1006G『Dream with Sazerac组』eco阅读作业贴

yanghan1167UID: 2722895

注释：文化性的探索。文中，Mr.MacGroger试图找出100个推动历史、文化发展的标志性事物。其中包括：Periclean Athens, Confucian China（中国儒家） and Achaemenid Iran, the importance of trade, silver pieces of eight, as the first step of global economy,coins, religion, freedom and the battles against slavery and totalitarianism.

文中分别阐释了这几项是如何影响历史的。

生词多多！例子超多！哇咔咔

A history of the world in 100 objects

Creative impulses

Dec 30th 2009
From The Economist print edition

A new BBC radio series shows how the things that man made can be even more compelling witnesses to the past than the events he witnessed

MAN is one of a number of animals that make things, but man is the only one that depends for its very survival on the things he has made. That simple observation is the starting point for an ambitious history programme that the BBC will begin broadcasting on January 18th in which it aims to tell a history of the world through 100 objects in the British Museum (BM). (句子结构尚不算复杂，但从句修饰较多，应熟悉到能写的程度)A joint venture four years in the making between the BM and the BBC, the series features 100 15-minute radio broadcasts, a separate 13 episodes(插曲，序曲) in which children visit the museum at night and try to unlock its mysteries, a BBC World Service package of tailored(简明的) omnibus(综合性的，精选的) editions for broadcasting around the world and an interactive digital programme involving 350 museums in Britain which will be available free over the internet.
The presenter is Neil MacGregor, the BM’s director, who has moved from the study of art to the contemplation of things. “Objects take you into the thought world of the past,” he says. “When you think about the skills required to make something you begin to think about the brain that made it.” From the first moment (the ghostly magnetic pulse from a star that exploded in the summer of 1054, as recorded at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics) this series is radio at its best: inventive, clever, and yet always light on its feet.(难句类型：插入语)
In the mid-17th century Archbishop James Ussher, an Irish prelate(A prelate is a member of the clergy(神职人员) holding a high rank, for example a bishop(主教) or an archbishop(大主教).) and scholar, totted up the lifespans of all the prophets mentioned in the Old Testament and concluded that the world had been created on the night preceding October 23rd 4004BC. Mr MacGregor, a more modern historian, begins nearly 1.8m years before that with the Swiss Army knife of the stone age, a handaxe found by Louis Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in the 1930s.
Discovering how to chip(削，打磨) stones to make a tool that would cut flesh was the moment man learned to be an opportunist. Once invented, the handaxe would hardly change over 1m years. It became a passport to the world, and was carried from east Africa to Libya, Israel, India, Korea and even to a gravel pit near Heathrow airport where one was buried 600,000 years ago.
Mr MacGregor is less interested in advertising the marvels of the 250-year-old universal museum he heads than in considering who made the objects he discusses. That involves drawing together evidence of how connected seemingly disparate societies have always been and rebalancing the histories of the literate and the non-literate. “Victors write history; the defeated make things,” he says. This is an especially important distinction when considering Africa. The great “Encyclopedia Britannica” of 1911 assumed that Africa had no history because it had no written history. (对于历史的观点)The statues of black pharaohs that Mr MacGregor discusses in an early programme, for example, are the best visual evidence that a Nubian tribe once seized control of ancient Egypt and that Africans ruled over the Nile for more than a century.
The BM’s curators spent two years choosing the objects Mr MacGregor examines. In particular, they sought out things that would help him draw out universal themes. Periclean Athens, Confucian China and Achaemenid Iran existed at more-or-less the same time, between 500BC and 450BC. By examining objects from each place, Mr MacGregor is able to compare three different ways of constructing a highly efficient state and nimbly(敏捷的) reassesses Athens in the context of the Persia it was fighting and the China it did not yet know.
The importance of trade is another theme. A 16th-century Aztec mosaic of a double-headed serpent(蛇) (pictured above) exemplifies the way cultures have long been connected through the movement of people and ideas. It is, he says, “a document of the tribute system of the empire”, with pieces of turquoise(绿松石) from mines that were over 1,000 miles apart, white teeth carved from shells found on both coasts of Mexico, and red details made out of Spondylus, a thorny(令人苦恼的) oyster shell found 60 metres below the surface of the sea.
Silver pieces of eight were another passport to trade, and, as the first object of a global economy, a key step in the history of money. Minted(发明；刚完成) in South America from the end of the 15th century, they crossed both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. So widely were these silver coins used that interruptions in the production of silver in Mexico and Peru had a severe knock-on effect. In Europe silver shortages led to a sudden massive expansion of the money supply and the hyperinflation of the mid-17th century. In China they helped cause the collapse of the Ming dynasty.
Mr MacGregor also uses coins, the simplest common sign of a centralised rule, to explore the personification of power as well as the history of money and of trade. In the Middle East the head of the Byzantine emperor was stamped on coins for several centuries. But in the early 690s, for example, Umayyad dinars from Damascus suddenly switched from displaying heads of rulers to showing the shahada, the declaration of belief in the oneness(单一性，同一性) of Allah. It was the first time political power, as represented by coinage, was connected to a set of unchanging universal ideas rather than a person.
Religion as a way of organising different interests in societies is another theme. How and why, for example, did different religions acquire their own particular look? Why does God in Judaism and Islam have no face while Buddha is a cross-legged man? And when do you begin seeing the connection between the food that man ate and the gods he worshipped(崇拜，信仰)? When man started farming at the end of the ice age was the moment his gods began farming too. Dependent on regular seasons, man prayed for rain, and, in Honduras, started making statues of maize gods.
Freedom and the battles against slavery and totalitarianism dominate the 20th century. A Russian imperial porcelain(精美的；瓷器；) plate showing a Leninist worker trampling on capital and taking over a factory is one starting point, as is a suffragette penny, with “Votes for Women” stamped across the head of King Edward VII. Closer to our own time, Mr MacGregor describes a chair made from decommissioned(退役的) guns collected since the Mozambique civil war ended in 1992, including AK-47s (both Russian and Czech), a second-world-war Sten gun and a Belgian assault rifle. The BM’s throne of weapons provides a neat symbol of the postcolonial moment when the Soviets and the West fought their proxy wars across the continent.
Of the 100 objects, only one has not been selected yet. Mr MacGregor is waiting until the last possible moment to pick out the best symbol of our own time. Suggestions, please, on a postcard to: British Museum, London WC1B 3DG.

