【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障12系列】【12-15】经管

angela不怕孤单

大家加油哦↖(^ω^)↗！周六的作业~
又赶上个特别的日子，1314，祝各位有另一半的幸福美满，没有另一半的早日找到一生一世的TA~

【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障12系列】【12-15】经管
【speed】
【time 1】
Autos
Why 2013 Will Be Another Huge Year for Car Sales
By Brad TuttleJan. 03, 20131 Comment

In 2012, U.S. consumers purchased over one million more new cars than the year before. This year, we’re expected to buy nearly one million more than in 2012. And in 2014? Yep, auto sales are projected to increase by another million or so over 2013.

What explains the steady rise in car sales? The answer probably has less to do with new cars drivers are being tempted to buy than it does with the older cars consumers still have parked in their driveways.

Without a doubt, there are plenty of exciting new models that have just hit the marketplace or will do so soon. As many as 40 vehicles will be freshly introduced (as redesigns or totally new cars) this year, according to the Wall Street Journal, which is more than twice the number of new cars rolled out in 2012.

Speaking of 2012, it was no slouch in terms of auto sales. A Washington Post story recently declared that the national economy was saved last year largely due to the strength of new-car sales. At the beginning of 2012, analysts forecasts called for total sales to hit around 14 million, which would have been roughly one million more that were sold in 2011. Automakers and car dealerships happily surpassed the 2012 projections, with approximately 14.5 million new vehicles sold, representing a 13% increase over the prior year.

Analysts expect auto sales to rise yet again in 2013, though most likely with a percentage increase in the single digits over 2012. The auto research firm Polk is predicting new car registrations to reach 15.3 million in 2013.

Drivers have been making do with older vehicles for years. The average car on U.S. roads in 2012 was over 11 years old, up from 10.6 years in 2010 and 9 in 2002.
【300】

【time 2】
Despite having a strong 2012, auto sales have been in something of a lull for years. A record-high 17.5 million vehicles were purchased in the U.S. in 2005, but after that the industry entered a slump, with a growing segment of consumers opting to repair their older vehicles rather than buy new ones. Restricted access to credit also stopped many consumers from buying or leasing new cars.

The Great Recession and continued uncertainty in the economy are rightly blamed as prime reasons that consumers have been hanging onto their cars longer and longer, but they’re not the only reasons. Better built, longer lasting cars deserve some of the credit too; at some point in recent years, it became expected that a car would last at least 100,000 without requiring major repairs, and 200,000 miles became the mark at which an owner could brag about his car’s impressive lifespan—and then just keep on driving it, hassle free.

But at some point even the most reliable vehicles must be put to sleep. The average car is 11.1 years old, meaning that there are quite a few automobiles on the road far higher in age than that. We’re talking 15, 20 years old. Each car is different, but overall, the numbers indicate a large portion of vehicles need to be replaced.

Accordingly, analysts are now calling for auto sales to top 15 million in 2013, and then to surpass 16 million in 2014. While that’s still below the mark hit in 2005, it represents strong growth for the industry. And while the increase in sales may come partly as a result of the better gas mileage, high-tech innovations, and cool new style offered in the latest cars and trucks, for the most part sales will rise because sales were so weak, relatively speaking, in recent years. All of that “pent-up demand” drove consumers into dealerships for new cars last year, and it’ll continue boosting auto sales in the years to come.
【329】

【time 3】
Free exchange
Stoneless rivers
Can China feel its way across the turbulent waters of financial reform?
Jan 5th 2013 | from the print edition

TRUSTING investors can easily be gulled by scams designed to relieve them of their savings. In China efforts to educate the unwary extend to the streets. Walls are daubed with murals illustrating the dangers of Ponzi schemes, which pay off early investors with money raised from a larger group of later ones. In one cartoon a swindler, hugging a big pot of cash, sits atop a human pyramid, representing the Ponzi principle at work.

The Ponzi principle has even tempted some of China’s banks, according to a widely cited article in China Daily, an official newspaper. The article was notable because its author, Xiao Gang, is chairman of one of China’s four big banks and may take over the central bank later in 2013. Mr Xiao is worried about the proliferation of wealth-management products (WMPs), which collect money from investors for a fixed term (usually less than six months) and plough it into a variety of financial assets, from short-term bills to long-gestation property projects.

Some of these products are issued by banks, although only a minority are explicitly guaranteed by them. Others are merely sold through the banks, which act as a distribution network. Mr Xiao frets that short-term products are financing long-term projects, creating a maturity mismatch. He also worries that some failed ventures are able to repay their bank loans only by raising fresh funds through WMPs, a form of Ponzi finance.

