——微观经济观察系列之十(本文首发《上海证券报》醒客一周专栏)

文 周年洋 

虽然中国股市还是一个新兴市场，但是投资人在长久的经验积累和知识学习中已经发生了一些可喜的变化。我周边的一些朋友越来越像一个真正的投资者。一些朋友申请了招商银行的信用卡，用起来很方便，服务高效快捷，便买了招商银行的股票，也有朋友因为买了万科的房产，对万科公司的产品和经营有了直接的感受，便买进万科股票。还有一种情况是，在投资时买入了某一个公司，对公司了解清楚后，便取消费这个公司的产品，比如买了云南白药股票的去买云南白药牙膏，或是买了格力电器股票的去买格力空调。

前一种是客户变成了股东，这会让投资者趋于长期投资，投资者不仅作为客户享受好的产品和服务，也分享公司的增长收益；后一种是股东变成了客户，增加了公司的销售收入，在消费产品和服务的同时也增加自己的投资收益，对于公司来说，由于这种客户的忠诚度高，会带来源源不断的收益。中国资本市场的这种细微变化如果演变为一种潮流，不仅会使中国股市更健康，也给了有眼光的公司发展壮大的机会。遗憾的是，在中国有这种倾向的投资者不多，还没有看到哪个上市公司有意识地利用这个机会。

其实投资者的这种倾向，早已经被巴菲特这样的投资者兼经理人所发现，并在其每年的年度股东大会上利用这种倾向。在每次的伯克希尔股东年会上，在毗邻会场的差不多20万平方尺的大厅里堆满了伯克希尔各个关系事业部的产品，有吃的喝的比如可口可乐、DQ冰激淋，还有各种日用品和工业品如萧氏地毯、克雷顿移动屋、顶极砖块、贾斯廷牌靴子、开福雨蓬、约翰·曼维尔隔热材料等等，应有尽有。同时场地还专门设置金融服务类展台如保险公司盖可的摊位，为投资者介绍汽车保险，有总裁飞机公司的展示台，投资者在这里可以了解或加入总裁飞机公司成为会员。在股东大会期间，凭借会议入场券优惠购买博希姆的珠宝、内布拉斯加家具卖场的家具。

来参加股东大会的几万人不仅聆听了巴菲特和芒格的精彩发言，还以优惠价格买到了自己喜欢的各类商品，在买商品的过程中又更多地了解了伯克希尔公司的经营情况，对伯克希尔公司更加充满信心。而对伯克希尔公司来讲，如此庞大的购物人群会带来一笔巨额的销售收入。实际情况也确实如此，具体数字没有看到，但据巴菲特自己说，这个年度销售活动每年的销售额迭创新高。

笔者也参加过一些上市公司的股东大会，几乎都是消费类的优秀公司，但是这些公司没有意识到可以让我们这些股东变成客户，从而让股东更多地了解自己公司的运营和优秀之处，同时增加公司的销售量。当然有可能是这些公司主观上不希望公司股东通过自己的产品和服务更多地了解公司，以免自己的弱点暴露在投资者面前。但是，以我对这些公司的了解，这些公司提供的产品和服务在同类公司中是名列前茅的，有足够的自信让股东去体验自己的产品和服务，消费的过程不仅不会吓走这些股东，更有可能使股东增加消费量和投资额。我觉得这些公司没有致力于让股东变成客户，不是害怕投资者的检验，而是没有意识到这个商机和投资服务。当然，这里也有中国股市参与者投机成风的因素，让这些优秀公司对这种股东变成客户的可能不抱希望。

但是，如果这样的优秀公司能够自信一点，设置出一些方案比如持股两年的投资者发放优惠卡，由投资者向公司申请或者在年度股东大会期间直接发放，消费公司产品或服务享受95折或者98折优惠。这有几个好处，一、可以督促企业更好地经营企业；二、可以增加公司的销售额；三、可以让投资者实地了解公司的产品和服务，同时也分享公司的优秀产品和服务；四、少量的折扣可以吸引长期投资者长期成为公司客户，培养一批忠诚的用户，获得一定的稳定销售额，少量的折扣可以相当于公司投放的广告费，而这些广告费的效用是最高的。在中国只要极少数的优秀公司开始这样的尝试，不久的将来就会带来经营上和资本市场上的丰厚回报，同时也会培育出一批成熟的价值投资者，从而改变中国股市现在的投机炒作风气。

股东成客户，客户成股东的转变，前提是公司要诚实经营，奉献出优秀的产品或服务，同时也需要大批真正看重价值的真正投资者。这样的一个转变其实是一个双向激励的过程，投资者通过对上市公司的投资和消费支持上市公司的业绩和股价，公司管理层在这种鼓励中获得进一步的激励，更好地经营公司；投资者消费了公司优质的产品和服务，又通过公司业绩推动的股价获得投资收益，在这个过程中，投资者和上市公司进入了良性循环。但是，如果市场投机成风，上市公司玩弄概念，买卖股票的只是投机，那么真正诚实经营、品质高尚、业绩优秀的公司并不能得到相应的高股价，反而可能不如那些概念制造者，当然更不会有投资者成为客户的可能了。长此以往，可能减低公司经营者的热情，少部分投资优秀公司的投资者也得不到相应的收益。

显然，要让股东成客户，客户成股东这种趋势成为潮流，需要投资文化、经营文化发生变革，需要一个投资者和上市公司从投机向投资转化的过程，这个过程不会一挥而就，需要政策上的倾斜，也需要部分先知先觉的上市公司和投资者的推动和培育。 

2008年8月20日星期三于大运河畔

上海证券报网址链接： http://www.cnstock.com/paper_new/html/2008-09/01/content_64407035.htm

文  周年洋

资本市场是一个众人参与的市场，市场的各种变化，其中一部分是人性的影响。作为普通人，大多数时候每天的心态是宁静平和，风平浪静的，但也有极少数时候，可能狂喜，可能悲痛，可能恐慌，可能愤怒。宁静平和是一般人大多数时候的正常情绪，但狂喜、悲痛、恐慌、愤怒等这些情绪则是极少数时候的极端现象。与一个人频繁交往，可能偶尔碰上极端情绪，但多数时候看到的是正常状态，但一个短暂交往的人，一旦碰到恶劣情绪，那么两个人的关系就会因此结束。如此看来，要认识一个好朋友，不能凭短暂的交流，而需要长期的交往。长期可以认识到一个人的正常状态，从而淡化极端情绪的负面影响。投资亦如是。
股市是人性的表征。多数时候股市行情会波澜不惊，像大多数人的情形一样，处于常态。但也有少数时候，市场在外界某件事情的影响下，偏离常态，持续暴涨或持续暴跌，尤其在中国这样的新兴市场，由于政策、公司和投资者三方面的不成熟，市场处于非常态的概率大于发达国家的资本市场。如何在这样的市场上获得比较丰厚的利润而不是大幅亏损？这就需要我们认真看待影响市场的正常情绪和极端情绪了。
谈到这个问题，不能不让人想到鼎鼎大名的长期资本管理公司（LTCM）了。这个公司是华尔街上由数学天才和诺奖得主的金融学家组成的"梦之队"。他们相信市场是有效的，投资者是理性的，市场上所有金融产品的价格都已经反映了市场上的所有信息，如果这些金融产品的价格偏离正常范围，它一定会回到正轨。他们计算债券波动幅度的历史记录，得出一个基数，以这个基数建立数学模型作为套利操作的指导。在这个模型中，他们没有给人的情感变化留一点位置，对投资者表现出来的感情用事不屑一顾，他们似乎要把生活中的感情因素彻底剥离。他们的数学模型忽视了金融市场中的人性。
在市场处于正常状态下，这些债券的波动幅度有一个可以预测的范围，当它们偏离基数时，赌它会回到基数，往往能赚到一点小利。当然，由于LTCM这班天才非常自负，他们极大地放大资金杠杆，放大到让一般投资者害怕的程度，达到30倍之巨，也就是手头有一元钱可以借30元的债务去做生意，从而让小利变成巨额利润。LTCM的天才们利用市场短期的波动，把握每一次的套利机会，在市场处于常态的年月里，他们获得了巨额的收益。
对于这些天才来说，金融市场的价格变化是随机的，虽然没有任何人能够对某一个特定价格做出预测，但在一个足够长的时间内，这些价格的分布会和其他随机事件一样，如掷硬币的正反面的概率都是50%。但是这里的关键在于，掷硬币时所有的投掷都是独立于前一次的，硬币不会记得前3次掷出的是图案还是数字，但市场是有记忆力的，投资者可能会跟从某种趋势从而使这种趋势继续下去，人性的存在，使得可怕的情形变得更加严重，打破事物本有的概率，使得"黑色星期一"之类现象绵延不绝。
LTCM追求极端理性忽视人性的极端情绪导致了悲剧性的结局。当市场处于极端情绪时，波动幅度远远大于LTCM模型所测度的范围，而且波动时间之长也远远超出他们预计的范围，亏损的局面开始了，加上过于放大的资金杠杆，更是加大了亏损的数额。要不是华尔街的几大银行联手相救，这班天才将把全球拖入金融危机之中。
LTCM只看到了人性正常的一面，也只考虑了市场的常态，他们在这个大框架下从事套利操作。而人性和市场的实际是，在不确定的某一些时刻，会爆发极端情绪和极端行情，而因为其不确定性，数学模型是无法把它考虑进去的。就是LTCM极端聪明的天才们，也无法长期把握市场的短期机会，而是连续好几年盈利，而一旦失手则万劫不复。这就表明，对于投资者来说，不要奢望从市场短期的波动中获得利润，因为短期无法超越人性和市场的极端状态，而一旦遇到这种极端状态，就会遭遇巨额亏损的可能。而只有基于对公司的深入研究，给公司一个比较正确的估值，在适当安全的价格区域买进，从而长期持有才可以在长期获得不错的利润。因为从长时段来看，人性处于正常状态的可能性大，市场处于常态的情况多，恰恰因为长期持有，反而超越了特殊情绪和极端行情的负面影响。