yanghan1167UID: 2722895

好词好句

注释

难词

注释：在日本经济大衰退20年的日子，文章分析了日本20年前的经济崩溃的原因。对日本造成的影响。

Deflation in Japan

To lose one decade may be misfortune...

Dec 30th 2009 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition

Twenty years on Japan is still paying its bubble-era bills(倒装)

FOR many Japanese the boom years are still seared on their memories. They recall the embarrassing prices paid for works by Van Gogh and Renoir; the trophy properties in Manhattan; the crazy working hours and the rush to get to the overcrowded ski resorts at the weekend, only to waste hours queuing at the lifts.
(描述日本经济崩溃的情形。数字说明，知道2009年，日本的经济，即使官方的数字统计，GDP仍未达到1992年的水平。)
The bust(破产), when it came, was less perceptible. The world did not come crashing down after December 29th 1989, the last trading day of that decade, when the stockmarket peaked. The next year Japanese buyers were still paying record prices for Impressionist art at Christie’s. It was not until 1991 that the property bubble burst. There was no Lehman-style collapse or Bernie Madoff-type fraud to hammer home the full extent of the hubris.

But once the Nikkei 225 hit 38,916 points 20 years ago this week, life began to leach out of the Japanese economy. In the third quarter of 2009 nominal GDP—though still vast by global standards—sank below its level in 1992, reinforcing the impression of not one but two lost decades. Deflation is back in the headlines. On December 29th the Nikkei stood at 10,638, 73% below its peak, though an expansionary budget drafted on December 25th has given it a recent lift. Urban property prices have fallen by almost two-thirds. Some ski apartments are worth just one-tenth of what the “bubble generation” paid for them.

(从心理上，探究对日本人民的影响。没有像30年代美国的大萧条时期一样，无家可归，自杀率上升，人们生活困难。)

What effect has this steady erosion (侵蚀)of value had on the psychology of Japanese people? The bust did not lay waste to Japan, after all, as the Depression did to America in the 1930s. Homelessness and suicide have risen, and life has got much harder for young people seeking good jobs. But Japan still has ¥1,500 trillion ($16.3 trillion) of savings, its exporters are world-class, and many of its citizens dress, shop and eat lavishly. As a senior civil servant puts it: “Japanese people have never really felt that they are in crisis, even though the economy is slowly withering away.”

For individuals the damage lies below the surface. One of the first bubbles to pop, says Peter Tasker of Arcus Research, who has written several books on the bust, was a psychological one: confidence. Instead of getting angry, people lost faith in Japan’s economic prowess. “It became all about declining expectations and how society coped with it,” Mr Tasker says. (但是，人们明显对经济失去了信心)

The mood among investors swiftly turned risk-averse. Remarkably, retail investors were among the first to get out of the stockmarket and were net sellers of equities from 1991 to 2007, says Kathy Matsui, chief strategist for Goldman Sachs in Japan. Though there have been four bear-market share-price rallies since 1989, they have all been driven by foreigners.(开始抵抗风险)

The Japanese parked their money instead in government-backed shelters such as the post office, which in turn invested in safe bonds. The result has been a 78% rally in ten-year government bonds since their trough in 1990 (see chart). “Fixed income has been one of the longest-duration bull markets in the world,” Ms Matsui notes.

A deflationary mindset started to take hold. With prices falling, even inert money in the bank or post office earned, in real terms, a small tax-free return. Once the banking system began to look frail, there was a boom in the sale of safes for people to keep their cash at home. A long period of zero interest rates led a few to hunt for higher yields abroad. The mythical(虚构的) figure of Mrs Watanabe—housewives in Japan manage the family money—invested in New Zealand dollars and Icelandic kronur. These days she is placing large bets on Brazilian bonds, leading to the quip that although Tokyo failed to secure the 2016 Olympics, the Japanese will finance the games in Rio de Janeiro anyway. Yet individual Japanese investors are still only gingerly returning to their own stockmarket.

The most pernicious(致命的) effects of the bust, economists say, have been transmitted via banks and businesses. Banks found themselves loaded down with non-performing loans. Belatedly they faced up to many of their losses, restructured and consolidated. But according to Takuji Aida, an economist at UBS in Japan, long-term yields remained very low because of deflationary expectations, thereby flattening the yield curve (the difference between short- and long-term interest rates). That prevented banks from earning their way out of crisis, so lending remains weak.

Companies, meanwhile, have been focused on paying down debt, as well as coping with deflation in the domestic economy and competition from cut-price imports. Large exporters were forced to restructure and enjoyed a long boom from 2002 to 2007. But firms in more protected areas of the domestic economy have fared badly: profitability(盈利能力), wages(工资，待遇) and investment have declined in the past decade.

This has fed back to households. As firms cut back, the proportion of full-time contract jobs has fallen from almost 80% of the labour force in 1990 to 66% in 2007, according to the OECD. The proportion of lower-paid non-regular jobs has risen correspondingly(相应的). This is partly down to the increasing role of women in the workforce, as declining wages and benefits force families to rely on two incomes. But there are long-term social costs to this extended income drought. “The slow wear-and-tear of the recession has made people much less confident of their ability to finance children,” Mr Tasker says.

