐渐减少纸币的发行量。
And just so far, it's been very ineffective. People, you know, more people use Bitcoin, stable coins than use the CBDCs had low adoption.
到目前为止，中央银行数字货币（CBDCs）的采用率非常低，相比之下，比特币和稳定币的使用更加普遍，因此可以说CBDCs的效果不尽如人意。
People did riots when they couldn't get enough physical cash to support their effect of their economy is quite cash based. You know, it's kind of hard to enforce more and more mobile payments on a country that's just not ready for it yet.
当人们无法获得足够的纸币来支持他们的经济时，他们发动了骚乱。你知道，对于一个还未准备好的国家来说，要推行越来越多的移动支付是相当困难的。
The central bank governor ended up getting like deposed, like literally arrested. It's just been a whole mess. And while Nigeria is not necessarily the template for other countries, it just shows that going forward with the technology people have as long as the internet is still the internet, I think it's been pretty challenging for some of these things to work going forward like they worked in the past, if you know what I mean.
中央银行行长最终被罢免，甚至被逮捕，事情变得一团糟。尽管尼日利亚不一定适用于其他国家，但这显示出随着互联网的存在，未来基于科技发展的事情将比以往更加具有挑战性，如果你明白我的意思的话。
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a new world that we're in and you know, we are increasingly in we're in a dead world.
是的，是的，我们绝对进入了一个新世界，而且你知道的，我们越来越多地处于一个死寂的世界中。
And, you know, one of the arguments that I've heard you talk about is that we have many creditworthy borrowers that have insensitive to take on debt, even if they don't need capital. And you know, simplistically, we can think of this as if you can borrow at say 3%, I don't think you can do that anymore at least not in the States.
而且，你知道，我听过你谈论过的一个论点是，我们有许多信誉良好的借款人对于借债并没有敏感性，即使他们不需要资本。简单地说，我们可以将这看作是如果你可以以3%的利率借款，我认为至少在美国不能这样做了。
But if you can borrow at 3% and let's say that your currency and in turn your debt are debased by say 5% a year, you haven't sensitive to take on debt. And you know, even for us, we're like raised at the church of Buffett and Munger. And we're taught not to take on that, you know, perhaps the other way itself. Our taking on billions and billions of dollars in debt and they could easily operate without, you know, it's not too long ago. They took out billions in Japan and paid next to nothing. For that, then bought Japanese equities because there are no reason, no reason not to.
但是如果你可以以3%的利率借款，假设你的货币，进而你的债务每年贬值5%，那么你就没有充分的理由不去负债。而且你知道，即使对于我们来说，我们也是在巴菲特和芒格的教堂中长大的。我们被教导不要承担债务，或许反过来说也是如此。我们承担了数十亿美元的债务，而且他们完全可以不这样做，不久之前他们在日本贷款数十亿美元，并几乎付出零成本。为此，他们购买了日本股票，因为没有任何理由不这样做。
But if we take it back here to us as retail investors, how can we best leverage the debasement of currencies to our advantage, for example, to taking on that in our portfolios?
但是如果我们把它回归到我们作为零售投资者的角度，我们如何最好地利用货币贬值为我们谋取好处，比如在我们的投资组合中进行介入？
So historically, over the past 40 years or so, investors and companies have been rewarded by taking on modern amounts of debt. And so you've generally been punished if you've taken on no debt or if you take on so much debt that you get over your skis and get liquidated. So entities that can successfully manage that middle area, that's kind of how the system's been optimized. That's who wins in the system is if you have a long term, low interest short on the fiat currency and use it to buy better assets and structure that well, that's been the winning trade.
历史上，大约过去40年，投资者和公司通过承担适量的债务获得了回报。因此，如果你没有承担债务，或者承担了太多债务导致破产清算，你通常会受到惩罚。因此，能够成功管理这种中间区域的实体，这就是系统的优化方式。在这个系统中，如果你能够长期持有低利率的非法币货币，并将其用于购买更好的资产并进行良好的结构安排，那就是获胜的交易。
So Berkshire Hathaway has nailed that both in terms of debt and in terms of their insurance float. That's another type of leverage in a way. That's one of the superpowers that they've had. But even if you look at their portfolio, so Berkshire Hathaway has its own leverage, but then it owns the portfolio stocks including Apple, Coca-Cola, American Express, Bank of America, all these different companies, Chevron. Most of those have significant debt as well.
伯克希尔·哈撒韦所做到的东西，无论是债务方面还是保险浮动资金方面，都非常成功。这在某种程度上是一种杠杆的运用。这是他们拥有的超能力之一。但即使你看一下他们的投资组合，伯克希尔·哈撒韦也有自己的杠杆作用，然后它拥有包括苹果、可口可乐、美国运通、美国银行在内的投资组合股票，这些不同的公司，包括雪佛龙。其中大多数公司也有相当大的债务。
And we think why does Coca-Cola have debt? It's a company that's more than a century old, they've been profitable for longer than our grandparents have been alive. Why do they have debt on their balance sheet? And the reason is because it's an active choice. It's basically a fiat currency short. It's a cheaper part of their capital stack than pure equity. And so a company like Coca-Cola can borrow for 10 years, 20 or 30 years at low interest rates. And they can basically use it for share buybacks or dividends or business expansions. And they basically have this kind of permanent long-term short on their balance sheet.
我们在想为什么可口可乐会有债务呢？这是一家成立了一个多世纪的公司，它们的盈利时间比我们的祖辈还长久。为什么他们的资产负债表上会有债务呢？原因是因为这是一种主动选择。实际上，这是一种对法定货币的空头交易。相比纯股权，这是他们资本结构中更便宜的部分。因此，像可口可乐这样的公司可以以低利率借款10年、20年或30年。他们基本上可以用它来进行公司股票回购、派息或业务扩张。实际上，他们在资产负债表上持有这种永久长期的空头头寸。
So one is you don't have to have your own leverage to do that. You can own entities that are themselves just taking advantage of that going forward. Now, I think that the next years and decades are going to be a little bit different in this regard than the past 40 years. I think the cycle is getting more challenging. I think a lot of the wind in that position has been taken out now.
因此，你不必拥有自己的杠杆来做那些事情。你可以拥有那些能够充分利用这种情况的实体。现在，我认为未来几年和几十年在这方面会与过去40年有些不同。我认为经济周期正在变得更具挑战性。我认为这种优势地位已经大大减弱了。
There's also any homeowner that for example locked in a low fixed rate mortgage and refinance whenever rates went down has been very much rewarded in the current system. That's another way that the average retail investor can do it is you don't buy stocks on a margin, but you buy your house on 80% leverage, which is just like a normalized leverage in society. It's like the socially acceptable type of leverage. That's how our society structures is normal to do that. And if you buy your house carefully, if you don't buy in a bubble, it has been the smart move to turn it out for 30 years and leverage it five to one with 20% down. That has been a good trade.
在当前的系统中，还有一种方式是有些房主会选择锁定一个低固定利率的抵押贷款，并在利率下降时进行再融资，这种做法是非常有回报的。这是普通零售投资者可以采取的另一种方式，就是不用杠杆购买股票，而是通过以80%的杠杆购买房子，这在社会中被视为一种规范化的杠杆。这就像是一种被社会接受的杠杆类型。我们的社会结构中这样做是正常的。如果你谨慎购买房子，不买泡沫房产，把它保留30年并以20%的首付五倍杠杆来运作，这是一个明智的举措。
There's still some global opportunities, but they're generally hard to seek out unless you're tied to that space. For example, we just bought an Egyptian property and it's financing works differently there than in the United States or in Europe. Money supply is growing there by 20% a year. We have a seven-year payment term at a 3% interest rate. We have a seven-year short on the Egyptian pound that's growing by 20% a year. And it's just a quirk in their financing for how that works. It's like developer financing. It's basically part of them trying to move the villas that they've constructed.
目前仍存在全球机遇，但通常很难找到，除非你对该领域有所了解。例如，我们刚刚购买了一处埃及房产，那里的融资方式与美国或欧洲不同。埃及的货币供应每年增长20%。我们以3%的利率分期七年付款。我们押注埃及镑贬值并每年增长20%的幅度。这是埃及特殊的融资方式，就像开发商的融资方式。基本上是他们试图推销他们建造的别墅的一部分。
So if an entity, if someone in the country is selling a house and wants to buy this house, they would probably not take that deal. They just don't want to hold their equity and other things. They want to transfer their equity from one house to another house. But if you're a foreign buyer that makes your income in dollars and has significant dollar time and assets or globally priced assets, being able to go in there and do a seven-year, three percent short on the currency makes a lot of sense in a way that wouldn't necessarily make sense for local investors.
所以，如果一个实体，如果一个国家的人正在出售一栋房子并且想要买下这栋房子，他们可能不会接受这个交易。他们只是不想持有他们的股权和其他东西。他们希望将他们的股权从一幢房子转移到另一幢房子上。但如果你是一个以美元赚取收入并拥有大量美元和全球定价资产的外国买家，能够进行七年期、三个百分点汇率做空交易是非常明智的，而这对于本地投资者来说可能并不明智。
And so there are opportunities out there to still do this type of thing. Basically, whenever you have an opportunity to have a long term non-colable short on a fiat currency at an interest rate that is well below the typical money supply growth of that, and you can then deploy that in something that's got a pretty high chance of beating that very low hurdle. It does make sense as long as you are judicious about it.
所以仍然存在机会来进行这种类型的交易。基本上，当你有机会以低于典型货币供应增长的利率在一种非可再生的长期负债上进行交易时，你可以将其用于某种具有相当高的机会打败这个非常低的门槛的投资。只要你慎重对待，这是有意义的。
And it's not really a part of the system I like. When I discuss that in the book and I discuss it elsewhere, it's not that I like that aspect of the system. And it's one of my criticisms with the current system is financial engineering is generally a more profitable thing to do than real engineering. That's partly why the US has become so financialized. If you get an engineering degree, it often makes more sense to take all that quantitative knowledge and go to Wall Street than it does to go to Silicon Valley. And it shouldn't really be that case, but that's the world we've been in, at least in this 40 year declining, this 40 year period of disinflation, 40 year period of this system we've been in.