2008-7-24于大运河畔

网友问索氏作品有没有中文译本，我上当当网搜索了一下，当一回文抄公，放在这里，功劳是当当网的。有必要提示一下，群众出版社在传播索尔仁尼琴作品方面贡献很大，而在翻译方面姜明河先生贡献很多。

古拉格群岛（上、中、下）

作者： [俄]索尔仁尼琴 著，田大畏等 译

出 版 社： 群众出版社

出版时间： 1996-12-1  

内容简介

“献给没有生存下来的诸君，要叙述此事他们已无能为力。但愿他们原谅我，没有看到一切，没有想起一切，没有猜到一切。” 

1970年诺贝尔文学奖得主亚历山大·索尔仁尼琴的史诗般巨著《古拉格群岛》就是以这样沉痛的题辞开篇。1973年，索尔仁尼琴决定将这本书秘密送往西方发表，这成了苏联政治史研究的一个重要事件。可以说，苏联当局决定剥夺索尔仁尼琴的国籍，并将其强行驱逐到欧洲，与这本书的出版关系极大。  

这部长达140 万字的巨著，堪称苏联列宁和斯大林时期法制历史最精炼的描摹。所谓“古拉格”，即“劳动改造营管理总局”，原是苏联劳改制度的象征。作者将其比喻为“群岛”，意在指出这种制度已经渗透到苏联政治生活的每个领域，变成了苏联的“第二领土”。全书分监狱工业、永恒的运动、劳动消灭营、灵魂与铁丝网、苦役刑、流放、斯大林死后7部，既以“群岛居民”的经历为线索，又穿插了苏联劳改制度发展史中的大量资料，结构宏大，卷帙浩繁，充分显示了诺贝尔文学奖得主驾驭材料的能力。书中有激昂的控诉，愤怒的谴责，也有尖锐的嘲讽，深切的诉说，是深刻理解苏联政治体制重要的参考著作。 

癌症楼  

作者： （俄）索尔仁尼琴 著，姜明河 译

出 版 社： 译林出版社

出版时间： 2007-8-1  

内容简介

一个复杂多变、充满巨大冲突的世纪已然过去。这个世纪里，人们的心灵中前所未有地弥漫着希望与失望、乐观与悲观的情绪﹔这个世纪的文坛，也因此空前地喧哗与骚动，文学作品数量繁多，审美倾向丰富多彩，思潮流派更替频繁。

文学即人学。当下读者全面认知20世纪和彼时文学情状的需求正在增加，作为多年来致力于外国文学译介的专业出版机构，我们希望以必要的责任心，翻译介绍更多更好启迪民智、打动心灵的现当代文学作品，以实现对人，特别是对其精神取向的尊重与关怀。是以译林出版社精心推出“20世纪经典”，从对20世纪世界文学的整体回望出发，遴选百年来的文学名著翻译出版，以供热爱文学的读者及各界人士丰富学养、陶冶性灵之需要，并力图借此实现对未来出版事业的积极开拓，为实现民族的伟大复兴奉献一己之力。

20世纪文学史上作品异彩纷呈，作家灿若群星。“20世纪经典”旨在以新世纪的历史视野和现实视角，选择在文坛已有定评且契合社会现实与人的心灵需求的作品，使丛书的每一选篇日久弥新、传之久远。出于对翻译出版现状的认真思索，我们在遴选的过程中，特别注重中译本的译文水准，无论名家新人，均以实力取舍。译林出版社努力以披沙拣金的态度，为读者献上品位高尚和质量一流的翻译作品。在整体装帧的庄谐雅俗上，也尽量考虑现时读者具有共性的需求。

由于时间仓促，加之自身水平所限以及选目因海外授权获得与否而受影响，这套丛书的不足之处恐在所难免，敬希读者海涵。“20世纪经典”的书目将是开放性的，我们热诚期待读者的评判与指正，帮助这一志存高远的事业高质量地进行下去。

索尔仁尼琴从流放地到塔什干治病的坎坷经历和所见所闻，构成了《癌症楼》这部小说的基本素材。作者写出了主人公科斯托格洛托夫及其同病房里的各个病人的不同命运和经历，他们性格的形成和人性的扭曲。作者写的是人生的坎坷，但实际上是社会悲剧的写照。一个个知识分子和忠心耿耿的干部被捕、流放、劳改的事实，使作者陷入痛楚的沉思，思考产生这些悲剧的缘由。 

第一圈(上下)

作者： （俄）索尔仁尼琴 著，景黎明 译

出 版 社： 群众出版社 

内容简介

“第一圈”源自但丁的不朽诗作《神曲》，诗中的《地狱篇》中把地狱分成了九圈，第一圈是最好的一层，索尔仁尼琴借用第一圈的喻意，描写了地处莫斯科郊区的一个特殊监狱——玛尔非诺里的生活。这里关押的犯人，都是被指控犯有“叛国罪”、“间谍罪”以及其它莫须有的罪名的科学家，他们享受比普通犯人要好的待遇，在玛尔非诺从事绝密的科学项目研究。

三十多岁的外交部驻某国二等秘书瓦洛金，在一个电话亭中打电话，提醒托布洛莫夫可能要遭到迫害，没想到这个电话被窃听……

特殊监狱玛尔非诺正在研究一种语音辩析器，为了抓到这个打电话的人，首脑机关直接下达命令，强行要求玛尔非诺的科学家立即研制出语音辩析器，不惜施以高压恐怖手段。最终，外交官瓦洛金被秘密逮捕……

小说以凝炼的笔触，超时空浓缩的技巧，仅用了四天的时间，表现了一群人物的命运，刻划了那些没有罪行的科学家们，在玛尔非诺没有人权、没有自由，甚至连“性”的权利都没有的非人生活。 

出版时间： 2000-11-1 

牛犊顶橡树   

作者： （俄）索尔仁尼琴

出 版 社： 时代文艺出版社

出版时间： 1998-2-1

伊凡·杰尼索维奇的一天

作者： （俄罗斯）索尔仁尼琴　著，斯人　等译

出 版 社： 人民文学出版社

出版时间： 2008-1-1 字　 

还有姜明河的译本，由群众出版社出版，时间： 2000-1-1

 以下是纽约时报的报道

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/books/04solzhenitsyn.html

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89  

 Michael Estafiev/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his wife, Natasha, in Vladivostok, in 1994. More Photos >

 By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN

Published: August 4, 2008

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose stubborn, lonely and combative literary struggles gained the force of prophecy as he revealed the heavy afflictions of Soviet Communism in some of the most powerful works of the 20th century, died late on Sunday at the age of 89 in Moscow. 

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn outlived by nearly 17 years the Soviet state and system he had battled through years of imprisonment, ostracism and exile. 

Mr. Solzhenitsyn had been an obscure, middle-aged, unpublished high school science teacher in a provincial Russian town when he burst onto the literary stage in 1962 with “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The book, a mold-breaking novel about a prison camp inmate, was a sensation. Suddenly he was being compared to giants of Russian literature like Tolstoy, Dostoevski and Chekhov. 

Over the next five decades, Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s fame spread throughout the world as he drew upon his experiences of totalitarian duress to write evocative novels like “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward” and historical works like “The Gulag Archipelago.” 