A weak culture of consumer borrowing means that people have been forced to rely even more on their savings—or those of their parents. But as society ages, growth in the stock of savings has dwindled(减少). Savings are bound to fall as more people retire. For the younger generation the next decade may be even tougher than the past two.

yanghan1167UID: 2722895

好词好句

注释

难词

注：解决全球性气候变暖问题，大国政治博弈的又一个舞台，小国也只能是个牺牲品：利益冲突才是关键。

   哥本哈根协议试图采取一个长期的国际合作的协议以应对全球气候变暖问题。协议并未设定任何的具体目标，如气体排放物的指标限定；并未安排会议的议程；

Copenhagen climate talks

Better than nothing

Dec 19th 2009 | COPENHAGEN
From Economist.com

The accord delivered by the Copenhagen climate talks is hardly far-reaching

EVEN its biggest fans—if such people exist—would be hard-put to find the Copenhagen Accord(（国家之间的)协议,An accord between countries or groups of people is a formal agreement, for example to end a war.) on the climate a rousing success. "Many," admits Ban Ki-moon, "will say it lacks ambition." Despite the emotional support and demands of tens of thousands of activists gathered in the Danish capital, expectations of the UN climate conference among participants were not so high that they were hard to meet. （难句类型：so…that…结构）But the accord put together on Saturday December 19th by an informal grouping of countries, including America, China, India and South Africa, barely made it over, and was only incorporated into the conference's conclusions after a tense all-night session.

The accord offers to enhance long-term co-operative action against climate change, and recognises(If people or organizations recognize something as valid, they officially accept it or approve of it.) the need to provide help to poor countries for adaptation. It provides a way to bring together the offers of emission reductions made by various countries before the conference began—and, should they so wish, to raise them—as long as they are confirmed in the next few months, and gives a special status to the idea of holding global warming to no more than 2ºC. It finds words that provide a way forward on the vexed issue of monitoring reductions undertaken by developing countries off their own bat, which is important not least because it is something the American Senate wants reassurance on with respect to China. It offers short-term funding for projects in developing country of $30 billion, and aspires to a long-term system that would, in principle, provide $100 billion a year for mitigation(减轻，Mitigation is a reduction in the unpleasantness, seriousness, or painfulness of something.) and adaptation from 2020 onwards. And, perhaps the component of clearest value from outside the world of climate politics, it moves forward on REDD, the plan for reducing deforestation.

To many environmentalists, the accord's great deficiency is that it sets no targets for emissions; earlier drafts had room for specific figures for developed-country reductions in 2020 and both developed-country and global reductions by 2050. Such language is seen as important in defining a widespread shift of the world economy away from fossil fuels. The emissions reductions the accord enshrines are, at least so far, significantly smaller than is needed to provide any confidence about the 2ºC target, and there is much yet to be sorted out about getting the money it talks about distributed equitably.

Nor does the accord provide a solution to the fundamental flaw of the negotiating process; that the Kyoto protocol, the only instrument with which the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) can act on emissions, imposes obligations only on the developed countries that have ratified(批准，认可) it. It requires nothing from developing nations, even China, the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. And it requires nothing of America.

The UNFCCC's discussions on "long-term co-operative action", which began in Bali two years ago, are meant to produce a new agreement that does tie in America and the other big developing economies, while maintaining the convention’s commitment to "common but differentiated responsibilities".(难句类型：复杂修饰) When the accord was announced by heads of government at various different press conferences, many believed on the basis of earlier drafts circulating that the accord would be accompanied by a mandate(授权，If a government or other elected body has a mandate to carry out a particular policy or task, they have the authority to carry it out as a result of winning an election or vote.) requiring by this time next year that the ongoing long-term co-operative action talks deliver the text of a legally binding agreement. The leaders then, for the most part, disappeared into the night, leaving their delegations to sort out the details of where the accord fits into the rest of the negotiations(谈判，磋商). The expected mandate for a legally binding treaty vanished(突然消失，If someone or something vanishes, they disappear suddenly or in a way that cannot be explained.) at much the same time, and a concerted effort to keep the accord from being adopted by the conference by a small group of countries kept things going all night, very nearly succeeding a few hours before dawn.

Some procedural legerdemain(手法，戏法，SLEIGHT OF HAND), coupled with the fact that the vast majority of the countries present preferred this accord to no accord, managed to get the text adopted in such a way that it will enter into force. The UNFCCC process, though—quite remarkably fractious(难以对待的) and unproductive over the past two weeks—looks in need of some serious attention. Though there was a fair bit of mess involved, and their achievement was far from monumental, the leaders who turned up in Copenhagen seem to have made a difference by finding their way to a suboptimal deal rather than none at all.

yanghan1167UID: 2722895

好词好句

注释

难词

注：谷歌中国宣布要退出中国搜索市场，源自中国政府对新闻自由的限制，遭到中国反对分子的黑客攻击。Google 2009年在中国搜索引擎市场的收益为1亿美元，仅为其全球收益的1%。而且未能成功抢占Baidu 的市场份额。有评论称，这可能是Google 是作为其商业运作的失败，为其灰溜溜的撤退打的幌子。

Google and China

Flowers for a funeral

Jan 13th 2010 | BEIJING
From Economist.com

Censorship(审查制度) and hacker attacks provide the epitaph for Google in China

“WE’RE in this for the long haul,” wrote a Google executive four years ago when the company launched a self-censored version of its search engine for the China market. Now Google says it might have to pull out of the country because of alleged attacks by hackers in China on its e-mail service and a tightening of China’s restrictions on free speech on the internet. Its change of heart, as the company rightly points out, could have “far-reaching consequences”.

