单选题 One reason why shareholder activism has been increasing is that regulators have encouraged it, especially on pay. For a decade Britain has required firms to give shareholders a non-binding annual vote on executive pay. The colossal Dodd-Frank act of 2010 gave shareholders in American companies a "say on pay", too. Now comes two new moves. On March 3rd the Swiss voted to oblige firms to hold a binding annual vote on director's pay: in the small print, the referendum also banned golden handshakes and severance packages for board members, and bonuses that encourage the buying or selling of firms. Then on March 5th E.U. finance ministers (with only Britain objecting) agreed to cap bankers' bonuses to 100% of their basic salary, or 200% if shareholders vote for it. If the Swiss had merely given shareholders an annual vote on pay, it would have been a good thing; but the accompanying bans are not. There are times when a golden handshake to a talented manager can be in shareholders' interests: far better to let the owners vote on it than restrict the firm from trying it. The E.U.'s proposal has less still to recommend it. The rationale for it is that banking bonuses have encouraged risk taking, because they reward bankers hugely for bets that come off and punish them only slightly for those that don't. But banks have come a long way since the crisis, by deferring bonuses and making them partly payable in their own debt and equity. Blunt laws could undermine such progress. And bonus caps will either hold pay down, thus sending clever people elsewhere, or push up salaries, thus making pay less responsive to performance. Enpowering shareholders is a good idea; requiring them to channel populist fury is not.

单选题Comparisons to the Depression feature are in almost every discussion of the global economic crisis. In world trade, such parallels are especially chilling. Trade declined alarmingly in the early 1930s as global demand imploded, prices collapsed and governments embarked on a destructive, protectionist spiral of higher tariffs and retaliation. Trade is contracting again, at a rate unmatched in the post-war period. This week the WTO predicted that the volume of global merchandise trade would shrink by 9% this year. This will be the first fall in trade flows since 1982. Between 1990 and 2006 trade volumes grew by more than 6% a year, outstripping the growth rate of world output, which was about 3%. Now the global economic machine has gone into reverse: output is declining and trade is tumbling at a faster pace. The turmoil has shaken commerce in goods of all sorts, bought and sold by rich and poor countries alike. It is too soon to talk of a new protectionist spiral. Nevertheless, errors of policy risk make a bad thing worse—despite politicians" promises to keep markets open. When they met in November, the leaders of the G20 rich and emerging economies declared that they would eschew protectionism and will doubtless do so again when they meet on April 2nd. But this pledge has not been honoured. According to the World Bank, 17 members of the group have taken a total of 47 trade restricting steps since November. Modern protectionism is more subtle and varied than the 1930s version. In the Depression tariffs were the weapon of choice. America"s Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed in 1930, increased nearly 900 American import duties and provoked widespread retaliation from America"s trading partners. A few tariffs have been raised this time, but tighter licensing requirements, import bans and anti-dumping have also been used. Rich countries have included discriminatory procurement provisions in their fiscal-stimulus bills and offered subsidies to ailing national industries. These days, protectionism comes in 57 varieties. There are good reasons for thinking that the world has less to fear from protectionism than in the past. International agreements to limit tariffs, built over the post-war decades, are a safeguard against all-out tariff wars. The growth of global supply chains, which have bound national economies together tightly, have made it more difficult for governments to increase tariffs without harming producers in their own countries. But these defences may not be strong enough. Multilateral agreements provide little insurance against domestic subsidies, fiercer use of anti-dumping or the other forms of creeping protection.