It is hard to count, or even define, WMPs. They probably topped 12 trillion yuan ($1.9 trillion) by the end of 2012, equivalent to about 16% of commercial-bank deposits, according to Charlene Chu of Fitch Ratings. But that figure counts only the products issued by banks, which typically offer pedestrian returns of about 4% on average. It does not include investments like the 160m-yuan product issued by Zhongding Wealth Investment Centre, which promised returns of 11-13%, according to Reuters, from investments in car dealers, a TV production firm and a pawn shop.
【327】

【time 4】
This now infamous product was sold to customers at Hua Xia bank in Shanghai by one of the bank’s employees. But the bank does not consider itself liable for its failure, as hundreds of aggrieved investors discovered when the product defaulted at the end of November. Unnerved by the Hua Xia case, China’s banking regulator has told banks to carry out urgent internal checks of all the third-party products they are peddling.

China has both a surplus of saving (almost half of GDP in 2012) and a shortage of suitable vehicles for that thrift. The bond market is small, especially for retail investors, and the stockmarket is suspect, thanks to shaky auditing and rampant insider trading. Property remains popular, but the government has tried to curb speculative home purchases. For many, bank deposits remain the default option. But they earn a meagre rate of interest, capped by the government.

Given these alternatives, it is easy to explain why investors are flocking to WMPs. It is harder to explain why the government tolerates them. Why does it impose a ceiling on deposit rates, even as it allows banks to issue close substitutes at whatever yield they can get? Why retain a regulation, then let banks work around it?

It appears paradoxical. But this approach to financial reform is in keeping with China’s approach to all economic liberalisation. It reforms piecemeal, crossing the river by feeling for the stones, as Deng Xiaoping, its former leader, put it. After 1978, for example, it kept many of the central plan’s existing quotas in place. But it also allowed farms and then firms to sell anything extra at whatever the market would bear. Rather than throwing out the plan, China grew out of it, as Barry Naughton of the University of California, San Diego, has put it.
【302】

【time 5】
Some analysts hope that WMPs will help China’s banks to grow out of the country’s financial plan, forcing them to compete for custom among choosy investors who will happily defect to a rival bank offering better terms. Through WMPs, lenders can dip their toes into competitive banking, just as farms and firms in the 1980s embraced the market even as they continued to fulfil their duties under the plan. But this approach works only if the government can continue to enforce its quotas and price controls. In the case of banking, this is a difficult trick to pull off. The government can control the price of deposits but it cannot control the quantity that firms and households are willing to provide. The rapid growth of WMPs suggests that depositors are switching to these products in increasing numbers. “China’s previously sticky deposits are losing their adhesiveness,” notes Ms Chu.

Mural hazard

The problem is that the state may still have to pick up the tab if things go wrong. Although only 15-20% of the WMPs issued by banks are explicitly guaranteed by them, in practice banks would probably stand behind their own products. (Third-party products sold through banks are a different matter.) In pushing their WMPs, banks are trading on their own credibility. But this credibility is not theirs to sell. It is borrowed from the state.

China’s government has closed only one bank in the past 15 years. And deposits enjoy an implicit state guarantee. Until recently, Chinese banks enjoyed this state protection at the cost of limited freedom. The introduction of WMPs has granted banks more freedom without any obvious loss of protection. Because the state’s deposit guarantee is not explicitly stated it is not explicitly limited either. Many WMP-buyers probably take comfort from it. They might rethink if China introduced formal deposit insurance, limited in scope and financed by the banks themselves.

In the meantime, third-party products like the one sold in Hua Xia bank must be allowed to fail. The loss would provide a striking illustration of the risks of financial speculation, painting a picture even China’s muralists would struggle to match.
【355】

【obstacle】
Meritocracies and Intergeneration Mobility-Becker

Countries differ greatly in the influence of family background on the achievements of children. Family influence is measured through the degree of intergenerational mobility, or the relation between the achievements of parents and children. Intergenerational mobility is said to be stronger when the achievements of children are more weakly related to the achievements of their parents.

Intergenerational mobility in a country is often used as a measure of the importance of merit rather than prejudice, political influence, and other similar considerations in determining success and failure in that country. Although intergenerational mobility is related to the importance of merit in determining success, the connection is more complex than one might think.

Economists usually measure intergeneration mobility by the relation between the earnings (or education) of parents and children. If children’s (lifetime) earnings tend on average to increase by 4% when parents (lifetime) earnings increase by 10%, the degree of intergenerational mobility would be 60% (=(100-40)/100), while if children’s earnings tend to increase on average by only 1% when parental earnings increase by 10%, intergenerational mobility would be 90%. This measure of mobility ranges among countries from about 90% to less than 20%. The degree of mobility for the United States equals about 50%, while it seems to be over 80% for several Scandinavian countries, and only about 30% for Brazil.

Success in a meritocracy depends mainly on a person’s abilities and skills. The relation between intergenerational mobility and such a meritocracy is complex. Consider, for example, cognitive abilities, as measured say by IQ score. Genes are a major determinant of IQ, although early environmental experiences and the covariance between genes and environment are also important. The significant role of genes in IQ means that children of parents with high IQs also tend to have higher than average IQs in part because children inherit their genes from parents. If earnings depended to a large extent on IQs because the economy heavily rewarded this measure of “merit”, parents with high IQs would tend to have high earnings, and their children would also have relatively high earnings because the children would also have high IQs.

