1006G[REBORN FROM THE ASHES组]备考日记 by 豆腐店的86——越来越快（新）

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

A special report on the world economy
The long climb
Oct 1st 2009 From The Economist print edition
生词
读多遍才懂的句子
好句子，好表达法
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The world economy is recovering from financial disaster. But it will not return to normal as we know it, says Simon Cox (interviewed here)

NEWPORT BEACH, California, is not a bad place to contemplate the future of the world economy. Its information office promises nine miles of pristine sand, fine dining for devoted epicureans and an atmosphere of laid-back sophistication. Yet students of economic turmoil will find their subject matter conveniently close to hand. California’s unemployment rate has doubled to 12.2% since the start of 2008. Saddled with the worst credit rating in the country, the “Golden State” is cutting spending on schools, prisons and health care for the elderly, as well as closing parks and laying off staff for three days a month. It will pay its workers a day late at the end of the fiscal year so that the expense will show up in next year’s budget. Financial shenanigans are not the sole province of the banking industry.

Newport Beach is also the home of Pimco, the biggest bond manager in the world, which handles $840 billion on behalf of pension funds, universities and other clients. In May the company held its annual “Secular Forum”, in which it tries to peer five years into the economic future. After two days of rumination, Pimco’s laid-back sophisticates concluded that the financial markets may well “revert to mean”, which is a statistician’s way of saying that what comes down must go up. But the next five years will not resemble the five preceding the crisis. Not every change wrought by the financial breakdown will be reversed. The world economy is fitfully getting back to normal, but it will be a “new normal”.
Click here to find out more!

That phrase has caught on, even if people disagree about what it means. In the new normal, as defined by Pimco’s CEO, Mohamed El-Erian, growth will be subdued and unemployment will remain high. “The banking system will be a shadow of its former self,” and the securitisation markets, which buy and sell marketable bundles of debt, will presumably be a shadow of a shadow. Finance will be costlier and investment weak, so the stock of physical capital, on which prosperity depends, will erode.

The crisis invited a forceful government entry into several of capitalism’s inner sanctums, such as banking, American carmaking and the commercial-paper market. Mr El-Erian worries that the state may overstay its welcome. In addition, national exchequers may start to feel some measure of the fiscal strain now hobbling California. America’s Treasury, in particular, must demonstrate that it is still a “responsible shepherd of other countries’ savings”.

The notion of a “new normal” is convincing, even if you do not agree with every particular. But some forecasters now harbour higher expectations. They think the economy will bounce back to its old self, almost as if nothing had happened. They draw inspiration from the work of the late Milton Friedman, who showed that in America deep recessions are generally followed by strong recoveries. He likened the economy to a piece of string stretched taut on a board. The more forcefully the string is plucked, the more sharply it snaps back.

Friedman’s piece of string represents the demand side of the economy: the sum of spending by households, firms, foreigners and the government. The rigid board symbolises the supply side. When spending is strong enough, the economy’s resources are fully employed, allowing it to realise its full potential. As the workforce grows, capital accumulates and technology advances, this limit expands over time.

String theory

In a recession demand falls short of supply, leaving a sorry trail of unemployed workers, shuttered factories and unexploited innovations. But when the recovery arrives, Friedman suggested, it is all the more forceful because these resources have been lying idle, waiting to be brought back into production. The economy can grow faster than normal for a period until it reaches the point where it would have been without the crisis, when it reaches its full potential again (see chart 1, scenario 1).

Friedman’s story is heartening, but it can come unstuck in two ways. If the shortfall in demand persists it can do lasting damage to supply, reducing the level of potential output (scenario 2) or even its rate of growth (scenario 3). If so, the economy will never recoup its losses, even after spending picks up again.

Why should a swing in spending do such lasting harm? In a recession firms shed labour and mothball capital. If workers are left on the shelf too long, their skills will atrophy and their ties to the world of work will weaken. When spending revives, the recovery will leave them behind. Output per worker may get back to normal, but the rate of employment will not.

Something similar can happen to the economy’s assembly lines, computer terminals and office blocks. If demand remains weak, firms will stop adding to this stock of capital and may scrap some of it. Capital will shrink to fit a lower level of activity. Moreover, if the financial system remains in disrepair, savings will flow haltingly to companies and the cost of capital will rise. Firms will therefore use less of it per unit of output.

The result is a lower ceiling on production. In the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, its researchers count the cost of 88 banking crises over the past four decades. They find that, on average, seven years after a bust an economy’s level of output was almost 10% below where it would have been without the crisis.

This is an alarming gap. If replicated in the years to come, it would blight the lives of the unemployed, diminish the fortunes of those in work and make the public debt harder to sustain. But even worse scenarios are possible. A financial breakdown could do lasting damage to the growth in potential output as well as to its level. Even when the economy begins to expand, it may not regain the same pace as before.

Financial crises can pose such a threat to national incomes because of the way they erode national wealth. From the start of 2008 to the spring of this year the crisis knocked $30 trillion off the value of global shares and $11 trillion off the value of homes, according to Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. At their worst, these losses amounted to about 75% of world GDP. But despite their enormous scale, it is not immediately obvious why these losses should cause a lasting decline in economic activity. Natural disasters also wipe out wealth by destroying buildings, possessions and infrastructure, but the economy rarely slows in their aftermath. On the contrary, output often picks up during a period of reconstruction. Why should a financial disaster be any different?

The answer lies on the other side of the balance-sheet. Before the crisis the overpriced assets held by banks and households were accompanied by vast debts. After the crisis their assets were shattered but their liabilities remained standing. As Irving Fisher, a scholar of the Depression, pointed out, “overinvestment and overspeculation…would have far less serious results were they not conducted with borrowed money.”

Japan found this out to its cost in the 1990s after the bursting of a spectacular bubble in property and stock prices. For a “lost decade” from 1992 the economy stagnated, never recovering the growth rates posted in the 1980s. Richard Koo of the Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo calls Japan’s ordeal a “balance-sheet recession”.

The typical post-war recession begins when the flow of spending in the economy puts a strain on its resources, forcing prices upwards. Central banks raise interest rates to slow spending to a more sustainable pace. Once inflation has subsided, the authorities are free to turn the taps back on.

But in a “balance-sheet recession”, what must be corrected is not a flow but a stock. After the bubble burst, Japan’s companies were left with liabilities that far exceeded their assets. Rather than file for bankruptcy, they set about paying down their stock of debt to a manageable level. This was a protracted slog which, by Mr Koo’s reckoning, did not finish until 2005. In the meantime Japan’s economy stagnated. By 2002 its output was almost 23% below its pre-crisis trajectory.

Since Pimco’s forum concluded in May, the world economy has palpably improved. In many ways the new normal is beginning to look a lot like the old, vindicating Friedman’s plucking model. China is outpacing expectations. Goldman Sachs is making hay. The premium banks must pay to borrow overnight from each other is now below 0.25%, the level Alan Greenspan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, once described as “normal”. Companies in Europe and America are selling bonds at a furious pace. A few months ago financial newspapers were debating the future of capitalism. Now they are merely discussing the future of capital requirements. Shock has given way to relief.
The persistence of debt

But the relief is likely to be short-lived. Just over a year ago, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the world economy fell off a precipice. When you are falling, you do not look up. Only when you hit bottom can you stop and contemplate the cliff you must now climb.

This special report will argue that although a “new normal” for the world economy is now in sight, it will be different from the old normal in a number of ways. Demand in rich countries will remain weak and emerging economies will not be able to compensate. The report will explain why many governments will have to keep their stimulus packages going for longer than expected, or face entrenched unemployment that will permanently lower their economic potential. Public debt will rise so that private debt can fall. The banks, the report will show, will remain cautious about lending again, which will slow up the recovery but also make companies more careful about their investment; and the securitisation markets that became so fashionable during the boom will recede, though not disappear altogether.

A persistent shortfall in demand will weigh on supply. By the time this crisis is over, as many as 25m people may have lost their jobs in the 30 rich countries that belong to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The danger is that several million may never regain them. The mobilisation of capital will be fitful as the financial system copes with past mistakes and impending regulation. The travails of finance, in turn, may prevent the recovering economy from backing and exploiting innovations.