这并不是我喜欢的系统的一部分。当我在书中以及其他地方讨论这个问题时，并不代表我对这个系统的这一方面有好感。这也是我对现行系统的批评之一，即财务工程往往比实际工程更有利可图。这部分原因才导致了美国金融化程度如此之高。如果你拥有工程学位，通常更有意义将所有数量上的知识运用于华尔街，而非硅谷。这实际上不应该是这种情况，但这就是我们所处的世界，至少在过去40年的通缩、当前的这个系统下。
There's even small factors like, for example, in Argentina, if you're wealthier, you have access to credit cards. If you're not wealthy, you're in more of a cash based payment situation. And so with the rate of inflation that they have, even doing things like buying something and paying for it 30 days later, makes a lot of sense. But again, that's only available to people that have access to decent credit.
甚至还有像在阿根廷这样的小因素，例如，如果你比较富有，你可以使用信用卡。如果你不富裕，你更多地依赖现金支付。由于他们的通货膨胀率很高，即使像买东西后再延后30天付款这样的行为也是有道理的。但是，这仅适用于能够获得良好信用的人们。
And so all these things kind of stack up to favor those who have a lot of assets that they can lever cheaply or that they can access global markets and pick out all these little opportunities or they can do financial engineering. Whereas none of this really benefits, say the bottom 50%, the working class, the people that are renting, the people that are just not making use of all this credit arbitrage.
因此，所有这些事情都有利于那些拥有大量资产，可以廉价利用杠杆或者可以进入全球市场，并找到所有这些小机会，或者可以进行金融工程的人。而这些事情实际上都不利于底层的50%人群，工薪阶层、租房人群以及那些没有充分利用所有信贷套利机会的人们无法从中受益。
That's a fascinating story and well thought out. And there's this irony that it's typically those who can afford debt that don't need it in the first place. And that's just one of the ironies of finance. And it's very interesting to hear about that story in Egypt that it's possible to do what you're saying.
这是一个引人入胜且深思熟虑的故事。而令人讽刺的是，通常那些能承担债务的人本来就不需要它。这只是金融领域的其中一种讽刺。而听到你讲述埃及的那个故事非常有趣，这证明了你所说的是可能实现的。
I was speaking with another friend of the podcast here the other day, Manus Pabrai. And he's investing a lot in Turkey. And so the obvious thing to ask would be, and I think at the time, perhaps the interest rate was like, I don't know, 15% or 12, whatever it was. And with inflation raging at, I think, at the time, like 80% or something crazy. And so I couldn't help but like ask, why don't you just take out a long fixed loan and then just pay it back with a worthless, not worthless, but worthless currency. And he was like, yeah, they know that trick. You just can't do that. It's not how it works. We have sort of interest rate, but you can't really just go out and take out that loan. So it was fascinating to hear how things are in Egypt and how you manage to create that type of deal. So yeah, it's a country by country basis.
前几天，我正在与播客中的另一位朋友Manus Pabrai交谈。他在土耳其进行了大量投资。所以很明显要问的问题就是，在那个时候，利率可能是15%或12%之类的。而通货膨胀猖獗，我记得当时可能是80%或其他疯狂的数字。所以我禁不住问道，为什么你不只是拿出一个长期固定贷款，然后用一种不值钱但并非一文不值的货币来偿还呢？他回答说，是的，他们知道这个诀窍。但你不能这样做，情况不是这样的。我们有一种类似利率的东西，但你不能真的去申请那样的贷款。听到埃及的情况以及你是如何达成这种交易是很有趣的。所以是的，这是因国家而异的。
And Turkey, so when you're when you're trying to run below market industries, like Turkey does, it usually comes some sort of credit restriction. So for example, they also limited, you know, any like companies have less borrowing access if they hold a lot of foreign currency, because what they don't want is to people just take out tons and tons of leera debt and then buy dollars with it, right? Because that whenever you take out debt in a currency, if it's a bank loan specifically, you're actually increasing the money supply of that currency. So you're literally shorting it and increasing the supply of it at the same time. So you're contributing to its weakness while profiting from its weakness. And so, but that's when when an interest rate is doesn't make sense to market level, that's when you start to get artificial restrictions on it.
而土耳其，所以当你试图经营低于市场水平的产业，就像土耳其一样，通常会出现某种形式的信贷限制。例如，他们也限制了拥有大量外币贷款的公司的借贷权，因为他们不希望人们只是拿出大量的里拉债务然后用它来购买美元，对吧？因为每当你以某种货币负债，特别是银行贷款时，你实际上正在增加该货币的货币供应。所以你在短期内将其抛售并增加其供应量。所以你在从其贬值中获利的同时也在加剧其贬值。但当利率与市场水平不合理时，就会出现人为的限制。
Also, you know, a thing I have in the book is that bell curve of monetary hardness and leverage. And so basically, if you're in an environment where money is super hard, right, let's say it's a gold standard or a future, maybe a Bitcoin standard, whatever, you know, if you're if there's a very hard monetary unit, the the borrower incentives for borrowing that currency are limited, right? You you'd only borrow in it if you have a very high rate of return thing you want to do with that money. Maybe you want to get a degree that's going to pay you a lot. So you'll take it a little bit of debt and you can pay it back quickly. Maybe you're doing a business expansion that you expect like a 30% eternal rate of return. So you're willing to borrow for, you know, a few years. But you wouldn't just have like debt as a permanent part of your capital structure in a very hard money environment.
在书中，我提到的一件事是货币硬度和杠杆率的钟形曲线。所以基本上，如果你处于一个货币非常硬的环境中，比如黄金标准或者未来的比特币标准，你知道的，如果货币单位非常硬，借款人借这种货币的动机是有限的。你只会借它，如果你有一项具有非常高回报率的事情要做。也许你想要获得一个回报很高的学位。所以你会负上一点债务，然后迅速偿还。也许你在进行一个预计会有30%年回报率的业务扩展。所以你愿意负债几年。但在一个货币非常硬的环境中，你不会把债务作为你资本结构中的永久部分。
Another hand, and the other end of the bell curve, if if money is like Argentina or Turkey, where it's constantly devaluing, lenders normally are not going to give you like very long term lending because they don't know what the courage is going to be like. And so a lot of a lot of financing gets shorter term. And and you know, they're basically it's just the borrowers would love to, you know, borrow tons of it and short it. But the lenders, of course, are more careful with how they're going to do that. And ironically, it's the middle of the bell curve where we get most of the debt because, you know, borrowers are happy to borrow it because it's, you know, it's, you know, it dollar the euro, the yen, you know, they're not inflating away as fast as the Argentine peso or the Turkish slayer, but they are inflating away relative to most hard assets or most equities.
另一方面，在钟形曲线的另一端，如果货币像阿根廷或土耳其一样不断贬值，借款人通常不会提供长期贷款，因为他们不知道未来的情况会如何。因此，很多融资都是短期的。尽管借款人希望借大量的款项并进行短线交易，但贷款人当然会更加谨慎。讽刺的是，我们借贷最多的是钟形曲线的中间部分，因为借款人愿意借款，因为相对于阿根廷比索或土耳其里拉来说，美元、欧元、日元等货币通胀速度较慢，但相对于大多数有形资产或股权来说，它们仍然在通胀。
And so at various entities want to borrow them. And then also various entities want to lend them, including for pretty long amounts of time, as long as they have access to an even cheaper funding rate, and can make some small amount of spread. And so that's how in these systems, we build up maximal leverage is by having that slowly devaluing unit of account. This neither too hard nor too soft.
因此，许多实体都想要借用它们。同时，包括那些需要较长时间借出的实体也想要借出，只要他们能够获得更便宜的资金利率，并能获得一定程度的利差。这就是在这些系统中，我们建立最大杠杆的方式，即通过逐渐贬值的账户单位。这既不过于严格也不过于宽松。
But then the downside of that is that after many decades of that, we build up such high debt levels that we have, you know, put your own instability event. Basically that that multi decade period of stability, ironically, then leads to a period of instability, because it's only because of that stability that we've built up so much leverage to begin with.
然而，由此带来的不利方面是，在经历了这么多年之后，我们累积了如此高的债务水平，以至于我们自己造成了不稳定事件。基本上，这几十年的稳定时期，讽刺的是，最终导致了一段不稳定时期，因为正是由于这种稳定，我们才积累了如此之多的负债开始。
Yeah, there are so many ironies when it comes to currencies. And you know, there are so many people in our space, Lynn, who are talking about that debt must be restructured. And so if we're looking through the lens of euros or dollars, you know, our listeners have many different types of debt. I'll imagine a lot of them have the mortgage. Some might even invest in various securities using leverage. And I'm sure there may have something in between. So whenever we hear about debt restructuring, what does that imply and should investors who feel comfortable servicing their current debt be worried about a debt restructuring?
是的，涉及货币问题时，有很多讽刺之处。而且你知道，我们行业中有很多人在谈论债务必须重组。所以，如果我们通过欧元或美元的角度来看，我们的听众拥有各种不同类型的债务。我想其中许多人有抵押贷款。一些人甚至可能通过杠杆投资于各种证券。我相信可能还有一些中间方式。所以每当我们听到债务重组的消息时，这意味着什么？那些觉得自己有能力偿还当前债务的投资者应该担心债务重组吗？
So I think when we talk about debt restructuring, most of it's about the sovereign level, like how our government's going to deal with their debt. Because a lot of what we see in recent years and decades is that debt starts moving up the hierarchy. And so a big thing we saw in the global fanta crisis, for example, is in the US, a good chunk of household debt and banking debt went up to the sovereign level. You know, some of it was inflated, some of it was just outright shifted, build out, and put on the sovereign level. And so banks became way more capitalized after 2008. And households, you know, and for example, going into this whole recent inflation period, any household that had a 30 year fixed rate low mortgage, and then the money supply increased by 40% in two years, and house prices jumped, and prices of everything jumped, and there's just permanently more money in the system now. If you had a 3% mortgage locked in on a appropriately priced piece of real estate, you've already partially had your debt restructured. Part of your liabilities were inflated away.