“Gulag” was a monumental account of the Soviet labor camp system, a chain of prisons that by Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s calculation some 60 million people had entered during the 20th century. The book led to his expulsion from his native land. George F. Kennan, the American diplomat, described it as “the greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be leveled in modern times.”

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn was heir to a morally focused and often prophetic Russian literary tradition, and he looked the part. With his stern visage, lofty brow and full, Old Testament beard, he recalled Tolstoy while suggesting a modern-day Jeremiah, denouncing the evils of the Kremlin and later the mores of the West. He returned to Russia and deplored what he considered its spiritual decline, but in the last years of his life he embraced President Vladimir V. Putin as a restorer of Russia’s greatness. 

In almost half a century, more than 30 million of his books have been sold worldwide and translated into some 40 languages. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn owed his initial success to the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev’s decision to allow “Ivan Denisovich” to be published in a popular journal. Mr. Khrushchev believed its publication would advance the liberal line he had promoted since his secret speech in 1956 on the crimes of Stalin.

 But soon after the story appeared, Mr. Khrushchev was replaced by hard-liners, and they campaigned to silence its author. They stopped publication of his new works, denounced him as a traitor and confiscated his manuscripts.

A Giant and a Victim

 But their iron grip could not contain Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s reach. By then his works were appearing outside the Soviet Union, in many languages, and he was being compared not only to Russia’s literary giants but also to Stalin’s literary victims, writers like Anna Akhmatova, Iosip Mandleshtam and Boris Pasternak.

 At home, the Kremlin stepped up its campaign by expelling Mr. Solzhenitsyn from the Writer’s Union. He fought back. He succeeded in having microfilms of his banned manuscripts smuggled out of the Soviet Union. He addressed petitions to government organs, wrote open letters, rallied support among friends and artists, and corresponded with people abroad. They turned his struggles into one of the most celebrated cases of the cold war period.

 Hundreds of well-known intellectuals signed petitions against his silencing; the names of left-leaning figures like Jean-Paul Sartre carried particular weight with Moscow. Other supporters included Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, W. H. Auden, Gunther Grass, Heinrich Boll, Yukio Mishima, Carlos Fuentes and, from the United States, Arthur Miller, John Updike, Truman Capote and Kurt Vonnegut. All joined a call for an international cultural boycott of the Soviet Union.

That position was confirmed when he was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in the face of Moscow’s protests. The Nobel jurists cited him for “the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.”

Mr. Solzhenitsyn dared not travel to Stockholm to accept the prize for fear that the Soviet authorities would prevent him from returning. But his acceptance address was circulated widely. He recalled a time when “in the midst of exhausting prison camp relocations, marching in a column of prisoners in the gloom of bitterly cold evenings, with strings of camp lights glimmering through the darkness, we would often feel rising in our breast what we would have wanted to shout out to the whole world — if only the whole world could have heard us.”

 He wrote that while an ordinary man was obliged “not to participate in lies,” artists had greater responsibilities. “It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!”

 By this time, Mr. Solzhenitsyn had completed his own massive attempt at truthfulness, “The Gulag Archipelago.” In more than 300,000 words, he told the history of the Gulag prison camps, whose operations and rationale and even existence were subjects long considered taboo.

Publishers in Paris and New York had secretly received the manuscript on microfilm. But wanting the book to appear first in the Soviet Union, Mr. Solzhenitsyn asked them to put off publishing it. Then, in September 1973, he changed his mind. He had learned that the Soviet spy agency, the KGB, had unearthed a buried copy of the book after interrogating his typist, Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, and that she had hung herself soon afterward.

 He went on the offensive. With his approval, the book was speedily published in Paris, in Russian, just after Christmas. The Soviet government counterattacked with a spate of articles, including one in Pravda, the state-run newspaper, headlined “The Path of a Traitor.” He and his family were followed, and he received death threats.

 On Feb. 12, 1974, he was arrested. The next day, he was told that he was being deprived of his citizenship and deported. On his arrest, he had been careful to take with him a threadbare cap and a shabby sheepskin coat that he had saved from his years in exile. He wore them both as he was marched onto an Aeroflot flight to Frankfurt. .

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn was welcomed by the German novelist Heinrich Böll. Six weeks after his expulsion, Mr. Solzhenitsyn was joined by his wife, Natalia Svetlova, and three sons. She had played a critical role in organizing his notes and transmitting his manuscripts. After a short stay in Switzerland, the family moved to the United States, settling in the hamlet of Cavendish, Vt.

 There he kept mostly to himself for some 18 years, protected from sightseers by neighbors, who posted a sign saying, “No Directions to the Solzhenitsyns.” He kept writing and thinking a great deal about Russia and hardly at all about his new environment, so certain was he that he would return to his homeland one day.

 His rare public appearances could turn into hectoring jeremiads. Delivering the commencement address at Harvard in 1978, he called the country of his sanctuary spiritually weak and mired in vulgar materialism. Americans, he said, speaking in Russian through a translator, were cowardly. Few were willing to die for their ideals, he said. He condemned both the United States government and American society for its “hasty” capitulation in Vietnam. And he criticized the country’s music as intolerable and attacked its unfettered press, accusing it of violations of privacy.

Many in the West did not know what to make of the man. He was perceived as a great writer and hero who had defied the Russian authorities. Yet he seemed willing to lash out at everyone else as well — democrats, secularists, capitalists, liberals and consumers.

 David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, who has written extensively about the Soviet Union and visited Mr. Solzhenitsyn, wrote in 2001: “In terms of the effect he has had on history, Solzhenitsyn is the dominant writer of the 20th century. Who else compares? Orwell? Koestler? And yet when his name comes up now, it is more often than not as a freak, a monarchist, an anti-Semite, a crank, a has been.”

 In the 1970s, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger warned President Gerald R. Ford to avoid seeing Mr. Solzhenitsyn. “Solzhenitsyn is a notable writer, but his political views are an embarrassment even to his fellow dissidents,” Mr. Kissinger wrote in a memo. “Not only would a meeting with the president offend the Soviets, but it would raise some controversy about Solzhenitsyn’s views of the United States and its allies.” Mr. Ford followed the advice. 

 The writer Susan Sontag recalled a conversation about Mr. Solzhenitsyn between her and Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet who had followed Mr. Solzhenitsyn into forced exile and who would also become a Nobel laureate. “We were laughing and agreeing about how we thought Solzhenitsyn’s views on the United States, his criticism of the press, and all the rest were deeply wrong, and on and on,” she said. “And then Joseph said: ‘But you know, Susan, everything Solzhenitsyn says about the Soviet Union is true. Really, all those numbers — 60 million victims — it’s all true.’ ”

 Ivan Denisovich

 In the autumn of 1961, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a 43-year-old high school teacher of physics and astronomy in Ryazan, a city some 70 miles south of Moscow. He had been there since 1956, when his sentence of perpetual exile in a dusty region of Kazakhstan was suspended. Aside from his teaching duties, he was writing and rewriting stories he had conceived while confined in prisons and labor camps since 1944.

 One story, a short novel, was “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” an account of a single day in an icy prison camp written in the voice of an inmate named Ivan Denisovich Shukov, a bricklayer. With little sentimentality, he recounts the trials and sufferings of “zeks,” as the prisoners were known, peasants who were willing to risk punishment and pain as they seek seemingly small advantages like a few more minutes before a fire. He also reveals their survival skills, their loyalty to their work brigade and their pride.

The day ends with the prisoner in his bunk. “Shukov felt pleased with his life as he went to sleep,” Mr. Solzhenitsyn wrote. Shukov was pleased because, among other things, he had not been put in an isolation cell, and his brigade had avoided a work assignment in a place unprotected from the bitter wind, and he had swiped some extra gruel, and had been able to buy a bit of tobacco from another prisoner.

 “The end of an unclouded day. Almost a happy one,” Mr. Solzhenitsyn wrote, adding: “Just one of the 3,653 days of his sentence, from bell to bell. The extra three days were for leap years.”

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn typed the story single spaced, using both sides to save paper. He sent one copy to Lev Kopelev, an intellectual with whom he had shared a cell 16 years earlier. Mr. Kopelev, who later became a well known dissident, realized that under Mr. Khrushchev’s policies of liberalization, it might be possible to have the story published by Novy Mir, or The New World, the most prestigious of the Soviet Union’s so-called thick literary and cultural journals. Mr. Kopelev and his colleagues steered the manuscript around lower editors who might have blocked its publication and took it to Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the editor and a Politburo member who backed Mr. Khrushchev.

