有位朋友曾任政府高官，退休後轉任某知名民間企業的高階主管。有一回與他聊天，提到他的工作，他有感而發，認為台灣許多老闆主控的家族企業，員工可以分為家具、家臣、家奴三類，聽來頗為有趣。

這位高官朋友說，他現在只是企業的「家具」，擺著好看的。某個程度來說，「家具」其實就是客卿，通常在公司內部頭銜尊崇，但實質權力有限。「家具」必須是退休高官，或是具有相當社會聲望的人士。企業延攬這些「社會賢達」，一方面是希望利用他們的既有關係，以利業務發展；另一方面則是提升企業或老闆的形象，讓外人認為這位老闆有禮賢下士的格局。

因應法規與社會的期待，現在有很多企業必須延聘獨立董事，據我所知，有不少企業的獨立董事有如「家具」，擺起來很好看，卻沒什麼大用。

「家臣」則是替老闆處理「家務機要費」的人。老闆要處理難以告人的事務，不論是否與公務有關，都會被託付重任的人，是為「家臣」。「家臣」的條件是對老闆忠心耿耿，口風緊，必要時還要替老闆承擔法律責任。

老闆上酒店、送紅包、陪公子讀書或要做某些齷齪事時，絕對不會找「家具」，以免有損「家具」以及他個人的形象，此時就要由「家臣」來負責打點。

比起「家具」，「家臣」的工作要辛苦得多，但是，老闆對「家臣」有知遇之恩，「家臣」當然也就肝腦塗地的報答老闆。「家臣」的正式職級頭銜未必很高，但實際的權力、地位，卻是「家具」所遠不及的。

為了討生活而被迫放棄自由與尊嚴的人謂之奴。許多員工為了保有一份工作，常常要承受老闆無理的羞辱；也可能為了工作而犧牲生活品質與尊嚴；這些員工或許都可以歸為「家奴」。

「家奴」與「家臣」最大的不同是，「家奴」沒有機會參與「家務機要」，不必處理「家務機要費」；因此，「家奴」的階級地位遠不如「家臣」，但萬一老闆出事，不必替老闆頂罪。

「家奴」畢竟是人，總要維持一定的尊嚴，真的受不了，總有選擇離去的自由。但也有不少公司員工，有如謝長廷所說的「豬、狗、雞、畜生，只管吃」，既無真正的生產力，也沒有尊嚴，那可就是「家畜」了。

BILL GROSS: Thank you.

CONSUELO MACK: All three of you are global investors. So what does this divergence that I just talked about in the dollar and gold mean, if anything? What does it tell you, Bill?

BILL GROSS: Well, it tells me that for a U.S.-based investor that you want to get outside the United States. The dollar has been depreciating against not only gold but other currencies. You want to invest basically where the growth is. And the growth is in emerging markets. It is in Asia, and to some extent in South America. It is not really in the United States. It's not really in Japan. It's in those emerging market countries where the bulk of the growth is. That's where you want to go.

CONSUELO MACK: Jean-Marie Eveillard, what does that tell you, that the dollar is depreciating, and the gold is going up? Is there a big macro message?

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: It tells me maybe there is too much paper in the world. Too much debt and too little stuff, in other words, too little gold. What may save the dollar in the end is the fact that -- and what is very positive for gold, is the fact that the other two major currencies, the yen and the euro are not particularly attractive either.

CONSUELO MACK: Why do you say that?

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: Because you only have to hear the screams coming from across the Atlantic whenever the oil goes above $1.40. And you know that the Europeans are finding it difficult to live with a strong currency. And it's the same with the Japanese, who have barely emerged from their last decade of the 1990s, where basically the Japanese economy stagnated for more than ten years, and who are very eager not to see the yen strengthen too much.

CONSUELO MACK: Bob, same question to you: what is the significance, as far as you're concerned?

BOB SHEARER: I agree with both Jean-Marie and Bill. But I would also say looking at this ability of mines, to bring on new gold mines have been eroded over the past years, there is not as much investment in those areas, and it has reduced the supply of gold coming to the market. And we have greater wealth in India and China, and those people are looking for gold as another store value.

CONSUELO MACK: Bill, let me ask you: the financial world as you and I have known it over the last 25 years or more has changed a great deal- money is no longer controlled by banks. It is no longer regulated by the regulators. You've written about this a great deal- it’s in private hands or OPEC government hands. It is not being regulated. You manage the largest bond fund in the world. How do you know what is real out there?

