这是08年9月22日的财富杂志上的文章。非常惊讶的文章提及的一点：JP Morgan的cost accounting居然作到了每种信用卡的层面上，实在是太不可思议了。文章其实就是告诉世人：JP Morgan能躲过subprime & SIV的灾难并不是就因为老板Jamie Dimon是天才，所以灵光一闪就决定06年开始抛售subprime mortgage securitization，而是来自于制度和团队上的安排和执行，更重要的是后台的整套技术支持（包括现今各大银行仍然使用的VaR技术也是94年起源于JPMorgan当时的老板的要求。所以JP Morgan一直比其他人了解VaR的缺陷，知道不能单纯依靠每天的VaR去判断整个银行的风险敞口）。
能在每种信用卡的层面上作cost accounting，就在美国也是极其领先的，更不要提国内的银行了（估计能做到支行层面的国内银行都少，产品线上的cost accounting开什么玩笑？）。
另外一点让我警惕的就是文章披露JP Morgan的表外是没有SIV的，国内的银行标榜的是没有受到次贷的冲击，可是表外的那些SIV的东东，谁看得懂？

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很有意思的一篇采访John Loeb，70年代的，现在来看依然是适用的。http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/18/magazines/fortune/loeb.fortune/index.htm

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1. Once in every seven to ten years, there is a period of excessive general speculation culminating in a severe panic or depression when the man who is borrowing money is at great disadvantage and he who has ready cash stands like a tower, four-square to the ill winds that blow.
2. Extreme situations do not last, no matter what the apparent justification. While we may have "new eras," old laws will still operate.
3. Avoid commitments, particularly of the delayed variety; they are more insidious. Also, be definite about commitments made to you by others. When the storm comes, misunderstandings are so easy and so natural.
4. In both 1920 and 1929, the so-called "big fellows" in general said everything was okay. But if the big fellows in general thought otherwise the stage could not be set for the unexpected. Panics occur because the leaders themselves have lost their way.
5. Never borrow money without continually reviewing and questioning your ability to pay it back under the worst conditions.
6. It's right to be an optimist, but always be prepared for the worst.
7. People borrow money in good times and pay it back in bad times - just the opposite of what they should do.
8. The public is just as blind in recognizing the bottom of a depression as it is in recognizing the top of a boom. While there is no ladder that reaches to Heaven, the ladder that reaches all the way down to Hell in a country like America is just as fantastic.
9. A reputation for fair and honest dealing will be your greatest asset.
10. As my father used to say, "Don't forget, the soup is never eaten as hot as it is cooked."

周三公布的住房救助计划，让我不仅对美国和斑马哥升起由衷的景仰。非常鼓舞人心的开端！在市场化自愿加入的基础上，非常努力地减少供屋者的财务负担，很大可能会因此遏止foreclosure恶化。
再说透明性和效率。前一向有个大陆律师要求财政部公开4万亿的投资具体项目，结果被拒绝，原因我不知道，估计是设计国家机密等等。
source: http://www.stimuluswatch.org/project/by_state
看看老美，每个项目多少钱，受惠区域和人口，项目目的和内容都公布，随便你看，随便你批评。老美的开放心态和制度安排，放眼世界还真的无人能敌。

1. Jim Chanos' interview on PBS
source:http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/research/learnmore/090212_interview_with_jim_chanos/
Jim Chanos的新观点是不大相信大家都一直看多的health care & biotech

2. David Swensen's interview Special to ProPublica
source: http://www.propublica.org/article/yales-financial-wizard-david-swensen-says-most-endowments-shouldnt-try-to-b
a. 坚信在长期投资周期来看需要分散投资和股票为主的投资原则
b. 认为美国国债不具有投资价值
c. 偏执狂胜出：要不积极投资，要不被动投资指数基金即可。大多数投资者其实都只应该进行被动投资，但是人的天性就是高估自身能力。