 On reading the manuscript, Mr. Tvardovsky summoned Mr. Solzhenitsyn from Ryazan. “You have written a marvelous thing,” he told him. “You have described only one day, and yet everything there is to say about prison has been said.” He likened the story to Tolstoy’s moral tales. Other editors compared it to Dostoevski’s “House of the Dead,” which the author had based on his own experience of incarceration in czarist times. Mr. Tvardovsky offered Mr. Solzhenitsyn a contract worth more than twice his teacher’s annual salary, but he cautioned that he was not certain he could publish the story.

 Mr. Tvardovsky was eventually able to get Mr. Khrushchev himself to read “A Day in the Life.” Mr. Khrushchev was impressed, and by mid-October 1962, the presidium of the Politburo took up the question of whether to allow it to be published. The presidium ultimately agreed, and in his biography “Solzhenitsyn” (Norton, 1985), Michael Scammell wrote that Mr. Khrushchev defended the decision and was reported to have declared: “There’s a Stalinist in each of you; there’s even a Stalinist in me. We must root out this evil.”

 The novel appeared in Novy Mir in early 1963. The critic Kornei Chukovsky pronounced the work “a literary miracle.” Grigori Baklanov, a respected novelist and writer about World War II, declared that the story was one of those rare creations after which “it is impossible to go on writing as one did before.”

Novy Mir ordered extra printings, and every copy was sold. A book edition and an inexpensive newspaper version also vanished from the shelves.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn was not the first to write about the camps. As early as 1951, Gustav Herling, a Pole, had published “A World Apart,” about the three years he spent in a labor camp on the White Sea. Some Soviet writers had typed accounts of their own experiences, and these pages and their carbon copies were passed from reader to reader in a clandestine, self-publishing effort called zamizdat. Given the millions who had been forced into the gulag, few families could have been unaware of the camp experiences of relatives or friends. But few had had access to these accounts. “A Day in the Life” changed that.

Born With the Soviet Union

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born in the Caucasus spa town of Kislovodsk on Dec. 11, 1918, a year after the Soviet Union arose from revolution. His father, Isaaki, had been a Russian artillery officer on the German front and married to Taissa Shcherback by the brigade priest. Shortly after he was demobilized and six months before his son’s birth, he was killed in a hunting accident. The young widow took the child to Rostov-on-Don, where she reared him while working as a typist and stenographer. By Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s account, he and his mother lived in a dilapidated hut. Still, her class origins — she was the daughter of a Ukrainian land owner — were considered suspect, as was her knowledge of English and French. Mr. Solzhenitsyn remembered her burying his father’s three war medals because they could indicate reactionary beliefs.

He was religious. When he was a child, older boys once ripped a cross from his neck. Nonetheless, at 12, though the Communists repudiated religion, he joined the Young Pioneers and later became a member of Komsomol, the Communist youth organization.

 He was a good student with an aptitude for mathematics, though from adolescence he imagined becoming a writer. In 1941, a few days before Germany attacked Russia to expand World War II into Soviet territory, he graduated from Rostov University with a degree in physics and math. A year earlier, he had married Natalia Reshetovskaya, a chemist. When hostilities began, he joined the army and was assigned to look after horses and wagons before being transferred to artillery school. He spent three years in combat as a commander of a reconnaissance battery.

 In February 1945, as the war in Europe drew to a close, he was arrested on the East Prussian front by agents of Smersh, the Soviet spy agency. The evidence against him was found in a letter to a school friend in which he referred to Stalin — disrespectfully, the authorities said — as “the man with the mustache.” Though he was a loyal Communist, he was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. It was his entry into the vast network of punitive institutions that he would later name the Gulag Archipelago, after the Russian acronym for the Main Administration of Camps.

 His penal journey began with stays in two prisons in Moscow. Then he was transferred to a camp nearby, where he moved timbers, and then to another, called New Jerusalem, where he dug clay. From there he was taken to a camp called Kaluga Gate, where he suffered a moral and spiritual breakdown after equivocating in his response to a warden’s demand that he report on fellow inmates. Though he never provided information, he referred to his nine months there as the low point in his life.

 After brief stays in several other institutions, Mr. Solzhenitsyn was moved to Special Prison No. 16 on the outskirts of Moscow on July 9, 1947. This was a so-called sharashka, an institution for inmates who were highly trained scientists and whose forced labor involved advanced scientific research. He was put there because of his gift for mathematics, which he credited with saving his life. “Probably I would not have survived eight years of the camps if as a mathematician I had not been assigned for three years to a sharashka.” His experiences at No. 16 provided the basis for his novel “The First Circle,” which was not published outside the Soviet Union until 1968. While incarcerated at the research institute, he formed close friendships with Mr. Kopelev and another inmate, Dmitry Panin, and later modeled the leading characters of “The First Circle” on them.

 Granted relative freedom within the institute, the three would meet each night to carry on intellectual discussions and debate. During the day, Mr. Solzhenitsyn was assigned to work on an electronic voice-recognition project with applications toward coding messages. In his spare time, he began to write for himself: poems, sketches and outlines of books.

He also tended toward outspokenness, and it soon undid him. After scorning the scientific work of the colonel who headed the institute, Mr. Solzhenitsyn was banished to a desolate penal camp in Kazakhstan called Ekibastuz. It would become the inspiration for “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”

At Ekibastuz, any writing would be seized as contraband. So he devised a method that enabled him to retain even long sections of prose. After seeing Lithuanian Catholic prisoners fashion rosaries out of beads made from chewed bread, he asked them to make a similar chain for him, but with more beads. In his hands, each bead came to represent a passage that he would repeat to himself until he could say it without hesitation. Only then would he move on to the next bead. He later wrote that by the end of his prison term, he had committed to memory 12,000 lines in this way.

On Feb. 9, 1953, his term in the camps officially ended. On March 6, he was sent farther east, arriving in Kok-Terek, a desert settlement, in time to hear the announcement of Stalin’s death broadcast over loudspeakers in the village square. It was here that Mr. Solzhenitsyn was ordered to spend his term of “perpetual exile.”

 He taught in a local school and secretly wrote poems, plays and sketches with no hope of having them published. He also began corresponding with his former wife, who during his incarceration had divorced him. He was bothered by stomach pains, and when he was able to visit a regional clinic, doctors found a large cancerous tumor.

 His life as a restricted pariah struggling with the disease would lead to his novel “The Cancer Ward,” which also first appeared outside the Soviet Union, in 1969. He finally managed to get to a cancer clinic in the city of Tashkent and later described his desperation there in a short story, “The Right Hand.”

“I was like the sick people all around me, and yet I was different,” he wrote. “I had fewer rights than they had and was forced to be more silent. People came to visit them, and their one concern, their one aim in life, was to get well again. But if I recovered, it would be almost pointless: I was 35 years of age, and yet in that spring I had no one I could call my own in the whole world. I did not even own a passport, and if I were to recover, I should have to leave this green, abundant land and go back to my desert, where I had been exiled ‘in perpetuity. ’ There I was under open surveillance, reported on every fortnight, and for a long time the local police had not even allowed me, a dying man, to go away for treatment.”

 After acquiring medical treatment and resorting to folk remedies, Mr. Solzhenitsyn did recover. In April 1956, a letter arrived informing him that his period of internal exile had been lifted and that he was free to move. In December, he spent the holidays with his former wife, and in February 1957, the two remarried. He then joined her in Ryazan, where Natalia Reshetovskaya headed the chemistry department of an agricultural college. Meanwhile, a rehabilitation tribunal invalidated his original sentence and found that he had remained “a Soviet patriot.” He resumed teaching and writing, both new material as well as old, reworking some of the lines he had once stored away as he fingered his beads.

 Twenty-two months elapsed between the publication of “Ivan Denisovich” and the fall of Mr. Khrushchev. Early in that period, the journal Novy Mir was able to follow up its initial success with Mr. Solzhenitsyn by publishing three more short novels by him in 1963. These would be the last of his works to be legally distributed in his homeland until the Soviet Union began to collapse in 1989.

When Leonid I. Brezhnev replaced Mr. Khrushchev as party leader in October 1964, it was apparent that Mr. Solzhenitsyn was being silenced. In May 1967, in an open letter to the Congress of the Soviet Writers Union, he urged that delegates “demand and ensure the abolition of all censorship, open or hidden.”

 He told them that manuscripts of “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward” had been confiscated, that for three years he and his work had been libeled through an orchestrated media campaign, and that he had been prevented from even giving public readings. “Thus,” he wrote, “my work has been finally smothered, gagged, and slandered.”

 He added, “No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death.”