(对比前后的态度，Google 退出中国。)

Google’s “new approach to China”, as the company’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, called it on January 12th on the company’s official blog, will certainly infuriate(激怒) China’s government. The authorities are sensitive to foreign complaints about internet controls in China. In November, during a visit by President Barack Obama, his obliquely worded criticism of Chinese online censorship was itself censored from official reports. If it does close down in China, Google would be the first big-brand foreign company to do so citing freedom of speech in many years.

Mr Drummond’s blog-posting also contained unusually direct finger-pointing by a foreign multinational at China as a source of hacker attacks. It said that in mid-December Google detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on its corporate computer systems “originating from China”. It found that at least 20 other large companies from various industries had also been attacked. A primary goal, of the hacking of Google, it said, appeared to be to gain access to the e-mail of Chinese human-rights activists who use Google’s “Gmail” service. The hackers succeeded in partially penetrating two such accounts. (遭到了中国黑客的攻击，仅仅是其自称“检测到”？？缺乏可信度。)

“Third parties” had also, wrote Mr Drummond, “routinely” gained access to the Gmail accounts of dozens of other human-rights advocates in America, Europe and China itself. Unlike the mid-December attack, these breaches appeared to involve “phishing” scams or “malware” on users’ computers rather than direct attacks on Google’s systems. All this, he said, along with attempts over the past year to impose further limits on free speech on the web, had led Google to “review the feasibility” of its Chinese business.

The company has decided to stop censoring the results of its China-based search engine, Google.cn. Mr Drummond said this might result in having to shut down Google.cn and Google’s offices in China. In the face of much criticism from Western human-rights advocates, Google justified its decision to set up Google.cn in 2006 by pointing out that China often blocked its uncensored engine, Google.com. Better to offer a censored service (with warnings to users that results were filtered), the company argued, than nothing at all. China would certainly not allow an uncensored search engine to be based on its territory.

Google’s decision at the time was presumably driven in part by the lure of China’s rapidly expanding internet market. In part because of intermittent(间歇性的) blocking of Google.com, and the slowness of access to the company’s foreign-based servers, Baidu, a Beijing-based company listed on America’s NASDAQ exchange, dwarfed Google’s share of the search-engine business in China. The launch of Google.cn did little to dent Baidu’s domination.

Nor has Google’s acquiescence in self-censorship of its searches made China any less wary(机警的；考虑周到的) of its other, uncensored, services. Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube, has been blocked since March, because of footage of Chinese police beating Tibetan monks. Its photo-album site, Picasa Web Albums, suffered the same fate soon after. Access to Google’s blog service, Blogger, has long been intermittent. It is currently unavailable in Beijing.

Google’s frustrations are widely shared. In the build-up to the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, China lifted longstanding blocks on several websites, as it tried to present a more open image to foreign visitors. Since then, controls have been stepped up to unprecedented levels. Internet access in the western region of Xinjiang has been all but cut off since ethnic riots erupted there in July. (列举一系列中国政府对新闻审查的“罪证”)

The unrest also prompted a shutdown of foreign social-networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The role of such sites in protests in Iran, after its stolen elections in June, had already alarmed the government. Its fear of dissent around the 60th anniversary in October of the founding of communist China prompted even greater vigilance against sensitive debate online. But there has been no sign of relaxation since then. In recent weeks the authorities have tightened restrictions on the registration of websites under the .cn domain name (only businesses may apply). A crackdown on internet pornography has led to closer scrutiny by internet service providers of non-porn websites.

In December Yeeyan, a site with translations of articles from foreign newspapers including the Guardian and the New York Times, was closed for several days. It was allowed to reopen after putting tighter controls in place on the publication of politically sensitive pieces. Ecocn, a site offering translations of articles from this newspaper, was also briefly shut down as officials trawled for pornography, but resurfaced unscathed. The volunteers who run this informal operation make translations of sensitive articles available only to users they trust.

The anti-porn drive turned up the heat on Google too. Last year Google.cn was among several search engines in China accused by the authorities of providing links to pornographic sites. The state-controlled press gave particular prominence to Google’s alleged transgressions, which the company promised to investigate. The Chinese media have also published frequent criticisms in recent months of Google’s alleged violations of Chinese copyrights in its Google Books venture.

In Silicon Valley, its home, Google’s change of tack in China was widely applauded. But some were asking whether it was “more about business than thwarting evil” to quote TechCrunch, a widely read website. Besides pointing to Google’s failure to eat into Baidu’s market share, cynics noted that, whereas, according to Mr Drummond, Google’s revenues in China are “truly immaterial”, its costs are not. It employs about 700 people in China, some of them royally paid engineers, who may now may have to look for other jobs. Hacker attacks and censorship, critics say, are convenient excuses for something Google wanted to do anyway, without appearing to be retreating commercially. Google strongly rejects this interpretation.

In China, however, the government is clearly fearful that the company’s public stand against censorship will be celebrated by many Chinese internet-users. Chinese news accounts of the company’s decision failed to mention the reason for Google’s actions. Chinese web portals buried the story. Many internet-users in China have become adept at finding ways of circumventing China’s blocks on overseas websites, including the installation of “virtual private network” software. Numerous tributes to Google that rapidly appeared on Chinese internet discussion forums, and flowers laid outside Google’s office in Beijing, showed that the attempts at censorship had failed. Few, however, believe the company’s announcement will dissuade China from keeping on trying.

yanghan1167UID: 2722895

好词好句

注释

难词

注：科技的应用，在农业上。

由一项数据的统计着手，即手机市场的增长促进了人均GDP的增长，促进了农业的增长。手机—>沟通—>价格互动—>竞争

Economics focus

Worth a hill of soyabeans

Jan 7th 2010
From The Economist print edition

How the internet can make agricultural markets in the developing world more efficient

Illustration by Jac Depczyk

WHEN the internet took off in the mid-1990s, it was often claimed that it would improve price transparency, cut out middlemen and make markets more efficient. (因特网的功能)There is plenty of anecdotal(秩事)evidence for this, just as there is for similar claims about mobile phones. Empirical(经验主义的) data on the impact of these new technologies increasingly support the thesis.

