【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障7系列】【7-20】经管

bank11

【速度】

US Elections Heat Up, China Trade Tensions Rise
【time 1】
BEIJING — Trade tensions between China and the United States escalated this week, with both countries filing international trade complaints against each other. And as the U.S. presidential campaign heats up, China is increasingly finding itself the focus of attention.

President Barack Obama and his opponent Mitt Romney are talking tough on trade with China.

Earlier this week, Obama announced a new World Trade Organization case over Chinese automobile subsidies. He also brushed off accusations from his opponent that he is not doing enough to pressure China on unfair trade practices.

Beijing quickly responded with a WTO case of its own, challenging a new U.S. law that allows duties on subsidized goods from China.

"Both sides should resolve our differences in an appropriate manner on the basis of mutual respect and equal benefits, through dialogue and consultation," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei. "We oppose the politicization of the issue, and the engagement in trade and investment protectionism.”

China’s Commerce Ministry responded to Washington’s WTO action more directly, arguing that Beijing is becoming a victim of election politics. But with the two countries’ economies so closely intertwined, analysts say it is becoming difficult to keep politics out of trade policy - especially as the U.S. economy continues to struggle.
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【time 2】
"There is just an immense amount of frustration on both sides of the aisle [among both the Republican and Democrat parties] in the United States, in both parties in terms of what will work with China," said Patrick Chovanec, a Beijing-based economist.

Not too long ago, Chinese trade disputes were a more abstract foreign policy issue, but they are now widely viewed as directly affecting American jobs and prosperity. The high stakes lead to more complaints.

"Some of the measures that the Obama administration has pursued have more merit than others," said Chovanec. "Input subsidies with Chinese raw materials and rules preventing access for American movies are some of the things that have the greatest merit, and really deal with, sort of, important issues in terms of market access to China. The tire tariff I think was more of a sop to the steel workers unions, and there have been others that have been more political in nature.”

The auto trade case President Obama filed this week was his second in recent months, and both coincided with trips to Ohio, an auto manufacturing state that could prove crucial in the November elections.

In July, the Obama administration accused China of placing unfair duties on some $3 billion worth of U.S. car exports. This week’s case focuses on $1 billion in subsidies the Chinese government provides companies for the export of cars and car parts.
【234】


Angola's Economic Boom Has Winners and Losers
Emilie Iob September 18, 2012

【time 3】
LUANDA — As Angola is experiencing one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, its capital city, Luanda, is facing a dramatic transformation. It has become a land of opportunity for some westerners, but for some Angolans, the development of the city has a bitter taste.

The city has become a big construction site. Everywhere in Luanda, new buildings are rising from the ground, as a ballet of cranes is shaping the new skyline of the capital. Luanda is busy leaving the past behind - burying 27 years of civil war and devastation under mountains of petrodollars.

With an annual growth rate of 11 percent, the second biggest oil producer in Africa is attracting companies and western workers - many fleeing economic crises elsewhere.

Like Sylvia Soares, the young Portuguese architect who has lived in Luanda for two years. She says she would not have had the same opportunities, had she stayed in Portugal.

"There is no job in Portugal. Not even for the renowned architects, so you can imagine how it is for young architects who have just graduated from university," she said.

Soares says her parents approve of her choice to come work in Angola.

"[My parents] have seen it as a short-period thing to do, because by the time I come back to Portugal, I'll have a better financial situation than if I had stayed in Portugal," she said.

And Luanda is a good place for a young architect, as it transforms itself to meet its ambition of becoming a world-class city. A few of the changes include the new parliament that is a replica of the American congress and the newly inaugurated waterfront.
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【time 4】
Geographer Chloé Buire says the social composition of the city is also changing.

"There is a whole rescaling of the city actually," Buire said. "And it's not only that there is a special sprawl, like, expansion, but also a whole social reshaping of the central city being emptied of its poorest communities [which] were evicted in the peripheries.

The evictions started in 2010. To provide the space for a new political center, the government destroyed several slums and neighborhoods. Thousands of families were relocated - one hour, sometimes two, away from the city center.

Zango is one of the new neighborhoods where the people were re-settled.

Carolina, who now lives in Zango, remembers the day they came to destroy her house in the city.

"It was a surprise, nobody knew. Suddenly, they came and said that they were going to destroy the houses," she said. "They brought us in this open space. We had nothing. There was a lot of young kids, and we were getting sick because of the mosquitos.

Carolina says her husband lost his truck-driving job because he now lives too far away. She has to spend $10 and take five different taxis to travel to the city and back every day.

"My life is worse now, because to eat, we have move up and down every day to sell things," she said.

Today, approximately 30 percent of Angolans live in Luanda, and the development of the city - that started even during the war - is expected to continue in the coming years.
【257】

Worries About Rising Food Prices May Ease
[attachimg=268,151]106791[/attachimg]

【time 5】
A United Nations report says world food prices stayed the same in August. Prices were unchanged after rising sharply in July.

