单选题What is the tone of the passage?

单选题Marketplace or peer-to-peer (P2P) lending matches borrowers and lenders on low-cost online platforms. By skirting banks, P2P lending allows borrower and lender alike to achieve better rates of interest. Essentially, P2P lending is a way of capitalising on the network effect of social media and the volumes of data generated therein to allow cheaper access to capital. According to Liberum, P2P lending in the UK will grow at 98 percent year-on-year in 2015, with ￡3.5 billion presently lent out. Worldwide in 2015, it"s estimated that $ 77 billion will be lent via P2P platforms—$ 60 billion China, $12 billion USA and $ 5 billion UK. Morgan Stanley"s Huw Steenis says, "While marketplace lending is still about 1 percent of unsecured consumer and SME lending in the US, we think it can reach approximately 10 percent by 2020... We forecast the global market to grow to $150-$ 490 billion by 2020." As Liberum"s Cormac Leech says, "We are witnessing the biggest changes to the banking sector for 400 years." P2P lending offers huge opportunities, mainly at the expense of banks, whose biggest margins are traditionally in unsecured lending. Herein is the layer of fat P2P platforms guzzling, picking off the banks" best customers. P2P platforms have also proved superior at harvesting and managing big data, and have lower cost bases than banks. A significant development is that institutional money is now alighting. The institutional P2P lender, P2P Global Investment PLC, floated in London last year. It has raised nearly ￡500m and aims to double that this year. As a reward for lofting "transformational" amounts of cash on to various platforms, P2P Global has been accumulating warrants and options on their equity, notably Ratesetter, Zopa, Direct Money and Lending Works. In a twist to this development, Neil Woodford, Britain"s most famous fund manager, recently upped his stake in P2P Global. Last August Woodford sold out of a bank, fearing "fine inflation". This seems a ringing endorsement of this disruptive but nascent sector. Perhaps most significantly, in May this year, Zopa, the P2P platform, announced its debut in secured (most P2P lending is unsecured) lending by collaborating with Uber. Of course, the sector presents risks. The credit dries up when interest rates rise. A P2P platform may go bust. But some investors, refugees from the banking sector perhaps, will simply like the idea of being on the right side of regulatory and technological upheaval. And when the banks finally twig , how will they react? Who knows. So far, none of them have.

单选题Do your children lie to you and their friends about their activities online? Do they feel empty, depressed and irritable when not at the computer? Do they have problems with school or work, yet they always seem to feel energized again when they are at the computers surfing the internet? If you answered "yes" to one or even more of the above questions, your children are suffering from internet addiction. The amount of time kids spend online is a source of headaches for many parents. At first, parents welcomed the Internet into their homes, believing they were opening up an exciting new world of educational opportunities for their children. But soon, to their disappointment, instead of using the Internet for homework or research, their kids were spending hours instant chatting with friends, playing online games or even talking to strangers in chat rooms, which is posing real dangers to the children. Maintaining a healthy balance between entertainment media and other activities in children's lives has always been a challenge for parents. The Internet has made this challenge even more difficult. The engaging nature of Internet communications and interactive games means many children and teens have trouble controlling the time they spent online. Unfortunately, parents and teachers do not realize that there is a problem until it becomes serious. To make it worse, Internet addiction is not widely recognized by the medical community. (Mental health practitioners continue to debate whether this behavior is an "addiction," with some preferring to identify it as "behavior control problems. Children and young people can easily become "hooked" on online activities such as multi-user games, instant messaging with their pals and chat rooms. The children most easily influenced, according to the Computer-Addiction Services at Harvard Medical School, are those who are "lonely and bored or from families where nobody is at home to relate to after school." Children who are unpopular or shy with peers are often attracted to the opportunities for creating new identities in online communities. Boys, in particular, are frequent users of online role-playing games, where they have new identities and interact with other players. Although playing these games with thousands of other users may appear to be a social activity, for the troubled child or teen, too much playing can further separate them from friends and peers.

单选题What does the author mean by "... has become its flip-flopper" (Par

单选题The second paragraph is meant to demonstrate that______.

