財經:投資預測大師的最新警告

JEREMY GRANTHAM'S GOT A TRACK RECORD that's impossible to ignore--he called the Internet bubble, then the housing bubble. While moves like those have earned the famed forecaster the nickname 'perma-bear, ' in early 2009 he also told clients at GMO, his $100 billion, Boston-based money-management firm, to jump back into the market. It was the same week that stocks hit their post-Lehman low.

傑里米·格蘭瑟姆(Jeremy Grantham)擁有不容小覷的從業紀錄─他成功地預言了互聯網泡沫，接着又成功地預言了房地產泡沫。雖說這樣的紀錄爲這位著名的預測大師贏得了“永遠的熊市論者”(perma-bear)的綽號，他也曾在2009年初告訴GMO資產管理公司的客戶殺回市場。就在那一週，股市正好創下了雷曼公司(Lehman)倒閉後的歷史低位。GMO資產管理公司的總部位於波士頓，管理的資產總額爲1,000億美元。

Now, however, the outspoken Yorkshireman, who is chief investment strategist at GMO, is making headlines with a new prediction: Dire, Malthusian warnings about environmental catastrophe. To hear him tell it, the world is running out of food. Resources will only keep getting more expensive. And climate change looms over it all. Indeed, at times he sounds like someone Greenpeace would send door-to-door with a clipboard. (He's not above likening the coal-industry spin to the handiwork of Goebbels.) If it were anyone else, Wall Street would probably laugh him off. But because it's Jeremy Grantham, they just might listen.

不過現在這位坦率直言的約克郡人、GMO的首席投資策略師，再次用最新的預測抓住了媒體的眼球：他發出馬爾薩斯式的悲慘警告，稱可能出現環境大災難。他的觀點主要是：世界的食品供應即將告罄；資源的價格只會越變越貴；氣候變化迫在眉睫。的確，格蘭瑟姆有時候聽起來像極了綠色和平組織派出去的拿着材料挨家挨戶宣傳的工作人員。（他未能免俗地將煤炭業的宣傳比作是戈培爾的造勢之作）。如果換成別人，華爾街很可能對此一笑置之。但因爲他是傑里米·格蘭瑟姆，華爾街很可能就會變得洗耳恭聽。

Q: You've been ringing alarm bells about commodity prices. Why all the worry?

問：對於大宗商品的價格，你一直都在敲響警鐘。你爲什麼會產生這種擔憂？

A: They came down for a hundred years by an average of 70 percent, and then starting around 2002, they shot up and basically everything tripled--and I mean, everything. I think tobacco was the only one that went down. They've given back a hundred years of price decline and they gave it back between '02 and '08, in six years. The game has changed. I suspect the game changed because of the ridiculous growth rates in China--such a large country, with 1.3 billion people using 45 percent of the coal used in the world, 50 percent of all the cement and 40 percent of all the copper. I mean these are numbers that you can't keep on rolling along without expecting something to go tilt.

答： 大宗商品的價格在一百年內平均下降了70%，而在2002年前後，大宗商品的價格卻出現了井噴式的增長，基本上每種大宗商品的價格都漲到了原來的三倍──我的意思是，幾乎沒有例外。我認爲菸草是唯一價格下降的大宗商品。大宗商品將一百年跌去的價格都漲回來了，而且是在02年至08年的六年間就漲回來了。遊戲規則已經改變了。我猜測，遊戲改變的原因是中國奇高的增長率──中國是如此龐大的國家，13億人口消費了全球45%的煤炭、50%的水泥和40%的銅。我的意思是，這些數據不可能持續下去而不導致一些事情失控。

Q: This led to some surprising conclusions, like your concerns about natural resources most of us have barely heard of.