Like Japan’s bubble years, the years that led to the global financial crisis have left a heavy legacy of debt on the balance-sheets of banks and households, especially in Britain and America. It is this legacy that allows past losses to depress future gains. Fisher, again, put it best: “I fancy that over-confidence seldom does any great harm except when, as, and if, it beguiles its victims into debt.” There is no better example of that than American consumers.

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contemplate to view or consider with continued attention, meditate on  *contemplate the vastness of the universe*
turmoil   a state or condition of extreme confusion, agitation, or commotion
fiscal of or relating to taxation, public revenues, or public debt  *fiscal policy*
shenanigans   a devious trick used especially for an underhand purpose
peer  to look narrowly or curiously;  especially  to look searchingly at something difficult to discern
rumination to go over in the mind repeatedly and often casually or slowly
subdue   to bring under control especially by an exertion of the will
bundle  PACKAGE, PARCEL  
harbour  to hold especially persistently in the mind  : CHERISH  *harbored a grudge*
pluck   a: to pick, pull, or grasp at  b : to play by sounding the strings with the
snap     a : to move briskly or sharply  *snaps to attention*  b : to undergo a sudden and rapid change (as from one condition to another)  *snap out of it*  *snapped awake*
shutter   to close by or as if by shutters  
idle   not occupied or employed: as  a : having no employment  : INACTIVE  *idle workers*
unstick   to release from a state of adhesion
mothball capital NOT FOUND
bust a complete failure  : FLOP  b : a business depression
stagnate   to become or remain stagnant
liability    something for which one is liable;  especially   : pecuniary obligation  : DEBT --usually used in plural
slog  to plod (one's way) perseveringly especially against difficulty
vindicate   a : to free from allegation or blame  b (1) : CONFIRM, SUBSTANTIATE  (2) : to provide justification or defense for  : JUSTIFY  c : to protect from attack or encroachment  : DEFEND
furious   a (1) : exhibiting or goaded by anger  (2) : indicative of or proceeding from anger  b : giving a stormy or turbulent appearance  *furious bursts of flame*  c : marked by noise, excitement, activity, or rapidity
impend    to be about to occur  *the impending Senate hearings*
balance-sheets In financial accounting, a balance sheet or statement of financial position is a summary of the financial balances of a sole proprietorship, a business partnership or a company. Assets, liabilities and ownership equity are listed as of a specific date, such as the end of its financial year.
beguiles  to lead by deception

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comments
Like the article on art market, this one is also a little bit difficult for me to fully comprehend. Anyway, this essay, especially the title, reminds me of a news report released a few months ago in which the writer claimed that the recoup of American economy would be a NIKE Recovery. That’s to say, in processing the recovery, there will be a long slope to climb as the NIKE logo shows. Personally, I think it is a interesting analogy. Anyway, this very article cites the status quo as well as the history of Japanese recession to sketch a recovery blueprint which is also credible enough to believe. After reading these two articles (19 & 21), I am prone to agree that the globe is now witnessing the process of economic recovery.

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

America's health-care bill
Nearer and nearer
Dec 21st 2009 From Economist.com
生词
读多遍才懂的句子
好句子，好表达法
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A procedural vote in America's Senate brings Barack Obama's health-care reforms closer


IT NOW looks certain that Barack Obama will get what he wanted for Christmas—a health-care reform bill passed out of the Senate, probably just a few hours before Santa begins his rounds. Republicans, who have been fighting tooth-and-nail to block passage of the bill seem to have given up the fight, and have given warning instead that this will be a wish that he comes to regret.

Shortly after 1am on Monday December 21st, the health bill cleared the first, and the most difficult, of the procedural hurdles it has to leap in order to secure passage through the Senate. Technically only a motion to end debate on a “manager's amendment” put together by the Senate's majority leader, Harry Reid, what the vote really represented was a crucial exercise in nose-counting. The result was a vote on precisely partisan lines, with all 40 Republicans opposed, and all 58 Democrats plus the two independents who are grouped with them voting in favour. Since 60 votes is the precise number needed to avoid a filibuster, there was no room for error whatsoever, the reason why the procedural motion had taken so long. But with all 60 members of the “Democratic caucus” now signed up, the final vote, on Christmas Eve, looks like a formality.

From the point of view of the Democrats, this victory has come at a high price. The health bill has been stripped of something very dear to many of then: a “public option” of a government-backed insurance scheme that would compete with private insurers in order, supposedly, to keep costs down and guarantee access. The version of the bill already passed by the House of Representatives does contain just such a public option, one of several reasons why final passage of a reconciled bill is still a way off. Some Democrats hope, however, that a public option can be added later on, after the initial bill has gone into effect.

Still, the Senate version does tick most Democratic boxes; it obliges everyone to have health-insurance, and sets out a generous system of subsides to help the uninsured obtain coverage, along with a system of government-regulated exchanges that should encourage competition among private insurers. It fines employers who do not offer health cover to their workers. And it makes it illegal for insurers to refuse people coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions, as well as putting strict limits on the way that premiums are allowed to increase with age. The hope is that tens of million of Americans currently without coverage will now be able to get it, and many tens of millions more, who have insurance but fear losing it through redundancy or ill-health, will have those worries lifted from their shoulders.

Republicans, however, hate the bill, mostly on the ground of cost. The advertised price-tag of the Senate bill is a bit under $900 billion over the next ten years, but Republicans contend that the numbers will be much higher than that, as the cost of subsidies has been underestimated and predicted savings will not materialise. Even at the stated number, this is a large bill at a time when America is running huge deficits that it urgently needs to tackle. The Senate bill is "paid for", but only in the sense that it provides for large charges on the most expensive private insurance policies, and because it factors in deep cuts to Medicare the health-insurance scheme for the elderly. Republicans say these will never be enacted. Past history provides them with evidence to back up that claim.

Less politically involved observers also note that it is unprecedented for such a substantive and expensive bill to have been forced through Congress on such a narrow vote. The bill passed the House on a margin of just five votes, and in the Senate it has no safety margin. With no bipartisan support at all, Democrats will be held solely responsible if the reform turns out to be a disappointment. Some studies have suggested that private insurance premiums could rise substantially in response to the new burdens being placed on insurers.

Completion of work on the bill is by no means a formality, though it does now look more or less certain that the Senate will vote the bill out before Christmas. The next difficulty will come in producing a single “reconciled” version from the very different bills that the Senate and House have produced; that reconciled bill then has to go back for final clearance by both chambers. The public option is one big stumbling block. It is clear that the Senate cannot pass any version of a bill that contains a public option, so the House will have to give ground, which is going to require a lot of presidential arm-twisting in January. And the two bills are funded in very different ways, one with a tax on the rich, the other with an insurance-policy surcharge. As of today though, health-care reform, expensive and imperfect though it is, is looking a lot more likely.

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tooth-and-nail  以牙还牙， 这里指猛烈争斗
amendment   the process of amending by parliamentary or constitutional procedure
nose-counting  NOT FOUND
partisan   a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person;  especially   : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance
filibuster the use of extreme dilatory tactics in an attempt to delay or prevent action especially in a legislative assembly  
caucus   a closed meeting of a group of persons belonging to the same political party or faction usually to select candidates or to decide on policy;  also   : a group of people united to promote an agreed-upon cause
formality   an established form or procedure that is required or conventional  *the interview was just a formality*
public option A public health insurance option (public insurance option or public option for short) is a proposed health insurance plan that would be offered by the U.S. federal government.
scheme a plan or program of action;  especially   : a crafty or secret one
House of Representatives 众议院 The United States House of Representatives, commonly referred to as the "House," is the lower house of the bicameral United States Congress, the upper house being the United States Senate.
way off 差得厉害，有很大距离
oblige to constrain by physical, moral, or legal force or by the exigencies of circumstance  *obliged to find a job*
premium NOT SURE  a : a reward or recompense for a particular act  b : a sum over and above a regular price paid chiefly as an inducement or incentive  c : a sum in advance of or in addition to the nominal value of something
redundancy the quality or state of being redundant  : SUPERFLUITY  这个词我是明白的，但是就是不知道在句子中怎么解释，求教了！
price-tag 价格标签
contend to strive in debate  : ARGUE
materialise  a : to make material  : OBJECTIFY  b : to cause to appear in bodily form
factor in   to include or admit as a factor ? used with in or into
unprecedented   having no precedent  : NOVEL 空前的
stumble to come to an obstacle to belief
substantive   considerable in amount or numbers  : SUBSTANTIAL  *made substantive progress*
give ground  退回，撤退
presidential arm-twisting   the use of direct personal pressure in order to achieve a desired end
surcharge  an additional tax, cost, or impost

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comments
The American health bill is now around the corner, though it has not been released, the day will not be later than Christmas, according to the writer. This Senate version of health care policy was raised on Obama’s presidential campaign and caused an intense discussion. Up till now, this very issue is still remain controversial that Republicans doubt the efficiency of the policy since they believe $900 billion is not enough to pay this bill. On my point of view, it is the right time to pass the health care policy which the Obama government promised to its people for such a long term. However, problems that people concern are still there and the government have figure out a way to solve them. Apparently, such issues are going to wait to be listed on the 2010 agenda.

