【每日阅读训练第三期——速度越障1系列】【1-5】经管

Periwinkle

小Peri第一次发小分队的贴，有不足的地方还望大家多指教，拍装轻轻哒~~~~~


速度：
Facebook and Its Stock Offering

Investors soon will be able to own shares of Facebook stock. The world's biggest social media network presented documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday. The documents are required before the company can make its initial public offering, or IPO. A date for the stock sale has yet to be announced.

Experts say Facebook could raise about five billion dollars. That would be one of the biggest IPO sales ever. And it would be much bigger than Google's first public stock sale in two thousand four. At that time, the Internet search company raised almost two billion dollars.

Facebook has eight hundred million users around the world. It is the second most visited website after Google. Now, experts say the social media network is in a position to become one of the most valuable Internet companies.

Stock expert Anupam Palit at Greencrest Capital says that among social media sites, Facebook is in a class by itself.

ANUPAM PALIT: "It is the biggest company in this space and we believe what makes it very unique from every other company that went public last year in this space is that it is very, very profitable."

Early estimates place the total value of the social network between seventy-five and one hundred billion dollars. That includes earlier investments by other companies. David Kirkpatrick wrote the book "The Facebook Effect." He says Facebook's IPO will be historic.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: "Will Facebook's IPO be the biggest IPO in American history, probably not, but it will certainly be by far the biggest Internet or technology IPO we've ever seen."

The stock sale is also could make Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg one of the world's youngest billionaires. He is only twenty-seven.

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Investment companies are likely to buy Facebook stock first. But investment manager Jim O'Shaugnessy says that is not so bad. He says the price of some IPO stocks are too high and fall not long after they first go on sale.

JIM O'SHAUGHNESSY: "Many IPO's come out being very, very overvalued because they get so hyped up and investors are so taken in by the story that they're willing to pay any amount just to be able to get into the stock. That generally translates to being very overvalued. So we generally tell investors that they should wait, probably a good full year before they look at buying stock that was recently IPO'd."

Recently, share prices of some Internet businesses have fallen after their stock was first offered. For example, stock of LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga, dropped in price by as much as twenty-five percent after going public.

There were similar questions eight years ago when Google first sold stock to the public. Today, Google is one of the world's most valuable technology companies.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report. Find teaching and learning activities in The Classroom at VOA Learning English. I'm Mario Ritter.

European Ministers Agree to Loan Greece Another 172 Billion

European finance ministers agreed to loan Greece about one hundred seventy-two billion dollars this week at a meeting in Brussels. Luxembourg's Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, announced the agreement on Tuesday.

JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER: "After a meeting of at least, I think, thirteen or fourteen hours, we have reached a far-reaching agreement on Greece's new program and private sector involvement that will lead to a very significant debt reduction for Greece."

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Under the plan, Greece's private creditors will lose more than half of the face value of their investments. The agreement also means the country will receive its second financial rescue in less than two years.

The new loans will likely let the Greek government make a nineteen billion dollar payment on its debt by March twentieth.

Now, Greece must negotiate the terms of its loans with individual banks and other investors. But these creditors will have to hurry. Greece can dictate its own terms once it reaches agreement with two thirds of its creditors.Not everyone believes Greece will be able to repay its loans. The Fitch financial services company cut the credit rating of Greece on Wednesday. Fitch said, it remains "highly likely" the country will fail to meet its financial responsibilities.

Not everyone believes Greece will be able to repay its loans. The Fitch financial services company cut the credit rating of Greece on Wednesday. Fitch said, it remains "highly likely" the country will fail to meet its financial responsibilities.

The Greek parliament has agreed to the idea of spending and job cuts demanded by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Parliament must now pass all seventy-nine measures included in a reform plan before getting the rescue loans. Prime Minister Lucas Papademos has said his country has a lot of work to do before it can receive new aid.

At the same time, protests continue in Greece over budget-cutting measures. Many Greeks say they have sacrificed enough.

But Greece's EU neighbors are unlikely to release new loans until the budget cuts are in place. The head of the EU delegation to the United States, Ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida, told VOA that the EU has learned a lot from the crisis.

JOAO VALE DE ALMEIDA: "I think we learned a lot about the means that we need to have to deal with emergency situations. We didn't have them before. We created, we developed them to deal with the cases like Greece and a few other countries.

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Secondly, we learned that our governance system was not yet at the right level of sophistication, and we are in fact changing a lot; if not, there is a small revolution going on inside the euro area in the way we deal with what we call the economic governance. There is a lot being changed."

How an Allowance Helps Children Learn About Money
Many children first learn the value of money by receiving an allowance. The purpose is to let children learn from experience at an age when financial mistakes are not very costly.

The amount of money that parents give to their children to spend as they wish differs from family to family. Timing is another consideration. Some children get a weekly allowance. Others get a monthly allowance.

In any case, parents should make clear what, if anything, the child is expected to pay for with the money.

At first, young children may spend all of their allowance soon after they receive it. If they do this, they will learn the hard way that spending must be done within a budget. Parents are usually advised not to offer more money until the next allowance.

The object is to show young people that a budget demands choices between spending and saving. Older children may be responsible enough to save money for larger costs, like clothing or electronics.

Many people who have written on the subject of allowances say it is not a good idea to pay your child for work around the home. These jobs are a normal part of family life.

Paying children to do extra work around the house, however, can be useful. It can even provide an understanding of how a business works.

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Allowances give children a chance to experience the things they can do with money. They can share it in the form of gifts or giving to a good cause. They can spend it by buying things they want. Or they can save and maybe even invest it.

Saving helps children understand that costly goals require sacrifice: you have to cut costs and plan for the future.

