【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障12系列】【12-8】经管

spencerX

spence下个星期要期末考试了，不知道有没有童鞋愿意代发1月3号的作业？
如果愿意的话请联系我！非常非常感谢！！

【速度】


【计时一】

China Wants the U.S. to Avoid the Fiscal Cliff, Too
by Michael J. Silverstein

The world's two most significant economies will both benefit from a swift and sensible resolution of the current federal budget crisis in Washington. The Chinese want stability in America. They want to see the U.S. market growing. They want to sell the U.S. goods. And they want to be able to continue investing in U.S. currency and U.S. debt. Above all, the Chinese don't want to see the U.S. simultaneously impose steep and precipitous tax increases and equally significant spending cuts, sending the nation over a so- called "fiscal cliff" and into a deepened recession. According to the most recent Congressional Budget Office projections, the current proposed fiscal measures, if implemented, would automatically slash the federal budget deficit by $503 billion between FY 2012 and FY 2013.

China is one of the world's most shrewd investors. It boasts world class economic advisors, many of whom have gone to Harvard, the University of Chicago, or other similarly esteemed institutions, and all of whom know how to diversify the nation's portfolio, make sensible tradeoffs, and execute wise, carefully considered investment decisions. The Chinese know that they have choices available to them. Across history, and especially over the last 15 years, the U.S. Treasury market has been driven by huge investments from surplus countries such as China and Japan, which have perceived the United States as the safest place to store their savings. But a 2011 Congressional Research Service report suggests that a loss of confidence in the debt market could provoke foreign creditors to divest large portions of their holdings, thus inciting others to do so, and causing a run on the dollar in international markets.

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【计时二】

Granted, the Chinese can continue to put significant money into the U.S. market. But they can also invest heavily in China's domestic markets. Or put money into Africa. Or Brazil. China is intent on maximizing access to and control over the world's natural resources and it will turn to developing nations to secure them.

Put simply, going forward, the United States will need to compete against other nations in order to continue to receive China's money.

China thinks in long-term timeframes. They know how to contemplate 10-year, 20-year, and 30-year programs and achieve year-on-year GDP growth that averages no less than 8 percent. Just last month, even following many prognosticators' exaggerated reports about a slowdown in China's economy, Bloomberg News reported that 16 economists it had surveyed forecast that China would keep its 7.5 percent goal for growth in gross domestic product next year. In our book, The Ten Trillion Dollar Prize, we provide rigorous analysis suggesting that China will achieve at least this level of annual growth, much of it supported by consumer spending. Specifically, we estimate that between 2010 and 2020, the people of China will spend $41.5 trillion, with annual expenditures rising from $2.0 trillion to $6.2 trillion, an increase of 203 percent. For Chinese children born in 2009, continued economic progress will probably mean that over the course of their lives, they can expect to consume thirty-eight times more material goods than their grandparents. Life expectancy has grown from forty-seven years for a Chinese baby born in 1960 to seventy-three years for one born in 2009. In comparison, a child born in the United States in 2009, although likely to enjoy the world's highest standard of living, might consume only twice as much as his or her grandparents and live only nine years longer.

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【剩余部分】

The big reason for this growth in the standard of living in China — which will put enormous pressure on global supply — is rising incomes. From 2010 to 2020, annual per-capita incomes in China will increase, on average, from about $4,400 to approximately $12,300. As a result, China's upper class will grow from 24 million to 91 million households, the middle class will grow from 109 million to 202 million households, and the lower class will shrink from 260 million down to 138 million households. The number of people living on less than $1.25 a day — the international poverty line — will fall from 208 million to 150 million.

We believe soaring consumer demand in China offers Western companies unprecedented new opportunities. But the United States (and other Western nations) will need to continue to create stable economic conditions that favor robust long-term trade. If U.S. markets become too uncertain, nothing will stop China from turning inward, from worrying less about exports and exploiting its 20% savings rate to help its own consumer economy grow even larger. According to data released this month by the customs administration in Beijing, growth in China's overseas shipments fell to 2.9 percent in November, down from 11.6 percent in October and exports to the U.S. tumbled 2.6 percent last month from a year earlier, the first decline since February 2011. At present, some 32% of China's GDP can be attributed to domestic consumption. Sure, China can keep its doors open to Western goods, try to shore up its exports, and continue to make vast investments overseas. But as the Europe debt crisis lingers and the United States gets mired in fiscal conflict, China knows that it has alternatives. It could very well decide to focus on feeding its own people and fueling its own growth.