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

Executive pay
This house believes that on the whole, senior executives are worth what they are paid
生词
读多遍才懂的句子
好句子，好表达法
================================================================================
About this debate

Over the past few decades executive pay has risen dramatically. Bosses who were once paid ten times as much as shopfloor workers are now sometimes paid as much as 300 times as much. This trend was never popular, even during good times. But today it is becoming radioactive, as governments step in to rescue failing companies and ordinary people are forced to tighten their belts.（popular和radioactive相呼应）

Is the anger justified? Some argue that executive pay is a long-standing disgrace. Pay is often not tethered to performance. Huge rewards for the few demotivate the rest of the workforce. Others are more sanguine. Successful executives, such as Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, can add hugely to a firm's profitability, benefiting workers, managers and shareholders alike. The growing pay of executives has to be balanced against the growing difficulty of their jobs, particularly as turnover in the boardroom increases.

Opening statements

Defending the motion

Steven N. Kaplan Neubauer Family Prof. of Entrepreneurship & Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

In the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, CEOs are routinely criticised for being overpaid.

Against the motion

Nell  Minow Editor and Co-founder, The Corporate Library

Excessive executive compensation of the past decade is both a symptom and a cause of the current economic mess.

The moderator's opening remarks

Oct 20th 2009 |   Adrian  Wooldridge

Oneof the few things that anti-globalisation campaigners and stockmarket investors agree upon is that executive pay is out of control.
It is not hard to understand this shared outrage: executive pay has exploded since the 1980s. For most of the postwar era executives earned a few multiples of the median pay. But there after, starting in America and slowly spreading to the rest of the world, the multiples increased exponentially. Today many American workers earn in a year what theirboss takes home in an evening.

Isn't this a disgrace?(连续两篇看到这个表达法！disgrace！) Critics of executive pay worry that even mediocre bosses are given outsized rewards. Robert Nardelli received a $20m pay-off when he left HomeDepot even though the share price had fallen during his six-year tenure. Carly Fiorina was $180m better off when she left Hewlett-Packard despite a lacklustre tenure. Defenders of executive payargue that great bosses such as Louis Gerstner, the former boss of IBM,and Jack Welch, the former boss of General Electric, are worth every penny because they create huge amounts of wealth for both shareholders and employees.

The debate about executive pay, though never cool, is particularly hot at the moment. Workers have been squeezed by the recession. Unemployment is approaching 10% in the United States and much higher numbers in many other countries. Numerous governments are planning to deal with their rising deficits by freezing public-sectorpay. And yet many bosses and bankers continue to make out like bandits—or so lots of people think.

We are lucky to have two of the best people in the business to debate this subject. Steven Kaplan,who proposes the motion, teaches at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Nell Minow, who opposes it, is a long-time shareholder activist and chairwoman of the Corporate Library, a research company. (For people who want to know more about her she isalso the subject of a profile in a recent issue of the New Yorker.)
MrKaplan starts off by making two fundamental points. CEO pay has not gone up in recent years; indeed, it has been dropping since 2000,particularly in relation to other well-paid groups(“与。。。对比”的表达方式), such as hedge fund managers, lawyers, consultants and professional athletes. Nor is CEO pay unrelated to performance. Boards are increasingly willing to fire CEOs for poor performance.

Ms Minow focuses heavily on the relationship between pay and the recent credit crunch. She points out that executive pay helped to create the mess in the first place:Country wide's CEO, Angelo Mozillo, made more than $550m during his time in office. She also points out that the fact that many companies that were bailed out by the government continue to pay their CEOs huge salaries and bonuses is damaging the credibility of the system.
Such bold opening statements raise questions galore. Is Mr Kaplan justified in starting his account in 2000 rather than 1980, when executive pay exploded. And is Ms Minow right to concentrate so heavily on the financial sector? These are only a couple of the questions that we need to thrash out in the coming days.


The proposer's opening remarks
Oct 20th 2009 |   Steven N. Kaplan

In the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, CEOs are routinely criticised for being overpaid. Critics argue that boards do not respond to market forces, but, instead, are dominated by or are over-generous to their CEOs. Boards are criticised for not tying CEOs' pay to performance. These criticisms have been exacerbated by the financial crisis and the desire to find scapegoats.

I argue below that the critics are wrong and that there are many misperceptions of CEO pay.While CEO pay practices are not perfect, they are driven by market forces and performance. Contrary to public perception, CEO pay has notgone up in recent years. In fact, the average CEO pay (adjusted for inflation) has dropped since 2000, while the pay of other groups has increased substantially. Similarly, the view that CEOs are not paid for performance is wrong. In fact, the opposite is true and board sincreasingly fire them for poor performance. And, most recently,consistent with market forces driving pay, the US and UK governments each hired a new CEO (of AIG and the Royal Bank of Scotland) for pay exceeding that of the median large company CEO.
It is useful to understand how CEO pay is measured. It includes three components:salary, bonus and stock-based pay. It is usually measured in two ways.The first is the sum of salary, bonus, restricted stock and the expected value of stock options. I call this expected pay. Expected pay measures what boards believe they awarded the CEO. This is the best measure of what a CEO is paid each year. Note that the CEO does not actually walk away with this money. The second measure replaces expected stock option values with values actually realized and realised pay measures what CEOs walk away with.
The first graph shows average and median expected CEO pay forS&P 500 CEOs since 1994 (adjusted for inflation). It shows that median CEO pay has been stable since 2001; it has not increased. Andaverage pay has declined substantially. In fact, average CEO pay in2008 is below the average in 1998.


While average CEO pay has declined, the pay of other highly paid groups has increased. The second graph shows S&P 500 CEO pay relative to the income of the top 1% of US taxpayers. Relative to those other groups,CEOs are no better off in 2008 than in 1994. Strikingly(连接词用得好), relative CEOpay is a half of what it was in 2001, a huge decline.()


Which are those groups that have earned increasingly high compensation? Hedge fund, private equity and venture capital investors have increased their assets and fees substantially, translating into high pay. By one estimate(据估计的好说法), the top three hedge fund managers earned more in 2007 than all 500 S&P 500 CEOs combined. Professional athletes, investment bankers, consultants and lawyers also have benefited greatly. For example, from 2004 to 2008, the inflation-adjusted pay of partners at the top 20 law firms increased by 12% while that of S&P 500 CEOs dropped 12%. Those law firms had over 3,000 partners making an average of $2.4m each.

One can look at the Obama administration for other examples. Larry Summers made $8m (more than the median S&P 500 CEO)giving speeches and working part-time for a hedge fund. Eric Holdermade $3.5m as a law partner.

So, while CEOs earn a lot, they are not unique. The pay of people in the other groups has undoubtedly been driven by market forces; all are compensated in arm's-length markets,not by cronies. Technology, globalisation and scale appear to have increased the market value of these groups. CEOs have not done better and, by some measures, have done worse. Those who argue CEOs are overpaid have to explain how CEOs can be overpaid and not subject to market forces, when the other groups are paid at least as well and are subject to market forces.

Why is the pay of these other groups relevant for CEOs? Top executives regularly leave to work for private equity firms and hedge funds. Law partners and consultants leave to work for public companies as general counsels and executives. Relative pay matters and all these groups are paid according to market demand.Markets are the driving force for senior executives in all these industries and talented people jump across industries, based on market perceptions of their worth.