单选题Happy people work differently. They"re more productive, more creative, and willing to take greater risks. And new research suggests that happiness might influence 1 firms work, too. Companies located in places with happier people invest more, according to a recent research paper. 2 , firms in happy places spend more on R&D (research and development). That"s because happiness is linked to the kind of longer-term thinking 3 for making investments for the future. The researchers wanted to know if the 4 and inclination for risk-taking that come with happiness would 5 the way companies invested. So they compared U.S. cities" average happiness 6 by Gallup polling with the investment activity of publicly traded firms in those areas. 7 enough, firms" investment and R&D intensity were correlated with the happiness of the area in which they were 8 . But is it really happiness that"s linked to investment, or could something else about happier cities 9 why firms there spend more on R&D? To find out, the researchers controlled for various 10 that might make firms more likely to invest—like size, industry, and sales—and for indicators that a place was 11 to live in, like growth in wages or population. The link between happiness and investment generally 12 even after accounting for these things. The correlation between happiness and investment was particularly strong for younger firms, which the authors 13 to "less codified decision making process" and the possible presence of "younger and less 14 managers who are more likely to be influenced by sentiment." The relationship was 15 stronger in places where happiness was spread more 16 . Firms seem to invest more in places where most people are relatively happy, rather than in places with happiness inequality. 17 this doesn"t prove that happiness causes firms to invest more or to take a longer-term view, the authors believe it at least 18 at that possibility. It"s not hard to imagine that local culture and sentiment would help 19 how executives think about the future. "It surely seems plausible that happy people would be more forward-thinking and creative and 20 R&D more than the average," said one researcher.

单选题Many states have gone on prison-building sprees, yet the penal system is choked to bursting. To ease the pressure, nearly all convicted felons are released early—or not locked up at all. "About three of every four convicted criminals," says John DiIulio, a noted Princeton criminologist, "are on the streets without meaningful probation or parole supervision." And while everyone knows that amateur thugs should be deterred before they become career criminals, it is almost unheard-of for judges to send first- or second-time offenders to prison. Meanwhile, the price of keeping criminals in cages is appalling—a common estimate is $30,000 per inmate per year. (To be sure, the cost to society of turning many inmates loose would be even higher.) For tens of thousands of convicts, prison is a graduate school of criminal studies: They emerge more ruthless and savvy than when they entered. And for many offenders, there is even a certain cachet to doing time—a stint in prison becomes a sign of manhood, a status symbol. But there would be no cachet in chaining a criminal to an outdoor post and flogging him. If young punks were horsewhipped in public after their first conviction, fewer of them would harden into lifelong felons. A humiliating and painful paddling can be applied to the rear end of a crook for a lot less than $30,000—and prove a lot more educational than 10 years" worth of prison meals and lockdowns. Are we quite certain the Puritans have nothing to teach us about dealing with criminals? Of course, their crimes are not our crimes: We do not arrest blasphemers or adulterers, and only gun control fanatics would criminalize the sale of weapons to Indians. (They would criminalize the sale of weapons to anybody.) Nor would the ordeal suffered by poor Joseph Gatchell—the tongue "pierce through" with a hot poker—be regarded today as anything less than torture. But what is the objection to corporal punishment that doesn"t maim or mutilate? Instead of a prison term, why not sentence at least some criminals—say, thieves and drunk drivers—to a public whipping? "Too degrading," some will say. "Too brutal." But where is it written that being whipped is more degrading than being caged? Why is it more brutal to flog a wrongdoer than to throw him in prison—where the risk of being beaten, raped, or murdered is terrifyingly high? The Globe reported in 1994 that more than 200,000 prison inmates are raped each year, usually to the indifference of the guards. "The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who ... are convicted of nonviolent offenses," former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun has written, "border on the unimaginable." Are those horrors preferable to the short, sharp shame of corporal punishment? Perhaps the Puritans were more enlightened than we think, at least on the subject of punishment. Their sanctions were humiliating and painful, but quick and cheap. Maybe we should readopt a few.

