Zero-Coupon Securities

零息债券

In September, Berkshire issued $902.6 million principal amount of Zero-Coupon Convertible Subordinated Debentures, which are now listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Salomon Brothers handled the underwriting in superb fashion, providing us helpful advice and a flawless execution.

9月份，伯克希尔公司发行了9.026亿本金的零息可转换次级债券，目前已在纽约证券交易所上市。所罗门兄弟很好地承担了本次债券的承销工作，给我们提供了很有帮助的建议并完美地实施。

Most bonds, of course, require regular payments of interest, usually semi-annually. A zero-coupon bond, conversely, requires no current interest payments; instead, the investor receives his yield by purchasing the security at a significant discount from maturity value. The effective interest rate is determined by the original issue price, the maturity value, and the amount of time between issuance and maturity.

当然，大部分债券要求定期支付利息，通常是半年支付一次。而零息债券则相反，不要求(发行人)支付当期利息；相反,投资者通过以相比到期价值很大的折扣购买债券从而获得收益。有效利率由初始发行价格、到期价值和发行日与到期日之间的期限决定。

In our case, the bonds were issued at 44.314% of maturity value and are due in 15 years. For investors purchasing the bonds, that is the mathematical equivalent of a 5.5% current payment compounded semi-annually. Because we received only 44.31 cents on the dollar, our proceeds from this offering were $400 million (less about $9.5 million of offering expenses).

在我们的情况中，债券以到期价值的44.314%发行，15年到期。对于购买这个债券的投资者来说，这种债券在数学上相当于年利率5.5%每半年付息的债券。因为我们每张债券只收到44.31美分，我们从这次发行中获得的收入为4亿美元（扣除大约950万美元的发行费用）。

The bonds were issued in denominations of $10,000 and each bond is convertible into .4515 shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Because a $10,000 bond cost $4,431, this means that the conversion price was $9,815 per Berkshire share, a 15% premium to the market price then existing. Berkshire can call the bonds at any time after September 28, 1992 at their accreted value (the original issue price plus 5.5% compounded semi-annually) and on two specified days, September 28 of 1994 and 1999, the bondholders can require Berkshire to buy the securities at their accreted value.

债券的面额为1万美元，每份债券可转化成0.4515股伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的股票。因为面值1万美元的债券花费$4,431，这意味着转换价格为$9,815一股伯克希尔股票，大约是当时市场价格的15%溢价。伯克希尔公司可在1992年9月28日后以加计利息价格（初始发行价格加上5.5%利率半年付息复利累计）随时赎回；在两个特殊的日子，1994年9月28日和1999年9月28日，股东可以要求伯克希尔公司以加计利息的价格赎回债券。（补充：在发行不久后，整个市场便大幅下挫，BRK在1990年底甚至跌至5500美元，一直到1992年末才稳定超过转股价9815美元，巴菲特非常巧妙地利用了1989年的市场情绪）

For tax purposes, Berkshire is entitled to deduct the 5.5% interest accrual each year, even though we make no payments to the bondholders. Thus the net effect to us, resulting from the reduced taxes, is positive cash flow. That is a very significant benefit. Some unknowable variables prevent us from calculating our exact effective rate of interest, but under all circumstances it will be well below 5.5%. There is meanwhile a symmetry to the tax law: Any taxable holder of the bonds must pay tax each year on the 5.5% interest, even though he receives no cash.

就税负来看，即使伯克希尔公司并没有支付利息给债券持有者，每年公司有权扣除5.5%的应计利息支出。由于税收减少了，对于我们的净效应是带来了正向现金流。这是很重要的益处。一些不可知变量妨碍了我们准确计算出实际利息率，但是在任何情况下，利率都是远低于5.5%的。同时，税法存在对称的效应：任何债券的持有人每年都必须为5.5%的利息收入付税，即使他没有收到任何现金。

Neither our bonds nor those of certain other companies that issued similar bonds last year (notably Loews and Motorola) resemble the great bulk of zero-coupon bonds that have been issued in recent years. Of these, Charlie and I have been, and will continue to be, outspoken critics. As I will later explain, such bonds have often been used in the most deceptive of ways and with deadly consequences to investors. But before we tackle that subject, let's travel back to Eden, to a time when the apple had not yet been bitten.