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【计时三】

Gun Safety Is a Business Issue
by David Hemenway

This could be a watershed moment.

We have a gun problem in the United States. The terrible shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School is just the latest and most gruesome example. But if something is going to change, it has to be now. And for anything to change, people have to step up — not just foundations and individuals, not just activists and parents. But business people, too.

We often talk about "business and society," as if they are two separate things. But business is of society — and has in fact already led the way on a number of violence-prevention efforts.

American business leaders have already stepped up on some elements of violence-prevention. They just call it "worker safety." Famously, when Paul O'Neill was at ALCOA, he achieved a worker injury rate that was just one-twentieth the rate of other manufacturing plants. How? In part by talking about worker injuries at the beginning of every meeting, no matter what the meeting was about.

When private-sector leaders like O'Neill come together with non-profits, government, and labor groups, even bigger goals can become achievable. For instance, Sweden used to have a very high child injury death rate. Finally, different groups came together to solve it: the Red Cross; labor unions; companies like Volvo. Each organization took on a different piece of the problem. For instance, one group specifically pledged to tackle the problem of children drowning. And gradually, whenever a road was built, a car was built, a house was built, the first thing people started to ask was "How will this affect the safety of children?" Over a 30-year period, Sweden became the safest country for children in terms of accidents and injuries.

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【计时四】

In Boston, some companies work with the State Street Foundation to provide summer jobs to inner city kids. The early results coming out of this program are promising, and the stories are moving. And while many mass shootings have taken place in the suburbs, the major gun violence problem is still very much in the inner cities.

Those are all big, ambitious programs. But there are also things that you can do, as a single manager, to help prevent more Sandy Hooks.

For instance, we may have differing opinions on gun policies, but we all care about preventing suicide. And most mass shootings are an extreme form of suicide. In fact, the majority of intimate partner killings are also suicides — usually the husband kills the wife, and then shoots himself.

These disturbed individuals need help — before they take their own lives and possibly others' as well. Many of these people are employees — someone's employees. Just think of all the violence that could have been prevented if someone — their coworker, manager, friend — intervened before it was too late. Some gun owners have been working to create a new social norm — similar to the idea of "friends don't let friends drive drunk" — that friends don't let friends who are going through a rough patch have a gun in their house. If you know someone whose wife has left him, who is having a hard time of it, help get the gun out of his house for a few months until he's OK.

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【剩余部分】

Here's what we can't let happen. We can't let guns become an increasingly partisan issue. We all want to stop the violence. We all want to keep our kids safe. We all want to prevent suicides, and especially homicide-suicides. But for that to happen, everyone, including the business community, needs to step up.

In the 1990s, Smith and Wesson decided they wanted to be a responsible corporate citizen — they announced that they were working with the White House to increase gun safety — for example, whenever they'd sell a gun, they'd include a gun lock. That seems like a great idea to me; after all, cars come with seatbelts. But the gun lobby was incensed. They boycotted Smith and Wesson. And they forced that CEO out.

That has to stop.

I think this moment, this post-Sandy Hook moment, is like the Arab Spring in that if something's going to happen at all, it's got to happen now. And if it doesn't, in three weeks we'll just go back to this sterile, stalemated debate.

I approach this as a public health issue. And like many other issues of public health, the solution is only possible when all members of the public — including business (individuals, individual companies and associations of companies) — find a way to make a difference. If everyone takes a little piece of it, I believe we can create a lasting change.

If not now, when?

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【计时五】

U.S. banks loosening standards for risky corporate loans, OCC says
By Danielle Douglas

Regulators are concerned that banks are loosening their standards for one of the riskiest forms of corporate lending, a trend that harkens back to perilous practices common in the run-up to the financial crisis.

In the past 18 months, banks have relaxed the criteria they use to determine whether to issue loans to highly indebted companies, a type of borrowing known as leveraged finance, according to a report on risk released Thursday by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The agency, which regulates national banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, is noticing more institutions allowing companies to take on higher levels of debt. Banks are also signing off on deals that provide limited lender protection if the borrower fails to keep up with payments.