单选题Las Vegas uses flashing lights and ringing bells to create an illusion of reward and to encourage risk taking. Insurance company offices present a more somber mood to remind us of our mortality. Every marketer knows that context and presentation influence our decisions. For the first time, economists are studying these phenomena scientifically. The economists are using a new technology that allows them to trace the activity of neurons inside the brain and thereby study how emotions influence our choices, including economic choices like gambles and investments. For instance, when humans are in a "positive arousal state", they think about prospective benefits and enjoy the feeling of risk. All of us are familiar with the giddy excitement that accompanies a triumph. Camelia Kuhnen and Brian Knutson, two researchers at Stanford University, have found that people are more likely to take a foolish risk when their brains show this kind of activation. But when people think about costs, they use different brain modules and become more anxious. They play it too safe, at least in the laboratory. Furthermore, people are especially afraid of ambiguous risks with unknown odds. This may help explain why so many investors are reluctant to seek out foreign stock markets, even when they could diversify their portfolios at low cost. If one truth shines through, it is that people are not consistent or fully rational decision makers. Peter L. Bossaerts, an economics professor at the California Institute of Technology, has found that brains assess risk and return separately, rather than making a single calculation of what economists call expected utility. Researchers can see on the screen how people compartmentalize their choices into different parts of their brains. This may not always sound like economics but neuro-economists start with the insight—borrowed from the economist Friedrich Hayek—that resources are scarce within the brain and must be allocated to competing uses. Whether in economies or brains, well-functioning systems should not be expected to exhibit centralized command and control. Neuro-economics is just getting started. The first major empirical paper was published in 2001 by Kevin McCabe, Daniel Houser, Lee Ryan, Vernon Smith and Theodore Trouard, all economics professors. (Professors McCabe, Houser and Smith are colleagues of mine at George Mason University.) A neuro-economics laboratory at Caltech, led by Colin F. Camerer, a math prodigy and now an economics professor, has assembled the foremost group of interdisciplinary researchers. Many of the early entrants, who have learned neurology as well as economics, continue to dominate the field. Investors are becoming interested in the money-making potential of these ideas. Imagine training traders to set their emotions aside or testing their objectivity in advance with brain scans. Futuristic devices might monitor their emotions on the trading floor or in a bargaining session and instruct them how to compensate for possible mistakes.

单选题People living on parts of the south coast of England face a serious problem. In 1993, the owners of a large hotel and of several houses discovered, to their horror, that their gardens had disappeared overnight. The sea had eaten into the soft limestone cliffs on which they had been built. While experts were studying the problem, the hotel and several houses disappeared altogether, sliding down the cliff and into the sea. Erosion of the white cliffs along the south coast of England has always been a problem but it has become more serious in recent years. Dozens of homes have had to be abandoned as the sea has crept farther and farther inland. Experts have studied the areas most affected and have drawn up a map for local people, forecasting the year in which their homes will be swallowed up by the hungry sea. Angry owners have called on the Government to erect sea defenses to protect their homes. Government surveyors have pointed out that in most cases, this is impossible. New sea walls would cost hundreds of millions of pounds and would merely make the waves and currents go further along the coast, shifting the problem from one area to another. The danger is likely to continue, they say, until the waves reach an inland area of hard rock which will not be eaten as limestone is. Meanwhile, if you want to buy a cheap house with an uncertain future, apply to a house agent in one of the threatened areas on the south coast of England. You can get a house for a knockdown price but it may turn out to be a knockdown home.

单选题German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck may he most famous for his military and diplomatic talent, but his legacy includes many of today"s social insurance programs. During the middle of the 19th century, Germany, along with other European nations, experienced an unprecedented rash of workplace deaths and accidents as a result of growing industrialization. Motivated in part by Christian compassion for the helpless as well as a practical political impulse to undercut the support of the socialist labor movement, Chancellor Bismarck created the world"s first workers" compensation law in 1884. By 1908, the United States was the only industrial nation in the world that lacked workers" compensation insurance. America"s injured workers could sue for damages in a court of law, but they still faced a number of tough legal barriers. For example, employees had to prove that their injuries directly resulted from employer negligence and that they themselves were ignorant about potential hazards in the workplace. The first state workers" compensation law in this country passed in 1911, and the program soon spread throughout the nation. After World War Ⅱ, benefit payments to American workers did not keep up with the cost of living. In fact, real benefit levels were lower in the 1970s than they were in the 1940s, and in most states the maximum benefit was below the poverty level for a family of four. In 1970, President Richard Nixon set up a national commission to study the problems of workers" compensation. Two years later, the commission issued 19 key recommendations, including one that called for increasing compensation benefit levels to 100 percent of the states" average weekly wages. In fact, the average compensation benefit in America has climbed from 55 percent of the states" average weekly wages in 1972 to 97 percent today. But, as most studies show, every 10 percent increase in compensation benefits results in a 5 percent increase in the numbers of workers who file for claims. And with so much more money floating in the workers" compensation system, it"s not surprising that doctors and lawyers have helped themselves to a large slice of the growing pie.