我们发行的债券或者某些其他公司去年所发行的类似的债券（尤其是洛斯公司和摩托罗拉公司）都与最近几年大量的发行的零息债券不同。关于这个，查理和我一直以来，也将持续地直言不讳地批评。正如我后面会解释，这种债券常常以非常具有欺诈性的方式发行，并给投资者带来致命的结果。但是在我们讨论这个问题之前，让我们先回到伊甸园，回到苹果还没有被咬的时代。

If you're my age you bought your first zero-coupon bonds during World War II, by purchasing the famous Series E U. S. Savings Bond, the most widely-sold bond issue in history. (After the war, these bonds were held by one out of two U. S. households.) Nobody, of course, called the Series E a zero-coupon bond, a term in fact that I doubt had been invented. But that's precisely what the Series E was.

如果你像我这样的年纪，你在第二次世界大战期间会买了你第一只零息债券，即著名的E系列美国储蓄债券，史上卖得最好的债券。（二战以后，几乎每两个美国家庭就会持有这些债券）当然，没有人把E系列债券称作零息债券，事实上我怀疑这个词语可能还没出现。但是E系列恰恰就是零息债券。

These bonds came in denominations as small as $18.75. That amount purchased a $25 obligation of the United States government due in 10 years, terms that gave the buyer a compounded annual return of 2.9%. At the time, this was an attractive offer: the 2.9% rate was higher than that generally available on Government bonds and the holder faced no market-fluctuation risk, since he could at any time cash in his bonds with only a minor reduction in interest.

这些债券中面额最小的只有$18.75，在持有10年后，美国政府需要支付25美金，也就是给予购买者每年2.9%的复合利率。那时候，这是个非常有吸引力的投资选择：2.9%的利率比普通的政府债券的利率要高，持有者不面临市场波动的风险，因为持有者只需损失较少的利息便可随时将他的债券换成现金。

A second form of zero-coupon U. S. Treasury issue, also benign and useful, surfaced in the last decade. One problem with a normal bond is that even though it pays a given interest rate - say 10% - the holder cannot be assured that a compounded 10% return will be realized. For that rate to materialize, each semi-annual coupon must be reinvested at 10% as it is received. If current interest rates are, say, only 6% or 7% when these coupons come due, the holder will be unable to compound his money over the life of the bond at the advertised rate. For n funds or other investors with long-term liabilities, "reinvestment risk" of this type can be a serious problem. Savings Bonds might have solved it, except that they are issued only to individuals and are unavailable in large denominations. What big buyers needed was huge quantities of "Savings Bond Equivalents."

美国国库券零息债券的第二种形式出现在过去十年间，同样是很有益的。普通债券的一个问题是，即使债券支付了给定的利息率，假定10%，并不能保证持有者能实现10%的复合回报率。如果要实现那个回报率，每半年支付的利息在收到时必须再投资到有10%回报率的项目上。如果息票支付时利率只有6%或7%，持有者在债券存续期里便不能以债券所宣称的回报率实现再投资。对于养老基金或者拥有长期负债的其他投资者来说，这类“再投资风险”可能是严重的问题。储蓄债券可能可以解决这个问题，只可惜它们只发给个人投资者，而且缺乏大面额。大买家需要的是巨量的“储蓄债券等价物”。