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目前为止看到最为实用的好采访。「我跟主管們說，不景氣時，大家千萬不能當觀眾、看電視，看了書一定要有心得！」--蔡明介

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蔡明介：電子業 全年都在谷底--這波不景氣會持續較長的時間，恢復速度也不會太快。聯發科將採取更聚焦的研發策略，在無線通訊晶片市場尋求更多成長機會。
蔡明介：3G智慧型手機 動能足 --- 談到產品的世代交替，設計公司最花錢的就是做產品，一個產品計畫一做就要上百名研發工程師，還有光罩、測試等費用，所以我還是強調要聚焦。另外，對於產品線規模不大的部分，腳步也會放緩。

問：在這波不景氣中，聯發科做了那些調整？

答：我們讓公司損益平衡點維持在最低的水準，假設不景氣的時間還得持續一陣子，若公司損益平衡點太高，就比較可能產生虧損。當然，現金流量也很重要。

在景氣好時，大家想要成長，持續擴充取得市占率，提高獲利；但在不景氣時，則要想到該如何維持最低損耗，不但要降低成本，還要保護核心競爭力。要知道的是，不景氣會過，但是你的核心競爭力不能因此受到損傷。講起來簡單易懂，但實際上很有挑戰，比方大家都知道在不景氣時要持續投資，但要投資到什麼程度呢？
在不景氣時，我會重新看整個產品線，有些規模不夠大的產品，我會思考是否過去投資太積極，這時是不是要拉回來、腳步放慢，或者把有些資源放在規模大、機會大的產品線，這就是聚焦。

今天的wsj有宏碁董事长王振堂(J.T. Wang)的采访：宏碁欲借智能手机和上网本逆境壮大
王振堂表示，他预计一些电脑厂商会在这轮经济萧条中倒闭，未来几年只会剩下四到五家能够赢利的品牌电脑厂商。王振堂说：“我们正在行业整合的过程中抢占有利位置。这一整合是个机会。”王振堂的目标的确大胆，不过近年来宏碁的发展速度一直比竞争对手快。据科技行业研究公司Gartner Inc.的数据，宏碁去年第四季度的个人电脑出货量较上年同期增长了31%，公司在整个个人电脑市场的占有率达12%，紧随戴尔的13%和惠普的19%。振堂透露，目前上网本约占宏碁笔记本电脑销量的三成左右。该公司预计2010年上网本的全球销量将介于2,500至3,500万台之间，这种产品将占到宏碁个人电脑销量的15%至20%。王振堂说：“我们发现美国同行们并不太看重上网本业务，但我们觉得这个市场非常大。”
此外，宏碁正在涉足手机业务。该公司周一晚间在巴塞罗纳举行的全球移动通讯大会(Mobile World Congress)上推出了其首款智能手机。王振堂预计在3年内这类手机产品将为公司贡献10%的收入。他透露，宏碁将先在12个国家销售智能手机。

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本期的《中国企业家》是重出江湖的柳传志的采访。07年杨元庆还是年度商业人物。
字里行间我们能读到的是中国大陆传统教育的硕果--一边倒的民粹主义，感性而优雅的文笔之下，并没有披露什么实质深入的商业判断和策略执行过程，更没有什么来自反方或者第三方的声音。也对，记者是带有主观判断的，是原告律师，并不打算为读者做一个法官，起码也让被告有个陈诉的机会，无他，只能怪以前的外国CEO太沉默。
最大的遗憾是无处寻觅07年度商业人物小杨哥的承担，起码我们在Benq收购西门子手机失败以后看到李焜耀有承担，除了老柳无处不在的对祖国花朵的袒护以外，就是拿着前董事会主席小杨哥学会熟练使用英文同外国董事谈笑风生说事。
当然要佩服老柳同志的深谋远虑和精心人事安排，和Acer的施振荣很像，不过总感觉好像少了施振荣的坦荡开放的心襟气度。

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Joshua Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School, recently analyzed returns, net of fees, for 1,252 U.S. venture funds going back to 1976. The median return for top-quartile firms was 28%. That included the huge profits of the tech boom, which aren’t likely to recur. The median return for all venture funds was just under 5%, or worse than what Treasury bonds would have given you. “If you’re not with the good guys, it’s not worth playing,” Lerner says.