BILL GROSS: It is hard to know what is real, Consuelo. It's hard to know where the money is. There is a shadow banking system that’s outside the banking system, and I refer to hedge funds which are the obvious, but to other financial conduits owned by banks and basically leveraged structured vehicles that allow the ability to borrow money at an increasing rate relative to what used to be in the banking system. In other words, the shadow banking system, which dwarfs banks, can allow leverage of 10, 20 times, where a bank normally multiplies reserves by five and six times. So it is an increasingly levered world based upon a shadow banking system that remains significantly in the shadows.

CONSUELO MACK: So let's talk about that shadow banking system for a minute. We've just come through a credit crisis where at least the short-term credit markets froze up in August. Where are we? And essentially if were we have to live with this shadow banking system, what is that going to mean going forward, as far as the unraveling of this credit bubble we have seen developing over the last 20 years?

BILL GROSS: Well, it will take time. And that's one of the problems that we've come across in the last few months. The transparency problem. Typically, when you have banks lending money, you know how many reserves they have. You know basically where their investments are. I'm not so sure with the shadow banking system. Over the past month or so, it was unclear as to where the subprimes were, basically. I called them Waldos in one of my pieces. Where is Waldo? It wasn't clear as to how many and where they were hidden. Investors were unwilling to basically lend money. They took money back from hedge funds and from these conduits, and basically it froze up not only the shadow banking system, but the banking system itself and produced a serious problem.

CONSUELO MACK: So where do we think we are now in basically solving at least the credit problems that we've had recently?

BILL GROSS: I think we're making progress. And you see progress basically by the esoteric three month Libor rate. The Fed is working to reduce that rate. They lowered Fed funds, they lowered the discount rate. Right now we have a three month Libor rate at 5.25. Normally it should be, in this type of normal market, around 5%. So you can see that 25 basis points of excess really reflects this unwillingness on the part of lenders to lend money to each other. We're making some progress, but there is still some significant headway to go. I think the Fed needs to continue to provide easy money in order to alleviate this problem.

CONSUELO MACK: All right. Jean-Marie Eveillard, most of the people think the credit crisis has abated somewhat, but you're not so sure?

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: I'm not so sure. There has been a big credit boom for 20 years or so or more. And the latest instance, of course, was the residential housing bubble, which burst -- the bubble was so powerful, as always happens in the last couple of years before the bubble finally bursts. Tremendous excesses develop, as Bill alluded, and they leverage 10 to 20 to one. And I think what has happened over the past month or so, is that the Fed has come in, and the financial types who have bet big and lost big were bailed out by the Fed.

CONSUELO MACK: Right.

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: But does that -- the consensus seems to be today that everything is fine because there has been five or six financial crisis, credit crisis of the sort over the past 20 years, and every time Mr. Greenspan and now Mr. Bernanke bails everybody out, there is a tremendous fear that the de-leveraging that would normally accompany the bursting of the bubble, would take place in the aftermath of the bursting of the bubble, that the leveraging is intolerable, and the excesses are not corrected. But whether the cuts in short term interest rates, the cuts that have already happened and, that according that them, will happen again, will be enough to prevent either an acceleration of inflation or a decline in the dollar, or even whether the cuts will prevent the American economy from going into either a major slowdown or, indeed, a recession.

CONSUELO MACK: So Bob Shearer, how do you invest in an environment like this?

BOB SHEARER: We tend to look for sectors that coming into tight capacity utilization. If we can find these sectors, it typically leads to pricing power and ultimately into earnings being paid out in dividends, which is our ultimate goal. We've identified several sectors in which we had overweights in four years- the metals and mining, energy, the industrials, as well as the utilities. And all of those areas had underinvestment during the 1990s, we're now seeing with the rapid economic growth that Bill mentioned in emerging markets, that the industries are having a tough time supplying metals, energy, and we're consistently seeing these upwards biases to the prices. So we’ve overweighted those sectors, and we underweighted the financials. Typically we would be buying financials when the Fed starts to cut, as Jean-Marie mentioned, we don't know what the next shoe to drop is with some of these companies.

CONSUELO MACK: Jean-Marie, would you agree? Would you avoid the financials at this point for that reason, because you don't know what they've really got?

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: Yes, by all means. They have been black boxes for years. They have those derivatives contracts -- or the banks do, they delivered the contracts where you really suspect they do the pricing of the contracts themselves. And they have those off-balance sheets, conduits, and structural investment vehicles. Yeah, they're black boxes. What we found out was that it is not just the American consumer who is heavily leveraged, it is the financial system at large, the financial companies that are heavily leveraged.