Enter some ingenious and, in this case, highly useful investment bankers (led, I'm happy to say, by Salomon Brothers). They created the instrument desired by "stripping" the semi-annual coupons from standard Government issues. Each coupon, once detached, takes on the essential character of a Savings Bond since it represents a single sum due sometime in the future. For example, if you strip the 40 semi-annual coupons from a U. S. Government Bond due in the year 2010, you will have 40 zero-coupon bonds, with maturities from six months to 20 years, each of which can then be bundled with other coupons of like maturity and marketed. If current interest rates are, say, 10% for all maturities, the six-month issue will sell for 95.24% of maturity value and the 20-year issue will sell for 14.20%. The purchaser of any given maturity is thus guaranteed a compounded rate of 10% for his entire holding period. Stripping of government bonds has occurred on a large scale in recent years, as long-term investors, ranging from n funds to individual IRA accounts, recognized these high-grade, zero-coupon issues to be well suited to their needs.

在这种情况下，一些有创意的、非常有效的投资银行家出现了（我很高兴的说这是由所罗门兄弟带领的）。他们从标准的政府债券剥离出了半年息票而创造出需要的零息债券。一旦分开，每个息票都呈现出储蓄债券的基本特征，因为它表示未来某一时刻到期的单笔资金。举个例子，如果你从2010年到期的美国政府债券中剥离出40个半年度息票，你将得到到期日从6个月到20年的40份零息债券，每一个零息债券都可以与其他到期日相同的息票捆绑在一起并在市场出售。如果对于所有到期日不同的债券，目前的利率都是10%，则半年期的债券将以到期面值的95.24%出售，20年的债券以到期面值的14.2%出售。对于任何给定到期日的购买者，都可以保证他在整个债券持有期获得10%的复合利率。近年来政府债券分拆大规模地进行，因为长期投资者，包括养老基金和个人退休账户，意识到这些高品质的零息债券很符合他们的需求。

But as happens in Wall Street all too often, what the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end. In the last few years zero-coupon bonds (and their functional equivalent, pay-in-kind bonds, which distribute additional PIK bonds semi-annually as interest instead of paying cash) have been issued in enormous quantities by ever-junkier credits. To these issuers, zero (or PIK) bonds offer one overwhelming advantage: It is impossible to default on a promise to pay nothing. Indeed, if LDC governments had issued no debt in the 1970's other than long-term zero-coupon obligations, they would now have a spotless record as debtors.

但就像经常在华尔街所发生的一样，智者开头，最后引来蠢才也做类似的事。最近几年，（信用）前所未有低劣的借贷方发行了巨额的零息债券（以及功能上等同的PIK债券，这种债券每半年分配额外的PIK债券作为利息而不是支付现金）。对于这些债券发行人，零息债券（或者PIK债券）提供了一个压倒性的好处：由于（发行后到到期日之前之间）不需要支付任何资金，因此不可能违约。事实上，如果LDC政府（LDC是Less developed countries的缩写，80年代许多发展中国家发生了政府债券违约，以1982年墨西哥政府违约为首）在20世纪70年代没有发行除了长期零息债券以外的债务，那么他们作为债务人现在仍有着完美无瑕的纪录。

This principle at work - that you need not default for a long time if you solemnly promise to pay nothing for a long time - has not been lost on promoters and investment bankers seeking to finance ever-shakier deals. But its acceptance by lenders took a while: When the leveraged buy-out craze began some years back, purchasers could borrow only on a reasonably sound basis, in which conservatively-estimated free cash flow - that is, operating earnings plus depreciation and amortization less normalized capital expenditures - was adequate to cover both interest and modest reductions in debt.

如果在很长时间里你只需认真地承诺而什么也不付，那么在很长时间里你就不会违约。在债券推动者和投资银行家寻求不稳定的交易方面，上述生效的原则未曾失效。不过放款方需要花段时间来接受：在几年前杠杆收购热潮开始时，购买者需以合理而明智的依据借钱，基于保守估计的自由现金流-也就是用营业利润加上折旧和摊销减去正常的资本支出-足够覆盖未来的利息支出和负债的适度减少。

Later, as the adrenalin of deal-makers surged, businesses began to be purchased at prices so high that all free cash flow necessarily had to be allocated to the payment of interest. That left nothing for the paydown of debt. In effect, a Scarlett O'Hara "I'll think about it tomorrow" position in respect to principal payments was taken by borrowers and accepted by a new breed of lender, the buyer of original-issue junk bonds. Debt now became something to be refinanced rather than repaid. The change brings to mind a New Yorker cartoon in which the grateful borrower rises to shake the hand of the bank's lending officer and gushes: "I don't know how I'll ever repay you."