当我们谈论债务重组时，我认为大部分是指主权层面的，例如我们政府如何处理他们的债务。因为我们近年来和几十年来所看到的情况是债务开始向层级上升。所以一个很大的问题是，在全球金融危机中我们看到的事情是在美国，相当大部分的家庭债务和银行债务都上升到了主权层面。你知道，有些是膨胀的，有些是直接转移到了主权层面。因此，2008年之后银行的资本化程度提高了很多。而家庭，例如，在进入这个最近的通货膨胀时期，任何拥有30年固定低利率抵押贷款的家庭，当货币供应在两年内增加了40%，房价上涨，物价上涨，系统中的货币永久增加时，你的部分债务已经得到了重组。你的部分债务被通胀抵消了。
And that's, you know, even though they're trying to fight back now and have a tighter monetary policy, some of that is just permanent now, like, you know, basically that even if we slow down CPI growth, we're not going to go back to the prices of things we had before, we're not going to get money supply back down to where it was before. And so that's what I mean by over these kind of years and cycles, more and more decades pushed up to the sovereign level. And you mentioned Ray Dalio. I mean, Dalio was a big source of research for mine over, you know, starting about probably six or seven years ago about how these long term debt cycles play out. You know, he's done really good work on the long term debt cycle, and how these things kind of go.
虽然他们现在正试图采取措施抵制，实施更严格的货币政策，但一些问题却已经成为永久性的，即便我们放慢居民消费价格指数（CPI）的增长速度，物价也不会回到之前的水平，货币供应也不会回到之前的水平。所以，我所指的就是在这些年份和周期中，越来越多的十年被推到国家层面。你提到了雷·达里奥。他在关于这些长期债务周期的研究方面对我产生了很大影响，开始大约是六七年前。他在长期债务周期和这些问题的演变方面做出了很好的工作。
And so the first type of restructuring is to kind of over time push this up to the sovereign level. We've also seen this in Japan. If you look at over the past 30 years, they had basically 30 years of falling private debt relative to GDP and rising public debt relative to GDP. There's been this very slow transition to kind of delever corporate balance sheets, household balance sheets while levering up the sovereign balance sheet. And so the question then becomes, well, what happens when you push all of it to the top level? And that's what it normally gets taken out on the currency.
因此，第一种类型的重组是逐渐将这种情况推至主权层面。我们在日本也看到了这一情况。如果你看过去30年的情况，他们的私人债务相对于国内生产总值呈下降趋势，而公共债务相对于国内生产总值呈上升趋势。在企业负债表和家庭负债表减轻的同时，主权债务表却在增加。所以问题就变成了，当所有这些都推到最高层时会发生什么？通常情况下，这会对货币产生影响。
Right. So basically that kind of like how the homeowner, you know, deleveraged to some extent, if they were short the currency and then, you know, money supply grows by 40% and prices of everything, including their house go up, you know, their liabilities now deleveraged relative to their house and the rest of the things in the market. You kind of eventually see that on the sovereign level where they can partially inflate the debt away through the currency. And it ultimately gets taken out in the cash holders and the bond holders.
是的。基本上就是像房主那样，如果他们在货币短缺的情况下降低了负债，那么货币供应增长了40%，所有东西的价格都上涨了，包括他们的房子，你知道的，相对于他们的房子和市场上其他物品，他们的负债现在解杠了一部分。你最终会在主权层面上看到这种情况，他们可以通过货币部分地通胀来抹去债务。最终，这将对持有现金和债券的人造成影响。
There are other ways to do it. But that's generally how this works. It's not so debt restructuring is often not always but all, especially developed markets, often less dramatic than you'd expect because people say, well, when is this debt restructuring coming? I mean, so for the private sector, it's already come in many cases. Now, Europe is different and Canada and Australia are different because those are very real estate focused markets. And so they still have significant household debt tied to significant property values. So it kind of comes on a market by market basis.
有其他方法可以做到这一点。但通常情况下，就是这样操作的。债务重组并不总是像你期望的那样戏剧性，尤其是在发达市场中经常会出现这种情况，因为人们会说，债务重组什么时候来临？我的意思是，对于私人部门来说，在很多情况下，这已经发生了。不过，欧洲、加拿大和澳大利亚与其他市场不同，因为这些市场非常依赖房地产。因此，它们仍然与显著的房地产价值相关联，所以这种情况会因市场而异。
But for example, in the United States, in Japan, kind of country basis, you've already had debt restructuring. And the question is, what's the next phase of debt restructuring, which is the sovereign level itself? And in Japan, you see kind of just endless financial repression, you know, yield curve control and blow, you know, negative real interest rates as far as the eye can see. In the United States, we're a little bit more volatile. We're trying to still, I think, retain the view that we're going to have positive rates for the long term, which is just mathematically doesn't really work. But I think that we're going to probably have a similar thing as Japan, where eventually that sovereign debt just kind of gets held below kind of the rate of money supplies growing at a certain rate. And the industry getting on your bonds are not keeping up with that. And so bonds basically just keep losing value relative to other assets out there.
比如说，在美国，在日本，以国家为基础，你已经进行了债务重组。问题是，债务重组的下一阶段是什么，也就是主权级别本身？在日本，你会看到无休止的金融压抑，如收益曲线控制和无止境的负实际利率。在美国，我们的情况略为不稳定。我们仍然试图保持正利率的观点，但从数学上来看，这并不可行。但我认为我们可能会经历与日本类似的情况，最终主权债务会被保持在货币供应增长速度以下的水平。对你的债券感兴趣的行业没有跟上这个速度，因此债券相对于其他资产不断贬值。
So to put our listeners at ease, if they can service the current debt, they should not be worried about any kind of restructuring that would be deflationary, which everything is equal, if deflationary, they will get higher debt compared to, say, their income.
为了让我们的听众安心，如果他们能够偿还当前的债务，他们不需要担心任何可能导致通缩的重组，因为一切都是平等的，如果出现通缩情况，他们会面临较高的债务，与其收入相比。
Yeah, I mean, so for example, if you have a fixed rate mortgage, you still have to make sure that, you have substantial equity compared to your liabilities that your income that provides for those payments is secure. So for example, if you're a two income household, if you lose one of your incomes, can the other income support all of your base expenses, even if you have to aggressively tighten your belt, can you still pay for all of your key expenses?
是的，我的意思是，举个例子来说，如果你有一份固定利率的抵押贷款，你仍然必须确保你与你的责任相比拥有充足的资产净值，以确保你的收入可以支付这些贷款。比如说，如果你的家庭有两份收入，如果你失去其中一份收入，另一份收入能否支持你的所有基本开支，即使你需要极其紧缩自己的腰带，你仍然能够支付所有关键开支？
Do you have substantial investments built up that you could tap into if need be? So whenever you have leverage, there's always a risk to it. But of course, that can be minimized by having leverage that is non-recourse, right? So it's tied to a specific asset, for example, not to your entire net worth. So you eliminate the prospect for bankruptcy, even in the worst case scenarios. And then two, you just are very judicious with it. So you still have a low loan-to-value ratio when you consider all of your assets together, that your leverage is hopefully low relative to your total assets.
你有大量的投资积累起来吗？如果需要的话，你可以动用这些投资吗？所以每当你利用杠杆时，总会存在风险。但当然，通过选择非追索权利的杠杆，就可以将风险降到最低，对吗？也就是与特定资产相关联，例如与你的整个净资产无关。这样一来，即使在最坏的情况下，也不会面临破产的风险。其次，你需要非常谨慎地运用杠杆。因此，考虑到你所有的资产，你的贷款价值比应该保持较低，相对于你的总资产来说，你的杠杆应该是较低的。
I think the danger comes in some of these countries that are just very, very high property values that are also highly levered. That's where I would be quite worried about, because they haven't really gone through that restructuring yet. And that's a political process. And so for example, going into the 2008 crisis, the banks were built out more than homeowners were. So a lot of homeowners did lose their homes or get their equity nuked. So if you buy overvalued property on too much leverage, that's when you get into major problems. So you have to definitely avoid that mistake. But in general, if you're locked into a reasonably priced property with low loan-to-value, I think you should be in pretty good shape. And then going forward, you just kind of keep building your equity side.
我认为危险出现在一些拥有非常高房地产价值并且杠杆比例也很高的国家。这就是我担心的地方，因为它们还没有经历过那种重新结构的过程。而这是一个政治过程。举个例子，进入2008年的危机时，银行救助得比房主多。所以很多房主失去了他们的住房或者股权被抵消掉。因此，如果你以过高的杠杆购买价值过高的房产，那就会陷入严重的问题。所以你一定要避免这个错误。但总体而言，如果你锁定了一个价格合理、贷款-价值比低的房产，我认为你应该处于相当不错的状态。然后，你只需继续增加你的股权。
Yeah, I think the takeaway here is really moderation, because it is tempting whenever you hear about the inflation and to think, let's take on debt. And so just to summarize what Lim has been talking about here is like, yes, you can do that, but you really have to be careful about how much you're doing it. It's really those in the middle who get rewarded. Those who don't take on any debt, they get punished and those who take on too much, they go bankrupt.
是的，我觉得这里的重点是节制，因为每当听到通货膨胀的消息时，很容易就想着借债。所以总结一下Lim在这里谈论的是，是的，你可以这样做，但你真的要小心你做得有多少。中间那些得到回报的人，他们是真正受益的。那些不负债的人会受到惩罚，而那些负债过多的人将破产。
Do you think, Lin, that, and I'm sort of like jumping here to talking about technology, you know, many, many of our listeners have been reading the Booth book, wonderful book, The Price of Tomorrow. And he talks about technology being deflationary.
林，你认为，我现在有点跳跃，想谈论一下技术，你知道的，我们的很多听众一直在阅读《明天的代价》这本绝妙的图书。作者谈到技术具有通货紧缩的特点。
And there are different voices out there with different takes on, you know, on most law, how deflationary can be. But I'm interested to hearing where you're coming from. Can technology be so deflationary that the Fed cannot print us to a specific inflation target and how would that play out?