单选题Charities are facing a multi-billion pound black hole in their finances as companies withdraw sponsorship and individuals cancel standing orders as the economic downturn bites, according to an authoritative study published today. A survey of 362 charities by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the Institute of Fundraising and the Charity Finance Directors" Group reveals that charity incomes are expected to fall in real terms and costs to rise. PwC estimates that the deficit could reach ￡2.3bn next year as the UK heads towards recession. The forecast is the clearest sign yet of the crisis facing the charitable sector as a result of the credit crisis and has been met with warnings that charity services—often aimed at helping victims of financial hardship—will be curtailed, and some may even collapse. The squeeze has already seen the value of corporate donations fall. The British Red Cross was forced to cancel its winter gala ball beside the Thames this month as it could not find a corporate sponsor for an event which usually raises ￡500,000. Shelter, the housing charity, lost ￡400,000 in the space of six weeks this autumn when corporate sponsors, including the nationalised mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley, cancelled donations. Charity chief executives will now press ministers further to release a ￡500m emergency fund to help see them through the slump. After a decade of strong growth in revenues, the value of legacies and wills—which account for a third of the income of UK charities—has also plunged, and the charities" investment income has collapsed in line with the stock markets. According to the survey, the only growth looks set to come from charity shops, as bargain hunters turn to second hand goods. Even that is threatened by a lack of goods to sell, as some would-be donors try to raise extra cash by selling their stuff online. "In all aspects the recession is upon us and the economic climate is looking gloomy," said Keith Hickey, chief executive of the Charity Finance Directors" Group. "The one certainty is that our beneficiaries will need us more than ever. We must respond to this demand by ensuring that our charities are strongly led and able to ensure that we make the maximum possible use of resources." The crisis has come at a difficult time for Shelter, which offers advice on mortgage problems, homelessness, keeping warm and coping with rent payment. Overall, however, the British Red Cross believes its income will grow modestly next year, largely from monthly direct donations gathered through face-to-face fundraising. "It is going to be tough, but it is not all doom and gloom," said the spokesman of the Red Cross. "We are watching our individual donations closely and there is no detectable change."

单选题 European regulators have contributed to their banks' decline, in two ways. First, they are specifying how much banks can pay in bonuses relative to base pay. Second, they are trying to force banks to hold more capital and to make it easier to allow them to fail by, for instance, separating their retail deposits from their wholesale businesses. The first approach is foolish. It will drive up the fixed costs of Europe's banks and reduce their flexibility to cut expenses in downturns (低迷时期). They will therefore struggle to compete in America or fast-growing Asian markets with foreign rivals that have the freedom to pay the going rate. The second approach is sensible. Switzerland and Britain are making progress in ending the implicit taxpayer subsidy that supports banks that are too big to fail. The collapse of Ireland's economy is warning enough of what happens when governments feel compelled to help out banks that weaken their economies. Some European bankers argue that the continent needs investment-banking champions. Yet it is not obvious that European firms or taxpayers gain from having national banks that are good at packaging and selling American subprime loans (次级贷款). Indeed, it is American taxpayers and investors who should worry about the dominance of a few Wall Street firms. They bear the main risk of future bail-outs (紧急援助). They would benefit from greater competition in investment banking. IPO fees are much higher in America than elsewhere, mainly because the market is dominated by a few big investment banks. Wall Street's new titans say they are already penalised by new international rules that insist they have somewhat bigger capital buffers (缓冲) than smaller banks because they pose a greater risk to economies if they fail. Yet the huge economies of scale and implicit subsidies from being too big to fail more than offset (抵消) the cost of the buffers. Increasing the capital surcharges for big banks would do more for the stability of the financial system than the thicket of Dodd-Frank rules ever will. Five years on from the frightening summer of 2008, America's big banks are back, and that is a good thing. But there are still things that could make Wall Street safer.