后来，由于交易商肾上腺素的激增，业务的买价太高以至于所有的现金流都不得不用于利息的支付。这导致没有留下任何资金来偿付债务。 实际上，借款人关于本金偿还的态度变得像斯嘉丽.奥哈拉一样，“我明天再考虑它”（飘中的经典台词），而那些新的贪婪的债权人，也就是原先垃圾债券的购买者也能够接受。债务现在变成到期再融资而不是偿付的事物。这种转变让我想起在《纽约客》卡通中的画面，一个感激涕零的借款人握着银行贷款职员的手说道：“我实在不知道怎么偿还你。”

Soon borrowers found even the new, lax standards intolerably binding. To induce lenders to finance even sillier transactions, they introduced an abomination, EBDIT - Earnings Before Depreciation, Interest and Taxes - as the test of a company's ability to pay interest. Using this sawed-off yardstick, the borrower ignored depreciation as an expense on the theory that it did not require a current cash outlay.

不久借款人发现即使新的、宽松的标准下的约束也不能忍受。为了引诱债权人为更加愚蠢的交易融资，他们引入了一个令人厌恶的事物，EBDIT—折旧、利息和所得税前利润—作为评价公司支付利息能力的标准。利用这个被锯断的标准，借款人基于折旧不会导致当期的现金支出，而忽视了折旧作为一项费用。

Such an attitude is clearly delusional. At 95% of American businesses, capital expenditures that over time roughly approximate depreciation are a necessity and are every bit as real an expense as labor or utility costs. Even a high school dropout knows that to finance a car he must have income that covers not only interest and operating expenses, but also realistically-calculated depreciation. He would be laughed out of the bank if he started talking about EBDIT.

这种态度很明显是妄想。对于95%的美国企业，长期而言近似于折旧的资本性支出，是必须的，而且同人力或者公用事业费用同样真实。即使高中辍学的学生也知道，要想为买汽车融资，他的收入不仅仅需要承担利息和运营成本，还有现实计算出的折旧。如果他开始谈论EBDIT，他会被银行嘲笑并轰出。

Capital outlays at a business can be skipped, of course, in any given month, just as a human can skip a day or even a week of eating. But if the skipping becomes routine and is not made up, the body weakens and eventually dies. Furthermore, a start-and-stop feeding policy will over time produce a less healthy organism, human or corporate, than that produced by a steady diet. As businessmen, Charlie and I relish having competitors who are unable to fund capital expenditures.

当然，一家公司可以忽略给定的月份的资本支出，就像人可以一天甚至一个礼拜不吃饭。但是如果这种跳跃成为一种惯例而且不进行弥补，身体就会变得虚弱，最终死亡。此外，比起稳定的进食习惯，有一餐没一餐的做法久而久之将使得一个有机体的机能变差，不管是人体或是企业。身为生意人，查理和我喜欢拥有的是缺乏资金进行资本支出的竞争对手。

You might think that waving away a major expense such as depreciation in an attempt to make a terrible deal look like a good one hits the limits of Wall Street's ingenuity. If so, you haven't been paying attention during the past few years. Promoters needed to find a way to justify even pricier acquisitions. Otherwise, they risked - heaven forbid! - losing deals to other promoters with more "imagination."