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如果不是这次美国的危机，我还不知道竹中平藏(Heizo Takenaka)（他曾任小泉純一郎內閣的經濟大臣、財政改革大臣和總務大臣），也不能理解小泉純一郎在日本经济复苏中起到的关键作用。From 1992 to 2005, Japanese banks wrote off about 96 trillion yen, or about 19 percent of the country’s annual G.D.P. But Mr. Takenaka’s toughness restored faith in the banks.回过头来看竹中平藏在08年10月写的《日本经济危机的前车之鉴》，字字珠玑。

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片中的房地产经纪人说对迪拜的长期前景不担心，这很好，这在中国和海湾国家都是这样，大家认为资产价格下降到一定程度就有买主，所以并没有通缩预期，希望在产生通缩预期之前经济有好转。昨天看好像是龚方雄的评论：“现在的问题是这样，经济上半年会有通缩，CPI、PPI都可能是负的，但是好在我们目前还没有通缩预期，因为贸易商在重新构建库存，他觉得价格跌的差不多了，咱们开始买货吧，钢价、铝价反弹，老百姓也是看发展商一降价就买房子，所以现在不存在通缩预期，虽然通缩有可能会真正来临，但是通缩预期还不存在，这是非常好的现象，但是要防范的是如果价格持续下跌，会不会在社会经济里产生通缩预期。”
source:http://opinion.hexun.com/2009-02-10/114275094_3.html

很有趣的文章，解释为什么我们很少看见彩虹能延伸到地面，但是当车轮驶过地面导致出现很多水珠就如同洒水的时候一样，彩虹就能从地面出现。

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The Register’s science editor Gary Robbins is getting lots of reaction from his readers to a photo one of them sent him and he ran on line. It shows a rainbow running right into the ground - or, actually, into the asphalt of a rainy day road. Some readers, he says, think it was photoshopped. It is remarkable.

The Tracker thinks Robbins, a keen reporter, may have missed a chance in this case to explain some optics. So I’ll take a stab at it.

So, as we all know don’t we?, rainbows are the refracted backscatter of sunlight off raindrops (the actual optics of that, I recall, is very complex). The refraction angles vary with wavelength which in turn provides the nice colorful arc. And, most important to the immediate topic, the bow’s intensity depends on both the brightness of the sun and the number (and sizes?) of raindrops in the appropriate directions. Okay then. In the general sky it usually takes hundreds of yards or even a mile or so worth of raindrops to generate much brightness. So natch one rarely sees a rainbow going all the way to the ground right in front of one. There is just not enough optical action over such a short distance. But one can see such a thing while standing in the garden sprinkler’s spray on a bright day. There are lots of water drops from a nozzle like that. If it ever rains that hard, stay out of the creekbed. Well! A tire’s spray can accomplish the same thing. So, the rainbow above, visible between the photographer and the sky and mountains, would have faded out as normal at its end except for one thing. It gets a boost from the wheel spray right at its bottom. I think, but am not sure, that a harmonic secondary rainbow is above the Mini and that it too brightens at its terminus.