然后，对于大部分法律问题，也存在不同的观点，如通缩的影响程度。但我很想知道你的看法。科技是否能够导致通缩，以至于美联储无法通过印钞来实现特定的通胀目标？这会带来什么后果呢？
Yeah, so I'm a big fan of Jeff. I actually work with him at Ego Death Capital, venture investing. So yeah, I get to see his kind of brilliant son of regular basis.
是的，我是Jeff的超级粉丝。实际上，我和他一起在Ego Death Capital从事风险投资工作。因此，我经常能够近距离目睹他那种出色的才华。
You know, with the short answer, I'd answer that is no, basically that because the central banks can print unlimited money, there is no deflation that they can't overcome. The key question is, what are the consequences for overcoming it?
你知道的，简单回答的话，我会说答案是否定的，基本上是因为央行可以无限制地印钞，所以没有通胀他们无法克服的问题。关键问题是，克服通胀会有什么后果？
And I actually, so back in 2019, when there was 18 trillion dollars worth of negative yielding debt in the world, and we were in kind of a multi-year period of disinflation, I wrote an article called, Are Bonds in a Bubble, or Is this the new normal?
事实上，在2019年时，全球存在价值18万亿美元的负收益债务，而我们当时正处于一种多年的通胀放缓时期。在那个时候，我写了一篇名为《债券是否处于泡沫期？还是这是新的常态？》的文章。
And of course, the conclusion of it was bonds are very likely in a bubble. And I made the case that, you know, equities were expensive looking, but not outrageously so, whereas bonds were like unfathomably expensive.
当然，最后的结论是债券极有可能处于泡沫之中。我提出了这样的观点，股票看起来是昂贵的，但并非过于离谱，而债券的价格则是难以理解的昂贵。
And we've had, you know, the worst three years in, you know, bond market history starting in like, you know, it took another year to kind of play out. We ran into the pandemic. And then the three years after that, just absolutely killed bonds.
我们经历了有史以来最糟糕的三年，从债券市场历史上来说，起初还需要一年的时间才能完全展现。我们遭遇了疫情爆发。然后在接下来的三年里，债券市场彻底被摧毁了。
And one of the cases I made there, because I was like, there was articles at the time, let me see if I can bring that article up actually. It's a really interesting case study.
其中一个案例是因为当时有一篇的文章，让我看看能不能找到那篇文章。这是一个非常有趣的案例研究。
So there was, I was kind of doing the thing where I was like fading headlines. Like there was a Bloomberg Business Week magazine, it's called Is Inflation Dead. And of course, you know, we had just long term of like lower, lower inflation, lower interest rates, and they were like, Is Inflation Dead?
所以，我当时正在看一些标题的渐渐消失。比如有一本彭博商业周刊，标题是《通胀已死》。当然，你知道在这长期以来我们一直经历着较低的通胀率和利率，他们问道：“通胀已死吗？”
And there's another, there was another article that I quoted, and it was like, Inflation is dead. We, you know, we solved inflation. It's no longer a problem. Macro deflationary forces are more powerful than single bank monetary forces. That was from a business, a business insider article. It did not age well. Yeah, did not age.
还有一篇文章，我引用了另一篇文章，内容大致是这样的：“通胀已经死亡。我们解决了通胀问题。宏观通缩力量比单一银行货币力量更强大。”这是来自一篇商业内幕文章。但现在看来，它的论断已经不再适用。是的，它已经过时了。
Another, another quote was that really is the headline here. Inflation no longer exists. Inflation has been solved. We solved it through our new inventions.
另一个引述的重点是通货膨胀已经不存在了。通货膨胀问题已经得到解决。我们通过我们的新发明来解决了它。
And I, so I quoted these and I was like, okay, like, you know, all of this is true. But then I used, I actually used the analogy of Superman, which is that if you, if you're familiar, Superman comics and stuff, he always holds back because he doesn't want to hurt people around him, but every once in a while, like some villain comes like Dark Side or Doomsday. He's got to just absolutely go all out and he just like changes the rules.
于是我引用了这些（观点），然后我就想，好吧，就像你知道的，所有这些都是真的。但后来我用了一个超人的类比来解释，就是如果你熟悉超人漫画之类的东西，他总是克制自己，因为他不想伤害身边的人，但偶尔会出现一些像黑暗神或毁灭日这样的恶棍。他只能全力以赴，而且在这样的情况下他会改变规则。
And I use that analogy. I said, Central Banks can literally just completely, you know, both the combination of Central Banks and governments can completely change the rules. And so I said, you know, so far, this is my quote, 2019. So far, Central Bank tools have not been inflationary because they have primarily been asset prices rather than middle class consumption.
我用这个类比来表达我的意思。我说，中央银行实际上可以完全改变规则，中央银行和政府的结合可以完全改变规则。所以我说，到目前为止，这是我在2019年说的，中央银行的工具并没有引发通货膨胀，因为它们主要是对资产价格的影响，而不是对中产阶级消费的影响。
They printed money, but kept the money on the Central Bank balance sheets by buying bonds. If Central Bank actions get more aggressive, combined with fiscal policies and start targeting the middle class, they have the power to override these various deflationary forces with sheer monetary expansion.
他们印制货币，但通过购买债券将资金保留在中央银行的资产负债表上。如果中央银行采取更积极的行动，并结合财政政策以及对中产阶级的针对性，他们就有能力通过纯粹的货币扩张来抵消这些不同的通缩压力。
They can issue helicopter money to pay off debts, boost inflation, build infrastructure, be allowed on funded pension systems, and prop up the middle class if that's what policymakers decide to do. I wouldn't want to be holding a 20 year or 30 year bond at super low fixed rate yields in that kind of environment. Negative yields would be even more vulnerable.
如果决策者决定这样做，他们可以发行直接向人民支付的“直升机钱”，用于偿还债务、提振通货膨胀、建设基础设施、资助养老金体系，并扶持中产阶级。在这样的环境中，我可不想持有利率极低的20年或30年期债券。负收益率甚至更加脆弱。
Sometimes Superman goes all out and every few decades, Central Banks do unusual things. And that was 2019. And I mean, I didn't know that we'd have a pandemic next year, but basically that step by step, that's exactly what they did. They just set out money to people monetized by the Central Bank, boosted middle class consumption, boosted inflation, boosted asset prices, and just completely over road the various disinflationary forces we have.
有时候超人会全力以赴，而每隔几十年，中央银行会做一些不寻常的事情。这就是2019年的情况。我的意思是，我不知道我们明年会有一场大流行病，但基本上，步步为营，这正是他们所做的。他们只是向人们注入中央银行货币化的资金，提振了中产阶级的消费，提高了通货膨胀，提高了资产价格，并完全摒弃了我们所面临的各种通货紧缩力量。
And so yeah, I do think that they, to the extent that they choose to, they can override demographic driven disinflation, technology driven disinflation, especially if it starts to challenge their fixed sovereign debt, and they start to actually run into cute solvents issues, they can literally just print the money.
所以，是的，我确实认为他们可以在一定程度上选择性地抵消人口结构引起的通缩和技术引起的通缩，特别是当这开始挑战它们的固定主权债务，并导致可爱的清偿问题时，他们可以直接印钞票。
And if anything, that type of disinflation gives them more cover to do that because it's harder for to manifest in real world inflation.
如果有什么变化的话，这种通缩现象会让他们更容易这样做，因为它在现实世界的通胀中更难以体现出来。
I think another factor we might see going forward is a bigger divergence between real world inflation and tech. So for example, AI can make so many things way cheaper, right? The cost of doing art, the cost of doing a video, the cost of writing code, the cost of analyzing something, the cost of editing, the cost of just XYZ across the board. So much things now are more productive, more disinflationary, cheaper to do. And a lot of that is in the informational world, the white collar world.
我认为我们未来可能会看到另一个因素，即实际通胀与技术之间的巨大分歧。比如说，人工智能可以使很多事情变得更便宜，对吗？做艺术的成本，制作视频的成本，编写代码的成本，分析某种东西的成本，编辑的成本，甚至所有事情的成本都能变得更低。现在许多事情都更加高效、降低了通货膨胀风险，更便宜容易实现。而其中很多都发生在信息世界，也就是白领世界。
Whereas if you try to find someone in the US to like fix your HVAC system or be a plumber or, you know, the cost right now or skyrocketing, the cost of people actually going out and doing stuff. And robotics are nowhere near the point where just like, you know, a car can just drive to your house automated, then a robot gets out and fixes your HVAC system and drives away again. Maybe one day we'll be there, but we're not there this decade. You know, even if we have self-driving cars around the margins, but imagine a robot that can just come fix your HVAC system, right? We're not there yet.
然而，如果你在美国想找人来修理你的暖气和空调系统，或找个管道工，你知道，目前的费用已经飞涨了，实际上让人出去干活的费用也是一样。而且机器人还远远没有达到那种程度，就像你知道的，一辆汽车可以自动驶向你的房子，然后一个机器人下车修理你的暖气和空调系统，然后再开走。也许未来有一天我们能实现这一点，但这个十年还没有到达那个阶段。即使我们周围有自动驾驶汽车，但想象一下一个机器人来修理你的暖气和空调系统，对吧？我们还没有那么先进。
So these kind of physical blue collar stuff is where I think some of the inflation is going to be more centered going forward. In addition, I think the energy side, you know, the tightness of the energy supply is still where inflation can come from later this decade. And so I think we can see a divergence where the cost of some things keeps trending towards zero, right? I mean, it used to be that taking pictures was somewhat expensive. Now it's basically free. That can continue eating into other things, you know, and like more things that are expensive now trend towards zero cost. Whereas real world stuff still has a substantial cost. And if especially money printing is used to override the deflationary forces from those other areas, it can jack up the prices of these more physical goods and services. And so that's where I think that the costs come when policymakers and central banks try to override the tech deflation and it manifests in the areas that are not being driven by by tech deflation.