 The letter touched of a battle within the writers union and in broader intellectual and political circles, pitting Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s defenders against those allied with the party’s hard-line leadership. Two years later, on Nov. 4, 1969, the tiny Ryazan branch of the U.S.S.R. Writers Union voted five to one to expel Mr. Solzhenitsyn. The decision ignited further furor at home. In the West, it intensified a wave of anti-Soviet sentiment that had been generated in 1968 when Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the liberal reforms of the Prague spring.

 The conflict grew 11 months later with the announcement that Mr. Solzhenitsyn had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Soviet press responded with accusations that the award had been engineered by “reactionary circles for anti-Soviet purposes.” One newspaper belittled the author as “ a run of the mill writer”; another said it was “a sacrilege” to mention his name with the “creators of Russian and Soviet classics.”

 But there were also Russians willing to defend Mr. Solzhenitsyn. The eminent cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich wrote to the editors of Pravda, Izvestia, and other leading newspapers praising the writer. Mr. Rostropovich, who had taken some risk in inviting Mr. Solzhenitsyn to live at his dacha near Moscow for several years, suffered official disfavor after his letter was published abroad.

 Even greater risks were taken by the inmates of the Potma Labor camp. They smuggled out congratulations to Mr. Solzhenitsyn, expressing admiration for his “courageous creative work, upholding the sense of human dignity and exposing the trampling of the human soul and the destruction of human values.”

 Private Turmoil

 At the time, Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s private life was in turmoil. As news of the prize was announced, his marriage was dissolving. Two years earlier he had met Natalia Svetlova, a mathematician who was involved in typing and circulating samizdat literature, and they became drawn to each other. As Mr. Solzhenitsyn explained, “She simply joined me in my struggle and we went side by side.” He asked his wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya, for a divorce. But she refused, and continued to do so for several years. At one point, shortly after he had won the prize, she attempted suicide, and he had to rush her to a hospital, where she was revived.

 In the meantime, Natalia Svetlova gave birth to Yermolai and Ignat, Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s two oldest sons. Finally, in March 1973, Natalia Reshetovskaya consented to a divorce. Soon afterward, Mr. Solzhenitsyn and Natalia Svetlova were married in an Orthodox church near Moscow.

 His skirmishes with the state only intensified. While the authorities kept him from publishing, he kept writing and speaking out, eliciting threats by mail and phone. He slept with a pitchfork beside his bed. Finally, government agents who had tried to isolate and intimidate him arrested him, took him to the airport and deported him. Mr. Solzhenitsyn believed his stay in the United States would be temporary. “In a strange way, I not only hope, I am inwardly convinced that I shall go back,” he told the BBC. “I live with that conviction. I mean my physical return, not just my books. And that contradicts all rationality.”

 With that goal, he lived like a recluse in rural Vermont, paying little attention to his surroundings as he kept writing about Russia, in Russian, with Russian readers in mind.

 “He wrote, ate, and slept and that was about all,” Mr. Remnick wrote in 1994 after visiting the Solzhenitsyn family in Cavendish. “For him to accept a telephone call was an event; he rarely left his 50 acres.” In contrast to the rest of his family, he never became an American citizen.

 His children — a third son, Stepan, had been born six months before Mr. Solzhenitsyn was deported — went to local schools, but they began their day with prayers in Russian for Russia’s liberation, and their mother gave them Russian lessons. She also designed the pages and set the type for the 20 volumes of her husband’s work that were being produced in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris. And she administered a fund to help political prisoners and their families. Mr. Solzhenitsyn had donated to the fund all royalties from “The Gulag Archipelago,” by far his best-selling book.

 As for the author, he would head each morning for the writing house, a wing the Solzhenitsyns had added to the property. There he devoted himself to a gigantic work of historical fiction that eventually ran to more than 5,000 pages in four volumes. The work, called “The Red Wheel,” focused on the revolutionary chaos that had spawned Bolshevism and set the stage for modern Russian history. It has been compared, at least in it’s sweep and intentions, with Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn started work on the first volume, “August 1914,” in 1969, though he said he had begun thinking about the project before World War II, when he was a student in Rostov. “August 1914” was spirited out of the Soviet Union and published in Paris before Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion.

 He believed that his account, which challenged Soviet dogma about the founding period, was as iconoclastic as his earlier writings about the gulag.

 In the United States, “August 1914” reached No. 2 on best-seller lists, but the subsequent volumes, “November 1916,” “March 1917,” and “April 1917,” all completed in Cavendish, have not been widely bought or read.

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn was displeased by the Russian reaction to “The Red Wheel,” which he spoke of as the centerpiece of his creative life. He expressed the hope that it would gain importance with time.

Aloof in America

In Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s 18 years in Vermont, he never warmed to Americans beyond his Cavendish neighbors. On the eve of his return to Russia in 1994, he acknowledged he had been aloof. “Instead of secluding myself here and writing ‘The Red Wheel,’ I suppose I could have spent time making myself likable to the West,” he told Mr. Remnick. “The only problem is that I would have had to drop my way of life and my work.”

 But even when he stepped outside Cavendish, as he did when he addressed the Harvard graduates in 1978, his condemnations of American politics, press freedoms and social mores struck many as insensitive, haughty and snobbish.

 There were those who described him as reactionary, as an unreconstructed Slavophile, a Russian nationalist, undemocratic and authoritarian. Olga Carlisle, a writer who had helped spirit the manuscript of “The Gulag Archipelago” out of Moscow but who was no longer speaking to Mr. Solzhenitsyn, wrote in Newsweek that the Harvard speech had been intended for a Russian audience, not an American one.

 “His own convictions are deeply rooted in the Russian spirit, which is untempered by the civilizing influences of a democratic tradition,” Ms. Carlisle said. And Czeslaw Milosz, generally admiring of his fellow Nobel laureate, wrote, “Like the Russian masses, he, we may assume, has strong authoritarian tendencies.”

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia on May 27, 1994, first landing in the Siberian northeast, in Magadan, the former heart of the Gulag. On arrival, he bent down to touch the soil in memory of the victims.

 He flew on to Vladivostok, where he and his family began a two-month journey by private railroad car across Russia, to see what his post-Communist country now looked like. The BBC was on hand to film the entire passage and pay for it.

 On the first of 17 stops, his judgment was already clear. His homeland, he said, was “tortured, stunned, altered beyond recognition.” As he traveled on, encountering hearty crowds, signing books and meeting dignitaries as well as ordinary people, his gloom deepened. And after settling into a new home on the edge of Moscow, he began to voice his pessimism, deploring the crime, corruption, collapsing services, faltering democracy and what he felt to be the spiritual decline of Russia.

 In Vermont, he had never warmed to Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his reform policies of perestroika He thought they were the last-ditch tactics of a leader defending a system that Mr. Solzhenitsyn had long known to be doomed. For a while he was impressed by Boris N. Yeltsin, Russia’s first freely elected leader, but then turned against him. Mr. Yeltsin, he said, had failed to defend the interests of ethnic Russians, who had become vulnerable foreign minorities in the newly independent countries that had so suddenly been sheared off from the Soviet Union. Later, he criticized the advent of Vladimir V. Putin as antidemocratic.

 Russians initially greeted Mr. Solzhenitsyn with high hopes. On the eve of his return, a poll in St. Petersburg showed him to be the favorite choice for president. But he soon made it clear that he had no wish to take on a political role in influencing Russian society, and his reception soon turned tepid.

 Few Russians were reading “The Red Wheel.” The books were said to be too long for young readers.

 Michael Specter, then The New York Times correspondent in Moscow, observed, “Leading intellectuals here consider his oratory hollow, his time past and his mission unclear.”

 Nationalists, who had once hoped for his blessing, were alienated by his rejection. Democratic reformers, who wanted his backing, were offended by his aloofness and criticism of them. Old Communists reviled him as they always had.

 In October 1994, Mr. Solzhenitsyn addressed Russia’s Parliament. His complaints and condemnations had not abated. “This is not a democracy, but an oligarchy,” he declared. “Rule by the few.” He spoke for an hour, and when he finished, there was only a smattering of applause.

 Mr. Solzhenitsyn started appearing on television twice a week as the host of a 15-minute show called “A Meeting With Solzhenitsyn.” Most times he veered into condemnatory monologues that left his less outspoken guests with little to do but look on. Alessandra Stanley, writing about the program for The Times, said Mr. Solzhenitsyn came across “as a combination of Charlie Rose and Moses.” After receiving poor ratings, the program was canceled a year after it was started.