你可能会认为，除去像折旧这种主要的费用来使原来糟糕的交易看起来不错的做法，已经达到了华尔街聪明才智的极限。如果是这样，最近几年你可能是没有足够留意。债券推动者需要找到一个方法来证明甚至更为昂贵的交易的合理性。否则，他们会冒着被其他更有创意的促进者抢走他们的生意的风险，天理难容！

So, stepping through the Looking Glass, promoters and their investment bankers proclaimed that EBDIT should now be measured against cash interest only, which meant that interest accruing on zero-coupon or PIK bonds could be ignored when the financial feasibility of a transaction was being assessed. This approach not only relegated depreciation expense to the let's-ignore-it corner, but gave similar treatment to what was usually a significant portion of interest expense. To their shame, many professional investment managers went along with this nonsense, though they usually were careful to do so only with clients' money, not their own. (Calling these managers "professionals" is actually too kind; they should be designated "promotees.")

所以穿过那道镜子，债券推动者和他们的投资银行家宣称EBDIT应该只跟现金利息作比较，这就意味着当评估一个交易的财务可行性时，可以忽视零息债券或者PIK债券的应计利息。这样的方式不仅把折旧费用放到了没人注意的角落里，还将通常情况下利息费用中的相当规模的部分也给予了同样的对待。可耻的是，很多专业的投资管理人也赞同了这种谬论，尽管他们通常小心地只用客户的钱这样做，而不是用他们自己的。（称这些经理“专家”实在是太友善了；他们应该被称为“被提拔者”。）

Under this new standard, a business earning, say, $100 million pre-tax and having debt on which $90 million of interest must be paid currently, might use a zero-coupon or PIK issue to incur another $60 million of annual interest that would accrue and compound but not come due for some years. The rate on these issues would typically be very high, which means that the situation in year 2 might be $90 million cash interest plus $69 million accrued interest, and so on as the compounding proceeds. Such high-rate reborrowing schemes, which a few years ago were appropriately confined to the waterfront, soon became models of modern finance at virtually all major investment banking houses.

在这种新标准下，一个公司，假定有1亿的税前利润，同时有负债并需支付对应的9000万美元的利息支出，可以用一个零息债券或者PIK债券来筹措资金，对应着带来另一笔将不断累积并复合增长但在几年内不会到期的6000万美元的年利息。这种债券的利率通常会非常高，到了第二年公司可能会承担9000万的现金利息和6900万的应计利息，并因复利而持续增长。这种高利率的再融资计划，在几年前还获得适当控制，不久后就成为所有主要投资银行现代金融财计的范本。

When they make these offerings, investment bankers display their humorous side: They dispense income and balance sheet projections extending five or more years into the future for companies they barely had heard of a few months earlier. If you are shown such schedules, I suggest that you join in the fun: Ask the investment banker for the one-year budgets that his own firm prepared as the last few years began and then compare these with what actually happened.

当他们完成这些发行之后，投资银行家显现出他们诙谐的一面：他们对公司的利润表和资产负债表的预测进行了调节，将预测期延长到未来5年或者更长的时间，虽然这个公司他们可能几个月前都没听说过。如果你遇到了这种预估表，我建议你参加这个游戏：跟投资银行家要几份他们自己公司过去几年年初时准备的年度预算表，并与实际情况作对比。

Some time ago Ken Galbraith, in his witty and insightful The Great Crash, coined a new economic term: "the bezzle," defined as the current amount of undiscovered embezzlement. This financial creature has a magical quality: The embezzlers are richer by the amount of the bezzle, while the embezzlees do not yet feel poorer.

不久前，Ken Galbraith（美国20世纪很有影响力的经济学家，凯恩斯主义者）在他诙谐且富有洞察力的著作《大崩盘》杜撰了一个新的经济术语：“未发现的盗用”，定义为目前未经发现的盗用公款的金额。这个金融现象有个神奇的特质：盗用公款者通过盗用公款而富有，而被盗用者却并没有因此而感到变穷。

Professor Galbraith astutely pointed out that this sum should be added to the National Wealth so that we might know the Psychic National Wealth. Logically, a society that wanted to feel enormously prosperous would both encourage its citizens to embezzle and try not to detect the crime. By this means, "wealth" would balloon though not an erg of productive work had been done.