所以我认为，未来一些通货膨胀更多集中在这些体力劳动的蓝领工作上。此外，我认为能源方面，你知道，能源供应的紧缺仍然是本十年后期可能引发通胀的原因。因此，我认为我们可以看到一种分化，其中一些东西的成本保持朝着零的方向发展，对吧？我的意思是，以前拍照是有一定费用的，现在基本上免费了。这可以继续侵蚀其他物品的价格，而一些现在昂贵的东西趋向于零成本。而实际世界的物品仍然有相当大的成本。尤其是如果货币的印制被用来抵消来自其他领域的通缩压力，它会提高这些更实物的商品和服务的价格。因此，这就是当决策者和中央银行试图抵消科技通缩时产生的成本，而这些成本在不受科技通缩推动的领域中显现。
It's so fascinating to speak to you about this. Then if we if we continue to be a bit more futuristic here, and talking about the decline influence of the US dollar on the global scene, and I'm not talking tomorrow and next week or next month, I'm more talking very like decades now. But who knows, would it be realistic for the world to shift to a more multi polar currency world that is not picked to a neutral reserve currency, but where each region is built up around a dominant currency?
和你讨论这个话题真是太有趣了。如果我们继续朝更加未来的方向思考，谈论美元在全球舞台上的影响力下降，我不是说明天、下周或下个月，我更多地是指几十年后。但谁知道呢，世界是否能实现向一个更加多极化的货币体系转变，这个体系不是以一个中立储备货币为核心，而是每个地区都围绕着一种主导货币建立起来？
Yeah, so a challenge is network effects. And one of the reasons why the dollar is so useful as a global reserve currency is because the capital markets are so deep. So once you get dollars, there's so many things you can do with a dollar. You can you can buy treasuries, you can buy SMB 500 or any of the stocks therein. There's an extensive private equity, there's a whole continent of dollars nominated real estate you could buy. There's just tens and tens of trillions of dollars worth of highly liquid assets you can buy with it that are all in one big regulatory scheme, currency scheme, very liquid and open capital markets.
是的，一个挑战是网络效应。美元作为全球储备货币之所以如此有用，原因之一就是资本市场非常深厚。所以一旦你获得了美元，你可以用美元做很多事情。你可以购买国债，购买标普500指数或其中任何一只股票。还有丰富的私募股权市场，整个大陆都有用美元命名的不动产可供购买。有数万亿美元价值的高度流动资产可供购买，它们都在一个庞大的监管方案和货币方案之下，非常流动和开放的资本市场。
The euro struggled more in that regard because even though you have a shared currency, you have different silos of capital markets. And so none of them are as liquid as US capital markets. Right. And so you're still siloed. In China, there's not a lot of foreign demand for Chinese equities or real state. And so it's like if you're running a surplus against China, let's say you're an oil producer, what do you do with that currency? Well, you can there's lots of things you can do in the near term, whether you can buy all the Chinese goods. You can go to Shanghai, gold exchange and convert it to gold if you want. There's plenty of things you can do, but just merely holding their currency and kind of reinvesting into Chinese capital assets is not a very attractive thing to do with it. And then the when you get outside of those three major currencies, it drops significantly. So if Brazil is trying to make their currency or regional currency, how many entities, if they're running a surplus against Brazil, want to hold a lot of that currency and then reinvest it into Brazilian capital markets.
欧元在这方面更加困难，因为虽然你们有共享的货币，但你们有不同的资本市场部门。因此，它们都没有美国资本市场那样具有流动性。对的，所以你们仍然是隔离的。在中国，对于中国的股票或房地产，外国需求并不多。所以，如果你对中国有盈余，比如说你是一个石油生产商，那么你该怎么处理这种货币呢？你可以在短期内做很多事情，比如购买所有的中国商品。你可以去上海黄金交易所，将货币兑换成黄金。你有很多选择，但仅仅持有他们的货币并且再投资到中国的资本资产并不是一个很有吸引力的选择。而且当你超出这三种主要货币时，这个选择就会显著降低。所以，如果巴西试图使他们的货币成为地区货币，如果对巴西有盈余的实体想要持有大量该货币并将其再投资到巴西资本市场，那有多少实体愿意这样做呢。
Right. And so that's the challenge with this. I think that over the long term, I mean, you could have maybe like two major currencies that really compete. Like you could have say the dollar system and the and the one Chinese one system, you know, you could you could potentially fracture that into into two. But it's really hard to have no neutral reserve asset at all. Usually, usually there's a network effect, Tennessee, that makes one dominant asset kind of the underlying one. And then even even as you have more multipolar world, like even as you have payment arrangements that don't use that reserve asset, you know, you you have China buy energy from Russia without using dollars or China by iron from Brazil without using dollars or India buying arms from Russia without using dollars. Right. There's there's there's I think we're going to see, we already are seeing, but I think we're going to continue to see de-dollarization of payment channels. We'll see more reserve accumulation, more reserve diversification. But there's still liquidity itself is a network effect. And so that's and we're already seeing this manifest. For example, India and Russia are on good trading terms. They were for a while and they still are because, you know, India needs commodities, Russia makes commodities, Russia also makes arms. And so, you know, they're and they don't share borders. So they're not really enemies in the way or like, you know, adversaries in the way that some other entities are. So they they've had a constructive trade relationship. The problem is when Russia runs a surplus against India, they accumulate all these rupees and they think, what do I want to do with these rupees? You know, don't want to there's only so much I want to reinvest into Indian capital markets. Right. And so they start saying, well, can you pay us in Chinese currency? You know, can you pay us in that they start to want to go up to stack to a higher network effect higher liquidity currency at a certain point. And so that's that's the kind of self reinforcing challenge of not having any reserve asset is that that the top few network effects really kind of start to dominate even as you can you can it's not necessarily one asset, but it's not a lot of assets is my point that only the most liquid capital market or or most liquid markets can really maintain that kind of global monetary status. Yeah. And I think that's important to distinguish between I was talking about what fiat currency dominance I were talking about. Do we measure it in payments? Do we look at the balance sheet of the central banks like you come up with different pictures depending on your methods here? But I want to sort of like in this segment of the episode to talk about different events around the world and perhaps start in Europe.
是的。所以这就是其中的挑战。我认为从长远来看，你可能会有两种主要货币真正竞争的情况。比如说你可能会有美元体系和中国人民币体系，你知道，你可能会将其分裂为两个体系。但是几乎没有中性的储备资产是非常困难的。通常情况下，有一个网络效应使得一种资产成为主导资产。即使你有更加多极化的世界，即使你有不使用储备资产的支付安排，你知道，中国可以不使用美元从俄罗斯购买能源，或者中国不使用美元从巴西购买铁矿石，或者印度不使用美元从俄罗斯购买武器。是的。我认为我们已经开始看到这种情况，并且我认为我们将继续看到支付渠道的去美元化、储备积累的增加以及更多的储备多样化。但是流动性本身就是一个网络效应。我们已经看到了这一点。例如，印度和俄罗斯之间的贸易关系良好。他们很长一段时间以来一直是这样，而且现在仍然是这样，因为印度需要大宗商品，而俄罗斯生产大宗商品，俄罗斯还制造武器。所以，你知道，他们之间没有接壤，所以他们并不是真正的敌人或者像其他实体那样的对手。因此，他们之间有着建设性的贸易关系。问题在于，当俄罗斯对印度形成盈余时，他们会积累大量印度卢比，然后他们开始思考，我应该用这些卢比做什么？我是否想要将其重新投资到印度资本市场中？是的。所以他们开始问，你是否可以用人民币支付给我们？你可以用...他们开始希望转向一个更高的网络效应和更高的流动性货币。所以这就是没有任何储备资产的自我强化挑战，即在顶级的几个网络效应开始主导的时候，甚至尽管不一定是一个资产，但最重要的是并不是有很多资产能够真正保持全球货币地位。是的，我认为重要的是要区分我谈论的是货币统治性，我在谈论的是以支付为基础进行测量还是以中央银行的资产负债表为基础进行测量，这取决于你的研究方法，你会得出不同的结果。但是在本节中，我想讨论世界各地的不同事件，也许从欧洲开始。
You know, the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, she recently said in the interview with the economist, and I'm going to quote here, if there's more trade in euros, we need to provide the liquidity supporting that trade. And international euro is a force for stability.
你知道的，欧洲央行行长克里斯蒂娜·拉加德最近在接受《经济学人》采访时说过一句话，我要引用一下：“如果欧元的贸易增多，我们需要提供支持该贸易的流动性。而国际化的欧元将成为稳定的力量。”
Now I found that quote interesting and not because you had a central banker who felt that her currency was really important. More people should use it. I think that's probably inherent in all central bankers to to think that way. But I do think it's interesting whenever you are taking these snapshots and whenever you're looking at say the different balance sheet of central banks around the world and how that has changed in the old decades and how it looks to change now, you also see more gold being accumulated now, for example.
我发现这句话很有趣，不仅仅是因为有一位央行行长认为自己的货币非常重要。更多的人应该使用它。我认为这可能是所有央行行长都具有的天性。但是当你拍摄这些快照并观察世界各国央行的资产负债表以及过去几十年的变化以及即将发生的变化时，你还会看到更多的金融储备正在被积累起来，比如最近。
But I think I wanted to talk about Europe here because to your earlier point, what is the role of the euro in the global scene? So I think, I mean, that's so far an example of how hard it is to to establish a new network effect. So it was a very optimistic time, 25 years ago, when the euro was kind of coming into existence and kind of on the on the uprise.
但是我认为我想在这里谈论欧洲，因为回到你之前说的，欧元在全球舞台上扮演了什么角色？所以我认为，这是一个非常艰难的示例，说明建立新的网络效应是多么困难。所以在25年前，欧元的建立和发展是一个非常乐观的时期。
In recent years, when we see some degree of reserve diversification, so we see a little bit China goes and almost no countries have reserves in it to maybe 5%, whatever, the dollar has been pretty flat. It's the euro that's been losing market share in the past few years. So for example, China has kind of been taking market share from Europe, you could say. And there's been a few reasons for that.