单选题Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. The European Union reached a preliminary deal to curb banker's compensation that would drastically limit the account that can be paid in bonuses. Britain resisted the move to cap the ratio between bankers' fixed and variable pay. In a nod to opposition from the City of London the new rules treat long-term incentives linked to equities and bonds more favourably. The deal has to be agreed on by finance ministries next week. The Royal Bank of Scotland, which is still majority owned by the British taxpayer five years after a government bail-out, reported an annual pre-tax loss of ￡5.2 billion, mostly because of an accounting quirk connected to the value of its own debts. RBS's loss was put in the shade, however, when Bankia later posted a net loss for 2012 of ￡19 billion. The Spanish government owns just under half the bank, but that is expected soon to rise to 70%. A report by McKinsey underlined the impact of the financial crisis on annual cross-border capital flows, which fell by 60% from 2007 to $4.6 trillion last year. The study says that financial globalisation has "stalled" and that markets have reached an "inflection point" that could lead to a "Balkanised" structure based on local, rather than global, banking systems. Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, nominated Haruhiko Kuroda to become the next governor of the Bank of Japan. Mr. Kuroda is the current head of the Asian Development Bank and had been a vocal critic of the BOJ. Mr. Abe has turned the central bank's record into a political issue, urging it to do more to help "the real economy". India's government unveiled the country's most important budget in years, as it seeks to boost output while controlling inflation. Growth has cooled rapidly to around 5%. The official forecast says that the economy will expand by up to 6.6% in 2013-2014, but the opposition is quick to point out that the estimate for this year was overly optimistic.

单选题Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft chairman without a single earned university degree, is by his success raising new doubts about the worth of the business world"s favorite academic title: the MBA (Master of Business Administration). The MBA, a 20th-century product, always has borne the mark of lowly commerce and greed on the tree-lined campuses ruled by purer disciplines such as philosophy and literature. But even with the recession apparently cutting into the hiring of business school graduates, about 79, 000 people are expected to receive MBAs in 1993. This is nearly 16 times the number of business graduates in 1960, a testimony to the widespread assumption that the MBA is vital for young men and women who want to run companies some day. "If you are going into the corporate world it is still a disadvantage not to have one," said Donald Morrison, professor of marketing and management science. "But in the last five years or so, when someone says, "should I attempt to get an MBA", the answer a lot more is: It depends." The success of Bill Gates and other non-MBAs, such as the late Sam Walton of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., has helped inspire self-conscious debates on business school campuses over the worth of a business degree and whether management skills can be taught. The Harvard Business Review printed a lively , fictional exchange of letters to dramatize complaints about business degree holders. The article called MBA hires "extremely disappointing" and said "MBAs want to move up too fast, they don"t understand politics and people, and they aren"t able to function as part of a team until their third year. But by then, they"re out looking for other jobs." The problem, most participants in the debate acknowledge, is that the MBA has acquired an aura of future riches and power far beyond its actual importance and usefulness. Enrollment in business schools exploded in the 1970s and 1980s and created the assumption that no one who pursued a business career could do without one [7]. The growth was fueled by a backlash against the anti-business values of the 1960s and by the women"s movement. Business people who have hired or worked with MBAs say those with the degrees often know how to analyze systems but are not so skillful at motivating people. "They don"t get a lot of grounding in the people side of the business," said James Shaffer, vice-president and principal of the Towers Perrin management consulting firm.

单选题By now, the idea of airline baggage charges, extra legroom at a cost, paying for food and so on, has become for travellers a bit like the pre-flight safety explanation about how seat belts work. It may annoy. Or perhaps it has become so common that it no longer elicits much response. But these transactions are helping keep the planes flying, and they illustrate a market reality increasingly faced by a wide spectrum of consumers and businesses. Efforts by airlines around the world to increase revenue apart from ticket prices have grown almost tenfold since 2008 to $22.6 billion. And, even with that, the International Air Transport Association is projecting overall global airline profits will be down in 2012 for a second successive year to about $3 billion. That"s a profit margin of just 0.5 percent, so what some see as nickel-and-diming is viewed within the turbulent airline industry as pennies from heaven. "The whole economics of the business have been an absolute disaster since the fuel crisis of 2008," IdeaWorks President Jay Sorensen explained. "Airlines are just desperate for money." The economy has ensured that this desperation is not unique to airlines or even the travel business, where hotels may look to charge for a Wi-Fi connection that Starbucks will give you for free, or charge extra fee on top of the cost of whatever the resort"s room rate is and maybe tack on a housekeeping extra charge. You see this batteries-not-included mentality elsewhere. Cellphone companies that once advertised all-inclusive services look to sell data and voice separately. Banks try to assess new fees to cover costs they once absorbed. "In an industry cycle, in the beginning, when you"re in a high-growth period, you tend to see a lot of bundling, giving a lot of things at one price," Jean-Manuel Izaret said by phone. "At the other extreme, when you are in the super-mature area, you"ll have low-cost providers entering certain markets with no-frills offers. So in a mature market, where low-cost challengers have come in and undercut the prices of established players, the only option for established players is to unbundle and price every little thing separately." "Airlines are going to have to be careful of nuisance fees, like checked bags and seating, and focus instead on inventing services that have not been offered before that people value," Sorensen said. That proposition is critical. But within a company the ability to generate revenue through a service often means more resources will be devoted to improving it. So the baggage service, for example, not only has benefited from fewer checked items in the system but greater investment in that system by airlines. Charging for specific services like baggage handling lets airlines invest to provide greater reliability for those who check a bag, without passing on the cost to customers who don"t.