As the century turned, Mr. Solzhenitsyn continued to write. In a 2001 book, he confronted the relationship of Russians and Jews, a subject that some critics had long contended he had ignored or belittled in his fiction. A few accused him of anti-Semitism. Irving Howe, the literary critic, did not go that far but maintained that in “August 1914,” Mr. Solzhenitsyn was dismissive of Jewish concerns and gave insufficient weight to pogroms and other persecution of the Jews. Others noted that none of the prisoners in “Ivan Denisovich” were definitively identified as a Jew, and the one whose Jewish identity was subtly hinted at was the one who had the most privileges and was protected from the greatest rigors.

 Mr. Remnick defended Mr. Solzhenitsyn, saying he “in fact, is not anti-Semitic; his books are not anti-Semitic, and he is not, in his personal relations, anti-Jewish; Natalia’s mother is Jewish, and not a few of his friends are, too.”

 In the final years of his life,, Mr. Solzhenitsyn had spoken approvingly of a “restoration” of Russia under Vladimir V. Putin, and was criticized in some quarters as increasingly nationalist. 

In an interview last year with Der Spiegel, Mr. Solzhenitsyn said that Russians’ view of the West as a “knight of democracy” had been shattered by the NATO bombing of Serbia, an event he called “a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.” He dismissed Western democracy-building efforts, telling the Times of London in 2005 that democracy “is not worth a brass farthing if it is installed by bayonet.”

 In 2007, he accepted a State Prize from then-President Putin — after refusing, on principle, similar prizes from Gorbachev and from Yeltsin. Mr. Putin, he said in the Der Spiegel interview, “inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible — a slow and gradual restoration.”

本来按照计划应该一天一天硬啃康德的《纯粹理性批判》和Charles Munger`s Poor Charlie's Almanack，在这样的天气里进展极慢，有时候只能退而求其次，比如去读库恩著的《康德传》或李泽厚先生的《批判哲学的批判》，以帮助理解康德哲学思想的真义。有时候，这些书都不想读了，只得读闲书。随手拿到一本陈村仁的《银元时代生活史》，文笔轻松，讲的都是20世纪二三十年代的老上海，既有作者自己求医问学的故事，更有应诊中遇到的各类当世奇人，比如国民党元老吴稚晖、于右任等人，文坛奇人章太炎，这些历史中的人物，在我辈的印象中都是一些名词概念，毫无内容，但在作者笔下，这些人个性突出，色彩斐然，就像你熟识的某位今人，历史人物活脱脱在你眼前展现，和差不多百年前的历史人物会面、倾谈，让你有超越时空的感觉。

陈村仁先生本是一位中医，但是他对当时的经济尤为关注，留心各种物价，并跟他动笔写作时的香港物价对比，让你获得当时在上海生活的点点滴滴，想象一个普通人的生活状态，历史的日常生活在你眼前展现出来，犹如一场模仿逼真的二三十年代的电影。

有一些特殊的词，也许今人不知其意，如“马蹄土”、“生意浪”、“番饼”等等。不过，我比较喜欢书中描写的文人如何求生计的部分。章太炎对金钱毫无概念，完全靠夫人打理，他唯一的生财之道就是卖字，而且不把这项生意当生意，碰到不喜欢的客人，收了定金也不写字，宁愿退掉，以至于常常欠房东租金。他喜好的食品则是各种臭食品，什么臭豆腐、臭豆角、臭苋菜，一旦得到乐不可支，让他写什么字就写什么字。吴稚晖也是一样靠卖字为生，他不过把这个生意当生意，一旦有人求字，往往是清晨开始工作，把所有求字的顾客满足，一天要写上三四个钟头，求字的人今天送纸，次日下午即可取件。因此，他的鬻字生涯越来越好。看了这两个人的生计，其实让我挺感概。旧式文人，就是名动天下，其生计所倚者，只是这笔墨功夫，好在那时的时尚是大家崇尚墨宝，要在今天，仅靠卖字为生，是否能养活自己了？

《银元时代生活史》中，记载了当时一些人的理财经验，我觉得很有一些意思，抄录如下：

《中西医学杂志》创办人丁福保传授给作者的理财经：

一个人读了一些书，往往对钱财看得很轻，认为是阿堵物，提到钱就俗了，这是不对的，所以文人往往不知理财为何事，一生潦倒，所谓“百无一用是书生”。其实，一个人的生存是脱不了钱的，不善理财一世苦。

理财的方法，从来都是老生常谈，人人都知道，要是知而不行，等于“无知”。要是能够按照我说的话去做，人人可以致富。所以我要传授你几个秘诀：

一、择业要向大众方面着想，选中一个行业，要专心致志地去“做”，绝对不能该行，只要努力，行行可以出状元。

二、一个人不可以懒，一懒白事休，“勤”要勤到与众不同的勤力，触类旁通，必然会出人头地。钱财一定要追求不息，但是不正当的钱，一文也不能妄取的。

三、赚到了钱之后，一定要懂得“节”，赚十文，最少要节三文，等到所业有成，那么赚到十文可能只用二三文，把积下来的钱，筹备更大的计划，因为“由钱生钱”更为容易。

四、赚钱不易，管钱更难，只会赚，不会“管”，仍旧不懂得理财的道理。能够理财之后，还要会“用”，会用比会管更难，用得不得当是浪费，用得有意义，才算得是理财家。

关于借钱的理财教训，一个李平书的老医生给了作者这些精彩之论，因为此前，作者因为亲戚朋友借钱之事气恼，加上编辑《中国药学大辞典》而病倒。

借钱的事，是不能开端的，而且自己应该订出一个规矩，否则，耗损金钱事小，精神上的损失事大，有好多人还会弄出气来，令到自己病倒，要是你将来真的有钱时，更要提防被人家牵累到你。

一、绝对不要贪利息：任何一个相熟的人，向你出重利，求你抵押、加浮利、换支票，以及一切供会、合伙等，不管利息多厚，都应该婉言谢绝，因为利息越大，受损失的机会越多。如果真正值得帮忙的亲友，花了钱，就要下定决心，不希望他归还，把到期不还当作是意中事，如果到期来还，反而要视为意外。

二、如何去应付人情：有许多亲戚，或是尊长、师友，本来有恩于我，或是真正有为人士，要是缺乏学费，或缺乏经营资本，应该爽爽快快予以援手，但是这种钱拿出去时，该要说明这不是借贷，而是赠予；换句话说，不希望来还，要是抱定施恩不望报，那么心中最是安乐，而永无烦恼。

三、若干人不可开端：对于若干青年人，如果有时来向你开口借钱，你应该直接爽快，严词拒绝。借一分钱给他，就是害他一分，养成他借钱的习惯，断送他一生。所以借给他就等于害了他，这是千万做不得的。至于有嗜好的人，更是借不得，即使伤及感情，也无所谓。因为这种人，一借之后，会得再借三借，缠绕不休，总要弄到大伤感情而后已。那么不如抱定宗旨，绝不能开端，要他死了这条心。虽说，在这人第一次开口借钱时，就要伤感情，多气恼，三次五次之后还是要闹翻的，事实上，只要本人无愧于心，借钱的人可能口出恶言，你以静制动，可以付之一笑就没有事了。

这些方法是我的一位老朋友教我的，其中以“借钱给人，就是害人”这句话，最有卓见，因为若干人从此失去了自尊心，专以借钱为业，甚至一世以借钱为生。这是人生的哲学，吾人对此，假使能随机应变，是很有意义的。

这两条关于金钱和理财的经验，可谓很有见地。在那个传统和洋文化杂居的老上海，这样的财富智慧恐怕不少，可惜，公有制的文化把那些完全截断了，到今天，我们只能从这些历史记载中知其一二。如果早就知道这些智慧之言，也许很多人的友谊还会存留至今，而不会因为借钱之事而分道扬镳了。反思我们的日常生活，你会发现，在借钱这种事情，大家都会犯过不少错误吧。

书还没有读完，酷暑似乎在远去，我会不会继续读完这本闲书呢，也许吧，因为这本书确实有吸引力。

2008年8月4日于大运河畔

《赌金者：长期资本管理公司的升腾与陨落》是我先读完的一本书，其实，今天读完《说谎者的扑克牌》后，发现这两本书的阅读顺序应倒转过来。先读《说谎者的扑克牌》，再读《赌金者》。