Critics also argue that CEO pay is not tied to stock performance. Again, that is not true. Looking at what CEOs actually receive—realised pay—Josh Rauh and I found that firms with CEOs in the top decile of realised pay earned stock returns 90% above those of other firms in their industries over the previous fiveyears. Firms with CEOs in the bottom decile of realised pay underperformed by almost 40%. The typical CEO is paid for performance.
This was reinforced in 2008, when average realised CEO pay declined by 25%(according to S&P's Execucomp). And Equilar, another provider of CEO pay data, estimated that the typical CEO experienced a net worth decline of over 40%.

The final myth to bust is that CEOs control their boards and earn high pay through this control and not performance. In fact, CEO tenure has declined, from ten years in the1970s to six years today, and boards have got tougher on their executives when they do not perform.

In sum, market forces govern CEO compensation.（简介，明了） CEOs are paid what they are worth. Talented individuals, who are perceived to be valuable, can move between industries to be compensated well. The clearest example of this is that even governments have to pay highly for talented executives. Recently,the Royal Bank of Scotland (under UK government control) hired a CEO with a package worth up to $16m; AIG (under US government control)hired a CEO with a package worth up to $10.5m. For these critical jobs,both of these executives received compensation exceeding the pay of the median S&P 500 CEO.


The opposition's opening remarks
Oct 20th 2009 | Nell  Minow

Excessive executive compensation of the past decade is both a symptom and a cause of the current economic mess. And the post-meltdown awards are all but guaranteed to continue to create perverse incentives that will reward management and further damage the interests of shareholders and everyother participant in the economy.

Incentive compensation rewarded executives for the quantity of transactions rather than the quality of transactions. It inevitably led to failures like the subprime disaster and the dominoes it toppled as it took the economy down with it. Worst of all, the avalanche of post-bail out bonuses and departure packageslike the $53m Ken Lewis got from Bank of America have severely damaged the credibility of Wall Street and the American financial markets as awhole. The billions of dollars of losses do not come close to the reputational hit to American capitalism, which will increase the cos tof capital for all US companies.

Panglossian observers will always be able to find some metric to justify any level of pay. But the results speak for themselves. The decisions that led to the meltdown were made by executives who knew that they would be paid tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars no matter how successful the consequences of those decisions.

Let us look at ground zero of the subprime mess, Countrywide, where Angelo Mozilo made more than $550m during his time as CEO. When the compensation committee tried to object to his pay levels, he hired another compensation consultant,paid for by the shareholders, to push them into giving him more. He also pushed for, and was given, shareholder subsidies, not just for hiswife's travel on the corporate jet but for the taxes on the imputed income from that travel. Instead of telling Mr Mozilo that he had no business asking the shareholders to subsidise his taxes, the board meekly S&P 500 CEO signed off on it, making it clear to everyone in the executive suite that the pay-performance link was not a priority.

By the end of 2007, when Countrywide finally revealed the losses it had previously obscured, shareholders lost more than 78% of their investment value. Meanwhile, in early 2007 Mr Mozilo sold over $127m inexercised stock options before July 24th 2007, when he announced a $388m write-down on profits. Before the bailout, Countrywide narrowlyavoided bankruptcy by taking out an emergency loan of $11 billion froma group of banks. Mr Mozilo continued to sell off shares, and by the end of 2007 he had sold an additional $30m in exercised stock options.There is the definition of outrageously excessive compensation.

Countrywidere sponded to a shareholder proposal that year asking for a non-bindingadvisory vote on its pay plan by urging shareholders to oppose it because "Countrywide has been an outstanding performer" and because"The Board's Compensation Committee has access to the best information on compensation practices and has a thorough process in place to determine appropriate executive pay." They could hardly have done worse. And it is likely that some market feedback on the structure of the pay plan could have given compensation committee members Harley W.Snyder (chair), Robert J. Donato, Michael E. Dougherty and Oscar P.Robertson worthwhile guidance.

Michelle Leder of the indispensable Footnoted.org website discovered that Frank A. Keating,Charles T. Maxwell and Frederick B. Whittemore, the compensation committee at Chesapeake Energy, not only paid the CEO, AubreyMcClendon, $100m, a 500% increase as the stock dropped 60% and the profits went down 50%, they spent $4.6m of the shareholders' money to sponsor a basketball team of which Mr McClendon owns a 19% stake, they purchased catering services from a restaurant which he owns just under a half of, and they took his collection of antique maps off his hands for $12.1m of the shareholders' money, based on a valuation from the consultant who advised Mr McClendon on assembling the collection. The board justified this by referring to Mr McClendon's having to sell more than $1 billion worth of stock due to margin calls, his having concluded four important deals and the benefit to employee morale from having the maps on display in the office. A market-based response would be: (1) that was his risk and it is inappropriate to the point of misappropriation to force the other shareholders, already substantially out of pocket with their own losses due to his poor leadership of the organisation, make up for his losses (2) if the deals are good ones, he will be adequately rewarded when the benefit of those deals is reflected in the stock price; and (3) you have got to be kidding. If this is pay for performance, what exactly is the performance we are paying for?

These may be anecdotes, but they are illuminating ones. The numbers and details may be at the extreme, but the underlying approaches are representative. Even as outliers, they still demonstratethe failure of the system to ensure a vigorous, arm's-length system for determining pay and the inability of the system to require an effective incentive programme with a genuine downside as well as an upside.

In my comments, I will discuss the seven deadliest sins of executive compensation, the two key elements that are essential for any plan thatmerits support from investors and the only metric that matters in looking at pay.
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executive pay  高管总裁的薪酬
shopfloor level 车间级，这里指生产一线的员工（shopfloor workers）
disgrace to humiliate by a superior showing
tether  to fasten or restrain by or as if by a tether
demotivate  NOT FOUND 打击积极性？
sanguine  CONFIDENT, OPTIMISTIC
profitability affording profits  : yielding advantageous returns or results 有利可图
exponentially expressible or approximately expressible by an exponential function;  especially   : characterized by or being an extremely rapid increase (as in size or extent)  *an exponential growth rate*  成指数增长，激增
tenure the act, right, manner, or term of holding something (as a landed property, a position, or an office);  especially   : a status granted after a trial period to a teacher that gives protection from summary dismissal
deficit a (1) : deficiency in amount or quality  *a deficit in rainfall*  (2) : a lack or impairment in a functional capacity  *cognitive deficits*  *a hearing deficit*  b : DISADVANTAGE  
public-sector 公共部门
activist 激进主义份子
hedge fund A hedge fund is an investment fund open to a limited range of investors that undertakes a wider range of investment and trading activities than long-only investment funds, and that, in general, pays a performance fee to its investment manager. Every hedge fund has its own investment strategy that determines the type of investments and the methods of investment it undertakes.  
Nor  NEITHER (注意本文中的用法)
crunch a severe economic squeeze (as on credit)  危急情况，经济收缩
galore ABUNDANT, PLENTIFUL ? used postpositively  *bargains galore*
thrash out 愿意为打，打败某对，本文中指澄清某事
exacerbate  to make more violent, bitter, or severe  *the proposed shutdownTwould exacerbate unemployment problems ?Science*
scapegoats a : one that bears the blame for others  b : one that is the object of irrational hostility
misperceptions 错误理解 误解，曲解
inflation   a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services  通货膨胀
arm's-length market not found
decile any one of nine numbers that divide a frequency distribution into 10 classes such that each contains the same number of individuals;
perceive  to attain awareness or understanding of
post-meltdown NOT FOUND 后经济崩溃时期？
perverse  a : turned away from what is right or good  : CORRUPT  b : IMPROPER, INCORRECT  c : contrary to the evidence or the direction of the judge on a point of law  *perverse verdict*
incentives  something that incites or has a tendency to incite to determination or action
transactions  something transacted;  especially   : an exchange or transfer of goods, services, or funds  *electronic transactions*
inevitable  incapable of being avoided or evaded  *an inevitable outcome*
subprime NOT SURE 次级的
domino  a member of a group (as of nations) expected to behave in accordance with the domino theory
topple   to cause to fall /  OVERTHROW *topple a dictator*  /   DEFEAT
Panglossian  marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds  : excessively optimistic
metric  a standard of measurement  *no metric exists that can be applied directly to happiness ?Scientific Monthly*
subsidise to aid or promote (as a private enterprise) with public money  *subsidize soybean farmers*  *subsidize public transportation*
meek enduring injury with patience and without resentment  : MILD
outrageously going beyond all standards of what is right or decent  *an outrageous disregard of human rights*
practices   actual performance or application  *ready to carry out in practice what they advocated in principle*  (在这里指实践操作？？)
catering  to supply what is required or desired  *catering to middle-class tastes*
appropriation  something that has been appropriated;  specifically   : money set aside by formal action for a specific use（挪用公款）
out of pocket 赔钱
illuminate to make illustrious or resplendent
outliers a person whose residence and place of business are at a distance
sins an offense against religious or moral law,    an often serious shortcoming
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMENTS
This debate is a discussion on executive pay. The proposer mainly gives three illustrations to correct his so called “misperception” on executive pay. By relating to other highly paid groups and providing the income status of executives, stated at the first, the proposer believe that executives gain their income based on their performance. Furthermore, he argues that the income is also related to the stock performance by analyzing the realized pay of executives. Additionally, he insists that it is the boards that control their executives. Contrarily, the opposer holds the point that the pay-performance practice is not grounded. She cites lots of examples (anecdotes as she mentioned) to support this very point.