Macroeconomic studies suggest that the internet and mobile phones boost growth. The effect is bigger in developing countries than developed ones, due to the paucity(缺乏，缺少) of existing communications infrastructure. The effect also seems to be bigger for the internet than for mobile phones. In a study published in 2009, Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang of the World Bank found that an increase of ten percentage points in mobile-phone adoption increased growth in GDP per person by 0.8 percentage points in a developing country, and by 0.6 percentage points in a developed one. (难句类型：插入语)For dial-up internet access, the figures were 1.1 percentage points and 0.75 percentage points respectively; for broadband internet, 1.4 percentage points and 1.2 percentage points.(逻辑错误？拿手机的增长跟GDP的增长相比，试图说明互联网有助于GDP的提高？)

Critics of such analyses contend that it is difficult to tell whether the adoption of new technologies is promoting growth, or vice versa. (观点)Researchers have responded by examining detailed microeconomic data to show how the spread of technology directly affects the prices of particular goods.

By examining historical data for the price of fish as mobile-phone coverage was extended down the coast of Kerala in southern India between 1997 and 2001, for example, Robert Jensen of Harvard University showed that access to mobile phones made markets much more efficient, eliminating wasted catches and thereby bringing down consumer prices by 4% and increasing fishermen’s profits by 8%. (难句类型：插入语 + 从句)Similarly, Jenny Aker of the University of California at Berkeley analysed grain markets in Niger to see how the phasing-in of mobile-phone coverage between 2001 and 2006 affected prices. She found that it reduced price variations between one market and another by at least 6.4%, and more in remote and hard-to-reach markets. With transaction costs cut, prices for consumers were lower and profits for traders higher. (移动网络的真正功能所在。)

In a forthcoming paper*, Aparajita Goyal of the World Bank has carried out a corresponding study for the internet by examining how the gradual introduction of internet kiosks providing price information affected the market for soyabeans in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Farmers in the region sell their soyabeans to intermediaries in open auctions at government-regulated wholesale(批发) markets called mandis, a system that was set up in order to protect farmers from unscrupulous(肆无忌惮的，不讲道德的) buyers. The intermediaries then sell on the produce to food-processing companies. The problem with this approach for the farmers is that the traders have a far better idea about the prices prevailing in different markets and being offered by processing companies. With only a few traders at each mandi, they can easily collude(串通，合谋，勾结) to ensure that they pay less than the fair market price; they can then boost their profits by selling on the beans at a higher price.

ITC Limited, an Indian company that is one of the largest buyers of soyabeans, felt it was paying over the odds, but was unable to monitor the traders closely. Starting in October 2000 it began to introduce a network of internet kiosks, called e-choupal, in villages in Madhya Pradesh. (Choupal means “village gathering place” in Hindi.) By the end of 2004 a total of 1,704 kiosks had been set up, each of which served its host village and four others within a five-kilometre (three-mile) radius. The kiosks displayed the minimum and maximum price paid for soyabeans at 60 mandis, updated once a day, along with agricultural information and weather forecasts. ITC also posted the price it was prepared to pay for soyabeans of a particular quality bought direct from farmers at 45 “hubs” (mostly in the same towns as mandis). By setting up the kiosks, ITC enabled farmers to check that the prices being offered at their local mandi were in line with prices elsewhere. It also gave them the option to sell direct.

Bean there, done that

(阐述手机、互联网和农业之间的关系)

To evaluate the impact all of this had on prices, Ms Goyal used historical data from mandis and the locations and installation dates of the kiosks. She found that the presence of kiosks in a district was associated with an instant and persistent increase of 1.7% in the average price paid at mandis in that district. As expected, the availability of price information increased the level of competition between the traders, raising prices and reducing the variation in prices between nearby mandis. Farmers’ profits increased by 33%, and the cultivation of soyabeans increased by an average of 19% in districts with kiosks. And by buying some produce direct, ITC reduced its costs, which paid for the kiosks.

All this supports the anecdotal evidence that the internet can indeed make agricultural markets more efficient, just as mobile phones can. But whereas the expansion of mobile-phone access is now rapid and commercially self-sustaining—even very poor farmers can benefit from having a phone, and find the money to buy one—the same is not true of the internet. Its use requires a higher degree of literacy, for one thing, and computers cost more than handsets. The e-choupal approach, in which a company pays for the kiosks, offers one model; another is for entrepreneurs to resell access to the internet from village kiosks, which is how mobile phones first caught on. Ms Qiang’s figures suggest that in the long run, the internet could have an even greater impact on economic growth than mobile phones did. But that will depend upon finding sustainable business models to encourage its spread in the poorest parts of the world.