Galbraith教授敏锐地指出这部分金额应该加到国民财富中以便我们知道心理上的国民财富是多少。从逻辑上来讲，一个社会如果想要觉得自己极为繁荣，就应该鼓励它的市民去贪污，同时尽力不要侦查这些犯罪。通过这样，尽管任何生产活动都未实施，“财富”也会膨胀。

The satirical nonsense of the bezzle is dwarfed by the real-world nonsense of the zero-coupon bond. With zeros, one party to a contract can experience "income" without his opposite experiencing the pain of expenditure. In our illustration, a company capable of earning only $100 million dollars annually - and therefore capable of paying only that much in interest - magically creates "earnings" for bondholders of $150 million. As long as major investors willingly don their Peter Pan wings and repeatedly say "I believe," there is no limit to how much "income" can be created by the zero-coupon bond.

现实中零息债券的荒谬让这个关于盗用公款的讽刺性的胡话相形见拙。利用零息债券，一个公司可以通过这些合约享受收入却不需要经受支出的痛苦。在我们的例子中，一个每年只能盈利1亿的公司-因此每年只能够支付同等数量的利息-神奇地为债券持有者创造了1.5亿美元盈利。只要主要的投资人愿意披上彼得.潘的翅膀，不断地说“我相信你”，零息债券所能创造的收入是没有上限的。

Wall Street welcomed this invention with the enthusiasm less-enlightened folk might reserve for the wheel or the plow. Here, finally, was an instrument that would let the Street make deals at prices no longer limited by actual earning power. The result, obviously, would be more transactions: Silly prices will always attract sellers. And, as Jesse Unruh might have put it, transactions are the mother's milk of finance.

华尔街以不太开化的人为轮子和耕犁持有的那种热情来欢迎这项发明。这项工具最终可以帮助华尔街以不再受实际盈利能力限制的价格做生意。很明显，结果会带来更多的交易：愚蠢的价格总会吸引销售者。正如Jesse Unruh（美国民主党政客，加州的财政局长）所说，交易是金融界的母乳。

The zero-coupon or PIK bond possesses one additional attraction for the promoter and investment banker, which is that the time elapsing between folly and failure can be stretched out. This is no small benefit. If the period before all costs must be faced is long, promoters can create a string of foolish deals - and take in lots of fees - before any chickens come home to roost from their earlier ventures.

零息债券与PIK债券对于债券推动者和投资银行家还有另一个吸引力，即愚蠢和失败之间流逝的时间可被延长。这是个不小的收益。如果面对所有代价的时间还要很久，推动者便能在早期交易的恶果显现出来之前，完成一系列愚蠢的交易并收取大量的费用。

But in the end, alchemy, whether it is metallurgical or financial, fails. A base business can not be transformed into a golden business by tricks of accounting or capital structure. The man claiming to be a financial alchemist may become rich. But gullible investors rather than business achievements will usually be the source of his wealth.

但最终，不论是冶金学中或是金融学中的炼金术都失败了。一个初级的业务不可能通过会计或资本结构的技巧转变成黄金业务。声称是金融炼金术士的人可能变得富有，但是他财富的来源通常是易受骗的投资者而不是公司的成就。

Whatever their weaknesses, we should add, many zero-coupon and PIK bonds will not default. We have in fact owned some and may buy more if their market becomes sufficiently distressed. (We've not, however, even considered buying a new issue from a weak credit.) No financial instrument is evil per se; it's just that some variations have far more potential for mischief than others.