The material provide only includes the opening speeches of both sides so that it is hard to find collisions on their specific supporting. However, the main and probably the only clash is on the pay –performance link. The proposer believes the link is concrete since the executive pay has being decreased and lots unqualified executives have lost their jobs for their lousy performance under the meltdown situations. The opposer does catch the fallacy that it is not because of the link that the income is decreasing and the unemployment of executives is growing. It is the economic situation itself that pick those who are qualified executives to survive and because it is melting down, the income is decreasing. That is to say, the theory of pay-performance link is not grounded. Unfortunately, the oppeser stop her rebuttal by merely cites some examples. Without further deduction, it is hard to make her perspective cogent. Personally, I am looking forward to seeing what the opposition side would say in its illustration.

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

终于把这篇DEBATE的弄好了
感觉读完了意犹未尽
只想看看下面双方是怎么接着打下去的！
呼呼
吃饭吧~~
饿得有点发晕了·~~

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

Rebuttal statements
Oct 23rd 2009 | Adrian Wooldridge  
生词
读多遍才懂的句子
好句子，好表达法
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The moderator's rebuttal remarks
It seems that experts are just as passionate on the subject of executive pay as the general public.

Mr Kaplan argues that the most powerful criticism of executive pay-that bosses get upside and no downside-is simply false. He points out that three of the most maligned bosses in the financial services sector, Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, John Mack of Morgan Stanley and Kenneth Lewis of Bank of America, all lost small fortunes in 2008. CEOs as a group lost roughly 40% of their wealth in 2008.

Ms Minow argues that her rebuttal is being written by the headlines. Financial service companies are once again paying huge bonuses despite the fact that their companies have been propped up by public money. She points out that CEOs enjoy the unique privilege of being able to appoint the people who decide their pay. She also reiterates the point that there are plenty of devices such as golden parachutes that cannot possibly be justified by performance.
In his expert evidence Rakesh Khurana tries to focus on fundamental questions such as what the purpose of compensation is. He argues that the market for CEOs is a highly distorted one because CEOs themselves can influence the process and performance is hard to measure. He suggests that extreme pay differentials can damage companies by attracting the wrong sort of bosses and demotivating the rank and file. He also worries about the legitimacy of the system. One survey suggests that only 13% of people trust what CEOs say.

So far the voting is going heavily against the motion. But I wonder how far this is driven by emotion rather than a reasoned assessment of the evidence. I would urge the participants to pay close attention to the wording of the motion-particularly the key phrases 'one the whole' and 'deserve'. We need to focus more on the overall picture, around the world as well as in the United States, rather than on a few attention-grabbing anecdotes. And we need to think more closely about the word 'deserve'. Mr Kaplan's best chance of turning the voting around is to demonstrate that outstanding bosses can boost the performance of the organisations that they head, not only earning their pay but also benefitting workers, shareholders and consumers.


The proposer's rebuttal remarks
Oct 23rd 2009 | Steven N. Kaplan

Nell Minow argues that top executive compensation was a major cause of the financial crisis. She bases her conclusion on two "outlier" examples, Angelo Mozillo and Aubrey McClendon, that she calls "anecdotes". The plural of anecdote is data. And the data, that is the pay at a broad sample of financial companies, simply do not support her conclusion. Ironically, neither do her two anecdotes.
Ms Minow makes the following claims. (1) Incentive compensation rewarded top financial executives for the quantity of transactions, not the quality. (2) Top CEOs, like Mr Mozillo, took large amounts of money out of their companies before their companies failed. (3) The CEOs knew they were making bad investments, but did so anyway because they could make more money doing so. (4) CEOs get upside, but no downside. (5) The post-meltdown awards create incentives that reward management, but damage shareholders and everyone else.

These claims are false. As David Yermack of NYU pointed out in a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, John Mack of Morgan Stanley and Kenneth Lewis of Bank of America:
"all lost small fortunes in 2008. The 2008 compensation of Messrs Pandit, Mack, and Lewis was approximately minus $105 million, minus $40 million, and minus $108 million, respectively, after taking account of the losses on the stock that each CEO owned in his firm. Other CEOs in the financial industry had similarly bad years. Kerry Killinger of Washington Mutual lost more than $25 million before being ousted in September, Kennedy Thompson of Wachovia lost more than $30 million before being fired in June, and Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric lost more than $60 million ... These CEOs' financial reversals were part of a robust system of pay-for-performance widely used by most U.S. companies."

Yermack also points out that James Cayne lost most of his billion-dollar fortune when Bear Stearns failed and Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The fact is that most financial-company CEOs received the lion's share of their pay in stock and options. And they kept most of that pay as shares in their companies which they never cashed in. When the crisis hit and their stock prices sank, those CEOs lost a large fraction of their wealth and, in many cases, their jobs.

As I wrote in my first entry, this is true, in general, of the overall CEO market. CEOs earn a lot and their stock appreciates when their companies perform well. CEOs lose large amounts of wealth and their jobs when their companies perform poorly. It is irresponsible to claim that CEOs do not bear any downside risk. In 2008, CEOs as a group lost roughly 40% of their wealth.

In direct contradiction to Ms Minow's conclusion, the financial CEOs were compensated in the end for the quality of their transactions. The CEOs did not take much off the table. The CEOs had a substantial amount of downside risk. In fact, those CEOs would have been much better off if they had not engaged in the transactions they did.

It is worth adding that David Yermack is a noted researcher on CEO pay who studies large samples over long periods. He has written several articles highly critical of specific CEO pay practices, like corporate jet usage. Nevertheless, his conclusion on the relation of CEO pay to the financial crisis is diametrically opposed to Ms Minow's (as is his characterisation of the CEO market in general).

A study of CEO incentives in a broader group of financial institutions during the crisis by Rudi Fahlenbrach and Rene Stulz of Ohio State (and a former president of the American Finance Association) confirms Yermack's analysis and also clearly refutes Ms Minow's conclusion.

Ironically, even her two anecdotes about Angelo Mozillo of Countrywide and Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy fail to support her case.
Unlike the other CEOs mentioned above (and most financial-institution CEOs), Mr Mozillo did manage to sell a lot of his stock. Unfortunately for him, the SEC has charged him with securities fraud and insider trading. And it is unlikely to lead to a good outcome for him. If found guilty, he potentially will end up paying three times what he took out. Clearly, he appears to have behaved badly, but he did not get away with it.

As for Mr McClendon, he runs an energy company. How could he possibly have had anything to do with the financial crisis?
The preponderance of the data and, even Ms Minow's "outlier" "anecdotes," therefore, fail to provide any evidence that top executive compensation had much to do with the financial crisis.