Requiring children to save part of their allowance can also open the door to future saving and investing. Many banks offer services to help children and teenagers learn about personal finance.

A savings account is an excellent way to learn about the power of compound interest.

Compounding works by paying interest on interest. So, for example, one dollar invested at two percent interest for two years will earn two cents in the first year. The second year, the money will earn two percent of one dollar and two cents, and so on.

That may not seem like a lot. But over time it adds up.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. We invite you to share your family stories about getting or giving an allowance. Write your comments at 51voa.com -- where you can also read, listen and learn with our programs and English teaching activities. You can learn more about economics and download MP3 files and transcripts of our weekly reports at 51voa.com. I'm Steve Ember.



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小Peri 要占两楼啦，大家见谅~~~~~~

越障：A firewall full of holes
The euro zone’s rescue strategy still does not add up

THERE is a new swagger among European financial officials these days. As bond spreads narrow, share prices rise and the euro strengthens, many policymakers are convinced the crisis has been solved. At a G20 gathering of finance ministers in Mexico City on February 25th-26th, for instance, the European delegates were touting their success. It is a far cry from the browbeatings they suffered during 2011.
This mood of confidence can largely be credited to the European Central Bank (ECB) and its provision of liquidity to banks. But add in Greece’s second bail-out deal, tough new euro-zone fiscal rules, bold reforms in Italy and Spain and—so the argument goes—it is clear that the Europeans are serious about fixing their problems. Just in case, the imminent introduction of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a permanent rescue fund, as well as an increase in the IMF’s resources, also mean that a solid firewall is being erected to cope with another conflagration.

Unfortunately, with one exception, every part of that argument is weaker than it looks. The exception is the ECB’s Long Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO), which provides banks with three-year liquidity at its main interest rate, currently 1%, against a wide array of collateral. On February 29th the ECB announced that it had lent another ?30 billion ($712 billion), taking the amount of three-year money it has pumped into the banking system over the past two months or so to more than ? trillion (see chart). It is hardly surprising that markets are perkier.


The amount lent at the second auction was slightly higher than expected, and went to far more banks than the initial auction in December. Since so many small banks have now tapped LTRO, hopes are rising that as well as slowing the pace of bank deleveraging and propping up sovereign-bond markets, the liquidity may encourage new lending to the real economy.

It might, but all that money could also have nasty long-term side-effects. Hawks at the ECB are already muttering about the problem of banks becoming addicted to cheap central-bank funds. And by encouraging Italian or Spanish banks to buy their governments’ bonds, LTRO reinforces the close links between the peripheral economies’ sovereign debt and the health of their banks.

LTRO has bought time, however. So, too, has Greece’s latest rescue package. Germany’s Bundestag approved its share of the funds on February 27th. The temporary downgrade of Greek bonds to “selective default”, as a result of moves to restructure private creditors’ debt, has caused few ripples. In the short term a chaotic default has almost certainly been avoided. But few believe the Greek rescue plan will actually work. Eventually Greece will either need more help from its rescuers or will face default and perhaps an exit from the euro.

What matters, therefore, is how well the euro zone uses the time it has bought itself. The signs are worrying. Policymakers’ overwhelming (and misguided) focus on budget austerity is facing increasing resistance. Spain announced on February 27th that its 2011 budget deficit, at 8.5% of GDP, was even bigger than first expected. It wants to renegotiate the 2012 deficit target of 4.4% of GDP

More worrying still is the lack ofprogress in building permanent defences against a loss of confidence in anothersovereign’s bonds. Much faith is placed in the ESM, to be launched on July 1st.This ?00 billion fund is supposedly stronger than the current iteration, theEuropean Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), because it is enshrined in legaltreaties and because ?0 billion of its capital will eventually be paid in,whereas the EFSF relies on guarantees. Although Germany still resists, mosteuro-zone members hope to run both funds simultaneously, which implies atheoretical cash-chest of ?50 billion.

The trouble is that this money is notactually to hand. The EFSF, whose AA+ credit rating was put on negative watchby Standard & Poor’s this week, must find its funds in the bond markets,and there is little evidence that it can raise a lot of money fast. Andcash-strapped countries, such as France, are reluctant to pay in a lot ofcapital to the ESM quickly.

The Europeans’ reluctance to put ahefty amount of real money at risk has weakened the second part of thefirewall, the IMF’s resources. In Mexico City G20 members made it clear thatthey would not stump up cash for the fund until there was a “credible”commitment from Europe.

Worse, even if it were fully in place,this is still a rather flimsy sort of defence. Relying on vast infusions ofmoney from the IMF could actually worsen the problems of a country like Italy,since the fund’s presumed preferred-creditor status would push privatebondholders further down the pecking order. Nor are the amounts being talkedabout enough to remove the risk of panic. As Willem Buiter of Citigroup pointsout, the weaker members of the euro zone collectively need to borrow some ?trillion over the next two years.

To get properly on top of its debtproblem, Europe needs to be bolder. A growing chorus argues that this mustentail some form of joint liability for countries’ debts. A proposal from theGerman Council of Economic Experts for a European Debt Redemption Fund, whichwould mutualise all euro-zone members’ debts above 60% of GDP, with strictrules to pay them off over 25 years, is gaining traction in some quarters.Germany itself remains staunchly opposed to anything that smells of Eurobonds,and the current period of calm has only reinforced that resistance. Meanwhile,the clock ticks.

xinnono

抢位

泾渭不凡

liulu007

占个位吧。。。。晚上再来做作业。。。。

铁板神猴

啥，今天也没能拿下前三…… 明天再接再厉
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3'59''

Periwinkle

babybearmm

占座....
啊，又是Euro.........我还是先复习今天读不懂的吧

phoebe0624

首页！

abjure

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qiuhua01234567

占位。。开做
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