A summer of drought in the United States and Russia has reduced expectations for corn and wheat supplies. As a result, a measure of food prices by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization rose six percent in July. But FAO economist Concepcion Calpe says the expected reductions did not get any worse in August.

Demand remains high for food commodities like maize and wheat. The U.N. estimates that more cereal crops will be consumed this year than will be produced. That means markets will have to use some of the supplies that have been kept in reserve. Concepcion Calpe says those reserves have been low for several years.

CONCEPCION CALPE: "And therefore we are very much susceptible to very quick changes because there is very little buffer on which to rely to protect ourselves should there be another bad news on the production front."

She says there will be ups and downs in prices until production meets the level of demand. Still, many experts do not expect a repeat of the crisis of two thousand seven and two thousand eight. Prices jumped, playing a part in civil unrest in several countries.

For one thing, these experts point out that energy prices are lower now. That means producing and transporting food is not as costly. And Gary Ellerts at the United States Agency for International Development says this year's bad weather has not affected another important crop: rice. Mr. Eilerts is head of the agency's Famine Early Warning System.

GARY EILERTS: "Rice is very calm, very nice. Prices are not volatile. There's a large supply. And so, countries that depend on that, that were hurt a great deal in two thousand eight, are not being touched right now."

However, economist Lourdes Adriano at the Asian Development Bank says prices could increase if India stops exporting rice because of a drought.

LOURDES ADRIANO: "If we have a severe monsoon in India and it starts banning again the export of rice, then we will have a major problem. Because as you know, global rice trade is very thin. There are very, very few major exporters."

Prices jumped when India banned rice exports in two thousand eight during the food inflation crisis.
【389】

【速度】
Charlemagne
SimEurope
Some fantasies for the future of Europe may cause more problems than they resolve
Sep 22nd 2012 | from the print edition
[attachimg=595,335]106792[/attachimg]
ANYBODY who has played (or watched their children play) life-simulation computer games, such as “SimCity” or “The Sims”, will know how engrossing they can be. Countless hours are spent creating an intricate synthetic world, be it a house or a whole city, inventing characters that speak a nonsense tongue known as Simlish, controlling their actions and sometimes visiting disaster upon them. A similar craze is gripping Brussels: call it SimEurope.

Guido Westerwelle and Radek Sikorski, the foreign ministers of Germany and Poland, have spent much of this year locked away with nine colleagues (almost all boys) engaging in make-believe. This week they revealed the fruits of their “Future of Europe Group”. It is a world that includes an elected European president, a more powerful European foreign minister, a European border police and perhaps even a European army. The British spoilsports were not invited.

Just a few days earlier, José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, gave his annual “State of the Union” address and spoke of a future “federation of nation-states”, a notion he has repeated in countless op-ed articles since. Mr Barroso has thus revived the term coined by his predecessor, Jacques Delors, but has not explained what he means by it. He says only that he will present some proposals by 2014.

With his words, Mr Barroso is breaking away from the three other “presidents”—Herman Van Rompuy of the European Council, Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank and Jean-Claude Juncker of the Eurogroup of finance ministers—who are collectively planning a “genuine” economic and monetary union. Having set out the “building blocks” in June, Mr Van Rompuy has now produced an “issues paper” that proposes, among other things, a central euro-zone budget. An interim report may be presented at a summit in October and the final version should be out in December.

In many ways Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, started this craze for make-believe with her calls for a “political union” (including more power for the flawed European Parliament). This is awkward in France, where parties have been deeply divided over Europe since the referendum in 1992 for the Maastricht treaty (approved narrowly) and the one in 2005 for a constitutional treaty (rejected). Yet Pierre Moscovici, the Socialist finance minister, recently uttered the word “federalism”. And François Fillon, the recent conservative prime minister, has proposed a new “pact for Europe” that would include a European finance minister.

All these ideas have their origins in an old game: More Europe. The aim is to avoid cataclysmic war, or domination by one country, by uniting while still pursuing national advantage. Each level of integration becomes more difficult as problems deepen. Players must not only negotiate away more power, but must then sell the new treaties to their reluctant populations.

In SimEurope the people are synthetic, divided into good Europeans and bad nationalists or populists. The baddies can be defeated by More Europe. In the real world things are rather more complicated. There is growing scepticism about the European project. According to recent polls, a majority of Germans think they would be better off without the euro, and many would be rid of the EU too. In France a majority of those who voted for the Maastricht treaty would not do so again. In Spain, though, a majority wants to deepen euro-zone integration.

Eurosceptic and Europhobic parties are claiming substantial chunks of electorates. In the Dutch elections this month centrists may have made a comeback, but often by adopting a tough line on bail-outs for troubled countries. In many places, there is a growing cry for citizens to be consulted directly in a referendum, albeit for different reasons. In Britain, Eurosceptics hope to win a vote to leave the EU whereas in Germany the pro-EU elite wants a referendum to change the constitution to give more powers to Brussels.