Top executive compensation did not cause the financial crisis. Instead, the crisis was caused by loose monetary policy, a global capital glut, over-high leverage at investment banks, mandates from Congress to provide mortgages to people who could not afford them, flawed ratings from the rating agencies and poor incentives at mortgage origination (not the CEO) level. Consistent with this, the financial crisis has spread to financial institutions in other countries with very different pay practices.


The opposition's rebuttal remarks
Oct 23rd 2009 |  Nell Minow

The headlines are writing my rebuttal for me.
GoldmanSachs set aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009, up 46% from a year ago. While its net income has tripled, its core investment banking business is down 31%. The Toronto Star quotes Goldman's CFO, David Viniar, using an unforgivable oxymoron in a conference call with reporters: "Our competitors are paying people quite well [and are] very willing to pay employees guaranteed bonuses of very high amounts." (emphasis added)

MrViniar also showed that he has a very short memory, arguing thatGoldman is operating without any government guarantee, ignoring the reality of the government guarantee that kept the system going just a year ago.

These bonuses have nothing to do with paying for performance. How much of Goldman's bouncing back is due to the government's guarantees and the hundreds of billions of dollars it poured into Goldman, Wall Street, and other subsidies and out right welfare payments to the very institutions that came close to bringingdown the entire economy? Shouldn't the American people expect some sort of discounted calculation of the bonuses that reflect a market-based assessment of performance? Once again, Wall Street is all about capitalism when it comes to the upside, but all about socialism when it comes to the downside, that is, from each, according to his ability, to each, whatever he can get away with.

Also this week, we had the testimony of Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the government's financial rescue programme before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The serial offender AIG has promised $198m in bonus pay to its employees next March, according to the testimony, and there is very little the government or anyone else can do about it. Because the bonus agreements were entered into before the bailout, the government has no legal authority to stop them. All Special Master Kenneth Feinberg can do is ask the company not to pay the bonuses and rattle his sabre about the pay he can control going forward, hoping that the threat of clamping down on the 25 executive sat each of the covered companies he does have authority over will be enough of an incentive to force a change. In the meantime, once again,pay is uncoupled from performance. Even the company has given up on trying to make that case, relying instead on opportunity costs to justify the bonuses and arguing that these kinds of payments are necessary in order to keep the employees from leaving. Based on their past performance and their unwillingness to tie future pay to genuine measures of sustainable growth, I suggest that the best choice for shareholders is to let them leave.

Mr Barofksy gave the committee a Treasury Department report on the last set of outrageous AIG bonuses. It concluded in part that "Treasury invested $40 billion of taxpayer funds in AIG, designed AIG's contractual executive compensation restrictions, and helped manage the Government's majority stake in AIG for several months, all without having any detailed information about the scope of AIG's very substantial, and very controversial, executive compensation obligations." If a private entity had been asked for emergency funds, it is unthinkable that any money would have been advanced without establishing some control over compensation. There are two reasons for this. The first is agency costs. Anyone (other than Secretary Henry Paulson, apparently) putting money at risk will want to ensure that it will not be inappropriately appropriated. The second is the high likelihood that the previous incentive structure was a significant factor in the bad decisions and catastrophic risk management that created the need for the funds in thefirst place.
And really, that is all the argument one needs. By definition, the incentive compensation was badly designed, as proved by the results. However, I will respond to some of the points raised by Professor Kaplan.
First, we disagree on the calculations tha tsupport the conclusion that CEO play has been declining. Our figures,based not on theoretical pay but on realised pay, are as follows.

Clearly actual pay is the better measure of pay effectiveness. I also question the validity of the Equilar survey figures. They are based on the reported total compensation in the summary compensationtable, which is even further from reality than the "expected pay", a sit is just an accounting cost.
I do not understand why he brings up the net worth of CEOs; that has no relationship whats oever to their pay, its relationship to performance, or its effectiveness ataligning CEOs' interests with shareholders'.

Second, ProfessorKaplan states, "The typical CEO is paid for performance. Board sincreasingly fire CEOs for poor performance." The second sentence has no relationship to the first. Boards may fire CEOs for poor performance, but they pay them boatloads of money for that performance on the way out of the door. Just look at Ken Lewis's departure from Bank of America. Disastrous performance that apparently included lying(about what else? bonuses) and an unprecedented vote of no confidence from shareholders that removed him as chairman,(语义表达清晰，复杂内容整合在一个句子) may indeed have caused him to be fired (though the board did not use that term). But his $53m retirement package does not feel like pay for performance to me.

ProfessorKaplan tries to obscure the point by bringing in law firm partners,athletes and other highly-paid professionals. Partners in law firms are paid according to formulas set by the partnership. As in any other private firm, there are no agency costs to worry about and they can do whatever they like. Athletes, movie stars and recording artists, who have a much greater range and far greater elasticity in compensation,engage in vigorous arm's length negotiations on pay; their pay is not set by boards they appoint, as CEOs' is.

And it is hard for meto understand how anyone could point to the US or UK governmentauthorising excessive pay as a validation of the system. As noted above, the government has repeatedly failed as regulator or as provider of capital in curbing outrageously destructive executive compensation.
Here are seven deadly sins found in executive compensation plans. Each of them is conclusive evidence that the system is out of whack.
1.    Making up for losses in stock value with other grants of cash or stock.
2.    Imputed years of service to increase retirement benefits.
3.    Setting the performance goals too low or other phony metrics to trigger bonuses.
4.    Dividends on unvested stock.
5.    Outrageous departure packages.
6.    Stock options that are not performance-based or indexed.
7.    Perquisites and gross-ups.

In my next response, I will explain how to do it right.

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prop to support by placing something under or against , often used with up  /  to support by placing against something
/  SUSTAIN, STRENGTHEN , often used with up  *a government propped up by the military*
reiterate to state or do over again or repeatedly sometimes with wearying effect
golden parachutes 提前离职津贴
distort  to cause a twisting from the true, natural, or normal
plural NOT SURE  在原句The plural of anecdote is data.中作何解？
reversal an act or the process of reversing 文中指财政逆转
diametrically completely opposed  : being at opposite extremes  *in diametric contradiction to his claims*
fraud DECEIT, TRICKERY;  specifically   : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right
insider trading 内幕交易 Insider trading is the trading of a corporation's stock or other securities (e.g. bonds or stock options) by individuals with potential access to non-public information about the company.
preponderance  a superiority in weight, power, importance, or strength / a superiority or excess in number or quantity / MAJORITY
glut an excessive quantity  : OVERSUPPLY
mandate an authorization to act given to a representative  *accepted the mandate of the people*
mortgage  抵押 a conveyance of or lien against property (as for securing a loan) that becomes void upon payment or performance according to stipulated terms
oxymoron a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (as cruel kindness);  broadly   : something (as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongrous elements  矛盾修饰法
testimony firsthand authentication of a fact  : EVIDENCE
inspector 检查员 a person employed to inspect something
rattle his sabre 挥舞战刀
contractual of, relating to, or constituting a contract
entity BEING, EXISTENCE;  especially   : independent, separate, or self-contained existence  
boatloads a load that fills a boat / an indefinitely large number  *a boatload of money*
obscure to conceal or hide by or as if by covering
elasticity the responsiveness of a dependent economic variable to changes in influencing factors  *elasticity of demand*  *price elasticity*
Impute to lay the responsibility or blame for often falsely or unjustly
trigger to initiate, actuate, or set off by a trigger  *an indiscreet remark that triggered a fight*  *a stimulus that triggered a reflex*
unvested 引发
Perquisite a privilege, gain, or profit incidental to regular salary or wages;  especially   : one expected or promised
gross-ups NOT FOUND
----------------------------------------------------
COMMENTS
The rebuttal stamens are not as targeted as I thought. Both of the two sides reinforce their own perspectives again by partly refuting the other side’s point. Anyway, the proposer provide his examples in a much more clearer way that readers can easily follow. He cites David Yermack’s opinion on CEO pay which props the pay-performance link. However, even the idea of the opposition side is a little bit hard to understand, she does a impressive work on her rebuttal. For example, when coming to the deduction of the sentence “The typical CEO is paid for performance. Board sincreasingly fire CEOs for poor performance”, she directly name the fallacy that “the second sentence has no relationship to the first” because “boards may fire CEOs for poor performance, but they pay them boatloads of money for that performance on the way out of the door.” This stamen is sharp and conceivable which make me hold the idea that even the proposer’s idea is easy to follow, the opposition did somehow overweight on this debate for such a impressive rebuttal.