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The Obama presidency, one year on
Time to get toughJan 14th 2010
From The Economist print edition
Barack Obama’s first year has been good, but not great—and things are going to get a lot harderHOW far away it seems, that bitingly cold, crystal-clear morning when almost 2m people filled the Mall from Capitol Hill to the Washington Monument to hear the new president talk of the victory of hope over fear, of unity of purpose over conflict and discord. Recalling the dark days of the war of independence, he pledged, like George Washington, that in the face of common danger Americans under his leadership would come forth to（出现）meet it. One year on, how well has he done?（提出全文要说明的问题）
Not too badly , by our reckoning (see article). In his first 12 months in office Mr Obama has overseen the stabilising of the economy, is on the point of bringing affordable health care to virtually every American citizen, has ended the era of torture, is robustly prosecuting the war in Afghanistan while gradually disengaging from Iraq; and perhaps more precious than any of these, he has cleared away much of the cloud of hatred and fear through which so much of the world saw the United States during George Bush’s presidency.总结奥巴马上台后的十二月内的政绩
More generally, Mr Obama has run a competent, disciplined yet heterodox administration, with few of the snafus（混乱的） that characterised Bill Clinton’s first year. Just as important have been the roads not taken. Mr Obama has resisted the temptation to give in to the populists in his own party and saddle Wall Street with regulations that would choke it. He has eschewed punitive taxation on the entrepreneurs who animate the economy; and he has even, with the notable exception of a boneheaded tariff 比喻on cheap Chinese tyres, turned a deaf ear to the siren-song of the protectionists.比喻 In short, what’s not to like?奥巴马采取的措施所处的背景
Only one thing, really; but it is a big one, and it is the reason why most of the achievements listed above must be qualified. Mr Obama has too often remained above the fray, too anxious to be liked, and too ready to do the popular thing now and leave the awkward stuff till later. Far from living up to the bracing rhetoric（华丽虚饰的语言） of his inaugural, he has not been tough enough. In this second year of his presidency, to quote his formerly favourite preacher, his chickens will come home to roost.
It could have been so much betterAt home Mr Obama’s dangerous diffidence explains why the health bill that now seems likely to pass, while on balance a good thing rather than a bad one, is still a big disappointment. Yes, it makes provision for tens of millions of Americans who lack insurance, and many more who fear being cast into that boat should they lose their jobs. But it is expensive, and it takes only hesitant steps in the crucial direction of cost control. Constantly rising health-care charges threaten the entire federal government with bankruptcy. So it is tragic that the most comprehensive health reform in generations does so little to tackle this problem. Yet that, alas, is exactly what you would expect to happen if a president leaves the details to be written by Democrats in Congress, barely reaches out to the admittedly obstructive Republicans on issues such as tort reform, and remains magisterially aloof from much of the process.
Mr Obama’s failure to take on the spend-alls in his own party will cost him politically. His ratings are falling, and in November’s mid-term elections he looks likely, at the very least, to lose his supermajority in the Senate. Some critics argue that instead of focusing on health, he should have concentrated on jobs (the unemployment rate is two points higher than the 8% peak he predicted). That seems unfair: health care was the core part of his campaign and something America had to tackle. What has spooked the voters is the sheer cost of the scheme—and the idea that Mr Obama is unable to tackle the deficit.
They are right to be worried. The national debt is set to reach a market-rattling $12 trillion by 2015, more than double what it was when Mr Obama took over. It made sense for the government to pump money into the economy in 2009; but this year Mr Obama must show how he intends to deal with the debt. So far, he has not offered even an outline of how he intends to do so. Because he failed to be harsh with congressional Democrats (whose popularity ratings, incidentally, were a fraction of his), he will now have to do more with Republicans.
Not by carrots aloneThis same reluctance to get tough, or even mildly sweaty, is felt in America’s dealings with other nations. His long-drawn-out decision on Afghanistan mirrored that on health care. Yes, by sending more troops, he did more-or-less the right thing eventually. But it seemed as if the number of troops was determined by opinion polls, rather than the mission in hand. And the protracted dithering was damaging to morale.
Mr Obama has been on a goodwill tour of the world, proffering the open hand rather than the fist. Yet he has nothing much to show for it, other than a series of slaps in the face. Israel dismissed his settlement freeze. Going to China with human rights far down the agenda and the Dalai Lama royally snubbed seems to have done Mr Obama no good at all, judging by the fiasco that was the climate-change summit in Copenhagen. Co-operation between the “G2” was supposed to help fulfil Mr Obama’s grandiose promise that his presidency would be “the moment when…our planet began to heal”. Hitting the reset button on relations with Russia has produced nothing more than a click. Offering engagement with the Iranians was worth a go, but has produced nothing yet. This generosity to America’s enemies also sits ill with a more brusque approach to staunch allies, such as Japan (see article), Britain and several east European countries.
Some worry that Mr Obama will always be a community organiser, never a commander-in-chief. In fact he did not get to the White House by merely being nice, but by being bold and often confronting awkward subjects head-on. It is not too late for him to toughen （变坚韧）up. Firm talk about the budget in his state-of-the-union message would help. Now that the administration’s priority has shifted from engaging Iran to imposing sanctions, Mr Obama may be able to apply the stick and not the carrot. He is due to see the Dalai Lama. He might even, if he can relearn the virtues of bipartisan dealmaking（两党交易）, bully a climate-change bill through Congress. But this will all be a lot more difficult than anything he did in his first year.
China's economy

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Not just another fakeJan 14th 2010 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
The similarities between China today and Japan in the 1980s may look ominous. But China’s boom is unlikely to give way to prolonged slumpCHINA rebounded more swiftly from the global downturn than any other big economy, thanks largely to its enormous monetary and fiscal stimulus.（中国能从全球经济低迷期迅速走出是因为
巨大的金钱和国库的刺激）In the year to the fourth quarter of 2009, its real GDP is estimated to have grown by more than 10%. But many sceptics claim that its recovery is built on wobbly foundations. （不稳定基础）Indeed, they say, China now looks ominously like Japan in the late 1980s before its bubble burst and two lost decades of sluggish growth began. Worse, were China to falter now, while the recovery in rich countries is still fragile, it would be a severe blow not just at home but to the whole of the world economy.
On the face of it, the similarities between China today and bubble-era Japan are worrying. Extraordinarily high saving and an undervalued exchange rate have fuelled rapid export-led growth and the world’s biggest current-account surplus. Chronic overinvestment has, it is argued, resulted in vast excess capacity and falling returns on capital. A flood of bank lending threatens a future surge in bad loans, while markets for shares and property look dangerously frothy.（综述中国面临的与1983年日本相似的问题）
Just as in the late 1980s, when Japan’s economy was tipped to overtake America’s,（当日本
打算超过美国的时候）China’s strong rebound has led many to proclaim that it will become number one sooner than expected. In contrast, a recent flurry of bearish reports warn that China’s economy could soon implode. James Chanos, a hedge-fund investor (and one of the first analysts to spot that Enron’s profits were pure fiction), says that China is “Dubai times 1,000, or worse”. Another hedge fund,
（套头资金, 投入到将来日用品为减少冒险和损失的资金）

