查理·芒格文稿/演讲实录：2002年会计中不容乐观主义
乐观主义在会计中
没有容身之处
查尔斯·T·芒格 2002 年 4 月 4 日
Optimism Has No Place in Accounting By Charles T. Munger April 4, 2002
安然公司的惨败有两方面原因：（1）扭曲变形的“金融工程”，把失败粉饰成进步；（2）公认会计准则（GAAP）几乎是在明目张胆地纵容欺骗和欺诈。如今，那些误导者的罪过备受关注，并引发了对加重刑事处罚的呼声。但公认会计准则本身的缺陷更为重要，因为改变会计准则及其制定方式，才有可能更有效地防止安然式的灾难。
像安然那些傻瓜和骗子永远不会绝迹，在能赚大钱的地方会尤其活跃——比如在报告持续攀升的盈利时。因此，会计准则必须让傻瓜和骗子极难伪造利润和净资产。每个零售商都知道，盗窃导致的“损耗率”取决于是否建立了一套让任何人难以得逞的系统。同理，健全的会计体系必须让企业难以把失败伪装成成功。
如果规则制定体系反而让数字滥用变得轻而易举，那就好比零售业缺少了收银机。麻烦是迟早的事，无论刑事处罚有多严厉，因为两个体系都没有坚持那种，比如工程学中所要求的安全边际——即旨在防止人类固有弱点造成损害。举个例子，工程学针对手术中许多本可避免的死亡，发明了麻醉机，这种机器不允许操作者将氧气输送量降到零。明智的会计准则也必须拿出同样的精明，来防止不当的会计操作。
要从会计准则中获得最大的安全保障，必须强制采用悲观主义的视角。长期来看，悲观的会计能给公众带来巨大的利益，几乎没有任何风险；而乐观的会计则是一种公害。这一点从未像安然案例那样得到如此鲜明的印证：安然对其衍生品交易采用乐观的会计处理，结果将大量可疑且无法收回的收入提前“装入”了盈利。在这出戏的上半场，公认会计准则允许基于有缺陷的市场价格信息和不足的清算风险拨备，进行“按市值计价”的估值。随后，数百页晦涩难懂的会计准则被用来证明按“按模型计价”基础确定盈利的合理性，而“模型”价格恰恰是由那些接受审计的交易员自行计算出来的——他们却根据报告利润领取奖金。
公认会计准则这个体系存在缺陷，因为会计师事务所的意愿与其客户的需求导致了这种局面。而且，由于该体系的很大一部分已经烂到了根子里，麻烦将不仅限于从事衍生品交易或聘请安达信会计师事务所的公司。庞大的既得利益集团热爱误导性的会计。而美国证券交易委员会（SEC），即便在阿瑟·莱维特这样想改革的主席领导下，也无法推动太多改革，因为服务既得利益集团的政治家阻碍了它。
The fiasco at Enron had two causes: (1) perverted "financial engineering" that portrayed failure as progress and (2) generally accepted accounting principles that practically invited delusion and fraud. The faults of those who misled now get much attention and create demands for greater criminal penalties. But the faults of generally accepted accounting principles are more important, because changing accounting rules, and the way they are adopted, has a greater potential for preventing Enrontype disasters. Fools and knaves, like those at Enron, will always be with us and will be particularly active where big money can be made -- for instance, in reporting everhigher earnings. Therefore, accounting rules must make it very difficult for fools and knaves to fake profits and net assets. Every retailer knows that his "shrink rate" from stealing depends on his maintaining a system that makes it hard for anyone to get away with theft. Similarly, sound accounting must make it difficult for corporations to get away with presenting failure as success. A rule-making system that instead makes misuse of numbers easy operates like a retailing system without cash registers. Troubles are sure to come in each instance, no matter what the criminal penalties, because neither system insists on the margin of safety demanded by, say, engineering, which seeks to prevent damage from inevitable human foibles. For instance, engineering, reacting to many avoidable deaths in surgery, created anesthesia machines that do not permit operators to reduce oxygen delivery to zero. Wise accounting rules must display similar shrewdness in preventing undesirable accounting. The way to get maximum safety from accounting rules is to force a pessimistic outlook. In the long term, huge public benefits are to be gained, with almost no public dangers, from pessimistic accounting, while optimistic accounting is a public menace. Seldom has this been better demonstrated than in the case of Enron, where optimistic accounting of its derivatives trading resulted in a "front-ending" of too much dubious and uncollected revenue into earnings. In the first part of this charade, generally accepted accounting principles allowed "marked to market" valuations, based on defective information about market prices and inadequate allowance for the risks of clearing trades. Later, hundreds of turgid pages of accounting rules were used to justify determining earnings on a "mark to model" basis, in which "model" prices were calculated by the very traders subject to audit while they were paid bonuses based on reported profits. The system of generally accepted accounting principles is defective because the desires of accounting firms and the wishes of their clients make it so. Moreover, because significant parts of the system are rotten to the core, the trouble will not be limited to firms that engaged in derivatives trading or hired the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Huge vested interests love misleading accounting. And the Securities and Exchange Commission, even under a would-be reformer like Arthur Levitt, can't bring about much reform because it is deterred by politicians serving the vested interests.
如此描述问题本身就暗示了解决之道：把会计监管的控制权，置于远比现在更远离会计师事务所、企业界和政客影响的地方。
因此，我们制定会计规则的范本，首先应该是一个类似但甚至比美联储更为独立的新监管机构。其次，必须要求美国证监会（SEC）强制执行这些新规则制定者确立的标准。
这些规则制定者，应该至少像保罗·沃尔克当年制服通胀时那样专业、坚定和正直。他们的职位应该比美联储主席更难被撤换。毕竟，蠢行往往不会被从中获利者视为蠢行，而消除蠢行对某些人来说会很痛苦。
有些人认为，要纠正会计问题，只需要成立某个新的委员会，或者给证监会增加一些权力。但这些想法一次又一次地失败了，因为它们就像试图用豌豆枪去影响一头大象。我们需要一剂更猛的药。
本文作者是伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司的副董事长。
To so state the problem suggests a solution: placing the control of accounting much farther away than it now is from the influence of accounting firms, corporations and politicians. Thus, our model for accounting rule-making should be, first, some new control body similar to but even more independent than the Federal Reserve System. Second, the SEC must be required to enforce the standards established by the new rule-setters. These rule-makers should be at least as expert, determined and virtuous as Paul Volcker was when he tamed inflation. They should also be less removable than the head of the Fed. After all, folly often is not appraised as such by those who profit from it, and eliminating it will be painful for some. Some people think that, to correct accounting, we merely need some new committee or some increase in power for the SEC. But these ideas have failed, time after time, because they are equivalent to trying to influence an elephant with a peashooter. We need a stronger remedy. The writer is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.