单选题As to how to treat the bust businesses, America differs from the European countries in that

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Until recently, mobile radio was to wireless communications what the Yugo was to transportation. With a mixed clientele ranging from truckers using CBs to police armed with walkie-talkies to taxi drivers dispatched by radio, it was viewed as an unglamorous business and a technological backwater. But specialized mobile radio, as it is known, has been rediscovered. It is now considered one of the biggest prizes in the all-out war for the public airwaves. The reason: high-tech companies have figured out how to profitably rebuild the antiquated dispatching system into an advanced cellular-telephone network that can take on the likes of AT & T and the giant Baby Bells. Upstart Nextel Communications sent shock waves through the industry last week when it agreed to buy Motorola's SMR frequencies for $1.8 billion. That could pose a serious threat to cellular hegemony. Although both systems are based on the same basic technology, SMR systems are digital and cover almost 25 times as much area as the average cellular network. SMR handsets won't work on cellular systems and tend to be bulkier than cellular phones, though they provide more features, like a digital pager service. And while cellular growth has tripled to some 13 million subscribers since 2000, the technology has been losing ground. It is running out of channel capacity so fast, in fact, that 40% of cellular calls in high-density areas like Manhattan and Los Angeles fail to be completed. SMRs have capacity to spare, and service could eventually be priced 10% to 15% less than cellular. Dispatchers predict they will have at least 10 million subscribers by the end of the decade. There are now about 1.5 million users of SMRs. The addition of another contender to an already crowded field of telephone systems will surely multiply the confusion. By the year 2010, consumers will be able to choose from at least half a dozen vendors of a dizzying array of wireless-communications services, including pagers, voice mail answering machines and cellular phones. Phone and cable television operators, such as Bell South, MCI and Cox Enterprises, are developing so-called personal communications networks, or PCNs, a highly advanced portable-phone system that is expected to cover a wider area, connect to a greater variety of services and be cheaper to operate than conventional cellular. And many companies that have gambled on the wrong technological standards, and invested billions trying to develop the same markets, will undoubtedly lose a great deal of money before the shakeout is over. "The winners," says Nextel chairman Morgan O'Brien, "will be those who can make the choice for consumers easy." With all the anticipated confusion--mindful of the early years of personal computers--it is likely to be years before anyone calls the purchase of wireless products an "easy" choice.

单选题The Seneca Falls conference on women's right was

单选题OnthegroundflooroftheFederalReservebuildinginWashington,DC,thereisanelectronicgamewhichtestsavisitor'sskillatsettinginterestrates.Youhavetodecidehowtorespondtoeventssuchasrisinginflationorastockmarketcrash.Ifyougetalltheanswersright,themachinedeclaresyouthenextFedchairman.Inreallife,becauseofhugeuncertaintiesaboutdataandhowtheeconomyworks,thereisnoobviouslyrightanswertothequestionofwhentochangeinterestrates.NoristhereanyeasytestofwhowillmakethebestFedchairman.SowhowouldTheEconomistSelectforthejob?AlanGreenspanwillretireasFedchairmanonJanuary31st,afteramere18yearsinthejob.SoGeorgeBushneedstonominateasuccessorsoon.Mr.Bushhasapenchantforpickinghispalstofilltopjobs:lastweekhenominatedhispersonallawyerHarrietMierstotheSupremeCourt.ButhispersonalbankmanagerreallywouldnotcutthemustardasFedchairman.Thisisthemostimportanteconomic-policyjobinAmerica—indeedinthewholeworld.TheFedchairmansetsinterestrateswiththeaimofcontrollinginflation,whichinturnhelpsdeterminethevalueofthedollar,theworld'smainreservecurrency.Itishardlysurprisingthatfinancialmarketsworldwidecanriseorfallonhiseveryword.Financialmarketsaretypicallymorevolatileduringthefirstyearafterthehandovertoanewchairmanthanduringtherestofhistenure.InOctober1987,barelytwomonthsafterMr.Greenspantookoffice,thestockmarketcrashed.Currentconditionsforahandoverarehardlyideal.America'seconomyhasneverlookedsounbalanced,withanegativehouseholdsavingsrate,ahousingbubble,aheftybudgetdeficit,arecordcurrent-accountdeficitandrisinginflation.FiguresdueonOctober14thareexpectedtoshowthatthe12-monthrateofinflationhasrisenabove4%—itshighestsince1991.