不论不足是什么，我们都应该补充下，很多零息债券和PIK债券都不会违约。事实上我们有一些这类债券，如果这个市场变得足够惨淡，我们可能会买更多（然而，我们从来不会考虑购买新发行的来自低信用发行商的债券。）没有哪个金融工具本身是有害的；只是某些类型的潜在的伤害比别的类型多得多。

The blue ribbon for mischief-making should go to the zero-coupon issuer unable to make its interest payments on a current basis. Our advice: Whenever an investment banker starts talking about EBDIT - or whenever someone creates a capital structure that does not allow all interest, both payable and accrued, to be comfortably met out of current cash flow net of ample capital expenditures - zip up your wallet. Turn the tables by suggesting that the promoter and his high-priced entourage accept zero-coupon fees, deferring their take until the zero-coupon bonds have been paid in full. See then how much enthusiasm for the deal endures.

使坏的最高成就奖应该颁给那些无法支付当期利息的零息债券发行人。我们的建议是：不论何时一个投资银行家开始讨论EBDIT，或者有人创造了一个在当期现金流扣除足够的资本支出后便无法充分满足所有利息支付-不管是当期支付或是计提-的资本结构的时候，请拉紧你的钱包。若想扭转（被动的）局面，可以建议推动者和他的高价随从接受了零息债券费，推迟他们收取资金的份额直到零息债券被完全支付。看这交易的热情还能持续多久。

Our comments about investment bankers may seem harsh. But Charlie and I - in our hopelessly old-fashioned way - believe that they should perform a gatekeeping role, guarding investors against the promoter's propensity to indulge in excess. Promoters, after all, have throughout time exercised the same judgment and restraint in accepting money that alcoholics have exercised in accepting liquor. At a minimum, therefore, the banker's conduct should rise to that of a responsible bartender who, when necessary, refuses the profit from the next drink to avoid sending a drunk out on the highway. In recent years, unfortunately, many leading investment firms have found bartender morality to be an intolerably restrictive standard. Lately, those who have traveled the high road in Wall Street have not encountered heavy traffic.

我们关于投资银行家的评论可能看起来有些尖刻。但是查理和我，以我们绝望的老式方法，认为他们应该执行守门人的角色，保护投资者免于推动者的过度纵容的习性。毕竟，推动者自始至终在获得资金方面运用与酗酒者接受酒精一样的判断和克制。因此，银行家的最低行为应该上升到负责任的酒保的程度，当必要时，酒保拒绝酗酒者的下一杯酒和对应的利润以避免让一个醉汉上路。不幸的是，在最近几年，很多主要的投资公司认为酒保道德变成难以忍受的限制性标准。近来，那些在华尔街大道上行走的人并没有遇到交通拥挤（可理解为:酒保把喝酒的人直接灌倒了）。

One distressing footnote: The cost of the zero-coupon folly will not be borne solely by the direct participants. Certain savings and loan associations were heavy buyers of such bonds, using cash that came from FSLIC-insured deposits. Straining to show splendid earnings, these buyers recorded - but did not receive - ultra-high interest income on these issues. Many of these associations are now in major trouble. Had their loans to shaky credits worked, the owners of the associations would have pocketed the profits. In the many cases in which the loans will fail, the taxpayer will pick up the bill. To paraphrase Jackie Mason, at these associations it was the managers who should have been wearing the ski masks.

一个令人沮丧的补充说明：零息债券蠢剧的成本并不是只由直接参与者承担。某些储蓄贷款协会是这些债券的大买家，他们使用的是来自联邦储蓄与贷款保险公司担保的存款。为了尽量展示极好的收益，这些买家记录了这些债券超高的利率收入，但他们实际上没有收到。这些协会中的很多个现在都遇到了大麻烦。如果较差信用的贷款能够偿付，那么这些协会的所有者会赚得盆满钵满。在很多例子中这类贷款都得不到偿付，则纳税人最终为其买单。套用Jackie Mason（美国喜剧演员和影星）的话，在这些协会中，应该是由管理者来戴滑雪面具（银行的抢劫者经常带滑雪面具以实施抢劫）。