Today, debt in America excluding that of financial institutions and the federal government is about 190% of GDP, the highest since the 1930s, according to the Bank Credit Analyst, a financial-research journal (see chart 2). There are important differences between then and now. Debt was lower at the start of the Depression, at 164% of GDP. Mortgage debt was modest relative to home values, and prices were not notably bloated: they fell by 24% between 1929 and 1933, says Edward Pinto, a consultant, so were roughly flat in real terms. Debt burdens shot up because of deflation and shrinking output; nominal GDP fell by 46% between 1929 and 1933.
from:Today’s crisis has given new relevance to the ideas of another great economist of the Depression era -- Irving Fisher

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说起这位Irving Fisher，读MBA的时候我去借他的书，结果UCLA商学院里面还没有他的书，因为他的书属于“古董”级别，必须要到学校最大的图书馆去登记才能借到。当时并不珍惜，小小的书，现在想起来，怎是一个哎字！

富爸爸不可求，惟一可以控制的是自己头发的长短。

美国失业是从华尔街开始，中国是从最穷的农民工开始。这几天坐地铁1号线都是返回到上海的农民工，听他们的谈话也有人后悔春节没有留在上海找工作

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China on the brink
By Patrick Chovanec

Restaurants in Beijing are fully booked, malls are filled with shoppers. Property prices in the capital are buoyant, defying the historical pattern of a post-Olympic Games slump.

Chinese banks are busy lending to allcomers, in stark contrast to their Western counterparts. Even the Shanghai stock exchange, which lost more than 70% off its peak value last year, has something of a spring in its step - the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has gained 24% this year. On Friday, Wall Street watcher Jim Cramer cited China as number four of his "Top 10 Reasons for Optimism" about the world economy.

So what's going on here? Has China escaped the fate of more mortal economies?

Government spokesmen are cagey, but the unofficial line - for themoment - appears to be that China's system of state-influenced markets has proven itself superior to the more "unregulated" Western model. Cleverly insulated from market turmoil, the claim goes, China is poised to surge ahead as the world's new economic superpower.

Not so fast. The ripples emanating from the global recession may have seemed tiny at first as they traveled across the Pacific, but they are about to hit China with the full force of a tsunami. And there is real concern among the Chinese leadership that the impact may well surpass anything we've seen in the US or Europe. That's because the economic crisis in China is taking on a fundamentally different shape than in the countries where it originated.

The crisis in Western markets began at the top and worked its way down. When the US property bubble burst, it hurt some homeowners, but the real damage it inflicted was to undermine confidence in complex financial instruments and the banks that owned them. It was essentially a financial panic, and the first people to be laid off were Wall Street MBAs working at investment banks and hedge funds.

The effect on the real economy only came later. As big-name banks failed, consumer confidence took a nosedive, and as surviving banks retrenched, credit to consumers and business dried up. Only in the fourth quarter of last year - six to nine months after the first big bank, Bear Stearns, collapsed - did these factors result in significant working-class job losses.

The process unfolding in China is precisely the opposite. The threat comes not from the commanding heights of the economy, but from the grassroots. All along the coast, thousands of small factories that rely entirely on US and European export markets are cutting back production or shutting down. Their margins were thin to begin with, and now their orders are being slashed. The first to be affected aren't the global professionals that populate China's big cities, but the migrant workers that made those factories hum.

Last week, Chinese officials admitted that at least 20 million migrant workers - one out of every six - who journeyed back to their hometowns this lunar new year won't have a job to return to. Compare that to roughly three-and-half million American job losses so far. For the moment, China's army of unemployed seems disheartened rather than angry. Many of them took extended holidays among family back home and only now, out of desperation, are resuming their job hunts in earnest. No one knows how long their patience will last, or how much larger their ranks will grow in coming months.

China's government is keenly aware of the problem and has adopted a three-pronged strategy. First, it has directed state-owned banks to extend generous loans to support struggling exporters. Second, it announced a huge package of big-ticket infrastructure projects to sustain employment. Third, it is adopting a variety of measures to boost domestic consumer demand as an offset to failing exports.