单选题Not too many decades ago it seemed "obvious" both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people"s natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the "obvious" is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else. Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Small-town residents are more involved with kin than are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activates. Urbanism may produce a different style of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers. These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for young trouble makers. Moreover, as Wirth suggested, there may be a link between a community"s population size and its social heterogeneity. For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of a community is associated with bad behavior including gambling, drugs, etc. Large-city urbanites are also more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so-called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size.

单选题It was the worst tragedy in maritime history, six times more deadly than the Titanic. When the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was hit by torpedoes fired from a Russian submarine in the final winter of World War Ⅱ, more than 10,000 people—mostly women, children and old people fleeing the final Red Army push into Nazi Germany—were packed aboard, An ice storm had turned the decks into frozen sheets that sent hundreds of families sliding into the sea as the ship tilted and began to go down. Others desperately tried to put lifeboats down. Some who succeeded fought off those in the water who had the strength to try to claw their way aboard. Most people froze immediately. "I"ll never forget the screams," says Christa Ntitzmann, 87, one of the 1,200 survivors. She recalls watching the ship, brightly lit, slipping into its dark grave—and into seeming nothingness, rarely mentioned for more than half a century. Now Germany"s Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass has revived the memory of the 9,000 dead, including more than 4,000 children—with his latest novel Crab Walk , published last month. The book, which will be out in English next year, doesn"t dwell on the sinking; its heroine is a pregnant young woman who survives the catastrophe only to say later: "Nobody wanted to hear about it, not here in the West (of Germany) and not at all in the East." The reason was obvious. As Grass put it in a recent interview with the weekly Die Woche : "Because the crimes we Germans are responsible for were and are so dominant, we didn"t have the energy left to tell of our own sufferings." The long silence about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was probably unavoidable—and necessary. By unreservedly owning up to their country"s monstrous crimes in the Second World War, Germans have managed to win acceptance abroad, marginalize the neo-Nazis at home and make peace with their neighbors. Today"s unified Germany is more prosperous and stable than at any time in its long, troubled history. For that, a half century of willful forgetting about painful memories like the German Titanic was perhaps a reasonable price to pay. But even the most politically correct Germans believe that they"ve now earned the right to discuss the full historical record. Not to equate German suffering with that of its victims, but simply to acknowledge a terrible tragedy.

单选题Might war games deserve a greater role in business? Military analogies abound in the corporate world. In business, as in war, outcomes depend on what others do, as well as one"s own actions. Yet many firms fail to think systematically about how rivals will react to their plans—and traditional planning does a poor job of taking competitors" responses into account, says John McDermott, head of strategy at Xerox, an office-equipment company. Corporate war games, which simulate the interactions of multiple actors in a market, provide a better way to do so. Such games have two chief characteristics. First, players break into teams and take on the roles of fierce competitors (and sometimes other statuses, such as customers). Second, the games involve several turns, allowing competitors not just to draw up their own strategies but to respond to the choices of others. Their popularity is rising. Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), a consultancy, is running 100 war games a year, up from around 50 three years ago. Games can vary greatly in sophistication. Fuld these "preference trees" were shared with the other teams and fine-tuned. The results were then pumped into Open Options" proprietary software tools, which played out interactions between the companies and produced a range of possible outcomes. Mr. McDermott says the game"s predictive power was astonishing: one forecast, that a company would start to acquire a certain group of assets within the industry, came true within six months. By shedding light on areas where companies have different priorities, the concept of preference trees helps to highlight potential trade-offs, as well as competition. Open Options charges North American clients roughly $100,000 for an engagement. "The bang for buck was outstanding," says Mr. McDermott.