近年来，当我们看到一定程度的储备多样化时，我们会发现中国的储备比例增加了一点点，而其他国家的储备比例几乎没有变化，可能增加到5%，无论如何，美元的走势相对平稳。过去几年里，欧元的市场份额下降了，而中国却从欧洲那里获取了一部分市场份额。这其中有几个原因。
One is that going back to my prior point, the fractured capital markets make it hard for any entity running a big surplus against Europe to want to know what to do with those euros. So prior to the euro, German debt markets were highly liquid. And after the euro, German debt markets are still highly liquid. And so that's the one everybody wants. When you get into other ones, they suddenly get less attractive. There's a long tail of debt markets that are just not interesting to foreign investors.
有一点是，回到我之前的观点，市场资本的分散使得任何一个对欧洲拥有大量盈余的实体不知道该如何处理这些欧元。因此，在欧元出现之前，德国债市非常流动。而在欧元出现之后，德国债市仍然非常流动。所以这就是所有人都想要的。当涉及到其他债市时，它们突然变得不那么吸引人。有一长串的债市对外国投资者来说并不有趣。
And even the German debt market can't compete in scale with the US debt market, the size and liquidity there. And so it doesn't fundamentally solve the problem of fractured capital markets. And the major setback with Russia has also harmed the euro because one of the key benefits to the euro is it allows Europe to buy energy in their own currency. And for a while, that was working. And I mean, it still is.
即使德国债券市场也无法与美国债券市场相比，无论是在规模还是流动性方面。因此，它并没有从根本上解决资本市场分割的问题。而与俄罗斯的主要挫折也削弱了欧元的价值，因为欧元的一个关键好处是允许欧洲以自己的货币购买能源。而一段时间来这一机制一直在运作中。我是说，现在仍然有效。
But for a while, for example, if you looked at Russian natural gas and other commodities going to Europe, it was increasingly euro denominated. Over time, as that buildup for years and years and years, the dollar denominated trade was diminishing and the euro denominated was increasing. But now with the war, and then with the busted pipeline, and with the con, that whole trend is derailed. And so you're kind of starting from from square one again. And it's one of those, it's big enough currency where it's a serious contender to build up by energy in its own currency. So it's helping with that problem. But it's just it's not none of the network effects are making ground.
在一段时间内，比如说，如果你看俄罗斯的天然气和其他商品流向欧洲，它们越来越多地以欧元计价。随着多年来的积累，美元计价的贸易逐渐减少，欧元计价的贸易逐渐增加。但是现在随着战争，以及破裂的管道和船只的问题，整个趋势被打断了。所以你从某种程度上又回到了起点。欧元是一个足够大的货币，在自身货币中积累能源是一个严肃的竞争对手。所以这对解决这个问题有所帮助。但是目前没有任何网络效应取得进展。
And then now that Europe doesn't really have the energy security that it used to, we've seen, for example, German de-industrialization. So Germany's kind of been the economic powerhouse of Europe. And if you look at, if you're in any sort of energy intensive industry, if you make chemicals, if you manufacture stuff, a lot of that's been leaving Germany and going to places like China, because the energy costs are just not really competitive anymore. And just future risks of energy shortages, or what energy costs might be five, 10 years ago from now, if you're building a very long lived facility where you want kind of cheaper energy.
既然现在欧洲不再像从前那样能确保能源的安全，我们可以看到，比如德国正在脱工业化。所以德国一直以来一直是欧洲的经济强国。如果你看看任何耗能行业，比如化工生产或制造业，很多企业都离开德国前往中国等地，因为能源成本已经不再具备竞争力。还有未来能源短缺的风险，以及在建设非常长寿的设施时，你希望能够获得更廉价能源的问题也需要考虑。
And so overall, I think that we're seeing a diminishment of the euro on the global scale. It's not really if there's network effects and you're like in third place, it's just not a great position to be in. It's kind of what we're seeing as well as just internal policy issues that might kind of hamper that or just bad luck with things like their biggest natural gas provider going to war in Ukraine. Both external things that happen to them, internal energy policies, I would argue that they've taken missteps on. And then just the sheer challenge of trying to compete with leading network effects in money is just hard. So I'm not very optimistic on the euro's prospects for globalizing itself more than say the high watermark that it's already reached.
因此，总体而言，我认为欧元在全球范围内的地位正在减弱。如果你是排在第三位，并且没有网络效应的话，这不是一个很好的位置。我们正在看到的一种情况是，内部政策问题可能会阻碍欧元的发展，或者仅仅是因为一些不幸的事情，比如他们最大的天然气供应商卷入乌克兰战争。这些都是外部事态，而且我认为他们在内部能源政策上也犯了错误。此外，仅仅是尝试与货币网络效应领先者竞争的挑战就很困难。所以我对欧元在全球化方面的前景并不乐观，至多能达到已经达到的高水平。
So let's continue on a trip here and go to China. So you have renowned economist Richard Ku. He recently claimed that China is in a balance sheet recession. And he also claims that the solution is simple, because if households will not borrow and lend at low rates, then the government must. At least that's what he's saying. So fiscal deficits must offset the financial surpluses of the private sector until the balance sheet are fully repaired.
所以让我们继续这段旅程，前往中国吧。我们有着著名经济学家理查德·库。他最近声称中国正经历资产负债表衰退。他还表示解决办法很简单，因为如果家庭不再以低利率借贷，那么政府必须这样做。至少这是他的说法。因此，财政赤字必须抵消私人部门的财务盈余，直到资产负债表完全修复为止。
Now, perhaps we should take one step back before we discuss this and define what is a balance sheet recession. And I'm also curious to hear whether or not you agree with Ku's assessment.
现在，也许在我们讨论这个问题之前，我们应该退后一步，明确定义一下什么是资产负债表衰退。同时，我也很好奇听听您是否同意顾先生的评估。
Yeah, so balance sheet recession, basically it's kind of running the Japan model. And a lot of that actually does have to do with our prior discussion around debt restructuring. Whenever you see a multi like a very long trend of deleveraging of the private sector and a leveraging up of the sovereign sector, you're kind of going through that type of model.
是的，所谓的资产负债表衰退，基本上就是在执行日本模式。而这与我们之前关于债务重组的讨论确实有很大关联。每当你看到私人部门长期去杠杆化，而公共部门去杠杆化程度加大时，你就会经历这种类型的模式。
Right. So I do think that in some sense, China is going to go through what Japan did in the sense that China is known for their very high housing leverage. That's been a big issue for them in recent years as it's kind of deflated that bubble to some extent. They've historically not had much sovereign debt, but now they're they are inching up over time in terms of their sovereign debt levels. And so we are, I think, going to see a gradual transfer from private sector debt, household debt, corporate debt, regional government debt, like province debt up to more of the sovereign level. But I think it takes time. And so far, China is currently running kind of the opposite playbook of the US. The US is currently running very loose fiscal policy. They see very, very huge deficits and then pretty tight monetary policy to try to offset that. Whereas China is currently running pretty tight fiscal policy. They don't really have very large deficits. They've been very reticent. They've not been aggressively trying to do this transfer up to the sovereign level. They've been very hesitant to do that.
好的。所以我认为，在某种程度上，中国将经历类似日本的情况，因为中国以高杠杆率的住房市场而闻名。近年来，这一问题对他们来说是一个重大问题，因为它在某种程度上导致了房地产泡沫的破灭。历史上，他们几乎没有主权债务，但现在他们的主权债务水平正在逐渐上升。因此，我认为我们将会看到从私人部门债务、家庭债务、企业债务、地方政府债务（如省份债务）逐渐转移到更高的主权层面。但我认为这需要时间。到目前为止，中国目前正在运行与美国完全相反的政策。美国目前采取非常宽松的财政政策，出现巨额赤字，然后通过较为紧缩的货币政策来抵消。而中国目前采取的是相对紧缩的财政政策。他们并没有很大的赤字。他们一直很犹豫，不敢积极地进行这种转移至主权层面的努力。
That's why I think it's going to be a very gradual process. And because of how centralized China is and because of the culture itself, they generally have a higher tolerance for economic pain, I would argue, then say the West. And whether that's a good thing or bad thing is, I'll let the listener decide. But basically they can go through longer periods of deleveraging and stagnation. It seems like then many other countries.
这就是为什么我认为这将是一个非常渐进的过程。由于中国高度集中的特点以及文化自身的影响，相比之下，他们普遍对经济痛苦都有较高的容忍度，我认为。这是好事还是坏事，我会让听众自行决定。但基本上，他们能够经历更长时间的去杠杆化和停滞。似乎比其他许多国家更能承受。
We're also seeing a big divergence there between the export sector and the consumption sector. So their export sector is still firing on all cylinders. I mean, they've just it's just been a straight lineup in terms of exports. And specifically, they're also moving up the value stack. And so just in the last three and a half years, they've had like a hockey stick growth in their full auto exports. And we don't really see I don't know about Europe, but we don't really see it in the United States. No one drives Chinese cars. But if you go to Egypt, for example, as big big percentage of Chinese cars in the road, basically all of the emerging markets are their other primary target.
我们还在这里看到出口部门和消费部门之间存在很大的分歧。所以他们的出口行业仍然保持全速运转。我的意思是，就出口方面来说，他们一直都在稳步增长。而且特别是，他们也正在提升产品的附加值。在过去的三年半里，他们的整车出口产值增长迅猛，就像曲棍球杆一样。在美国我们看不到这种情况，我不知道欧洲怎么样，但是没有人开中国车。但是如果你去埃及，例如，你会看到道路上有很大比例的中国车，基本上所有新兴市场都是他们的主要目标。
So China is now the biggest auto exporter in the world. They've actually surpassed Japan. And this all happened in three years. They also just now they have their own airline like air, I mean, a air aircraft producer, commercial aircraft producer. So the COMAC is now up there, potentially with Brazil's and Brere and probably has the opportunity to surpass that and kind of rival airbussing Boeing as kind of a leading commercial aircraft producer. That's been a long time in the making. And it's still early stage for that. They're further behind that adoption curve than their cars, which really kind of taken off in recent years.