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

看了几位版友的帖子
发现自己做的实在是太不够了
没有做阅读的准备
没有仔细的看精华帖并做好笔记
也没有对每天的阅读做必要的summary
在这相互促进的学习环境下
不能掉队！

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

茫茫多的事，茫茫麻烦的做~~
茫茫简单的生活，茫茫勤勤恳恳的过~~~

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

啊呀~~·今天的事来不及了！
加油！

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

Passwords aplenty
Dec 18th 2009 | LOS ANGELES
From Economist.com
生词
读多遍才懂的句子
好句子，好表达法
-------------------------------------------------------------------
How to stay sane as well as safe while surfing the web
AT THIS time of the year, your correspondent crosses the Pacific to Japan for a month or so. He repeats the trip during the summer. He considers it crucial in order to keep abreast of all the ingenious technology which, once debugged by the world’s most acquisitive consumers, will wind up in American and European shops a year or two later.

Each time he packs his bags, though, he is embarrassed by having to include a dog-eared set of notes that really ought to be locked up in a safe. This is his list of logons and passwords for all the websites he uses for doing business and staying in touch with the rest of the world. At the last count, the inch-thick list accumulated over the past decade or so—your correspondent’s sole copy—includes access details for no fewer than 174 online services and computer networks.



Alamy
He admits to flouting the advice of security experts: his failings include using essentially the same logon and password for many similar sites, relying on easily remembered words—and, heaven forbid, writing them down on scraps of paper. So his new year’s resolution is to set up a proper software vault for the various passwords and ditch the dog-eared list.

Your correspondent’s one consolation is that he is not alone in using easily crackable words for most of his passwords. Indeed, the majority of online users have an understandable aversion to strong, but hard-to-remember, passwords. The most popular passwords in Britain are “123” followed by “password”. At least people in America have learned to combine letters and numbers. Their most popular ones are “password1” followed by “abc123”.

Unfortunately, the easier a password is to remember, the easier it is for thieves to guess. Ironically, the opposite—the harder it is to remember, the harder it is to crack—is often far from true. That is because, not being able to remember long, jumbled sets of alphanumeric characters interspersed with symbols, people resort to writing them down on Post-it notes left lying around the office or home for all and sundry to see.

Apart from stealing passwords from Post-it notes and the like, intruders basically use one of two hacks to gain access to other people’s computers or networks. If time and money is no problem, they can use brute-force methods that simply try every combination of letters, numbers and symbols until a match is found. That takes a lot of patience and computing power, and tends to be the sort of thing only intelligence agencies indulge in.

A more popular, though less effective, way is to use commercial software tools such as “L0phtCrack” or “John the Ripper” that can be found on the internet. These use dictionaries, lists of popular passwords and rainbow tables (lookup tools that turn long numbers computed from alphanumeric characters back into their original plain text) to recover passwords.

According to Bruce Schneier, an independent security expert, today’s password crackers “can test tens—even hundreds—of millions of passwords per second.” In short, the vast majority of passwords used in the real world can be guessed in minutes. And do not think you are being smart by replacing the letters “l” or “i” in a password with the number “1”; or the letter “s” with the number “5” or the symbol “$”. Cracking programs check all such alternatives, and more, as a matter of course.

What should you do to protect yourself? Choose passwords that are strong enough to make cracking them too time consuming for thieves to bother.

The strength of a password depends on its length, complexity and randomness. A good length is at least eight symbols. The complexity depends on the character set. Using numbers alone limits the choice to just ten symbols. Add upper- and lower-case letters and the complexity rises to 62. Use all the symbols on a standard ASCII keyboard and you have 95 to choose from.

The third component, randomness, is measured by a concept borrowed from thermodynamics—the notion of entropy (the tendency for things to become disordered). In information theory, a tossed coin has an entropy of one “bit” (binary digit). That is because it can come down randomly in one of two equally possible binary states.

At the other extreme, when you set the encryption of a Wi-Fi link, you are usually given the choice of 64-bit or even 128-bit security. Those bit-numbers represent the entropy (or randomness) of the encryption used. A password with 64 bits of entropy is as strong as a string of data comprising 64 randomly selected binary digits. Put another way, a 64-bit password would require 2 raised to the power of 64 attempts to crack it by brute force—in short, 18 billion billion attempts. A 64-bit password was finally cracked in 2002 using brute-force methods. It took a network of volunteers nearly five years to do so.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the American government’s standards-measuring laboratory in Gaithersburg, Maryland, recommends 80-bit passwords for state secrets and the like. Such security can be achieved using passwords with 12 symbols, drawn from the full set of 95 symbols on the standard American keyboard. For ordinary purposes, that would seem overkill. A 52-bit password based on eight symbols selected from the standard keyboard is generally adequate（还凑活，差强人意的表达方法）.

How to select the eight? Best to let a computer program generate them randomly for you. Unfortunately, the result will be something like 6sDt%k&3 that probably needs to be written down. One answer, only slightly less rigorous, is to use a mnemonic constructed from the first letters (plus contractions) of an easily remembered phrase like “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” (MCa1otFA) or “To be or not to be: that is the question” (2Bo-2b:?).

Given a robust 52-bit password, you can then use a password manager to take care of the dozens of easily guessable ones used to access various web services. There are a number of perfectly adequate products for doing this. In an early attempt to fulfil his new year’s pledge, your correspondent has been experimenting with LastPass, a free password manager that works as an add-on to the Firefox web browser for Windows, Linux or Macintosh. Versions also exist for Internet Explorer on Windows and Safari on the Mac.

Once installed and given a strong password of its own, plus an e-mail address, LastPass encrypts all the logons and passwords stored on your computer. So, be warned: forget your master password and you could be in trouble—especially if you have let the program delete (as it urges you to let it do) all the vulnerable logons and passwords on your own computer.

Thereafter, to visit various web services, all you have to do is log into LastPass and click the website you wish to check out. The tool then automatically logs you on securely to the selected site. It will even complete all the forms needed to buy goods online if you have stored your home address, telephone number and credit-card details in the vault as well.

Your correspondent looks forward to using the service while travelling around Japan over the next month or so. To be on the safe side, however, his dog-eared list of passwords will still go with him.
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sane  proceeding from a sound mind  : RATIONAL
dog-eared  翻旧了的
flout  contemptuous disregard  : SCORN  *flouting the rules*
interspersed to insert at intervals among other things  *interspersing drawings throughout the text*
brute-force NOT SURE 强制力
c ENCODE
binary digits 二进制数
overkill an excess of something (as a quantity or an action) beyond what is required or suitable for a particular purpose  *publicity overkill*  *an overkill in weaponry* 巨大杀伤力的
mnemonic   assisting or intended to assist memory;  also   : of or relating to mnemonics
and the like 不知道在距离里面作何解？
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Comments
The article provides some knowledge on setting password. Usually, people are likely to set passwords that are easy to remember. However, according to the writer, the easier the password is to remember the easier it is to crack. In this case, what we need to do to create a strong password is to set a 80-bit password, suggested in the article, which can be achieve by lining up 12 symbols chosen from all the 95 symbols of the standard American keyboard.
I am prone to believe what the article claims. But using a program to manage all my hard-to-remember passwords is really not my way of dealing with encoding. I prefer to create three different passwords for all the encoding, so that I will not forget which password fit which blank. Additionally, in order to make them hard to be cracked, I use symbols that represent some specific interest of mine and make them as long as 16 symbols. However, according to the writer, this way of creating password is in lack of randomness, which is what I am thinking about right now to strengthen all my passwords.