CONSUELO MACK: So, Bill Gross, one of the questions I posed at the very beginning is: what is as good at gold out there? When you look in the credit markets and the black boxes and the shadow banking systems we're referring to, where do you go for your credit standard?

BILL GROSS: Well, nothing is as good as gold in the credit markets, other than treasuries, and the problem with the treasuries is that they depreciate in value relative to inflation. So you have to watch yourself. Where we're going, Consuelo, is basically to the front end of the yield curve. We're buying two, three, and four-year treasuries, and corporate obligations, because those are the beneficiaries, really, of potential Fed cuts. When and if the Fed cuts interest rates additionally, and we expect them to move down into the threes at some point in 2008, it will be the two and three and four-year securities that benefit the most in terms of declining yields. Ultimately, I think this is the last gasp, really, for the Federal Reserve in terms of lower interest rates, that from this point -- or from that point forward in 2008, that we're going to be in a pretty significant bear market. But for the moment, it's a bull market, and that's where we participate.

CONSUELO MACK: So you think there is a significant bear market in bonds, stocks, both?

BILL GROSS: Well, I think beginning in the late 2008, and it's important to distinguish, because it will be at that point where we begin to recover in terms of an economy, in the United States. And I think at that point, inflation begins to pick up, and inflation is the enemy of bonds. And, yes, bonds will begin at that point probably a long-term bear market- inflation increasing from two to three to four percent as we move into the next decade.

CONSUELO MACK: Jean-Marie, you're a bottoms-up investor, where are you finding values when you look around the world?

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: Yes. We look from the top down only in the sense of a negative standpoint.

CONSUELO MACK: Which you just described, right?

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: Right. I happen to agree with Bill, that bonds are an accident waiting to happen. Just not now. But later on, next year or the following year.

CONSUELO MACK: You're not in an enviable position, Bill Gross, in other words.

BILL GROSS: That's all right. We’ve been there before.

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: So, as I said, we look from the top down, from a negative standpoint. In other words, is something genuinely negative going to happen from the point of view of the economy so that the intrinsic values we established for the businesses in which we buy securities would be temporarily too high if we had economic and financial circumstances that would be very hostile for a year or two or three. So where we try to keep that in mind, for all I know, the Fed may pull the rabbit out of the hat, but I think it will take a few months for us to figure that one out. And I'm certainly not as optimistic as the consensus appears to be. But whether we find investment opportunities, I think large caps and particularly multi-national large caps, and particularly multi-national large caps that have a franchise side to them, securities in the U.S., such as McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, and Europe, Allied, and the industrial gas business, and Carfur, the second largest retailer in the world, which is totally global. In Japan, the electronic security business, and the Shemano parts. And some electronics in South Korea. But that's, from a relative value point of view, and nothing is absolute in this world. But we like to be quasi-absolute value investors. And today there are very few bargains.

CONSUELO MACK: So, Bob, you described some of the sectors you have invested in, and certainly it has been a great place to be, in natural resources. But as far as the equity dividend fund is concerned, you're betting against the dollar in some respects, is that correct?

BOB SHEARER: We actually are. We also have overweights in the industrials which are exporting equipment, which are going to help build new mines, such as Caterpillar, which makes the large 400 ton trucks that are in short supply and on backorder around the world. There are no pure plan tires, these trucks don't come with tires. And the companies can’t even build their mines because the trucks show up without any tires on them. In addition, there are companies like United Technologies, anyone that supplies into the aerospace market, with so many new airlines being developed around the world.

CONSUELO MACK: So big cap stocks, do you pay attention to their ability to pay dividends, to grow dividends? Is that important?

BOB SHEARER: Every company we put in the portfolio has a dividend. It might not be a large dividend because what we're looking for is total return. And we're also looking for very strong balance sheets on the companies. The last thing we want to have is a dividend cut. So anything outside the utilities, anything above 50% debt to cap ratio is something that we would not consider.

CONSUELO MACK: Bill Gross, before we get to the one investment, for individual investors, they cannot be as nimble as you are. So, you know, for an individual investor with these global market shifts, what do we buy? Is there anything that we should buy and really can hold for several years and not worry about, or not?

BILL GROSS: Are you talking about on the bond side, Consuelo?

CONSUELO MACK: Yeah, on the bond side.

BILL GROSS: I think a good old-fashioned mortgage fund would do very well. Mortgages these days – I’m talking about mortgages guaranteed by the agencies, by Fanny and Freddie, and not subprimes, but they're yielding 6%, and that’s a very attractive return for a triple-A type of investment. For the next 12 to 18 to 24 months, I think they should hold reasonably in terms of price and provide an attractive 6 to 6.5%. So go mortgages.

