MEIF理財部落格

December 29, 2015
The Big Short's Michael Burry Warns "The Little Guy Will Pay" For The Next Crisis
We are sure, just as many of the so-called "smartest men in the room" ignored him last time, so every status-quo-maintaining, asset-gathering, commission-taker will be quick to dissonantly shrug off Michael Burry's (the economic soothsayer from Michael Lewis' book "The Big Short") warnings this time.

As NYMag.com reports, in an email, which readers of the book will recognize as his preferred method of communication, the real-life head of Scion Asset Management answered some of questions about the state of the financial system, his ominous-sounding water trade, and what, if anything, we can feel hopeful about...

The movie portrays all of you as kind of swashbuckling heroes in some ways, but McKay suggested to me that you were very troubled by what happened. Is that the case?

I felt I was watching a plane crash. I actually had that dream again and again. I knew what was happening, but there was nothing I, or anyone else, could do to stop it. The last day of 2007, I couldn’t come home. I was in the office till late at night, I couldn’t calm down. I wrote my wife an email and just said, "I can’t come home; it’s just too upsetting what’s happening, and I didn’t want to come home to my kids like this." As for punishment of those responsible, borrowers were punished for their overindulgences — they lost homes and lives. Let’s not forget that. But the executives at the lenders simply got rich. Were you surprised no one went to jail?

I am shocked that executives at some of the worst lenders were not punished for what they did. But this is the nature of these things. The ones running the machine did not get punished after the dot-com bubble either — all those VCs and dot-com executives still live in their mansions lining the 280 corridor on the San Francisco peninsula. The little guy will pay for it — the small investor, the borrower. Which is why the little guy needs to be warned to be more diligent and to be more suspicious of society’s sanctioned suits offering free money. It will always be seductive, but that’s the devil that wants your soul. When I spoke to some of the other real-life characters from The Big Short, I was surprised to hear that they thought that financial reform was pretty effective and that the system was much safer. Michael Lewis disagreed. In your opinion, did the crash result in any positive changes?

Unfortunately, not many that I can see. The biggest hope I had was that we would enter a new era of personal responsibility. Instead, we doubled down on blaming others, and this is long-term tragic. Too, the crisis, incredibly, made the biggest banks bigger. And it made the Federal Reserve, an unelected body, even more powerful and therefore more relevant. The major reform legislation, Dodd-Frank, was named after two guys bought and sold by special interests, and one of them should be shouldering a good amount of blame for the crisis. Banks were forced, by the government, to save some of the worst lenders in the housing bubble, then the government turned around and pilloried the banks for the crimes of the companies they were forced to acquire. The zero interest-rate policy broke the social contract for generations of hardworking Americans who saved for retirement, only to find their savings are not nearly enough. And the interest the Federal Reserve pays on the excess reserves of lending institutions broke the money multiplier and handcuffed lending to small and midsized enterprises, where the majority of job creation and upward mobility in wages occurs. Government policies and regulations in the postcrisis era have aided the hollowing-out of middle America far more than anything the private sector has done. These changes even expanded the wealth gap by making asset owners richer at the expense of renters. Maybe there are some positive changes in there, but it seems I fail to see beyond the absurdity. How do you think all of this affected people's perception of the System, in general?

The postcrisis perception, at least in the media, appears to be one of Americans being held down by Wall Street, by big companies in the private sector, and by the wealthy. Capitalism is on trial. I see it a little differently. If a lender offers me free money, I do not have to take it. And if I take it, I better understand all the terms, because there is no such thing as free money. That is just basic personal responsibility and common sense. The enablers for this crisis were varied, and it starts not with the bank but with decisions by individuals to borrow to finance a better life, and that is one very loaded decision. This crisis was such a bona fide 100-year flood that the entire world is still trying to dig out of the mud seven years later. Yet so few took responsibility for having any part in it, and the reason is simple: All these people found others to blame, and to that extent, an unhelpful narrative was created. Whether it’s the one percent or hedge funds or Wall Street, I do not think society is well served by failing to encourage every last American to look within. This crisis truly took a village, and most of the villagers themselves are not without some personal responsibility for the circumstances in which they found themselves. We should be teaching our kids to be better citizens through personal responsibility, not by the example of blame. Where do we stand now, economically?

Well, we are right back at it: trying to stimulate growth through easy money. It hasn’t worked, but it’s the only tool the Fed’s got. Meanwhile, the Fed’s policies widen the wealth gap, which feeds political extremism, forcing gridlock in Washington. It seems the world is headed toward negative real interest rates on a global scale. This is toxic. Interest rates are used to price risk, and so in the current environment, the risk-pricing mechanism is broken. That is not healthy for an economy. We are building up terrific stresses in the system, and any fault lines there will certainly harm the outlook.