問：這會令人得出一些意想不到的結論，比如你對於自然資源的擔憂。而大多數人還沒有聽說過這些擔憂。

A: We went through one by one, and we decided the most important, the most valuable and the most critical was phosphate or phosphorous. Phosphorous cannot be made, only placed. It is necessary for all living things. And we are mining it, and it's depleting. And I like to say, if that doesn't give you goosebumps, then you're tougher than me. That is a terrible equation. So I went to the professors, and I said, what's going to happen, and they said, 'Oh, there's plenty of phosphorous.' But what's going to happen when it runs out? 'Oh, there is plenty.' It's a really weak argument. We do have a lot, but 85 percent of the low-cost, high-quality phosphorous is in belongs to the King of Morocco. I mean, this is an odd situation. Much, much more constrained than oil in the Middle East ever was--and much more important in the end. And the rest of the world has maybe 50 years of reserve if we don't grow too fast.

答： 我們對資源逐一進行了研究，我們認爲最重要、最有意義以及最嚴峻的問題是磷酸鹽或磷的問題。磷不能經由人工生產，只能自然存儲。對於所有的生物來講，磷都不可或缺。隨着我們對磷的開採，這種原材料正在逐漸枯竭。我想說的是，如果這都不能令你感到恐懼的話，那你可比我堅強。這是一個可怕的等式（開採多少，儲量就減少多少）。所以，我去向教授們討教，問他們未來將會怎樣。他們說：“哦！磷礦的儲量非常豐富。”但是，當磷礦枯竭後又會怎麼樣呢？“哦，它的儲量非常豐富。”這是一個相當無力的論據。我們的確擁有大量磷礦，但是85%開採成本低廉、品質較高的磷礦都位於摩洛哥……並歸摩洛哥國王所有。我的意思是，這是一種微妙的狀況。相較於歷史上原油在中東最集中的程度，磷礦的集中程度要高得多；並且從長遠來說，磷礦的重要性也高得多。如果實施有節制開採的話，全球其他地區的磷礦儲備或許可以再支撐50年。

Q: What are investors supposed to do?

問：投資者應該怎樣做呢？

A: The investment implications are, of course, own stock in the ground, own great resources, reserves of phosphorous, potash, oil, copper, tin, zinc--you name it. I'd be less enthusiastic about aluminum and iron ore just because there is so much. And I wouldn't own coal, and I wouldn't own tar sands. It's hugely expensive to build coal utilities, and the plants they have to build for tar sands are massive, and before they get their money back I suspect that the price of solar and wind will have come down so much.

答： 這對投資的潛在啓示就是：要擁有地下儲藏的東西，擁有重要的資源，不論是磷、鉀、原油、銅、錫還是鋅─還可以繼續數下去。我對鋁和鐵礦石沒有那麼高的熱情，就因爲這兩種礦產儲備太豐富了。我也不會持有煤炭和含油砂。建造採煤設施非常昂貴，開採含油砂需要建設的設施也規模龐大。我懷疑遠在投資方收回成本前，太陽能和風能的價格就已然大幅回落。

So I wouldn't use that, but I think oil, the metals and particularly the fertilizers, I would own--and the most important of all is food. The pressures on food are worse than anything else, and therefore, what is the solution? Very good farming, which can be done. The emphasis from an investor's point of view is on very good farmland. It's had a big run. You can never afford to ignore price and value, but from time to time you can get good investments in farmland, and if you're prepared to go abroad, you can do it today. I wouldn't be too risky. I would stay with distinctly stable countries--Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, Brazil, Canada, of course, and the U.S. But I would look around, in what I call the nooks and crannies. And forestry is the same. Forestry is not a bad bargain, a little overpriced maybe, but it's in a world where everything is overpriced today, once again, courtesy of incredibly low interest rates that push people into investing. A wicked plot of the Federal Reserve.

所以我不會投資煤炭和含油砂，但是我會投資於原油、金屬，特別是肥料─以及比所有這些都重要的糧食。當前，糧食壓力比其它各方面的壓力都大。那麼，解決方案是什麼呢？是精耕細作，而這完全可以實現。從投資者的角度來看，重點在於優質的耕地。耕地價格已經漲了很多。你當然不能忽視價格和價值，但是你可以不時地找到不錯的耕地投資機會。如果你已經準備好了投資海外市場的話，那麼你今天就可以出手了。我本人不願冒太大風險。我會選擇那些非常穩定的國家─比如澳大利亞、新西蘭、烏拉圭、巴西、加拿大，當然還有美國。但是，我也會考慮一下那些稱作“被遺忘角落”的國家。林業也是如此。林業投資不是會讓你吃虧的生意，或許它的價格有點虛高，但是別忘了，我們正處於一個幾乎每件東西都價格虛高的世界。不得不說，這都是不可思議的低利率所賜。這是美國聯邦儲備委員會不道德的伎倆。

Q: Why is this problem so hard for us to deal with? You've railed against short-termism.

