저자: WarrenBuffett · 외국인
요약 보기
버핏은 정부의 대규모 현금 지급과 연준 통화 공급 확대로 현금 유통량이 약 0.8조에서 2.2조 달러로 늘었다고 설명하며, 이는 인플레이션을 불가피하게 만들었다고 주장한다. 연준의 정책은 경제에 도움이 되었지만 화폐 가치 하락(구매력 감소)은 피할 수 없었다고 본다. 일본의 장기 디플레이션 사례와 예측의 한계도 언급하며, 장기적으로는 신뢰할 수 있는 기업 중심의 투자가 중요하다고 강조한다.
다듬은 글
Inflation is never the same. Nothing in economics is the same the second time after it happens in the first because the first affects people's attitudes in the second and this their attitudes always influence the the the activity itself. I mean, it is it is an interesting phenomenon. There are there's People write a textbook and they write write it based on the last experience and people read the textbook so they behave differently next time and they then they
wonder why they got they're getting a different result than they got the time before. So, anyway, we have we have sent out lots and lots and lots. When I say we, I mean the United States government. We have the government has sent out lots of money to people. And at some point you know, it it the money can't be worth as much as it was when there was less money out.
There's an There's an interesting figure that I think probably will astound you. Sounds me anyway. The Federal Reserve every Thursday puts out a balance sheet. Now, the Federal Reserve and Federal Reserve, they're complicated institutions, but they do put out this kind of consolidated statement of all the various Federal Reserve banks.
All these things that have entered into the legislation over the years and and but there's a balance sheet. And 15 years ago roughly um if you look you know, the Federal Reserve issues those notes I talked about uh a while back and uh that's the one uh there's the current one and they print these piece of paper.
And they one way or another they got them in the hands of people. Well, the interesting thing is people said cash is dead and all that sort of thing, you know, cashless society. Well, there were 800 billion, go back 10 or 15 years ago, but it was about 800 billion of currency in circulation. And if you look at last Thursday's report you'll see there's something like now 2.2 trillion dollars of currency in circulation, 2.2 trillion.
Now, there's about um there's 300 well, there's 300 there's 100 [clears throat] There's 330 million people in the United States. Let's look at it that way. And with 330 million people and you have almost 2.3 trillion of currency in circulation that's $7,000 per person. Every man, woman, and child in theory has $7,000 worth of currency.
Well, you know, that isn't right, but you but you do know that the Federal Reserve's bookkeeping is essentially right. They've got that much that's out there. I don't know whether where it is. I mean, I don't know whether it's in Russia, I don't know whether it's in South America, I don't know where you know, I don't know whether Charlie's got it all.
I mean it's it's a staggering sum. You know, cash is dead and yet we on average have $7,000 for every person in the United States. Now, uh while you're absorbing that think for a moment what would happen if the US government said well, they work it out in private and um they decide that they're going to send Federal Reserve and I'm not going to blame the Federal Reserve for this.
Somebody back in Washington just decides they're going to send out a million dollars to every household in the United States and uh there 130 million households in the United States or something like that, you know, and and they they're going to mail you a million dollars in cash. And there were a couple provisions attached to it.
Um one is if you talked about it in the next 30 days the money disappeared. So, it was like in one of those old TV shows or something and poof disappears. And uh after 30 days uh you could spend it. Well, all of a sudden you've the household wealth of the United States, Federal Reserve puts out an estimate is 130 trillion or something like that.
So, basically, you've doubled the household wealth. And all you've done is mail out a people. But they don't tell them you're doing it with everybody. You just say they won the lottery or whatever it may be. And now you've got an amount equal to household wealth. Uh that every on average people have doubled it.
They've got they've got this extra 100 uh 30 um trillion of wealth and uh in a month they can spend it. Well, what's going to happen? Well, that uh [clears throat] what prices are going to go up. But are they going to go up immediately? You know, uh well, you don't know the other guy got it. You just know you've got it.
So, you don't really feel like you got to rush out buy things, but as soon as word gets around well, we've mailed out if you look at the amount we've distributed the Federal government I'm not talking about I'm just talking about the distribution of resources. We're we're talking numbers like that and and it it affects prices.
It has to affect prices. Yeah. If you had 10 times as much you went home and you bought a 10 times the net worth you had yesterday, [clears throat] but everybody else did the same thing. It had doesn't increase the amount of bread in the economy or the number of cars. It it just means that the price the value of this is going to go down and the and the and and its purchasing power it can't buy more than exists.
