《Trust and Individual Fair Dealing》歌词

[00:00:02] Trust and Individual Fair Dealing - 英语演讲

[00:00:08] Address by Alan Greenspan

[00:00:10] at University of Pennsylvania

[00:00:13] Dean Harker, members of the faculty,

[00:00:17] Wharton alumni, friends and families and,

[00:00:21] especially, members of the 2005 graduating class.

[00:00:25] I have more in common with you graduates

[00:00:29] than people might think.

[00:00:30] After all, before long, after my term

[00:00:33] at the Federal Reserve comes to an end,

[00:00:35] I too will be looking for a job.

[00:00:38] I am delighted to join in celebrating

[00:00:43] your achievements and promise.

[00:00:45] You are being bequeathed the tools

[00:00:48] for creating a material existence

[00:00:50] that neither my generation nor any

[00:00:53] that preceded it could have even

[00:00:56] remotely imagined as we began our life's work.

[00:01:00] What you must fashion for yourselves

[00:01:03] are those values that will enable you

[00:01:06] to contribute and thrive in a world

[00:01:08] that is becoming increasingly competitive and frenetic.

[00:01:12] The creative abilities of this graduating class

[00:01:19] and those of your contemporaries will determine

[00:01:22] the magnitude and extent of American prosperity

[00:01:25] in this century. And the ideas and values

[00:01:29] that you employ in these creative endeavors

[00:01:32] will shape the future state of our cultural,

[00:01:35] legal, and economic institutions.

[00:01:38] You will doubtless foster advances in science,

[00:01:42] engineering, and business management.

[00:01:48] But scientific proficiency will not be enough.

[00:01:50] Technology is a tool that, unless guided

[00:01:53] by a set of ethical principles, is of qualified value.

[00:01:58] The principles governing business behavior

[00:02:03] are an essential support to voluntary exchange,

[00:02:06] the defining characteristic of free markets.

[00:02:09] Voluntary exchange, in turn,

[00:02:13] implies trust in the word of those with

[00:02:16] whom we do business. To be sure,

[00:02:18] all market economies require a rule of law to function -

[00:02:23] laws of contracts, rights to property,

[00:02:26] and a general protection of citizens

[00:02:30] from arbitrary actions of the state.

[00:02:31] Yet, if even a small fraction of legally

[00:02:35] binding transactions required adjudication,

[00:02:38] our court systems would be swamped into immobility,

[00:02:43] and a rule of law would be unenforceable.

[00:02:47] Of necessity, therefore, in virtually

[00:02:52] all our transactions, whether with customers or with colleagues,

[00:02:56] with friends or with strangers,

[00:02:58] we rely on the word of those

[00:03:01] with whom we do business.

[00:03:02] If we could not do so, goods

[00:03:05] and services could not be exchanged efficiently.

[00:03:08] Trillions of dollars of assets are priced

[00:03:13] and traded daily in our financial markets.

[00:03:17] Before recent technologies enabled transactions

[00:03:20] to clear and settle virtually in real time,

[00:03:23] most of the vast volumes of trades

[00:03:26] were not legally binding for days.

[00:03:29] Their validity rested on trust.

[00:03:33] Even today, much of business is transacted

[00:03:36] on parties' undocumented verbal agreements.

[00:03:39] We take this for granted and rarely pause

[00:03:44] to ponder how unusual this practice is.

[00:03:47] Moreover, even when followed to the letter,

[00:03:52] laws guide only a few of the day-to-day

[00:03:56] decisions required of business and financial managers.

[00:03:59] The rest are governed by whatever personal code

[00:04:03] of values market participants bring to the table.

[00:04:07] Trust as the necessary condition for commerce

[00:04:12] was particularly evident in freewheeling nineteenth century America,

[00:04:17] where reputation became a valued asset.

[00:04:21] Throughout much of that century,

[00:04:23] laissez-faire reigned in the United States as elsewhere,

[00:04:28] and caveat emptor was the prevailing prescription

[00:04:32] for guarding against wide-open trading practices.

[00:04:36] In such an environment, a reputation for honest dealing,

[00:04:41] which many feared was in short supply,

[00:04:43] was particularly valued.

[00:04:46] Even those inclined to be less than scrupulous

[00:04:49] in their personal dealings had to adhere to

[00:04:53] a more ethical standard in their market transactions,

[00:04:57] or they risked being driven out of business.