But the hoped-for results may be limited. Infrastructure-focused stimulus will take time to implement and benefits only certain industries, such as steel and construction, leaving textiles and other major sources of employment untouched. Even worse, analysts are underestimating the degree to which domestic Chinese demand is driven by all the remittances sent by migrant workers to their extended families in the interior - income that will now disappear as job losses mount. Contrary to popular belief, domestic demand is in the process of being undercut, not strengthened. All the cheap loans in the world won't replace lost customers, at home and abroad.

The fact that China's slowdown is originating from the bottom up, rather than the top down, carries important implications. The first is the visibility of the problem. Today, China's high-income urban areas are experiencing a false dawn as banks churn out easy cash to prop up the economy. But quietly, behind the scenes, Chinese companies are revising their profit estimates downward, by as much as 50% for 2008. The bad news just hasn't hit home yet.

The second difference is the solution. Unlike the West, China does not face a liquidity problem, where financial markets have frozen and the government can thaw them out with easy money. China faces a breakdown in real demand due to an over-reliance on external markets, a core element of its growth model that will require a wrenching structural shift in the economy to correct.

Of greatest immediate concern are the social implications. Job cuts are starting to bite in the US and Europe, but at least there the working stiff had the (somewhat ephemeral) satisfaction of seeing the so-called "masters of the universe" get their comeuppance first. Pain has been felt both high and low.

China's slowdown, in contrast, threatens to drive a wedge between the rural have-nots, who are bearing its entire brunt, and the urban haves, who are still living it up. It's a worrisome vision that is giving top Chinese leaders some long sleepless nights, and ought to have the world's attention.

Patrick Chovanec is an associate professor with Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing.

片头那位妇女真的好强啊，不过更强的还是这位议员回答里透露的惊心动魄的挤兑风暴。强大如美国，也可以在一个工作日结束之前就被挤兑至破产。

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On Thursday (Sept 18), at 11 in the morning the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped a $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there.

If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2pm that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed... It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it...

We are no better off today than we were 3 months ago because we have a decrease in the equity positions of banks because other assets are going sour by the moment.

Reuterss称，中国银行业今年1月新增人民币贷款额达创纪录的约1.6万亿元(超过此前大家预期的1.2-1.4万亿的水平)，为2008年中国银行业新增人民币贷款额4.91万亿元的三分之一，也是中国银行业历史上的月新增人民币贷款额的最高峰的2倍。关于这个新闻，分析有如下：
1.新增的1.6万亿的贷款数字到底组成结构是怎样的？
主要构成：估计1 月份新增贷款中票据30%-40%，流动资金贷款20%-25%，政府相关项目占比25%-30%，这三项仍然是主要的新增贷款投向，私人部门投资增加带来的信贷需求并不显著。中金公司认为：1月份新增人民币贷款1.4万亿至1.6万亿元，而新增贷款中票据贴现为4000亿至5000亿元，约占新增贷款的30%至40%。（事实上，自去年初货币紧缩以来，票据融资占整个贷款份额的比例不断增大。去年上半年全国票据融资增量仅为50亿元，三季度则激增至1600亿元。在央行放开信贷规模控制后，10月至12月票据融资规模更分别猛增至608亿元、2105亿元和2147亿元，其中11月、12月票据融资逐渐增长到当月对公信贷投放的资金的46.15%和29.99%）

由于大家都在口口相传：流动性充裕，所以推动股市大涨。我们再来简单分析一下这个1.6万亿的新增贷款到此创造了多少的流动性？新增的流动性又是否会进行新的固定资产投资活动？
A. 表外资产被移至表内虚增了新的额外的流动性
07-08年国内银行被要求压缩信贷的时候，国内银行进行了很多把表内资产比如企业贷款等转移到表外的动作，现在在政府要求扩大信贷的指引下有多少银行进行了表外移动到表内的动作就不得而知了，我们只知道这个动作并没有创造出新的额外的流动性。