So, it's a very strange period where we have lots of money sent out to people one way or another we're getting it, but that uh they didn't find as many place things to buy as before and we had supply chain disruption. We have all these things happen, but the end of it is they go out to the Nebraska Furniture Mart and they start buying things.
And they do it with our other companies and they do it uh in very peculiar ways. And now [clears throat] they're buying I mean, one thing you know, that jewelry stores were generally speaking, not a very good business and and 2 years ago uh every landlord that had a a jewelry store or multiple jewelry stores in their mall you know, was wondering how they were going to get their rent.
And uh now every jewelry store virtually is is doing incredibly better than they ever dreamt with way less inventory because people are just coming in and buy. I mean, and they don't wait for sales. You know, when they walk in the store, they're going to walk out and they're going to bought something.
And uh they pay for it. They got the money. So, we are seeing an unleashing of the fact that we've just mailed all our money to people. One way or another, it's very indirect and you all gets complicated when you talk about a big system, but this is what's happened. And uh I will guarantee you that if we just if we mail out a million dollars to every household in the United States tonight and you don't know that it's happened you you know, um you don't really expect much to happen in behavior tomorrow, but somehow at some point in time if you start doing it every month, we'll say, and people really know you're doing it, then they start anticipating it and buying it a time and forward to I mean, there's a million things that happen in economics.
But the the answer is we've had a lot of inflation and it was almost impossible not to have if you're going to mail out the kind of money we've mailed out. And it's probably a good thing we did it. In fact, I think there was one point when the Federal Reserve uh which in fact creates the money uh the if they hadn't done it your lives would be a lot worse, a whole lot worse.
Now, and that was an important decision and and uh uh that's the way to that's the uh that's why you've had inflation and and heaven knows, I mean it could end. You can throw the country into recession, you can do all kinds of things. Country's going to have recessions incidentally. It's going to have depressions periodically.
And and and things don't things will happen differently. And you'll read the newspaper today and you'll wonder a year from now why was I reading the newspaper a year ago? I mean, it it it it's it's just the way it works. I mean, when I bought the first stock in 1942, did I know everything that was going to happen afterwards?
Of course not. I didn't know a damn thing. But uh I just needed to have one idea and that idea wasn't really well formed. It was just It was just probably the way practically every kid felt about the country when we just gone into a war, you know. We thought America was going to win, and America was going to win then.
It was going to win [clears throat] just generally, and and savings bonds were paying 2.9%. I don't know that. Cuz we we bought them they called them war bonds originally, and then they called them defense bonds, and then they called them savings bonds, but they were the same thing. And uh uh [groaning] it's you you print loads of money, and money is going to be worthless.
Not worthless. I got in trouble doing that one time with CNBC cuz I said it was going to be worth separately less, but it got contracted down to worthless. So, I I It may be a few years to learn to separate those words somehow. Uh Anyway, that's everything I know about economics and more, and Charlie can probably improve on it.
Well, it happened on a scale with them we'd never seen before. Those checks that were just mailed out everybody who claimed to have a business and claimed to have employees they they they probably drowned the country in money for a while. [clears throat] And they as you say they probably had to do it.
But it it was something that had never been done on that scale before. But we had a problem we hadn't had before. Yes, no, I'm not I'm I'm not saying it wasn't a good idea. I mean in my book Jay Powell is a hero. I mean it's very very simple. I mean he did what he had to do, you know, when when the if he'd done nothing, it would be the I mean he would be uh you know, be very easy to engage in what you would call thumb sucking then.
And plenty of I shouldn't say plenty of, but there are other Fed chairmen that would have been sucking their thumbs, and the world would have fallen around them, and nobody would have exactly blamed them. They would have blamed the the virus and the Chinese and all kinds of things. Well, the really interesting company is Japan where they first they buy back all the debt, then they start buying back all the common stocks.
Now, that's really weird. And what did they get? 25 years of stasis. Who would have predicted that? Well, nobody predicted anything. I mean there's nobody's predictions that we're interested in, including our own. I mean it's very simple. The What we do know is that we can we can we can deserve your trust.
Uh and there's no reason to do things that don't deserve it. And we can't tell what But basically we think we're trying to build a Berkshire that cannot can't withstand a nuclear exchange, but it can withstand just about withstand as much as any anything that that we can do anything about. And uh and uh that leaves us feeling good.
It doesn't It leave us feeling perfect. I mean we'd like to even promise you more than that, but we can't promise more than that. So, it's it's very simple. But uh uh And with that we'll move on to 18.
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