单选题 An industrial society, especially one as centralized and concentrated as that of Britain, is heavily dependent on certain essential services; for instance, electricity supply, water, rail and road transport, and harbors. The area of dependency has widened to include removing rubbish, hospital and ambulance services, and, as the economy develops, central computer and information services as well. If any of these services ceases to operate, the whole economic system is in danger. It is this economic interdependence of the economic system which makes the power of trade unions such an important issue. Single trade unions have the ability to cut off many countries' economic blood supply. This can happen more easily in Britain than in some other countries, in part because the labor force is highly organized. About 55 percent of British workers belong to unions, compared to under a quarter in the United States. For historical reasons, Britain's unions have tended to develop along trade and occupational lines, rather than on an industry-by-industry basis, which makes a wages policy, democracy in industry and the improvement of procedure for fixing wage levels difficult to achieve. There are considerable strains and tensions in the trade union movement, some of them arising from their outdated and inefficient structure. Some unions have lost many members because of their industrial changes. Others are involved in arguments about who should represent workers in new trades. Unions for skilled trades are separate from general unions, which means that different levels of wages for certain jobs are often a source of bad feeling between unions. In traditional trades which are being pushed out of existence by advancing technologies, unions can fight for their members' disappointing jobs to the point where the jobs of other union members are threatened or destroyed. The printing of newspapers both in the United States and in Britain has frequently been halted by the efforts of printer to hold on to their traditional highly-paid jobs. Trade unions have problems of internal communication just as managers in companies do, problems which multiply in very large unions or in those which bring workers in very different industries together into a single general union. Some trade union officials have to be re-elected regularly; others are elected, or even appointed, for life. Trade union officials have to work with a system of "shop stewards" in many unions, "shop stewards" being workers elected by other workers as their representatives at factory or works level.

单选题Nationally, the unemployment rate sits at 9.5 percent. But in the El Centro metropolitan area, it"s an incredible 27.6 percent. And as workers across the country struggle to navigate the lifeless labor market, El Centro has emerged as a case study about just how fragile the economic recovery can be. In recent years, California"s multibillion-dollar budget shortfall and its painful cutbacks have gotten plenty of attention. But even by California standards, El Centro"s situation is unusually dire. Since the recession hit, the area"s housing market has fallen apart, its wages have remained anemic, and its unemployment rate has soared. In El Centro, the position of mayor rotates between the members of the city council. Viegas-Walker has sat on the council for 13 years and is currently serving a third term as mayor. He attributes the city"s sky-high unemployment rate to its agricultural economy. Laborers in El Centro grow and harvest broccoli, lettuce, wheat, and just about everything in between. All told, agriculture in the area is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. But agricultural work is often temporary by nature, and seasonal job losses take a toll on the city"s overall unemployment rate. Meanwhile, competition from workers from nearby Mexico makes agricultural jobs harder to come by. In El Centro, unemployment has always been a concern. Notably, in the past decade, the area"s jobless rate has never dropped below 12 percent. But when the economy soured during the recession, El Centro"s unemployment rate surged, rising from 15.3 percent at the beginning of 2007 to 31.3 percent by the middle of last year as the housing market collapsed. "We had a large construction boom going on," says Sam Couchman, director of workforce development and veteran services. "So those construction workers being unemployed when the construction boom ended and everything kind of came to a standstill—that"s why you continue to have a high unemployment rate. They had overbuilt; they weren"t selling the homes that they had, so why would they build more?" But it"s not just housing. The retail and manufacturing sectors also got squeezed, applying further pressure to an already struggling economy. Currently, the government is one of the few reliable employers left. Another potential bright spot is the hope that El Centro will be able to expand its renewable-energy industry. Already, El Centro residents are awaiting the planned arrival of the company Tessera Solar. If all goes as planned, Tessera could be a major employer for El Centro residents. Cecilia Garcia, an adult development specialist at Imperial Valley College, says El Centro workers have already begun accepting renewable-energy internships with Tessera in Arizona in hopes of positioning themselves for eventual employment at the new location. "When the company comes, they"re going to be prepared so they can be hired," she says. The way Couchman sees it, El Centro is currently in the middle of a waiting game—just like much of the rest of the country. "We see a little bit of recovery on the horizon," he says. "It"s happening very slowly, but as the country recovers, we will recover."