Pivot Capital Management, argues that the chances of a hard landing, with a slump in capital spending and a banking crisis, are increasing.
Scary stuff. However, a close inspection of pessimists’ three main concerns—overvalued asset prices, overinvestment and excessive bank lending—suggests that China’s economy is more robust than they think. Start with asset markets. Chinese share prices are nowhere near as giddy as Japan’s were in the late 1980s. In 1989 Tokyo’s stockmarket had a price-earnings ratio of almost 70; today’s figure for Shanghai A shares is 28, well below its long-run average of 37. Granted, prices jumped by 80% last year, but markets in other large emerging economies went up even more: Brazil, India and Russia rose by an average of 120% in dollar terms. And Chinese profits have rebounded faster than those elsewhere. In the three months to November, industrial profits were 70% higher than a year before.
China’s property market is certainly hot. Prices of new apartments in Beijing and Shanghai leapt by 50-60% during 2009. Some lavish projects have much in common with those in Dubai—notably “The World”, a luxury development in Tianjin, 120km (75 miles) from Beijing, in which homes will be arranged as a map of the world, along with the world’s biggest indoor ski slope and a seven-star hotel
Average home prices nationally, however, cannot yet be called a bubble. On January 14th the National Development and Reform Commission reported that average prices in 70 cities had climbed by 8% in the year to December, the fastest pace for 18 months; other measures suggest a bigger rise. But this followed a fall in prices in 2008. By most measures average prices have fallen relative to incomes in the past decade (see chart 1).
The most cited evidence of a bubble—and hence of impending collapse—is the ratio of average home prices to average annual household incomes. （收入与房价的比率）This is almost ten in China; in most developed economies it is only four or five. However, Tao Wang, an economist at UBS, argues that this rich-world yardstick is misleading. Chinese homebuyers do not have average incomes but come largely from the richest 20-30% of the urban population. Using this group’s average income, the ratio falls to rich-world levels. In Japan the price-income ratio hit 18 in 1990, obliging some buyers to take out 100-year mortgages.
Furthermore, Chinese homes carry much less debt than Japanese properties did 20 years ago. One-quarter of Chinese buyers pay cash. The average mortgage covers only about half of a property’s value. Owner-occupiers must make a minimum deposit of 20%, investors one of 40%. Chinese households’ total debt stands at only 35% of their disposable income, compared with 130% in Japan in 1990.
China’s property boom is being financed mainly by saving, not bank lending. According to Yan Wang, an economist at BCA Research, a Canadian firm, only about one-fifth of the cost of new construction (commercial and residential) is financed by bank lending. Loans to homebuyers and property developers account for only 17% of Chinese banks’ total, against 56% for American banks. A bubble pumped up by saving is much less dangerous than one fuelled by credit. When the market begins to crack, highly leveraged speculators are forced to sell, pushing prices lower, which causes more borrowers to default.
Even if China does not (yet) have a credit-fuelled housing bubble, the fact that property prices in Beijing and Shanghai are beyond the reach of most ordinary people is a serious social problem. The government has not kept its promise to build more low-cost housing, and it is clearly worried about rising prices. In an attempt to thwart （反对
阻碍）speculators, it has reimposed a sales tax on homes sold within five years, has tightened the stricter rules on mortgages for investment properties and is trying to crack down on illegal flows of foreign capital into the property market. The government does not want to come down too hard, as it did in 2007 by cutting off credit, because it needs a lively property sector to support economic recovery. But if it does not tighten policy soon, a full-blown bubble is likely to inflate.
The world’s capital开始介绍中国与日本相似的第二个地方--------过度投资China’s second apparent point of similarity to Japan is overinvestment. Total fixed investment jumped to an estimated 47% of GDP last year—ten points more than in Japan at its peak. Chinese investment is certainly high: in most developed countries it accounts for around 20% of GDP. But you cannot infer waste from a high investment ratio alone. It is hard to argue that China has added too much to its capital stock when, per person, it has only about 5% of what America or Japan has. China does have excess capacity in some industries, such as steel and cement. But across the economy as a whole, concerns about overinvestment tend to be exaggerated.
Pivot Capital Management points to China’s incremental capital-output ratio (ICOR), which is calculated as annual investment divided by the annual increase in GDP, as evidence of the collapsing efficiency of investment. Pivot argues that in 2009 China’s ICOR was more than double its average in the 1980s and 1990s, implying that it required much more investment to generate an additional unit of output. However, it is misleading to look at the ICOR for a single year. With slower GDP growth, because of a collapse in global demand, the ICOR rose sharply everywhere. The return to investment in terms of growth over a longer period is more informative. Measuring this way, BCA Research finds no significant increase in China’s ICOR over the past three decades.
Mr Chanos has drawn parallels between China and the huge misallocation of resources in the Soviet Union, arguing that China is heading the same way. The best measure of efficiency is total factor productivity (TFP),全要素生产率 the increase in output not directly accounted for by extra inputs of capital and labour. If China were as wasteful as Mr Chanos contends, its TFP growth would be negative, as the Soviet Union’s was. Yet over the past two decades China has enjoyed the fastest growth in TFP of any country in the world.
Even in industries which clearly do have excess capacity, China’s critics overstate their case. A recent report by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China estimates that in early 2009 the steel industry was operating at only 72% of capacity. That was at the depth of the global downturn. Demand has picked up strongly since then. The report claims that the industry’s overcapacity is illustrated by “a startling figure”: in 2008, China’s output of steel per person was higher than America’s. So what? At China’s stage of industrialisation it should use a lot of steel. A more relevant yardstick is the America of the early 20th century. According to Ms Wang of UBS, China’s steel capacity of almost 0.5kg (about 1lb) per person is slightly lower than America’s output in 1920 (0.6kg) and far below Japan’s peak of 1.1kg in 1973.
Many commentators complain that China’s capital-spending spree last year has merely exacerbated its industrial overcapacity. However, the boom was driven mainly by infrastructure investment, whereas investment in manufacturing slowed quite sharply (see chart 2). Given the scale of the spending, some money is sure to have been wasted, but by and large（大体上）, investment in roads, railways and the electricity grid will help China sustain its growth in the years ahead.
Some analysts disagree. Pivot, for instance, argues that China’s infrastructure has already reached an advanced level. It has six of the world’s ten longest bridges and it boasts the world’s fastest train; there is little room for further productive investment. That is nonsense. A country in which two-fifths of villages lack a paved road to the nearest market town still has plenty of scope for building roads. The same goes for railways. Again, a comparison of China today with the America of a century ago is pertinent. China has roughly the same land area as America, but 13 times more people than the United States did then. Yet on current plans it will have only 110,000km of railway by 2012, compared with more than 400,000km in America in 1916. Unlike Japan, which built “bridges to nowhere” to prop up its economy, China needs better infrastructure.
It is true that in the short term, the revenue from some infrastructure projects may not be enough to service debts, so the government will have to cover losses. But in the long term such projects should lift productivity across the economy. During Britain’s railway mania in the mid-19th century, few railways made a decent financial return, but they brought huge long-term economic benefits.
The biggest cause for worry about China is the third point of similarity to Japan: the recent tidal wave of bank lending. Total credit jumped by more than 30% last year. Even assuming that this slows to less than 20% this year, as the government has hinted, total credit outstanding could hit 135% of GDP by December. The authorities are perturbed. This week they increased banks’ reserve requirement ratio by half a percentage point. They have also raised the yield on central-bank bills.
However, too many commentators talk as if Chinese banks have been on a lending binge for years. Instead, the spurt in 2009, which was engineered by the government to revive the economy, followed several years in which credit grew more slowly than GDP (see chart 3). Michael Buchanan, of Goldman Sachs, estimates that since 2004 China’s excess credit (the gap between the growth rates of credit and nominal GDP) has risen by less than in most developed economies.
Even so, recent lending has been excessive; combined with overcapacity in some industries, it is likely to cause an increase in banks’ non-performing loans. Ms Wang calculates that if 20% of all new lending last year and another 10% of this year’s lending turned bad, this would create new bad loans equivalent to 5.5% of GDP by 2012, on top of 2% now. That is far from trivial, but well below the 40% of GDP that bad loans amounted to in the late 1990s.
Much of the past year’s bank lending should really be viewed as a form of fiscal stimulus. Infrastructure projects that have little hope of repaying loans will end up back on the government’s books. It would have been much better if such projects had been financed more transparently through the government’s budget, but the important question is whether the state can afford to cover the losses.
Official gross government debt is less than 20% of GDP, but China bears argue that this is an understatement, because it excludes local-government debt and the bonds issued by the asset-management companies that took over banks’ previous non-performing loans. Total government debt could be 50% of GDP. But that is well below the average ratio in rich countries, of around 90%. Moreover, the Chinese government owns lots of assets, for example shares of listed companies which are worth 35% of GDP.
Ying and yangEven if, as argued above, concerns about a financial crash in China are premature, the risks of a dangerous bubble and excessive investment will clearly increase if credit continues to expand at its recent pace. The stitching（痕迹） on the Chinese economy could fray and burst. Would that imply the end of China’s era of rapid growth?
Predictions that China is heading for a prolonged Japanese-style slump ignore big differences between China today and Japan in the late 1980s. Japan was already a mature, developed economy, with a GDP per person close to that of America. China is still a poor, developing country, whose GDP per person is less than one-tenth of America’s or Japan’s. It has ample room to play catch-up with rich economies by adding to its capital stock, importing foreign technology and boosting productivity by shifting labour from farms to factories. This would make