Although the activity has not reached pre-crisis levels, regulators are keeping a watchful eye on the trend.

“We’ve seen underwriting standards broadly easing, which is kind of a normal part of the cycle as we come off very tight lending criteria,” said Darrin Benhart, deputy comptroller for credit and market risk at the OCC. “But in the leveraged space, the standards are really concerning.”

Leveraged financing is a popular source of funding for corporate acquisitions and private-equity buyouts. These loans are often carved up and sold to pension funds and hedge funds, which are attracted to their high yields. Banks were churning out these loans before the financial crisis, but once investors lost their appetite for risk, lending dissipated.

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【剩余部分】

Demand for leveraged loans has taken off this year as low interest rates have enticed companies to borrow more money or refinance their debt. Investors are once again taking a shine to these loans in search of higher returns.

Banks have issued $464 billion in leveraged loans so far this year, compared with $480 billion for all of 2006 and $535 billion in 2007, the peak of the cycle, according to Standard & Poor’s.

“The activity is getting close to pre-recession level, which is why we are concerned. The underwriting levels are not quite back to that period, but they are clearly on a trend line,” Benhart said. “The key driver is banks are seeking some type of earning asset.”

One of the more troubling trends regulators are tracking is the rise of “covenant lite” deals — arrangements that lack controls that banks use to monitor how a loan is being paid. Those types of deals constitute about 30 percent of the market.

Benhart noted that a lot of these deals are not sitting on banks’ balance sheets as they are typically pooled into securities, but regulators remain wary of high volumes of risky products being pumped into the marketplace.

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【越障】

CHOICE ARCHITECTURE
RICHARD H. THALER, CASS R. SUNSTEIN & JOHN P. BALZ

For reasons of laziness, fear, and distraction, many people will take whatever option requires the least effort, or the path of least resistance. All these forces imply that if, for a given choice, there is a default option—an option that will obtain if the chooser does nothing—then we can expect a large number of people to end up with that option, whether or not it is good for them. These behavioral tendencies toward doing nothing will be reinforced if the default option comes with some implicit or explicit suggestion that it represents the normal or even the recommended course of action.

Defaults are ubiquitous and powerful. They are also unavoidable in the sense that for any node of a choice architecture system, there must be an associated rule that determines what happens to the decision maker if she does nothing. Of course, usually the answer is that if I do nothing, nothing changes; whatever is happening continues to happen. But not always. Some dangerous machines, such as chain saws and lawn mowers, are designed with “dead man switches,” so that once a user lets go of the handle, the machine’s blades stop. Some “big kid” slides at playgrounds are built with the first step about two feet off the ground to keep smaller kids from getting on and possibly hurting themselves. When you leave a computer alone for a while to answer a phone call, nothing is likely to happen for a given period, after which the screen saver comes on. Neglect the computer long enough, and it may lock itself. Of course, a user can how long it takes before the screen saver comes on, but implementing that choice takes some action. Most computers come with a default time lag and a default screen saver. Chances are, those are the settings most people still have.

Downloading a new piece of software requires numerous choices, the first of which is “regular” or “custom” installation. Normally, one of the boxes is already checked, indicating it is the default. Which boxes do the software suppliers check? Two different motives are readily apparent: helpful and self‐serving. Making the regular installation the default would be in the helpful category if most users will have trouble with the custom installation. Sending unwanted promotional spam to the user’s email account would be in the self‐serving category. In our experience, most software comes with helpful defaults regarding the type of installation, but many come with self‐serving defaults on other choices. Just like choice architects, notice that not all defaults are selected to make the chooser’s life easier or better.

Many organizations, public and private, have discovered the immense power of default options, big and small. Consider the idea of automatic renewal for magazine subscriptions? If renewal is automatic, many people will subscribe, for a long time, to magazines they don’t read. Or the idea of automatically including seat reservations or travel insurance (for an extra charge, of course) when customers book train or airline tickets (Goldstein et al. 2008) Smart organizations have moved to double‐sided printing as the default option. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s chief campaign advisor, David Plouffe, ordered all printers to be put on this setting, and the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, estimates it will save more than $41,000 a year with double‐sided printing (Simon 2008).