80年代的华尔街有两大金融创新，一是抵押债券，一是垃圾债券。前者造就了所罗门兄弟公司的辉煌和衰落，后者造就了迈克尔.米尔肯的兴起和毁灭。《说谎者的扑克牌》以内部人士的视角叙述了处于80年代的所罗门兄弟公司的内幕故事。所罗门在20世纪80年代开启了华尔街的债券黄金时代，尤其是其创造的抵押债券，把一个没有的市场创造了出来，给所罗门公司带来了巨额的财富。但是这个债券市场的成长不仅仅是所罗门公司自己的成就，当时美国政府拯救储贷协会时的税收豁免政策才创造了巨大的需求。但是躺在这一个利润滚滚的生意中的所罗门公司个人野心膨胀、公司管理粗放、公司变成了野心家争权夺利的战场，最后人才流失、客户流失，自己被那些后来居上者打败。作者以内部人士的现场感记录了这一个华尔街庞然大物的贪婪、失信和彼此倾轧的过程，这个团对并不像外界传说那么神奇，管理混乱/信用文化丧失、每个人沦为赚钱的工具而毫无道德感，里面许多似乎在华尔街威风八面、令人敬仰的领袖人物，在作者笔下则没有那么神圣，往往是玩公司政治的小人，毫无操守，心胸狭隘如John Gutfreund。

本书对抵押债券的创设历史有详细的叙述，今天美国的次级按揭债危机，其产品的初级形态应该就是所罗门创立的，当然今天的罪孽不能归为所罗门了。

本书的历史只写到了1988年初，实际上所罗门的最精彩的故事还在后头呢，这就是《赌金者》接着要讲的了。在《说谎者的扑克牌》一书中，对《赌金者》中的大人物约翰.麦利维瑟（John Meriwether ）只讲了很少一点，但在《赌金者》中，他是从头至尾的主角，他聘用了一批哈佛、耶鲁的高材生，组成所罗门的套利部门，利用数学模型获得了巨额的利润，但是他手下在国债承销中的作弊断送了他在所罗门的美好前程。读过巴菲特传记的人知道，巴老曾经在1991年担任了拯救公司的CEO。

离开所罗门的麦利维瑟，后来建立了长期资本管理公司，把所罗门那般数学天才和两个创立了现代金融理论的诺贝尔奖获得者组合在一起，创建了华尔街的梦之队。他们相信模型的力量无往而不胜，可惜，他们没有看到人类情绪的变动带来的影响是任何科学都难以预测的。由于他们如此自信，他们把资金杠杆放大到了无以复加的地步，开始是30倍，后来到了50倍。当市场在特殊气候下完全抛离常态时，这班相信数学模型的天才们捅出了天大的灾难，要不是华尔街的银行互相联手相救，将会导致全球的金融灾难。

读完这本书后，我写了简单的四条：

1、对于常态，模型可以把握，LTCM那班教授可以赚到钱，但像人一样，除了常态，还有狂喜、愤怒、沮丧等非常态。市场也一样，非常态是无法用数学模型把握的。市场即人性，忽视了人性，短期可能赚钱，长期很可能赔光。投资不能基于市场而要基于公司本身。

2、用巨额财物杠杆获得常态波动中的小利，是LTCM开始成功的秘诀，也是其毁灭的宿命。

3、离开自己熟悉的债券套利，开展波动幅度和股票配对交易，也是犯了不熟悉不做的规则。

4、依恃聪明赚来的钱不牢固，需要配以一定的苯功夫和小挫折才可以稳固。

与这两本书相关的另外几本书是《贼巢》、《门口的野蛮人》和《泥鸽靶》（FIASCO，另一个中文译名是《诚信的背后》）。

《贼巢》写了80年代的另一大金融创新，迈克尔.米尔肯的垃圾债券，其中的胆识和罪孽，这本书又牵连了当时华尔街盛行的敌意收购，利用垃圾债券融资获得杠杆收购的资金，而当时最有名的案例就是《门口的野蛮人》中KKR竞标RJR纳贝斯克的故事。这两本书都是我2004年读过的，在阅读《说谎者的扑克牌》和《赌金者》时总想起这两本相关的书。

债券黄金时代之后是华尔街的金融衍生品时代了，而最有名的著作就是《泥鸽靶》，我看了一部分，但一直没有读完有兴趣的朋友一起来读吧。

华尔街的故事精彩纷呈，里面更多贪婪和自负，更多欺骗和利己，作为个人投资者，读了这些，你可以很好地保护自己的金钱，同时，一个价值投资者会更相信长期投资的价值，因为长期投资可以超越人性情绪的短期变动。

2008年7月24日于大运河畔

指数基金让普通投资者更受惠

 ——《长赢投资》书评

文 周年洋 

战胜市场是所有基金经理的梦想，少数基金经理短期能战胜市场，但能长期战胜市场的微乎其微。彼得·林奇掌控麦哲伦基金时，曾经以连续13年战胜市场的业绩威震业界，并于1992年金盆洗手全身而退。而掌控雷格·梅森基金的比尔·米勒，连续15年（1991年-2005年）战胜标准普尔指数，创造了基金史上的神话。可惜，米勒没有在创造奇迹之后立即退出江湖，在随后的第16年即2006年败给了标普指数，当年指数增长了15.8%，而雷格·梅森基金只上涨了5.8%，连胜的记录嘎然而止。

投资业界如此推崇林奇和米勒的投资业绩，是因为在基金业能长期战胜市场的基金经理寥若晨星，绝大多数基金都是市场的手下败将。而让投资者从众多基金中挑选米勒这样的长胜将军，几乎是大海捞针。既然市场很少有长期战胜市场的基金，即使有投资者也难以发现，那么能不能找到一种跟市场同步又容易操作的基金呢？这就是《长赢投资》作者约翰·博格创立的指数基金事业所要完成的任务，诺贝尔经济学奖获得者萨缪尔森高度评价指数基金在人类史上的重要作用，“其开创性完全可以和车轮和字母的发明相提并论。”

对于普通投资者来说，要在投资中取得优异的成绩，有两个欠缺：一是缺乏足够的专业知识背景；二是没有足够的时间研究公司和进行投资操作。因此，绝大部分自己投资股市的投资者以赔钱而告终。如果自己不直接参与投资，那么把钱委托给专业机构和专业投资者，也就是唯一可行的选择。把钱投给巴菲特这样的价值投资者肯定能在长期战胜市场，但这种做法不是今天的潮流，今天的潮流是变成基金投资者。那么问题就来了，到底应该选择哪种基金呢？创立指数基金的博格毫无疑问推崇指数基金，在我们还不清楚他推崇的理由之前，我们暂时认为博格是王婆卖瓜自吹自夸，或者是为了自己创立的先锋500指数基金大做广告罢了。

博格说：“成功投资的全部真谛不过是常识而已，……就是以最低成本持有所有上市公司的股票。”这里的关键是：一是持有所有上市公司股票；二是最低成本。

一般来说，一个国家的股票市场基本上包含了这个国家的大部分公司，这些公司的全部收益几乎代表了这个国家的整体经济。而股票市场的长期回报率与所有企业的长期收益率是基本一致的。从美国的历史来看，美国企业的长期累计收益和美国股市的累计年收益率是一致的。在整个20世纪，美国企业的年投资收益率9.5%，而股票的总体年均回报率是9.6%，两者之间只有0.1%的差别，这0.1%属于投机收益。指数基金的投资组合涵盖了市场的所有股票，投资指数基金则可以分享所有上市公司的股利和收益增长，也就等于投资了这个国家的经济，可以分享国家经济增长的成果。从长期来看，每个国家的经济处于向上增长的趋势，只要长期投资指数基金，也就可以分享国家经济的增长成果，不断获得上升的收益。

在所有基金投资中，标准指数基金（不包括ETF）的费用是最低的。从美国的情况来看，指数基金的费用只有0.2%，而股票型基金的费用繁多：管理费和运营费、销售费、股票转换费用、经纪人佣金还有交给国家的税收等等，每年的成本可能达到3%-3.5%。从成本来看，股票型基金比指数基金的成本高了15倍，短期看是一个小数字，但从长期复利看，这样成本可以导致总体收益少50%到60%。即使是比尔·米勒这样的基金业王者，以长达15年的连胜战绩，让雷格·梅森基金的年均收益率高达15.3%，但减除3%的高额成本后，其基金持有者收益只有12.3%，而同期标准普尔500指数的年均收益率是12.9%，投资标普指数基金的投资者，减除成本后每年收益是12.7%，雷格·梅森的基金持有者的收益不如指数基金的收益。考虑到很多基金投资者可能是在股市最红火的时候被吸引进股市，他们的收益还会更低。显然，那些指望战胜市场的基金往往战胜不了市场，反而被市场打败，而买进整个市场的指数基金则获得了自己应得那份收益。