单选题The author would be most likely to agree that

单选题European farm ministers have ended three weeks of negotiations with a deal which they claim represents genuine reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP). Will it be enough to kick off the Doha world trade negotiations? On the face of it, the deal agreed in the early hours of Thursday June 26th looks promising. Most subsidies linked to specific farm products are, at last, to be broken--the idea is to replace these with a direct payment to farmers, .unconnected to particular products. Support prices for several key products, including milk and butter, are to be cut-that should mean European prices eventually falling towards the world market level. Cut-ting the link between subsidy and production was the main objective of proposals put forward by Mr. Fischler, which had formed the starting point for the negotiations. The CAP is hugely unpopular around the world. It subsidizes European farmers to such an extent that they can undercut farmers from poor countries, who also face trade barriers that largely exclude them from the potentially lucrative European market. Farm trade is also a key feature of the Doha round of trade talks, launched under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001. Developing countries have lined up alongside a number of industrial countries to demand an end to the massive subsidies Europe pays its farmers. Several Doha deadlines have already been missed because of the EU's intransigence, and the survival of the talks will be at risk if no progress is made by September, when the world's trade ministers meet in Cancun, Mexico. But now even the French seem to have gone along with the deal hammered out in Luxembourg. Up to a point, anyway. The package of measures gives the green light for the most eager reformers to move fast to implement the changes within their own countries. But there is an escape clause of sorts for the French and other reform-averse nations. They can delay implementation for up to two years. There is also a suggestion that the reforms might not apply where there is a chance that they would lead to a reduction in land under cultivation. These 1et-outs are potentially damaging for Europe's negotiators in the Doha round. They could significantly reduce the cost savings that the reforms might otherwise generate and, in turn, keep European expenditure on farm support unacceptably high by world standards. Mote generally, the escape clauses could undermine the reforms by encouraging the suspicion that the new package will not deliver the changes that its supporters claim Close analysis of what is inevitably a very complicated package might confirm the sceptics' fears.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} "Worse than useless," fumed Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California, on March 19th, when the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Terrible, and getting worse," added Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic colleague who has kept a watchful eye on the INS for ten years. Committee members lined up to take swings at James Ziglar, the head of the INS. He explained, somewhat pathetically, that "outdated procedures" had kept the visa-processing wheels grinding slowly through a backlog of applications. He also had some new rules in mind to tighten up visas. Speeding up the paperwork and getting more of it on to computers--is vital, but the September attacks have exposed the tension, between the agency's two jobs: on the one hand enforcing the security of America's borders, and on the other granting privileges such as work permits to foreigners. But other people want more radical changes. James Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, wants to split the INS into two separate bodies, one dealing with border security and the other with handling benefits to immigrants. The other approach, favored in the White House, is to treat the two functions as complementary, and to give the INS even more responsibility for security. Under that plan, the INS would merge with the Customs Service, which monitors the 20m shipments of goods brought into America every year, as well as the bags carried in by some 500m visitors. The two agencies would form one large body within the Department of Justice, the current home of the INS. This would cut out some of the duplicated effort at borders, where customs officers and agents from the INS's Border Patrol often rub shoulders but do not work together. Mr Bush--who has said that the news of the visa approvals left him "plenty hot" --was expected to give his approval. The senate, however, may not be quite so keen. The Justice Department could have trouble handling such a merger, let alone taking on the considerable economic responsibilities of the Customs Service, which is currently part of the Treasury. The senate prefers yet another set of security recommendations, including links between the databases of different agencies that hold security and immigration information, and scanners at ports of entry to check biometric data recorded on immigration documents. These ideas are embodied in a bill sponsored by members of both parties, but are currently held up by Robert Byrd, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who worries that there has not been enough debate on the subject. Mr Ziglar, poor chap, may feel there has been more than enough.