中国现在是全球最大的汽车出口国。他们实际上已经超过了日本。而且这一切都在三年内实现了。他们现在还有自己的航空公司，像空中客车一样，也是一个商用飞机制造商。所以中国商用飞机公司(COMAC)现在可能与巴西的埃姆布拉航空公司(Brere)并驾齐驱，并有可能超越它，成为领先的商用飞机制造商，与空客和波音竞争。这样的成就历经了漫长的时间。而对于商用飞机业务，他们还处于早期阶段。相比之下，他们的汽车产业近年来真正腾飞，两者发展进度有差距。
But where I'm going with this is that their export sector is still just absolutely on fire as the as the kind of the manufacturing hub of the world. And where they are going through something like a balance sheet recession is their domestic consumption economy. So they're household deleveraging their internal use of commodities, their internal construction, their internal kind of retail sales and things like that. All of that is pretty stagnant at the current time because China's leadership is trying to deleverage it and without the fiscal looseness that we've seen in the West.
但我要表达的是，他们的出口部门仍然非常火热，作为世界制造业中心。而他们正经历着类似于资产负债表紧缩的国内消费经济。所以他们正在削减家庭负债，减少内部对商品、内部建筑和内部零售等的使用。目前，所有这些都相当停滞，因为中国的领导层试图减轻杠杆，而且没有西方国家所看到的财政宽松政策。
And I think that this is it has global implications because it affects China's internal commodity consumption. It affects the success of Chinese equities, for example. And I think that this is a transition that they are going through for probably quite a while. We could see some nonlinear moves in the future. Right now, they're sticking pretty to if you look at their money supply growth is pretty consistent. If you look at their fiscal deficits are pretty low, we are seeing a very gradual shift from private sector debt because that's mildly deleveraging as the sovereign model levers up. We are seeing that shift.
我认为这对全球有重大影响，因为它影响了中国内部商品消费。例如，它对中国股票市场的成功有影响。我认为这是他们正在经历的一个转变，可能会持续相当长的时间。未来我们可能会看到一些非线性的变化。目前，他们的货币供应增长相当稳定。如果你看一下他们的财政赤字，也相当低。我们正在观察一个从私营部门债务向主权模型杠杆加大的渐进性转变，因此私营部门正在稍微减杠杆。我们正在看到这个转变。
Now, if you do get a change in the public's perception of it, you could have a more stepwise change in terms of larger fiscal impulse. A good example of this is that they did their multi-year zero-covid policy, kind of some of the tightest lockdowns in the world, even beyond some of the initial points. So, for example, in like 2020, they were still heavily locking down. And eventually started to protest there that were some of the biggest protests in decades. It was not just one city. It was like, protests are breaking out in multiple cities. It was increasing dissatisfaction with how their leadership was handling this. And so, you saw a pretty quick pivot at one point where they finally decided, okay, we're ripping the bandit off. We're going to change our policy. And that was one of those things where it was tied to some extent to national identity. One of their arguments was, our system is better than the West because, look, we can handle a pandemic better than they can. But increasing, that was not the case. And so, they ran that policy for longer than most other countries. But even then, they couldn't do it indefinitely. And the people just kind of revolted and they had a change course, kind of social harmony. If it starts to get out of hand, it could force a pivot. And you could eventually see that in the deleveraging. If the economy stagnates for too long, or they do encounter too deep of a recession, you go back to my prior point, like my 2019 piece about bond bubble and printing, you could have an absolute massive kind of stimulus outside of coming out of China at any point where they feel that it's a risk not to do that. If the public is just kind of increasingly frustrated with the economic prospects, you could see that type of pivot. But until we do, the base case, I think, is just more gradual shift from China's sovereign level is probably going to keep levering up. And their private sector is probably going to be stagnant for a while. They're domestic private sector. And then they're exports are expecting to be very strong.
如果公众对此的看法发生改变，你可能会看到更大的财政刺激逐步改变。一个很好的例子是，他们采取了多年的“零新冠政策”，实施了一些世界上最严格的封锁措施，甚至超出了最初的预期。例如，在2020年，他们仍然在大规模封锁。最终，各地开始出现抗议活动，这些抗议活动是几十年来最大规模的。不仅仅是一个城市，而是多个城市的抗议活动。人们对他们的领导层处理此事的不满逐渐增加。然后，你会看到他们在某一时刻迅速改变了政策。这与某种程度上的民族认同有关。他们的论点之一是，我们的体制比西方国家更好，因为看，我们能更好地应对疫情。然而，情况不断恶化。虽然他们比大多数其他国家实行了更长时间的政策，但最终也无法持续下去。人们开始反抗，他们不得不转变政策以维持社会和谐。如果情况失控，可能会迫使他们改变方向。这也可能看到资产减值。如果经济长期停滞，或者遭遇太深的衰退，如我2019年关于债券泡沫和印钞的文章所述，中国可能会在任何时候采取大规模的刺激措施以减少风险。如果公众对经济前景越来越不满，可能会出现这种改变。但在此之前，我认为最有可能的情况是中国的主权层面会继续加杠杆，他们的私营部门可能会停滞一段时间。同时，他们的出口预计将非常强劲。
Let's continue on this trip around the world and go to Argentina. And now I think that from a currency perspective, at least if you were a nerd like me, this is perhaps the most interesting country right now. The latest number I found was 113% inflation rate. I think that's also heavily debated what it truly is. And I think it probably depends on who you're asking. And at the time of recording, we don't know who will be the next president of Argentina. We probably will know whenever this episode goes out. But I wanted to talk a bit about one of the candidates. There's a runoff now. I'll have to add my media. My Spanish is terrible. So I do apologize. I probably put you that name. But you can say a lot of things about him. But boring is probably not the word you want to use. Among his many proposals, one headline that called the financial media attention has been to authorize the Argentina economy. And the proposal is, of course, controversial, but it's probably not as far fetched as it might appear from the outside. Many other teams already use dollars today. And authorization of your economy has a president. One example could be a quadole that had to be a dollarized back in 2000. And at least in the short term, that reined in inflation. So I guess my question to you, Lyn, is not whether or not Argentina should dollarize its economy. But rather, what would be the implications if they decided to do that? And what would the implication be if they decide not to?
让我们继续这次环游世界的旅程，前往阿根廷吧。从货币角度来看，至少对于像我这样的书呆子来说，现在阿根廷或许是最有趣的国家。我找到的最新数据显示，通胀率达到了113%。我认为对于真实的通胀数据还存在很大争议，这也可能取决于你问的是谁。在录制本节目时，我们不知道阿根廷的下一任总统是谁。或许等到这一集发布时我们就会知道了。但我想稍微谈谈其中一位候选人。现在正在进行决选。我得给我的西班牙语点个赞，太糟糕了。对不起，可能会错误发音那个名字。但你可以说他很多事情。但无聊可能不是你想用的词。在他的许多提案中，有一个标题引起了金融媒体的关注，那就是批准阿根廷实行美元化经济。当然，这个提案具有争议，但从外部看来并不是那么不切实际。其他许多团队今天已经在使用美元。而且以实行经济美元化的总统为例，就有一个案例是在2000年实行美元化的厄瓜多尔。至少在短期内，这一举措抑制了通胀。所以，我的问题是，琳恩，我不是问阿根廷是否应该实施经济美元化，而是，如果他们决定这样做，会有什么影响？如果他们决定不这样做，会有什么影响？
So yeah, it's a good question. And when you have an untenable situation, eventually you do get more polarizing figures come up. People kind of hit their breaking points and start to say, you know what, I want to kind of throw a hand grenade into the situation and mix things up. I'd argue that the Brexit vote was a similar direction. The election of Trump was a similar direction. We kind of eventually just like, you know what, I'm going to throw the dice on this kind of outcome because clearly the current just incremental trend is just not working.
是的，这是一个很好的问题。当你面临一个无法持续的局面时，最终会出现更具极端倾向的人物。人们达到自己的极限，开始说，你知道吗，我想正面冲击这种局面，让事情变得混乱起来。我认为英国脱欧公投就是一个类似的方向。特朗普当选也是一个类似的方向。我们最终会说，你知道吗，我要为这种结果掷骰子，因为显然当前的渐进趋势行不通了。
And so that's kind of, I think, what we're seeing manifest in Argentina. And again, I don't know what the election outcome is going to be. But in general, when a country's own ledger becomes so destabilized, it kind of gets forcibly dollarized. It basically becomes increasing untenable for that country to offer a currency. But you know, people, the inflation so high, it becomes so unusable that the people themselves just increasingly refuse to hold the currency and they hold other currencies. And so that currency either hyperinflates or nearly so. And they can persist in that period for a long period of time, but they're kind of fooling themselves.
所以，我认为这在阿根廷得到了体现。再说一次，我不知道选举结果是什么。但总体来说，当一个国家的财务状况变得如此不稳定时，它就会被迫进行美元化。它基本上变得越来越难以提供本国货币。但你知道，通货膨胀太高，变得难以使用，人们就会越来越拒绝持有本国货币，而持有其他货币。所以这种货币要么超级通胀，要么接近超级通胀。它们可以在这段时间内持续存在很长一段时间，但他们实际上是在自欺欺人。
And so one of the things that they can do is say, okay, we're just going to use, you know, the dollar as our currency. And so it's basically an admission that they're just not capable at the current time, the current political infrastructure of running their own currency. And that it, you know, when you have constant double digit inflation, or in our tinnest case, triple digit inflation, it's very hard to run an economy because currencies and accounting system. And it's impossible to make long-term contracts, business to business or business to consumer or it's just, there's so much overhead that you extra administrative overhead you have to do with because constantly renegotiating prices and constantly having shorter term contracts that have to get updated on a regular basis. And it becomes so untenable. And eventually those costs outweigh the government's own desire to have their own currency.