不过，中国多数投资人不会支持博格的观点。在现今的中国，多数投资者都是博取股票差价，没有几个投资者是冲着公司的股利和收益增长去的。他们认为可以从股票的波动中赚到比公司收益增长更多的利润。我们不否认短期确实有一些高手能够获得这样的利润，但从长期来看，投机因素对长期收益的影响只有0.1%，微乎其微。为了0.1%，很多人舍弃丰富的生活、舍弃和家人团聚的乐趣，而进行全日制的投机追逐，是不是值得呢？如果赚得大满贯，也许还值得，但最大的可能是悲惨的结局。据6月19日央视发布的调查结果表明，在对70万股民进行调查后显示，从2007年1月1日起至今，参与调查的人群中亏损者比例达到了92.51%，盈利的投资者仅有4.34%，勉强保本的为3.15%。这只是一年半的投资结果，更长时间比如15年到20年呢？我想搏差价的投机不会与今天的结果有什么区别。显然，博取差价的投资动机不会给投资者带来美好的未来。正确的投资是分享企业收益的增长，投资指数基金则可以分享市场的正常收益。

沪深300指数是体现中国股市全貌的指数，以此指数作为标的的指数基金有嘉实300、大成300等。我们以央视调查的时间段来看投资嘉实300的收益。2007年1月4日嘉实300的复权价是2.036元，2008年6月19日收盘价2.579元，收益率为26.7%。这样的收益比前边调查的95.66%的投资者境况好很多，且不用面对股价上上下下的折磨，可以享受丰富的生活，过更有意义的人生。

改变投资者的观念是一件很艰难的事情，作为普通投资者，只要进行理性思考，抱着长期投资的心态进行投资，那么接受博格的看法是明智的，你能获得的收益就是公司的股利和收益增长，这是你应得的一份蛋糕。为了获得这份收益，最好的选择不是去主动战胜市场，也不是去选择那些奢望战胜市场的开放式基金，而是选择买入整个市场，把资金长期投入标准指数基金。

 《长赢投资：打败股票指数的简单方法》（美）约翰.博格著 中信出版社 

2008-7-6于通州大运河畔

文 周年洋

   成功投资者最重要的品性是什么呢？很多人会说是善于选时和选股，善于判断大势，但是从投资大师们的经验看来，理性和基于理性的耐心才是成功投资的基石和秘诀。但是，理性投资并不容易，不然大家就都是成功的投资者了。对于中国投资者来说，难以理性投资有人性的原因还有中国文化的原因。
从人性角度来说，虽然从人类诞生到现在进化了一万多年，但是人类遇到强大的外部刺激时，其直接的情绪反应跟我们一万多年前的祖先没有多大区别。要战胜这种本能的情绪反应很不容易，这就要求助于理性。但对于普通人来说，理性没有受到训练，往往在强大的情绪控制下，甘拜下风，被情绪击跨而做出错误的决定。
中国是一个文人文化很发达的国家，历史上的名人很多是文学家和诗人，世人对他们赞誉有加达致崇拜的程度。这些文人舞文弄墨，情感飞扬，多是情感发达、想象力丰富之人，悠久的文人传统导致中国人欣赏情感丰富的人物，而对理性很少像情感和想象那样痴迷。这样的民族性格，使得普通人在做决定时，多依据情感，少诉诸理性。在投资中表现出来的特征就是赌性十足，想象力丰富，而理性不足。
中国人讲究仁义道德，"仁"为根本，美国华裔学者孙隆基说，"仁"是"人"字旁一个"二"字，也就是说，只有在"二人"的对应关系中，才能对任何一方下定义，在传统中国，这类"二人"的对应关系包括：君臣、父子、夫妇、兄弟、朋友。这个对"人"的定义，到了现代，就被扩充为社群与集体的关系。这种文化，个人的责任融入群体，只见集体责任，不显个人义务，容易陷入羊群效应和群体迷狂，而更少基于个人责任的理性。因为在这种关系中，个人的责任由集体担当，决策失误可以归结为集体的责任，而不是自己的错误，长久以后，个人都变成可以不负责任的主体，理性决策自然谈不上。同时，中国古代很长时期是专制政体，国家代替个人担当所有责任，剥夺个人权利，个人在这种政体中难以通过主动的理性选择来为自己的利益做决定，结果就是个人如果在决策中做出了错误的决策，其责任都可以推给国家，既然不用负责任，在做决策时自然不用理性。中国文化和政体中个人意识的缺失导致中国人在投资时很难理性，而多付诸情绪和想象，成功的概率便降低，而且使中国股市沦为赌场，显得极为不成熟。
要想在中国股市做一个成功的投资者，不可不意识到人性本身的弱点和自身文化的缺陷。主动地进行理性决策，进行理性训练。那意味着在投资时，对所投资的公司进行详细的调查和研究，对事实和数据进行细致的分析，并依据基本的逻辑进行推理，获得确凿的结论。严格根据结论进行买卖，而不是凭主观想象和周围人群的情绪去投资。
有时候要有意识地训练自己的理性。面对大盘上涨，不受市场狂热情绪的影响，依然坚守自己的立场，不因为市场情绪高涨而情绪化买进；面对当前大盘的大幅下跌，人都会有本能的恐慌性情绪反应。受情绪左右的人会在这个时候做出卖出的决定，把很好的公司股票以地板价卖掉。理性投资者要有意识地克服这种本能情绪，依然坚持原来的理性决定。如此多次训练自己，就会面对大盘涨跌不再受情绪左右，完全依据理性做投资决定。
我们很多人知道巴菲特善于寻找优秀公司，但是这种认识只对了一半。巴菲特投资的优势还有一半是理性的发达。那就是不管在何种形势下，以理性做决定，不会被一些恐慌事件所影响做出情绪性的决定。巴菲特有一句话很流行：在别人贪婪时恐惧,在别人恐惧时贪婪。但得到这句话的真谛，不是很容易的事情，那是经过许多惊心动魄的事情之后，理性一次次被训练后才领悟到的真理。一个理性没有得到训练的人，在第一次碰到美国越战、总统辞职之类的事情该会何等仓惶！而面对一次次恐慌事件，一次次以理性应对的人，结果的正确不仅使理性发达，更使本能的情绪慢慢消散。只有经过了足够的恐慌事件，当再次遇到突然袭击时，不会吓得丢盔弃甲，反而可能平静买进那些价有所值的公司股票。

2008-6-22于大运河畔

周末读完指数基金创立者约翰.博格的《长赢投资》一书，发现指数基金是普通投资者最好的选择。以前面对朋友们的投资需求，我总是希望他们和我一样成为一个价值投资者，但是每个人的性格、耐心和价值观不一样，经过这一轮大幅下跌后，我发现我对我那些朋友的推荐是不适当的，我希望他们以后追随博格，做指数基金的投资者。当然，我对朋友们说过另一条路，但在这里就不能说了。

要投资指数基金，这里有几个前提需要投资者认同：

1、投资股市主要是分享企业的股利和收益增长。

2、历史研究表明，股市收益回报率在长期来看与一个国家企业的收益率是一致的，只有0.1%的偏差来自投机收益。

3、任何一个国家的经济在长期来看是呈向上发展的趋势，而一个国家的股市包含了大部分企业，投资股市就等于投资这个国家的整体经济，投资指数基金就等于分享这个国家的经济增长。

4、共同基金（中国叫开放式基金）的费用太多，导致成本太高，而指数基金成本最低。

5、只要长期投资指数基金，随着经济的增长，收益会不断上升。

对于普通投资者来说，一、没有投资的专业知识背景，二、没有足够的时间研究和操作。如果不借助外力而又想分享经济体的增长的话，指数基金是最好的方式，成本最低，操作简单。 

据6月19日央视发布的调查结果表明，在对70万股民进行调查后显示，从2007年1月1日起至今，参与调查的人群中亏损者比例达到了92.51%，盈利的投资者仅有4.34%，勉强保本的为3.15%。这些人应该包括个人选股投资和选择基金投资两种方式。

如果在调查的时间段投资了指数基金会怎样呢？

沪深300指数是体现中国股市全貌的指数，以此指数作为标的的指数基金有嘉实300、大成300等。以嘉实300为例，2007年1月4日嘉实300的复权价是2.036元，2008年6月19日收盘价2.579元，收益率为26.7%。这样的收益比前边调查的95.66%的投资者境况好很多，且不用面对股价上上下下的折磨，可以享受丰富的生活，过更有意义的人生。

由此看来，普通投资者投资指数基金是最好的选择。眼下的大盘点位应该是偏离了真实经济的，股市最终会回归到真实经济的本来面目，那么现在投资以沪深300指数做标的的指数基金，也许是最佳时机吧？

我对《长赢投资》写了一篇书评，等媒体刊登后在上载博客。

２００８年７月６日于大运河畔