Back to reality
By turning an imaginary currency into reality, Europe’s leaders have created a real-world crisis that they must deal with. Returning to the old marks, francs and lire would be more painful than trying to fix the euro. That means some more integration, and giving up the studied ambiguity about the ultimate objective of Europe so that citizens can make a clear choice.

Leaders are at least discussing the right issues. But the problem with many recent ideas is that they obfuscate the essential questions more than they clarify them. Foreign ministers may like the idea of playing with a European army, but it is hardly central to resolving the economic crisis. Similarly Mr Barroso’s federation of nation-states misses the point. He raises the standard of federalism, which is inevitably contentious, without saying how integration is to be reconciled with the nation-state rump that is left.

The euro zone is heading towards the worst of both worlds—nation-states feel violated by Brussels’s ever-expanding controls, even as the European level remains too weak and opaque to have an impact or win popular allegiance. A better approach might be to set aside labels and think of a narrow set of core functions that need to be deeply integrated. A coherent banking union makes sense, as do some joint bonds. Germany rejects mutualisation of debt on the grounds that not even America expects states to guarantee each other’s debt. Yet America has federal bonds, backed by federal taxes, which in turn provide a safe asset for all banks to hold. American states go bankrupt, as do lots of banks. Call it what you want; integration, centralisation, federation, confederation—the objective should be to stabilise the system sufficiently to allow badly managed banks and states to go bust safely.
【963】

spencerX

沙发？
谢谢bank的分享，文章很赞~

1’00    
1’08    
1’22    
1’03    
1’53    

6’39
感觉最近的阅读速度下来了，而且感觉是在一个一个读词，而不是意群...ORZ

miffyhui

占

莽莽要上7

speed1’14
1‘22
1’13
1’03
1‘47


Obstacle：6’33


文章很有趣~
谢谢po出来~

fightfor700

谢谢bank，排版很清楚，文章也很赞！
01:13
01:25
01:29
01:17
02:08
越障：06:38

icyseason

计时：
1′35
1′35
2′13
2′01
2′17
越障：
7′40

bank11

沙发？
谢谢bank的分享，文章很赞~

1’00    
1’08    
1’22    
1’03    
1’53    

6’39
感觉最近的阅读速度下来了，而且感觉是在一个一个读词，而不是意群...ORZ

-- by 会员 spencerX (2012/9/22 6:35:27)

spencerX一直在跟小分队啊~我自己拉了好多作业了。。。该打该打

puffywhite

01''08
01''10
01''12
01''07
02''04

obstacle: 05''42
the passage is talking about the plight that the euro-zone is now facing, saying that the leaders are indulging in a sim european world.
GW and RS are examples that stayed a close world to played the make-believe game.
JM, president of euro..., stated a tact recently but that tact did not seem reasonable and feasible. meanwhile, JM's proposal
broke away with the previous presidents.
AM suggested to establish a political union, however, his suggestion also seems awkward.
the leaders in europe should go back to reality and understand the more complicated situation rather than devide into two or three simple parts.
many survey show that people in different countries should totally divergent attitude towards the future of euro.
there are several wise and advisable approaches, for example, establishment of the bank union and the joint of bonds, might help to improve european's dilemma

angela不怕孤单

谢谢bank11 ~感觉文章难度什么的很合适！
speed
1 01:35
2 01:49
3 01:45
4 01:29
5 03:20
obstacle
11:22
1/the Europe future.
 -->new Europe zone president want to break away to the previous leaders and give a new pictures of europe.
 -->the point is more europe.
 -->many people are sceptical to the europe union.
 -->something about electrition.people want to consult directly.
2/the reality
 -->the new president has to deal with the crisis.
 -->leaders are discussing the most important things but they tend to obfuscate the problems.
 -->the real co-functions are more important to the label.
新闻：新闻事件（未来发展+各国观点）-->现实措施

xjbb

版面很漂亮，字体适中，谢谢LZ了～

Speed:
1'18
While US election is coming near and near, China-US trade tensions increase. both China and US have showed their attitudes through diplomacy states.
1'51
There were frequent disputes between China US trade.(about tariff, duties, subsidies…)
1'42
Angola's high development speed, Luanda is developing construction, the country has 11% increase per year. Many people from European countries fled            into Luanda to seek opportunities. architects are leading a good life there.
1'29
However part of people are living in worse conditions due to being evacuated from downtown forcibly. Luanda's social composition has changed during the development period.
2'28
US' food prices didn't increase in August, while in July they increased sharply. Different economists have different opinion on the trend of food prices. most of them consider that decreased oil price has been the reason of stable food prices. Another factor affects the prices is policies of major exporters.
Obstacle:
7'23
A game example, simcity, cited to make analogy.
Some notions that the EU countries integrated into a large nation are now prevalent.
However, some countries will not permit this to happen, for instance, France.
Germany has been against combining debts all along.
The author also gives its opinion on centralization, he/she doesn't think it helps to prevent more constitution from going bankrupt.