Therefore, to the extent that earnings depend on cognitive abilities, such a “meritocracy” would have a strong correlation between the earnings of parents and children. In other words, intergenerational mobility would be relatively low in such a merit-based economy. To be sure, intergeneration mobility would also be low if family position were automatically passed on from parents to children, independently of the abilities of children (or parents). Therefore, intergeneration mobility would be low at these two extreme models of the role of merit in determining earnings. By contrast, if earnings were basically randomly determined in each generation without regard to merit or any other considerations, there would be complete intergeneration mobility even though merit had no role in determining earnings.

The relation between intergeneration mobility and meritocracy becomes still more complex after we recognize that earnings in a meritocracy would depend not only on cognitive abilities, such as IQ. For it depends also on investments in education and other human capital, on getting to work on time, on being able to take criticism, and on many other psychological characteristics. Families that are more educated and have high earnings tend to invest a lot in their children’s human capital, and in various non-cognitive traits. In a merit-based economy where earnings depend on the totality of abilities and skills, children of high earning parents would also tend to be high earners because their parents would pass on both cognitive skills and investments in various forms of human capital.

Even after including parental investments in education, non-cognitive traits, and other human capital of children, an economy where success and failure are determined by merit would still have low intergeneration mobility. To be sure, investments in education and many other types of human capital are not only determined by parents, but also by government policies and by philanthropists. To the extent that governments and philanthropists invest more in the human capital of children with less successful parents (as appears to be the case for governments in Scandinavian countries), a merit-based economy could have relatively high intergenerational mobility since children from poorer and less educated families might have high levels of human capital investments.

Nevertheless, a big jump is still required to make inferences from the intergeneration mobility in a country to the role of merit in determining success and failure in that country. In particular, although the United States has considerably lower intergeneration mobility than many Western European countries, this does not imply that merit is a less important determinant of success in the American economy than in these other economies.

Merit-based economies use the human capital of individuals more efficiently than other economies, but a country might be willing to trade off less efficiency for greater intergeneration mobility. Good policies would recognize that there is such a tradeoff, and that policies that lead to much greater mobility across generations may make the allocation of human resources considerably less efficient.
【838】

elfking1234

新人第一天，基本超时一分多，捂脸
速度
02：09
02：20
02：36
02：10
02：19
越障
06：09
intergenration mobility is not directly involved in the parents' earning, since a person’s abilities and skills depended by IQ have heavily influence on earning. Parents' earning can affect children's earning through more investment of education, which means higher human capital.  However, eduction level of children is not only affected by parents' earning, but also government policies.

forazure

站位....

【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障12系列】【12-15】经管

[出勤次数：25(15 of S12) 连续出勤次数：10]
Speed:
300 2'30"
329 2'44"
327 3'08"
302 2'45"
355 3'42"

Obstacle:
Word: 838       Time:8min

pirate舟

1'40
1'23
2'20
1'48
2'09

kevinlaci

1'40
1'39
1'46
1'32
1'50
4'33

263602973

1‘47 the amount of car saling is expected to increase in 2013 and 2014.
2'11 the reasons why the sale of car is depression in recent years.
2'36 没看懂……WMPs brings a lot of problems to the financial market.
2’38 reasons why the WMPs are popular and the financial system reform.
2'59 the WMPs will bring chance to the financial reform.9'01 the relationship between intergeneration mobility, meritocracy and the economy of a country.

铁板神猴

新人第一天，基本超时一分多，捂脸

-- by 会员 elfking1234 (2013/1/4 22:48:32)

还好~ 我们现在的文章都是为1'30''左右设计的 这个速度还行~ 换算下，只要到150 wpm以上就符合考试要求了。

frankiepn

1'34
1'49
1'50
1'47
1'46
obstacle
4'35

Stonebutch

2'20
auto car sales will continue growing in 2013,the main reason is people want to change old cars by new modeled cars,some data to support the opinion like WSJ and WP
1'48
(continued)the oppsite situation has showed in 2005 because 1 great recession 2 high quanlity of cars,they need no major repaires in much longer distance. But most cars has life and most of them are old enough to be replaced. New car sales will influence economic and will last these years
2'45
Ponzi finance--China bank program(WMPs) using investors' money for long-term investigation may draw big risks,X is worried about
1'58
(continued)Hua Xia case to explain why investors are flocking to WMPs.It influence economic liber..,and there are some collisions in Chinese plan
2'14
(continued)China initially want WMPs to help grow country's inancial plan but banks use it in unexpected way and this waste the credicted from the country. China has the mural problem but still protect those banks
4'36
the relationship between Integrated mobility and merit;
to make it easier,first mark IM in earning in parents and children and give example of USA and other countries---merit depends on IQ(Genes);
second measure other factors such as  educations belonging to personality, then consider policies and country concept to ensrue the investigation.
Finally,draw a conclusion that IM and merit relationship

ashcroft

这越障的立意真独特，有意思的~~