The choice of the default can be quite controversial. Here are two examples. Faced with a budget crunch and the possible closing of some state parks because of the recent recession, Washington state legislators switched the default rule on state park fees that drivers pay when they renew their license plates. Before the recession, paying the $5 fee had been an option for drivers. The state switched from an out‐in to an opt‐out arrangement where drivers are charged unless they ask not to pay it. For transparency, the state provides information to each driver explaining the reason behind the change. So far, the move has worked, though critics do not think it is a long‐ erm solution to the state’s financial problems.

In another example, an obscure portion of the No Child Left Behind Act requires that school districts supply the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of students to the recruiting offices of branches of the armed forces. However, the law stipulates that “a secondary school student or the parent of the student may request that the student’s name, address, and telephone listing not be released without prior written parental consent, and the local educational agency or private school shall notify parents of the option to make a request and shall comply with any request.” Some school districts, such as Fairport, New York, interpreted this law as allowing them to implement an “opt‐in” policy. That is, parents were notified that they could elect to make their children’s contact information available, but if they did not do anything, this information would be withheld.

This reading of the law did not meet with the approval of then‐Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The Defense and Education Departments sent a letter to school districts asserting that the law required an opt‐out implementation. Only if parents actively requested that the contact information on their children be withheld would that option apply. In typical bureaucratic language, the departments contended that the relevant laws “do not permit LEA’s [local educational agencies] to institute a policy of not providing the required information unless a parent has affirmatively agreed to provide the information.” Both the Defense Department and the school districts realized that opt‐in and opt‐out policies would lead to very different outcomes. Not surprisingly, much hue and cry ensued.

We have emphasized that default rules are inevitable—that private institutions and the legal system cannot avoid choosing them. In some cases, though not all, there is an important qualification to this claim. The choice architect can force the choosers to make their own choice. We call this approach “required choice” or “mandated choice.” In the software example, required choice would be implemented by leaving all the boxes unchecked, and by requiring that at every opportunity one of the boxes be checked in order for people to proceed. In the case of the provision of contact information to the military recruiters, one could imagine a system in which all students (or their parents) are required to fill out a form indicating whether they want to make their contact information available. For emotionally charged issues like this one, such a policy has considerable appeal, because people might not want to be defaulted into an option that they might hate (but fail to reject because of inertia, or real or apparent social pressure).

A good example where mandated choice has considerable appeal is organ donation. As discussed by Johnson et al., some countries have adopted an opt‐out approach to organ donation called “presumed consent.” This approach clearly maximizes the number of people who (implicitly) agree to make their organs available. However, some people strenuously object to this policy, feeling that the government should not presume anything about their organs. An effective compromise is mandated choice. For example, in Illinois when drivers go to get their license renewed and a new photograph taken they are required to answer the question “do you wish to be an organ donor?” before they can get their license. This policy has produced a 60 percent sign up rate compared to the national average of 38 percent. Furthermore, since the choice to be a donor was explicit rather than implicit, family members of deceased donors are less likely to object.

We believe that required choice, favored by many who like freedom, is sometimes the best way to go. But consider two points about the approach. First, Humans will often consider required choice to be a nuisance or worse, and would much prefer to have a good default. In the software example, it is helpful to know what the recommended settings are. Most users do not want to have to read an incomprehensible manual in order to determine which arcane setting to elect. When choice is complicated and difficult, people might greatly appreciate a sensible default. It is hardly clear that they should be forced to choose.

Second, required choosing is generally more appropriate for simple yes‐or‐ o decisions than for more complex choices. At a restaurant, the default option is to take the dish as the chef usually prepares it, with the option to substitute or remove certain ingredients. In the extreme, required choosing would imply that the diner has to give the chef the recipe for every dish she orders! When choices are highly complex, required choosing may not be a good idea; it might not even be feasible.

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263602973

先占个位置再说

风随心动01

总是看你们发的帖子，你们有事情，我来帮忙类~

miffyhui

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涂涂Claire

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Obstacle：10'27"
When people facing choice making situation, they tend to choose the default one no matter is it the best one.  The default  choice can be controversial, two examples, people better make their own choice, so called"mandated choice" or "required choice".

frankiepn

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pirate舟

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annaliang2008

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alun1987

继续补作业中……

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越障待发……

铁板神猴

多谢spencer准备的素材~
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