B. 从1.6万亿的构成来看：新增的流动性被夸大，而企业会进行的投资活动也被夸大
b.1. 我们已经知道：1 月份新增贷款中票据30%-40%。要估算银行的信用创造能力，不妨把票据融资的保证金规模乘以10倍。理论上说，如果票据融资的保证金比例为10%，则企业通过各个银行的贴现和转贴现，其循环融资的总金额可增至10倍，等于大大虚增了各银行的贷款总量，而这部分资金并没有投入实体经济之中。
b.2. 1 月份新增贷款中流动资金贷款20%-25%。这部分贷款，很明显企业不会用来做投资，进行大规模的资本支出。相反企业倒有冲动拿这部分钱去炒股，因为企业盈利前景不明，利润微薄，不如股市来钱快，这样的财富效应反而不利于企业扩大R&D进行必要的转型。另外一种观点认为新增的这部分企业流动资金贷款被用来支付企业以前遗留下来的应付账款，这也表示劣质企业可以借旧账还新账，坏账率短期内不会提升。
b.2. 政府相关项目占比25%-30%. 这部分贷款就是我们政府所进行的4万亿投资。4万亿投资中中央政府出1/3，其余的2/3由地方政府和银行来出。从银行的角度来看，这部分国家基建项目基本上没有“商业风险”，因为有国家的或明或暗的“信用担保”。所以，只要央行不要持续降低利率从而人为降低银行的cost of capital，激化mispricing, 这部分贷款就比较安全。虽然有人说国家的信用担保更多的是以保就业来衡量，并非商业考量，会造成银行资金的misallocation。我昨天看《重庆商报》，说过去重庆一些小县城一直想修工业园区来招商引资，但是没有资金来源。现在好了，有了国家的4万亿，很快就贷到款了，马上重庆就有一批工业园区动工。这些B咖项目也就是所谓的marginal business拿到贷款，近期是不会造成不良贷款。但是正如97年亚洲金融危机以后3年，中国的银行业的不良贷款开始激增。这次恐怕也是地雷要埋个几年吧？
b.3. 企业的其它贷款项目的信用创造也虚增了各银行的贷款总量。
比如说有A和B两家关联企业，A企业来到工商银行存入1000万元的存款存单（工商银行计：1次存款）。A对工商银行说这个存单我背书质押给B企业（工商银行记：1次贷款），然后B钱企业拿这张1000万元的存款存单作为抵押向工商银行贷款8000万元（工商银行记：1次贷款）。好了，在这次交易中工商银行总共创造了1次存款，2次贷款，但是实际B企业会投入社会使用多少8000万元，我们就不知道了。我们只知道当前情况下很多企业并不完全使用银行贷款。

展望一. 不良贷款率短期不会攀升，因为银行可以靠发行次级债和资产支持证券来扩大分母。也就是说在全球银行业都努力去杠杆化的时候，我们的银行去努力地发债和做大表外资产（这是不是人们看好中国银行业的原因呢？中国银行业的领头羊们中国工商银行、建设银行、中国银行位居全球银行市值榜的前三名！）。长期来看，无论是增长的不良贷款总量还是近期的银行发债/表外资产扩张，银行是必然需要发行股票来提高核心资本率的，所以倒霉的是面临稀释的股东们。
我昨天看到2个新闻说：
第一个说：在2009年，信贷资产证券化、信贷资产转让将在信贷结构调整方面扮演重要角色。http://money.163.com/09/0205/00/51BKQEKC00251LIE.html
第二个是关于银行次级债发行和ABS发行：商业银行次级债券发行量大幅增加,全年共有10家商业银行发行次级债券724亿元,发行量较前一年增长115.2%,另有2家商业银行发行普通金融债券250亿元。资产证券化试点机构范围和发行规模较2007年均有扩大,包括商业银行、汽车金融公司、资产管理公司等在内的8家机构发起总金额为302亿元的资产支持证券。http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/20090207/01315827973.shtml
展望二：新增的流动性被夸大，也许很难能弥补企业由于留存收益大幅下降而引发的资本支出下降。