单选题As soon as it was revealed that a reporter for Progressive magazine had discovered how to make a hydrogen bomb, a group of firearm fans formed the National Hydrogen Bomb Association, and they are now lobbying against any legislation to stop Americans from owning one. "The Constitution," said the association"s spokesman, "gives everyone the right to own arms. It doesn"t spell out what kind of arms. But since anyone can now make a hydrogen bomb, the public should be able to buy it to protect themselves." "Don"t you think it"s dangerous to have one in the house, particularly where there are children around?" "The National Hydrogen Bomb Association hopes to educate people in the safe handling of this type of weapon. We are instructing owners to keep the bomb in a locked cabinet and the fuse separately in a drawer." "Some people consider the hydrogen bomb a very fatal weapon which could kill somebody." The spokesman said, "Hydrogen bombs don"t kill people—people kill people. The bomb is for self-protection and it also has a deterrent effect. If somebody knows you have a nuclear weapon in your house, they"re going to think twice about breaking in." "But those who want to ban the bomb for American citizens claim that if you have one locked in the cabinet, with the fuse in a drawer, you would never be able to assemble it in time to stop an intruder." "Another argument against allowing people to own a bomb is that at the moment it is very expensive to build one. So what your association is backing is a program which would allow the middle and upper classes to acquire a bomb while poor people will be left defenseless with just handguns."

单选题War may be a natural expression of biological instincts and drives toward aggression in the human species. Natural impulses of anger, hostility, and territoriality are expressed through acts of violence. These are all qualities that humans share with animals. Aggression is a kind of innate survival mechanism, an instinct for self-preservation, that allows animals to defend themselves from threats to their existence. But, on the other hand, human violence shows evidence of being a learned behavior. In the case of human aggression, violence cannot be simply reduced to an instinct. The many expressions of human violence are always conditioned by social conventions that give shape to aggressive behavior. In human societies violence has a social function: It is a strategy for creating or destroying forms of social order. Religious traditions have taken a leading role in directing the powers of violence. We will look at the ritual and ethical patterns within which human violence has been directed. The violence within a society is controlled through institutions of law. The more developed a legal system becomes, the more society takes responsibility for the discovery, control, and punishment of violent acts. In most tribal societies the only means to deal with an act of violence is revenge. Each family group may have the responsibility for personally carrying out judgment and punishment upon the person who committed the offense. But in legal systems, the responsibility for revenge becomes depersonalized and diffused. The society assumes the responsibility for protecting individuals from violence. In cases where they cannot be protected, the society is responsible for imposing punishment. In a state controlled legal system, individuals are removed from the cycles of revenge motivated by acts of violence, and the state assumes responsibility for their protection. The other side of a state legal apparatus is a state military apparatus. While the one protects the individual from violence, the other sacrifices the individual to violence in the interests of the state. In war the state affirms its supreme power over the individuals within its own borders. War is not simply a trial by combat to settle disputes between states; it is the moment when the state makes its most powerful demands upon its people for their recommitment, allegiance, and supreme sacrifice. Times of war test a community"s deepest religious and ethical commitments.

单选题Last year my federal tax bill—the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf—was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income—and that"s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent. If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine—most likely by a lot. To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It"s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are also hit with heavy payroll taxes. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn"t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering. Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country"s finances. They"ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It"s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country"s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from turning into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality. Job one for the 12 is to cut down some future promises that even a rich America can"t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get. But for those making more than $1 million, I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. My friends and I have been spoiled long enough by a billionaire friendly Congress. It"s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.