[00:05:00] To be sure, the history of world business,

[00:05:05] then and now, is strewn with Fisks, Goulds,

[00:05:09] Ponzis and numerous others treading on,

[00:05:13] or over, the edge of legality.

[00:05:15] But, despite their prominence,

[00:05:18] they were a distinct minority.

[00:05:20] If the situation had been otherwise,

[00:05:23] late nineteenth and early twentieth century America

[00:05:26] would never have realized so high a standard of living.

[00:05:30] Indeed, we could not have achieved our current level

[00:05:34] of national productivity if ethical behavior

[00:05:37] had not been the norm or

[00:05:40] if corporate governance had been deeply flawed.

[00:05:43] Over the past half-century,

[00:05:47] societies have chosen to embrace the protections

[00:05:51] of myriad government financial regulations

[00:05:54] and implied certifications of integrity

[00:05:57] as a supplement to, if not a substitute for,

[00:06:01] business reputation.

[00:06:03] Most observers believe that the world

[00:06:07] is better off as a consequence of these governmental protections.

[00:06:11] Accordingly, the market value of trust,

[00:06:14] so prominent in the 1800s,

[00:06:17] seemed by the 1990s to have become less necessary.

[00:06:22] But recent corporate scandals in the United States

[00:06:28] and elsewhere have clearly shown

[00:06:30] that the plethora of laws and regulations

[00:06:33] of the past century have not eliminated

[00:06:37] the less-savory side of human behavior.

[00:06:39] We should not be surprised then to see

[00:06:43] a re-emergence of the value placed by markets

[00:06:46] on trust and personal reputation in business practice.

[00:06:50] After the revelations of recent corporate malfeasance,

[00:06:55] the market punished the stock

[00:06:58] and bond prices of those corporations

[00:07:00] whose behaviors had cast doubt on the reliability

[00:07:04] of their reputations.

[00:07:06] There may be no better antidote for business

[00:07:09] and financial transgression.

[00:07:11] But in the wake of the scandals,

[00:07:13] the Congress clearly signaled that more was needed.

[00:07:18] The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 appropriately places

[00:07:25] the explicit responsibility for certification

[00:07:28] of the soundness of accounting and disclosure procedures

[00:07:32] on the chief executive officer,

[00:07:35] who holds most of the decision making power

[00:07:38] in the modern corporation.

[00:07:40] Merely certifying that generally

[00:07:43] accepted accounting principles

[00:07:44] were being followed is no longer enough.

[00:07:47] Even full adherence to those principles,

[00:07:51] given some of the imaginative accounting of recent years,

[00:07:55] has proved inadequate.

[00:07:57] I am surprised that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,

[00:08:01] so rapidly developed and enacted,

[00:08:04] has functioned as well as it has.

[00:08:06] It will doubtless be fine-tuned

[00:08:10] as experience with the act's details points the way.

[00:08:14] But the act importantly reinforced the principle

[00:08:19] that shareholders own our corporations

[00:08:22] and that corporate managers should be

[00:08:25] working on behalf of shareholders to

[00:08:27] allocate business resources to their optimum use.

[00:08:32] But as our economy has grown,

[00:08:35] and our business units have become ever larger,

[00:08:38] de facto shareholder control has diminished.

[00:08:42] Ownership has become more dispersed

[00:08:45] and few shareholders have sufficient stakes

[00:08:48] to individually influence the choice of boards

[00:08:51] of directors or chief executive officers.

[00:08:55] The vast majority of corporate share ownership is,

[00:08:59] of course, for investment,

[00:09:01] not to achieve operating control of a company.

[00:09:04] Thus, it has increasingly fallen to corporate officers,

[00:09:10] especially the chief executive officer,

[00:09:13] to guide the business, one hopes by

[00:09:17] what is perceived to be in the best interest of shareholders.

[00:09:20] To be sure, senior officers in today's corporations

[00:09:25] no longer have the dominance

[00:09:27] that they were able to achieve prior to

[00:09:29] the revolution in information technology.

[00:09:32] A decade ago, senior officers of a corporation

[00:09:36] could tightly control, if they chose,

[00:09:39] access to key information systems.

[00:09:42] Those senior officers could have far

[00:09:45] greater knowledge of the workings of their business

[00:09:47] than others and, as a consequence,

[00:09:50] were less subject to challenge

[00:09:53] when making day-by-day tactical and strategic decisions.

[00:09:57] Arguably, with information systems now accessible

[00:10:03] to broader ranges of managers and other employees,

[00:10:07] the monopoly power that proprietary information

[00:10:11] affords has been significantly reduced.