問：爲什麼這個問題讓我們如此難以應對？你一直抨擊短期行爲。

A: A career politician has a very short horizon. They're not really interested in problems that go out five or 10 years. Secondly, you have what they call the discount-rate effect, which is a dollar in 10 years has a much lower value to a corporation than a dollar today. So they're only interested, at the corporate level, in the short term. And politicians, in the very short term. And you have a vested-interest effect. In other words, it's very hard to get change when the people who are benefitting very nicely, thank you, from the current situation don't want it. If the oil industry is making a bundle, which they are, they don't want to change to a system that recognizes climate change and the need to have a tax on carbon. And they can fund right-wing think tanks, and they do.

答： 職業政客的眼界是非常短淺的。他們並不真正關心那些五年或十年之後會出現的問題。第二，還有一個貼現率效應的問題，也就是說，對企業來說，十年之後1美元的價值要遠低於今天的1美元。所以，從企業層面上講，他們最關注短期效應。而政治家關心的是更短時期內的效應。此外，還有既得利益效應。換句話說，當從現狀中獲益匪淺的人不想改變現狀的時候，改變就變得非常困難。如果石油行業正賺得盆滿鉢滿───事實也是如此──他們就不想改變現狀去建立一個關注氣候變化及徵收碳排放稅的系統。他們可能資助右翼智庫，事實上，他們也是這樣做的。

So you have vested interests fighting like mad to keep the situation the way it is. And that's always the case. So change is difficult, and with our politicians with the short-term election problems, it's nearly impossible. And when they depend so much on campaign contributions, and they find the campaign contributions come so much from the vested interests, the financial world, but more particularly the energy world, it's a bloody miracle anything gets done.

所以既得利益獲得者會奮不顧身地保持現狀。這是亙古不變的真理。因此，改變是困難的，再加上我們的政治家面臨短期競選的問題，改變幾乎是不可能完成的任務。政治家對競選獻金極度依賴，而且他們發現競選獻金大多來自金融界等既得利益集團，特別是能源行業，在這種情況下，就會出現血淋淋的奇蹟：什麼事情都可以做。

Q: And that long-term perspective is important, not only to changing society, but also to investing. As an investor, you're known for that.

問：長期展望非常重要，不僅對社會的改變是如此，對投資來講也一樣。作爲一名投資人，您的眼光已經是衆所周知。

A: I like to get what I consider the central idea, which in the stock market is patience and value and mean reversion. And in society, it is resources and climate damage. That's plenty to go on, and that's a pretty strong focus. We have a shockingly short horizon in the stock market, as witnessed in the Internet bubble. And we have a shockingly short horizon about social problems, where all we want to hear is how rapid the growth will be and how good everything is.

答： 我想指出我覺得是最核心的關注點，在股市中那就是耐心、價值和均值迴歸，在社會範疇中則是資源和氣候災害。需要做的還有很多，而這些則是重中之重。在股市中，人們關注的時間週期短暫得令人震驚，這在互聯網泡沫中就可見一斑。人們對社會問題關注的時間週期也同樣短得令人震驚，大家希望聽到的無非是增長速度將有多快，以及萬事都是多麼地遂願。

Q: How about a stock forecast. You called the market's initial 2009 rally, but by 2010 you were predicting 'seven lean years.' So far, however, the market's soared.