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https://bbs.gter.net/viewthread.php?tid=783960&extra=page%3D1%26amp%3Bfilter%3Ddigest

1.语言：简单句和复杂句结合，不要一味用从句，容易导致错误和冗长
           尽量用主动句
           逻辑连接词要用得恰当，要有逻辑关系才能用
           不要用which who来拖长句子

2.逻辑：句子内容的逻辑结构要切实，而不是看似合乎逻辑但实际上没有正向逻辑关系的··
3.材料：T OG 后面关于写作的评说要针对自己的文章审核审核

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https://bbs.gter.net/viewthread.php?tid=962761&extra=page%3D1%26amp%3Bfilter%3Ddigest
认真对待AW 从认真对待自己的习作开始！
记住无夏的话~~·
请，先并且时刻修缮基本语法。文法的不通顺比意思的浅显更让人觉得胸闷；
请，尽量选择同一难度和表意范围内的词语。文学性的词在论述文频繁的出现有时会很怪。并且，越是文艺，微妙的差异就越多，用错几率越大；
请，不要试图用一句很长的套句说完所有的意思。句子越长，成分越复杂，错误也就越多，误读也越多，指代模糊，单复数混淆，从句两头时态不符，都是长句的后果；
请，尽量不要用过多的BE动词，“BE”在英文里仅仅表达一种状态，I am here. You are there.都是状态，是没有什么感情色彩的。不如直接用实意动词来的更有色彩和力度；
请，不要轻易的动用废话和套话。宁字数不到，也别滥竽充数。积极的效果没有，还让人觉得态度投机；
请，不要事先假定读者会心领神会你的每一句潜台词。交待完整，限定清晰；
请，保持阅读（我指的是规范的英文作品）的习惯。这是写作的永恒真理。虽然说三人必有我师，但写作毕竟是比较个人化的事，同为习者，还仍然缺乏对作品的判断优劣的能力，也许对方的优点并不一定能教会你，可缺点常常让你对自己的错误更加包容；
请，时刻警醒你的逻辑。哪怕每一种论述方式都是先观点后说明，先论述谁后论述谁，重点论谁简要论谁，甚至是段落的摆放，都最好先想明白这样做是为什么？因为如果平时练习就没有培养这种习惯，在考场上就更没有多余的时间来训练你的逻辑。不要指望读者会自动为你找出逻辑。

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argument就应该这样写1，2
https://bbs.gter.net/viewthread.php?tid=412534&extra=page%3D1%26amp%3Bfilter%3Ddigest 理论
https://bbs.gter.net/viewthread.php?tid=416323&extra=page%3D1 实例分析
仔细读题，把题目分成，前提，论据和结论
攻击论据与前提的因果关系------最终目标得到“一个不一定确实存在的[前提]，不能推导到那样的结论”
而攻击前提与结论的因果关系------得到“即便[前提]是完全正确的，我也不能得到那样的结论。”
很明显，从逻辑层面上来说后者要重于前者！
也就是说，ARGUMENT一开始就要攻击主要矛盾！（当然这是建立在仔细读题理解题意的基础上的）

从最开始练习就要训练由大向小的思维方式，寻找最关键的矛盾，作出一针见血的反驳！

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Back to the future
Dec 19th 2009
From Economist.com
生词
读多遍才懂的句子
好句子，好表达法
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The taste for clutter and realism is curiously buoyant
WHILE the contemporary art market constantly seeks the new—new names, new imagery, new media or simply new novelty—another curious corner of the art market has remained steadfastly old-fashioned, cluttered and sentimental. With bad weather coming, much of London may have been preparing to shut down early for Christmas last week. But Christie’s sale of Victorian and British Impressionist pictures on December 16th and Sotheby’s sale of Victorian and Edwardian paintings the next day were surprisingly busy.

Sotheby's

Of the two auctions, Sotheby’s was by far more successful, fetching £4.4m ($7.1m) for works by some of the best-known names of the period, including Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Alfred Munnings, Dame Laura Knight and Charles Spencelayh. The cover lot, Spencelayh’s “The Old Dealer”, sold for a record price for the artist at auction. The buyer was David Mason, a London dealer who joined his father’s firm, MacConnal-Mason, when he was just 17. Mr Mason, who has seen recessions come and go in the 53 year he has been in the business, said afterwards: “Prices today reflect what is happening out there. People are discounting the coming inflation and buying quality. They know that inflation has always been the art dealer’s friend.”

Buyers in every sector of the art market, from Chinese porcelain to Old Masters, now seem to follow a pattern. They are happy to pay over the odds for top-ranking pictures, but leave the rest untouched. Nearly 40% of the lots in Sotheby’s sale were bought in. Its success lay in the high prices achieved for those that sold, half of which were bid up beyond their high estimate. Some pieces went for as much as four times what the auction house had predicted.

John Atkinson Grimshaw is a painter who celebrated industry, commerce and conspicuous wealth during Queen Victoria’s reign, dying in 1893. His works are often dark social commentaries featuring streets and portsides, full of ships’ rigging and lamplight that seems visually interchangeable with moonlight. Eight years ago Mr Mason sold an 1881 Grimshaw entitled “Prince’s Dock, Hull” to an American collector for £130,000. Consigning the picture to Sotheby’s, that same American saw his Grimshaw sell to an anonymous bidder for £397,250 (including commission and taxes), the third highest price achieved for the artist at auction.

Spencelayh, the son of an iron and brass founder, rose to be a prolific member of the Royal Academy of Arts and a favourite of Queen Mary. His work is, if anything, even more unfashionable-looking than Grimshaw’s. Spencelayh, who died in 1928, liked to paint fussy interiors. The most sought after are realistic pictures of men, often gathered around a table in a room full of clutter, with glazed jugs, books, umbrellas and pieces of velvet jumbled together. There is usually a pipe or two on the table, and there is nearly always a clock hanging on the wall.

A Manchester cotton merchant named Levy supported Spencelayh from the early 1920s. He offered the artist and his wife a house to live in and bought a number of his paintings. When Levy's widow, Rosie, auctioned his collection in 1946, the picture that fetched the highest sum was “The Old Dealer”, which Spencelayh had painted in 1925. It was sold again in 1973, where it was bought by Richard Green, a London dealer, on behalf of an American collector for about £30,000.

Consigned last week to Sotheby’s by this same collector, it sold for more than ten times that (£337,250 including commission and taxes) to Mr Mason. Mr Green, an earlier owner, was the underbidder. “It has everything you could want: the old man, the clock, the knickknacks,” Mr Mason said afterwards. “It is quite simply the best example of a Spencelayh I have ever seen.” Mr Mason said he bought the picture for stock, with no particular collector in mind.



“On the Cliffs” (pictured above) is one of a series of pictures that Laura Knight painted of women sitting high above the water on the Cornish coast. In one of the earliest examples, “Daughter of the Sun”, the women were naked. That picture did not sell when Knight exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1912, and Knight later cut it up and sold the pieces after it had become damaged. She continued to be inspired by the Cornish theme in the years before the end of the first world war, after she and her husband moved to London. In “On the Cliffs” one woman is sewing while the other may be threading a needle. Both are strong, calm figures. Behind them the sea, silvery, shimmering and full of light, has the same idyllic quality of water painted at the time by the Scottish Colourists. But there are no men in any of Knight’s pictures of this period, reminding viewers that war was close at hand.

“On the Cliffs” sold to an anonymous bidder for £646,050, nearly twice the top estimate. Even at that price, many regard the painting as a bargain. In July, Galen Weston, a Canadian billionaire whose family owns Fortnum & Mason, bought the companion picture, “Wind and Sun”. It cost him £914,850.

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sentimental a : marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism  b : resulting from feeling rather than reason or thought  *a sentimental attachment*  *a sentimental favorite*
Consign to send or address to an agent to be cared for or sold
prolific  marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity  *a prolific composer*
sought seek 的过去分词，寻找·~·· fetch to bring in as a price
shimmer to shine with a soft tremulous or fitful light  : GLIMMER
idyllic   pleasing or picturesque in natural simplicity 田园诗的~
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comments
After reading the article and come back to the title, it seems even more difficult for me to grasp the writer’s idea. What exactly he wants to convey by the title “back to the future” and what connection lies between the title and context?

Like the previous articles on arts, this one provides examples which indicate the growth of the economy as well. The art market is now witnessing a rejuvenation of old-fashion. Clutter and realism, as genres of old painting, are becoming highly evaluated by bidders. In Sotheby’s sales record, it is these old fashioned paintings which achieved higher price than estimating that help the company survive the winter.

Back to the title, maybe it infers that old-fashion art is getting hotter in the market and it will receive more attentions in the near future.