What makes you most nervous about the future? Debt. The idea that growth will remedy our debts is so addictive for politicians, but the citizens end up paying the price. The public sector has really stepped up as a consumer of debt. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is leveraged 77:1. Like I said, the absurdity, it just befuddles me. The last line of the movie, printed on a placard, is “Michael Burry is focusing all of his trading on one commodity: Water.” It sounds very ominous. Can you describe this position to me?

Fundamentally, I started looking at investments in water about 15 years ago. Fresh, clean water cannot be taken for granted. And it is not — water is political, and litigious. Transporting water is impractical for both political and physical reasons, so buying up water rights did not make a lot of sense to me, unless I was pursuing a greater fool theory of investment — which was not my intention. What became clear to me is that food is the way to invest in water. That is, grow food in water-rich areas and transport it for sale in water-poor areas. This is the method for redistributing water that is least contentious, and ultimately it can be profitable, which will ensure that this redistribution is sustainable. A bottle of wine takes over 400 bottles of water to produce — the water embedded in food is what I found interesting. What, if anything, makes you hopeful about the future?

Innovation, especially in America, is continuing at a breakneck pace, even in areas facing substantial political or regulatory headwinds. The advances in health care in particular are breathtaking — so many selfless souls are working to advance science, and this is heartening. Long-term, this is good for humans in general. Americans have so much natural entrepreneurial drive. The caveat is that it is technology that should be a tool making lives better in the real world, and in line with the American spirit of getting better and better at something, whether it’s curing cancer or creating a better taxi service. I am less impressed with the market values assigned to technology that enhances distraction. We don’t want Orwell’s world, but we don’t want Huxley’s world either. * * *

His prescient warning from many years ago remains just as crucial (perhaps even more so)...

"In this age of infinite distraction... when the entitled elect themselves, the party accelerates, and the brutal hangover is inevitable."

Michael Burry is founder of the Scion Capital LLC hedge fund, which he ran from 2000 until 2008, when he closed the fund to focus on his own personal investments. Author Michael Lewis profiled him in his 2010 book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.

2015年12月29日
電影大賣空的Michael Burry警告“小傢伙買單”，為下一場危機
我們相信，正如許多的所謂“最聰明的人在房間裡”不理他最後一次，所以每一個維持現狀，維護，資產收集，佣金接受者會很快dissonantly擺脫邁克爾·巴里的（中經濟預言家，從邁克爾·劉易斯的書“大空頭”）警告這個時候。

作為NYMag.com報導，在一封電子郵件中，這本書的讀者會發現，他喜歡的溝通方式，接穗資產管理的現實生活中的頭回答了一些關於金融系統的狀態問題，他的不祥的冠冕堂皇的水貿易，什麼，如果有的話，我們可以感受到充滿希望......

電影描繪的是你，那種在某些方面虛張聲勢的英雄，但麥凱建議我說，你感到非常鼓舞發生了什麼事困擾。是這樣嗎？

我覺得我在看一場空難。其實，我一次又一次地做過那樣的夢。我知道發生了什麼事，但有沒有我，還是其他人，可以做些什麼來阻止它。 2007年的最後一天，我不能回家。我在辦公室，直到深夜，我無法平靜下來。我寫了我的妻子一封電子郵件，只是說，“我不能回家;它只是太擾亂發生的事情，我不想回家給我的孩子們喜歡這個”至於肇事者的處罰，借款人懲罰他們overindulgences - 他們失去了家園和生命。讓我們不要忘記這一點。但高管的貸款人簡直是豐富的。是你驚訝沒有人進了監獄？

我震驚的是，高管們一些最嚴重的貸款人並沒有懲罰他們做了什麼。但是，這是這些東西的性質。所有這些風險投資和網絡公司的高管仍然生活在自己的豪宅裡料280走廊舊金山半島 - 運行的機器的那些沒有拿到互聯網泡沫破滅後，要么受到懲罰。小傢伙會為它付出 - 小投資者，借款人。這就是為什麼小傢伙需要被提醒要更加勤奮，更加懷疑社會的認可套裝提供免費的錢。這將永遠是誘人的，但是這是要你的靈魂的魔鬼。當我跟一些比較大的短路等真實生活中的人物，我很驚訝地聽到，他們認為金融改革是非常有效的，該系統更安全。邁克爾·劉易斯不同意。在您看來，沒有崩潰導致任何積極的變化？