問：您對股市作何展望？您成功地預測了股市在2009年初的漲勢，但是到了2010年，您又預測股市將出現“七年不景氣”。然而，到目前爲止，股市卻一再走高。

A: And it can go a lot higher than this with the Fed pushing it. And we can have another real bubble. Based on the Fed's history, that seems to be what they like. You know we had one in 2000 with Greenspan, and then we had a housing bubble and a financial bubble with Bernanke and Greenspan. And it looks like Bernanke is perfectly happy to keep the rates down and watch as stock prices rise. They do that because as the rising stock prices give you a little consumer kick, you feel richer--and then, when you least need it, the whole thing bites you, and the prices go back to fair price or lower, like they did in '09, and the consumer reacts, and you have a recession and a bad stock market. But they've had two of these, and they seem bound and determined to do it a third time. As I've said, it's a workable definition of madness to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

答： 在美聯儲的推動下，股指可能還會衝得更高。我們可能將迎來另一個真正的泡沫。基於美聯儲的歷史，泡沫似乎是美聯儲願意看到的景象。大家知道，我們在2000年格林斯潘掌舵時經歷過一次泡沫；託貝南克(Bernanke)和格林斯潘的福，我們隨後又迎來了房地產泡沫和金融泡沫。看起來，貝南克現在非常樂於將利率維持在低位並坐視股票價格飆升。他們這樣做的原因是，股票價格走高給你帶來些許消費的刺激，讓你感覺自己更富有了。接着，當你最不希望事情發生變化時，整個形勢突然間變得對你不利了，股票價格迴歸至均值甚至更低的水平，正像股市09年的情形一樣。消費者作出反應，於是就出現了衰退和熊市。但是，儘管我們已經遭遇了兩次泡沫，美聯儲似乎決心迎接第三次泡沫。就像我說的，這種希望種豆得瓜的做法符合“瘋狂”的定義。

Q: Like many Englishmen, you seem to regard Americans as wildly, fool-heartedly optimistic.

問：與許多英國人一樣，您似乎認爲美國人是過於盲目樂觀的。

A: America is a very, very optimistic-biased society, as I believe, incidentally, Australia is, for whatever that means. We're the two great optimistic societies. You can have a conversation about a housing bubble in England, and they'll say, 'oh, is that right? Let me see the data.' If you have one in Australia, you have World War III! They hate you. They hate you for years! [laughs] The idea that you could suggest that they were having a housing bubble. [laughs]

答： 美國是一個非常、非常具有樂觀傾向的社會；順便提一下，我認爲澳大利亞也是如此。美國和澳大利亞是兩大樂觀主義國家。當你在英國談及房地產泡沫問題時，英國人會說：“哦？真的嗎？讓我看看數據。”當你在澳大利亞提出同樣的問題時，第三次世界大戰便會由此爆發。他們將對你恨之入骨。並且在幾年之內都不會原諒你[笑]。只是因爲你暗示他們可能正面臨房地產泡沫。[笑]

Q: So the stereotypes about us are true?

問：所以這個關於美國人的固有印象是真的？

A: Absolutely. Now, it's been very useful in enterprise, in venture start-ups. We have more failures here than probably every developed country added together, but in consequence, when the smoke clears, we tend to end up with the Amazons and the Googles. It's not an accident. We just throw more darts at the dartboard. The Germans are very conservative about throwing darts. We have an admirable risk-taking attitude, and we're very tolerant of failure.

答： 千真萬確。樂觀對企業、風險資本以及初創企業一直都非常有幫助。在美國，失敗的案例可能比其它所有發達國家加起來還要多，但是結果是，當塵埃落定之時，亞馬遜(Amazon)和谷歌(Google)這樣的企業卻應運而生。這不是一種偶然現象。我們只是向圓靶投出了更多飛鏢而已。德國人對於投擲飛鏢非常保守。我們則擁有令人敬佩的冒險精神，和對失敗極高的容忍度。

Q: We benefit from it?

問：這點對美國人有益嗎？

A: Absolutely, but the downside is you're willing to throw darts because you think you're going to win. American entrepreneurs all know they're going to win. Only 10 percent survive, but they all think they're going to win.

答： 絕對有益，不過也有不足之處，那就是你是認爲自己會成功才願意投擲飛鏢的。美國企業家都認爲自己會成功。雖然只有10%的企業能夠生存下來，但所有企業家都會認爲自己會取得成功。