因此，他们可以做的一件事是，好吧，我们只使用美元作为我们的货币。这基本上是承认他们目前无法自己管理自己的货币，因为他们的政治基础设施。当你面临持续两位数甚至三位数的通货膨胀时，要经营一个经济非常困难，因为货币和会计系统。这就不可能进行长期契约，无论是企业之间的契约还是企业与消费者之间的契约，因为你不断地需要重新协商价格，并且需要经常更新合同。这种情况是如此不可行。最终，这些成本将超过政府渴望拥有自己货币的愿望。
And so eventually they say, you know what, we're just basically forced to dollarize. And so there has been a decent track record of countries that dollarize. You know, right now, a Salvador, for example, they've been dollarized for a while, you know, they're doing pretty well in Latin America. The number of countries that once they kind of rip the bandit off and try to have a firmer, you know, they kind of let go control the money system that they're able to stabilize and start building a base in there because people are actually able to make economic calculations again. Now, what would make this one kind of unique is the sense that you know, it'd be I think the biggest country to do it. You know, usually dollarization happens to lower population countries just, you know, Argentina's size and even their former wealth. It basically would be pretty remarkable for a country like Argentina to dollarize. And it's one of those things where if too many countries do it, you actually get a really big imbalance. It becomes like, you know, if too many countries are using the dollar as their currency, that actually starts causing major balances in the global system. So it's not really an answer for every country, but it's an answer for a lot of countries potentially in the intermediate term.
因此，他们最终说，你知道吗，我们基本上是被迫使用美元作为货币。所以，有一些国家采用了美元化的方式，取得了不错的成绩。例如，萨尔瓦多已经美元化了一段时间，在拉丁美洲表现得相当不错。一旦一些国家不再控制货币系统，允许经济计算的重新实施，它们能够稳定下来并开始建立基础。然而，这个国家的情况可能会有些独特，因为它可能是最大的美元化国家。通常，美元化发生在人口较少的国家，比如阿根廷这样的国家，即使是以前富裕的国家。对于像阿根廷这样的国家来说，美元化将是非常了不起的。如果太多的国家采取这种方式，实际上会导致全球体系出现严重不平衡。因此，美元化并不是对每个国家都适用的解决方案，但对许多国家来说，在中期内可能是一个答案。
And this goes back to my prior point of basically all the gates are down now. So with things like stablecoins anyway, you can just completely go around the former controls. So Argentina used to be able to keep out dollars or minimize the inflow of dollars. Whereas over time, technology makes it hard and harder. Their financial borders are more and more porous to dollars to Bitcoin to whatever current, whatever market currency is winning. They're far more porous to it. And so I think we're actually probably going to see an acceleration of this type of thing where the long tail of the weakest currencies is going to be increasing hard for them to maintain a currency because the options that people have are so much better.
这与我之前的观点有关，基本上现在所有的门槛都已经消失了。所以无论是稳定币等，你都可以完全绕过以前的控制。过去阿根廷可以阻止美元流入或减少美元流入。然而，随着时间的推移，技术使之变得越来越困难。他们的金融边界对美元、比特币或任何当前流行的市场货币变得越来越透明。他们对此越来越敞开。因此，我认为我们可能会看到这种趋势加速发展，即弱势货币的尾部将越来越难以维持，因为人们有更好的选择。
And I think the big downside risk is it can cause major changes in policy. And so for example, Argentina has a lot of fiscal support for the poor that's out just done with printed money. And the challenge is that it harbs the poor at the same time as it helps the poor, right? It's saying, okay, you're constantly getting diluted. It's impossible for you to save, especially because the poor have trouble accessing dollars and investments in credit and things like that.
我认为最大的下行风险是它可能导致政策的重大变化。例如，阿根廷大量的财政支持穷人是通过印钞实现的。挑战在于，它在帮助穷人的同时也抑制了穷人的发展，对吧？也就是说，不断地贬值让你无法存钱，尤其是因为穷人难以获取美元和进行信贷和投资等方面的机会。
So they're actually suffering the most from inflation. But they're also getting a constant stream of new money to go out and buy their groceries with and things like that. And if that gets kind of shut off, especially abruptly, you could get protests, you could get breakdowns of social cohesion. So these are not often pleasant transitions, even if they might, you know, it's kind of like how if you rip a bandit off, it hurts. If you if you put medicine on a wounded hurts, but it's important for long term healing of the problem. And I think that's the way to think about this. And so it's just kind of remarkable to see a country like Argentina going through it. And I think that's partially testament to these technologies that just make it hard and harder for borderline currencies to be able to sustain themselves.
所以，实际上，他们是通货膨胀中受到最大苦难的人。但他们也得到持续的新货币流入，以便购买日常用品等。如果这种流入突然被切断，特别是突然，就可能引发抗议活动，破坏社会凝聚力。所以，即使可能会造成不愉快的转变，但这对长期解决问题是重要的，就像撕下创可贴会疼痛一样，往伤口上涂抹药物也会疼痛，但这对问题的长期康复至关重要。我认为这是思考这个问题的方式。因此，看到阿根廷这样一个国家正在经历这种情况，真是令人印象深刻。我认为这在某种程度上证明了这些技术，这些技术让边缘货币越来越难以维持自身。
Yeah, I think on that note, Lane, it's important whenever you discuss something like should you dollar rise and not to say yes or no, but say this is what happens if you do X and this is what happens whenever you see and sort of like depends on what you want the outcome to be. It's very complex. And I can't help myself but say one decision that is not complex is the decision to buy. Your wonderful book, Broken Money.
是的，我认为Lane，在讨论类似于美元是否应该升值时，重要的是不要简单回答是或否，而是说如果你做X会发生什么，如果你看到Y会发生什么，还要看你想要的结果是什么。这非常复杂。我忍不住要说一件不复杂的决定就是购买你的精彩之作《破碎的货币》。
But before we end the interview, Lane, I wanted to hear how is the public received Broken Money? I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one who is who's a big fan of the book. So far, it's been very positive. You know, the ratings on Amazon and Goodreads are both better than I expected. I like the diverse kind of people from all multiple different countries are buying it. So it's like, it's cool to see all the different, just all the different markets that it sells to, all the translation requests are currently working to get it translated into other languages for people, which is always kind of rewarding to see.
在结束采访之前，莱恩，我想听听《断裂的金钱》受到了公众的反响如何？我相信不仅我一个人是这本书的大粉丝。到目前为止，反响非常好。你知道，亚马逊和Goodreads上的评分都比我预期的要好。我喜欢来自不同国家的各种各样的人购买这本书。所以，看到它销售到不同的市场，并且正在努力将其翻译成其他语言以供他人阅读，这是一件非常令人满意的事情。
And then there's like the academic interest in the book. And so for example, you know, there's some professors that are planning on using it as part of their class on money or inviting me to give guest lectures about the book or to give talks about the book at universities. And so it's been a very rewarding experience. And you know, and I've said this from the beginning that nobody should really write a book for the money side because it's not it's not generally a very economical thing to do with your time, especially if you if you work in investments or you work in other, you know, kind of profitable industries, a book is generally not the best hourly rate of your time at all.
然后还有对这本书的学术兴趣。例如，有一些教授计划将其作为财务课程的一部分，或邀请我作为讲师来讨论该书，或在大学做关于该书的演讲。因此，这是一次非常有价值的经历。我一直认为，没有人应该为了赚钱而写书，因为从经济角度来看，写书通常不是一件很划算的事情，特别是如果你从事投资或其他盈利行业，写书通常不是你用时间的最佳价值。
Instead, it's, it's, if you have a set of ideas that that you're, it's like distracting a few not to write the book, like you have a calling to write the book. If it be hard if you not to write the book, then to write the book is when you should write the book. And because I did it like that, it kind of came out of the heart. And the intangible benefits of having a book out there are are very constructive. And so it's so far, it's just, it's been very humbling to see the responses to it. And I've just been very happy that it's it's out there and that people are able to enjoy it as much as they do.
相反，如果你有一套观点，如果你发现写书比分散注意力更难，就像写书是你的使命一样，那么写书的时候将是你应该写书的时候。正是因为这样，它从心底产生。发表一本书所带来的无形好处是非常有建设性的。到目前为止，看到它引起的反响令人非常谦卑。我非常高兴它已经问世，人们能像他们一样享受它。
You know, I can most certainly say and I probably said it 10 times I read, but I've got to say yet another time this is a wonderful, wonderful book and I encourage everyone tuning in to grab the book whenever they can, gift it to friends and family as well, which I have too. But you also have a wonderful blog. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to, to give a handoff to that, Allan.
你知道的，我可以非常肯定地说，我可能已经说过十次了，但我必须再次说一遍，这本书真是太棒了，我鼓励所有在听的人尽早购买这本书，也可以把它送给朋友和家人，我也这么做了。不过你也有一个很棒的博客。我只是想给你一个机会，向Alan介绍一下。
Yeah, so LaneAlden.com. I have public articles, public newsletters, and low-cost research for people, including macro equities, digital assets, you know, kind of covering a pretty broad thing. So people can check that out if they want my ongoing thoughts.
是的，我有一个网站LaneAlden.com。在那里我发布一些公开的文章、通讯，还有一些价格低廉的研究报告，其中包括宏观股票和数字资产等内容，几乎覆盖了广泛的领域。所以如果有人想知道我的最新想法，可以去那里查看。
Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me again here on the show, then. It's always a pleasure chatting. Thank you for having me again. Always happy to be here. Even though the book covers a very long span of history and then into the future, the emphasis is on the present. So it's not just an academic book that says, okay, here's the layout of history. It says, we have a current problem and how did we get to that problem? And then how could we potentially fix that problem? And then of course, it defines the problem and goes into details around the problem. And the way I would describe it, essentially, is that money is broken in a global scale.
太棒了，太棒了。非常感谢您抽出时间再次在节目中与我交谈。一直很高兴能和您聊天。再次感谢您邀请我。我总是乐意来这里。即使这本书涵盖了很长一段历史，甚至进入了未来，但重点是现在。因此，它不仅仅是一本学术书籍，介绍了历史的布局。它说的是，我们现在面临一个问题，我们是如何陷入这个问题的？然后我们如何潜在地解决这个问题？当然，它定义了这个问题，并详细讨论了问题的各个方面。我将其描述为全球范围内的金钱系统出现了问题。