CONSUELO MACK: All right. So now the stock side, Bill Gross, for the one investment for a long-term diversified portfolio, something that each of us should own something of, what would it be?

BILL GROSS: It is in line with what we just talked about for the last 20 minutes, going outside the United States, finding something that is based on a non-dollar currency, and going into areas where there are growth prospects, and equity prospects. What I'm suggesting is an ETF, an exchange rated fund, called MSCI EFA Index.

CONSUELO MACK: It's a mouthful.

BILL GROSS: Yes, it is. And the symbol is EFA. It’s the second largest ETF in the world, and basically it is comprised of almost all large cap stocks outside of the United States. 60% orientation in Europe, Japan, Germany, France, and the U.K. basically you're getting participation in growth outside the United States in a currency outside the U.S. dollar.

CONSUELO MACK: And Jean-Marie? The gold standard is what you're looking at.

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: Yeah. It's the gold ETF, streetTRACKS Gold Shares (GLD), which has given individuals the opportunity to buy bullion without having to buy it from a dealer and transport it or whatever. It is the idea, which is a Peter Bernstein idea, of trying to get some protection against extreme outcomes. And admittedly, the Fed may be successful this time around, pulling the rabbit out of the hat, and leveraging up the economy once more, but there seems to be a financial crisis every three years or so, or there has been over the last 20 years, and maybe they won't be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat next time around. So I think gold is generally protection against extreme outcomes.

CONSUELO MACK: And it has been a very good investment the last several years. So there is momentum behind gold, too. But you're looking at it as a hedge against disaster --

JEAN-MARIE EVEILLARD: That's right. Because if anything, I would prefer to buy gold at 50 then at 730.

CONSUELO MACK: And Bob Shearer, you’re looking at a more natural investment.

BOB SHEARER: B.H.P. Billiton (BHP) is in our top ten holdings in the equity dividend fund. It is the world's largest mining company. Diversified, they focus on low-cost operations. They are benefiting from the iron ore prices, which are looking for a big increase with the negotiations with the steel mills right now. We're looking for rising met coal prices and thermal coal. And in addition, they have a very strong oil franchise, which is kind of lost in the mix. On its own, it would be the 20th largest oil company in terms of reserves and roughly production, and it is going to have a double-digit production increase over the next three to five years from their deep water discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico.

CONSUELO MACK: I know it is a core holding of yours in the Equity Dividend Fund.

BOB SHEARER: That's right.

CONSUELO MACK: Thank you all so much for being here. Bill Gross, it was great to see you. The next time, I want you in New York.

BILL GROSS: Thank you, Consuelo.

CONSUELO MACK: Please let us know when you're in town. Jean-Marie Eveillard, from First Eagle Funds, it is great to have you back. And Bob Shearer from BlackRock. Thank you very much for joining us.
  Every week on WealthTrack, we leave you with one piece of advice, one action you can take to build and protect your wealth. One of our major themes on WealthTrack is diversification. We want to protect you from big stock market declines and identify investments that zig when stocks zag. In street lingo, they are called "non-correlated assets.” So this week's Action Point: consider adding some anti-stock investments or non-correlated assets to your portfolio.
  Jean Marie Eveillard recommended one, gold, which has been considered a classic portfolio diversifier, although there have been a few years when it didn't perform as such. And three other incredibly consistent ones are all U.S. Treasury securities. Three month treasury bills have had only one down year in the last 81, versus the S&P 500, which had 23 annual declines. Stocks way outperformed, with compound annual returns of 10.4% versus the bill's very modest 3.7% over the eight decades, but the T-bills were there to pay the bills, no matter what. Another anti-stock choice was recommended by guest Robert Kessler last week: ten or 20 year zero coupon treasury bonds. You buy them at a deep discount, way under the $1,000 face value of each bond because you don't get cash interest payments. Instead, you get their full value when they mature. And finally, treasury inflation protected securities or TIPS-- which have had a negative correlation to stocks since their creation in 1997. All insurance policies, just in case.
  And before we wrap up this edition of WealthTrack, we want to tell you about next week's lineup. Joining us will be Bond Bible author Marilyn Cohen, veteran contrarian investor Steve Leuthold, and fund manager Robert Hagstrom, who is known for running the Legg Mason Growth Trust and for his book, The Warren Buffet Way. If you want to see Bill, Jean-Marie and Bob again, just go to our website, wealthtrack.com on Monday, where you can view it as a podcast or as streaming video. Until next time, make the week ahead a profitable and a productive one.