[00:10:14] Moreover, the availability of vital information

[00:10:18] now often extends beyond the borders of the company

[00:10:22] to suppliers and customers as well.

[00:10:24] A generation ago, for example,

[00:10:27] a purchasing manager rarely divulged to

[00:10:31] a supplier the state of the company's inventory position.

[00:10:34] It was presumed that such information

[00:10:38] in the hands of suppliers would undermine

[00:10:40] the bargaining position of the purchasing manager.

[00:10:43] Today such information is broadly

[00:10:47] and routinely shared to facilitate

[00:10:49] just-in-time supply systems.

[00:10:52] In general, technologies may be in the process

[00:10:56] of facilitating a much broader access to information,

[00:11:00] with the consequence that CEOs

[00:11:03] could increasingly face more careful monitoring.

[00:11:06] It seems clear that, if the CEO chooses,

[00:11:12] he or she can, by example and through oversight,

[00:11:16] induce corporate colleagues and outside auditors

[00:11:19] to behave ethically. Companies run by people

[00:11:24] with high ethical standards arguably do not

[00:11:28] need detailed rules on how to act in the long-run

[00:11:32] interest of shareholders and, presumably, themselves.

[00:11:36] But, regrettably, human beings come as we are -

[00:11:40] some with enviable standards,

[00:11:43] and others who continually seek to cut corners.

[00:11:46] Rules exist to govern behavior,

[00:11:51] but rules cannot substitute for character.

[00:11:54] In the years going forward,

[00:11:57] it will be your reputation -

[00:11:59] for integrity, judgment,

[00:12:02] and other qualities of character -

[00:12:03] that will determine your success in life

[00:12:06] and in business. A generation from now,

[00:12:10] as you watch your children graduate,

[00:12:13] you will want to be able to say

[00:12:16] that whatever success you achieved

[00:12:18] was the result of honest and productive work,

[00:12:21] and that you dealt with people

[00:12:23] the way you would want them to deal with you.

[00:12:26] I presume that I could offer all kinds of

[00:12:32] advice to today's graduates from my nearly

[00:12:35] six decades in private business and government.

[00:12:39] I could urge you all to work hard, save, and prosper.

[00:12:44] And I do. But transcending all else

[00:12:48] is being principled in how you go

[00:12:51] about doing those things.

[00:12:53] It is decidedly not true that "nice guys finish last,"

[00:12:58] as that highly original American baseball philosopher Leo Durocher

[00:13:03] was once alleged to have said.

[00:13:06] I do not deny that many appear to

[00:13:10] have succeeded in a material way

[00:13:12] by cutting corners and manipulating associates,

[00:13:16] both in their professional and in their personal lives.

[00:13:19] But material success is possible in this world,

[00:13:23] and far more satisfying, when it comes

[00:13:26] without exploiting others.

[00:13:29] The true measure of a career is to be able to be content,

[00:13:33] even proud, that you succeeded

[00:13:36] through your own endeavors without leaving a trail

[00:13:40] of casualties in your wake.

[00:13:42] Our system works fundamentally on trust

[00:13:47] and individual fair dealing.

[00:13:50] We need only look around today's world

[00:13:53] to realize how valuable these traits are

[00:13:57] and the consequences of their absence.

[00:13:59] While we have achieved much

[00:14:02] as a nation in this regard, more remains to be done.

[00:14:06] Prejudice of whatever stripe is unworthy

[00:14:11] of a society built on individual merit.

[00:14:14] A free market capitalist system cannot operate

[00:14:19] fully effectively unless all participants in the economy

[00:14:23] are given opportunities to achieve their best.

[00:14:26] If we succeed in opening up opportunities to everyone,

[00:14:31] our national affluence will almost surely

[00:14:35] become more widespread. Of even greater import is

[00:14:39] that all Americans recognize that they

[00:14:43] are part of a system that is fair and worthy of support.

[00:14:46] Our forefathers bestowed upon us a system of

[00:14:52] government and a culture of enterprise

[00:14:54] that have propelled the United States

[00:14:57] to the greatest material prosperity the world

[00:15:00] has ever experienced.

[00:15:01] Today's Wharton graduates are being passed

[00:15:06] the standard to carry forward those traditions.

[00:15:09] I know you will improve upon this inheritance

[00:15:13] in ways that we have yet to imagine.

[00:15:15] I offer you all my congratulations

[00:15:20] and wish you success in your chosen careers.