不幸的是，沒有多少，我可以看到。最大的希望我是，我們將進入個人責任的新時代。相反，我們加大了投入在指責別人，這是長期的悲劇。太多的危機，令人難以置信，做出最大的銀行更大。而且它使美聯儲，非民選的身體，更強大，因此更有意義。主要改革立法，多德 - 弗蘭克，被命名後，兩個人購買和銷售的特殊利益，其中一人應肩負的怪一個良好的金額為危機。銀行被迫由政府，以節省一些最嚴重的貸款人的房產泡沫，那麼政府轉頭嘲笑的銀行，他們被迫收購企業的罪行。零利率政策打破了社會契約世世代代勤勞的美國人誰救了退休，才發現自己的儲蓄是遠遠不夠的。而在超額放貸機構的準備金美聯儲支付的利息打破了貨幣乘數，並戴上手銬貸款中小型企業，其中多數創造就業機會和上進工資發生。政府在後危機時代的政策法規已經幫助了空洞化美國中產階級遠遠超過任何私營部門的做法。這些變化甚至擴大的貧富差距通過資產所有者在租房的費用更豐富。也許裡面還有一些積極的變化，但似乎我沒有看到超越的荒誕。您如何看待這一切的受災群眾的感知系統的，有什麼看法？

危機後的感覺，至少在媒體上，似乎是美國人的一個是在私營部門舉行下降了華爾街大公司，並通過富有。資本主義是審判。我認為這有點不同。如果貸款人提供我免費的錢，我沒有把它。如果我走了，我更好地了解所有的條款，因為沒有這樣的東西作為自由兌換貨幣。這只是基本的個人責任和常識。該促成了這場危機是多種多樣的，它開始不與銀行，但由個人決定借貸來資助一個更好的生活，這是一個非常加載的決定。這個危機就是這種真正的100年一遇洪水，整個世界仍在試圖七年後挖掘出的泥土。然而，如此少的了負責對它有任何的一部分，原因很簡單：這些人發現別人惹的禍，從這個意義上，創建一個無用的敘述。無論是百分之一或對沖基金和華爾街，我不認為社會是由失敗，鼓勵每一個最後的美國人在尋找良好的服務。這場危機真正把一個村，大部分村民自己是不是沒有在其中發現自己的情況下，一些個人的責任。我們應該教我們的孩子通過個人的責任，是更好的公民，而不是責備的例子。我們在哪裡現在的立場，在經濟上？

好了，我們馬上回來吧：試圖通過寬鬆貨幣政策來刺激經濟增長。它沒有工作，但它是美聯儲的得到的唯一工具。同時，美聯儲的政策擴大了貧富差距，其中飼料政治極端主義，迫使僵局在華盛頓舉行。看來世界正在襲向在全球範圍內實際利率為負。這是有毒的。利率是用來價格風險，因此，在目前的環境中，風險定價機制被打破。這是不健康的經濟。我們正在建立了不起的應力系統，以及任何斷層線有一定損害的前景。

是什麼讓你最擔心的未來？債務。這種增長會彌補我們的債務，我們的想法是很容易上癮的政治家，但市民為此付出代價。公共部門確實加強了作為消費者的債務。美聯儲的資產負債表槓桿77：1。就像我說的，荒謬的，它只是befuddles我。最後一行的電影，印在海報，是“邁克爾·巴里的重點是他所有的交易在一個商品：水”這聽起來很不祥。你能描述一下這個位置對我？

從根本上說，我大約15年前開始關注投資於水。清新，乾淨的水，不能想當然。而且這還不是 - 水是政治和訴訟。輸送水是不切實際的政治和身體的原因，所以買了水權並沒有給我做一個很大的意義，除非我正在尋求投資的更大的傻瓜理論 - 這是不是我的意圖。什麼成為我清楚的是，食物是投資於水的方式。也就是說，在水資源豐富的地區種植糧食和運輸其銷售的貧水區。這是該方法重新分配水是最有爭議的，最終它可以是有利可圖的，這將確保該再分配是可持續的。一瓶酒接管400瓶水生產 - 嵌入食物中的水是我發現了什麼有趣的。有什麼東西，讓你對未來充滿希望？

創新，尤其是在美國，繼續以極快的速度，甚至在地區面臨相當大的政治或監管不利因素。在特定的健康保健的進步是驚人的 - 這麼多無私的靈魂中努力推進科學，這是令人振奮的。從長期來看，這有利於人類一般。美國人有這麼多自然的創業動力。需要說明的是，它是技術，應該是一個工具製造生活在現實世界中更好，並與越來越好的東西，無論是治療癌症或創建一個更好的出租車服務的美國精神。我與分配技術，提高注意力分散的市場價值少留下深刻的印象。我們不希望奧威爾的世界，但我們不希望赫胥黎的世界無論是。 * * *

他從多年的先見之明的警告前保持同樣重要（甚至更是這樣）...

“在這個時代無限分心......在題為選舉本身，黨的加速，以及殘酷的解酒是不可避免的。”

邁克爾·巴里是接穗資本公司的對沖基金，這是他從2000年跑了直到2008年，當他關閉該基金專注於自己的個人投資創辦。作者邁克爾·劉易斯異形他在2010書中大肆做空：裡面的末日機器。