Chart 4 examines the relationship between growth rates and income per head for six Asian economies. Each plot shows a country’s growth rate and GDP per person relative to America’s for successive ten-year periods, starting when their rapid growth took off. It illustrates how growth rates slow as economies catch up with America, the technological leader. The fact that China’s GDP per head is much lower than Japan’s in the 1980s suggests that its growth potential over the next decade is much higher. Even though China’s labour force will start shrinking after 2016, rapid productivity gains mean that its trend GDP growth rate is still around 8%, down from 10% in the past decade.
Japan’s stockmarket and land-price bubbles in the early 1960s offer a better (and more cheerful) analogy to China than the 1980s bubble era does. Japan’s economy was poorer then, although relative to America its GDP per person was more than double China’s today, and its trend rate of growth was around 9%. According to HSBC, after the bubble burst in 1962-65, Japan’s annual growth rate dipped to just under 6%, but then quickly rebounded to 10% for much of the next decade.
South Korea and Taiwan, which experienced big stockmarket bubbles in the 1980s, are also worth examining. In the five years to 1990, Taipei’s stockmarket surged by 1,600% (in dollar terms) and Seoul’s by 700%, easily beating Tokyo’s 450% gain in the same period. After share prices slumped, annual growth in both South Korea and Taiwan slowed to around 6%, but soon regained its previous pace of 7-8%.
The higher a country’s potential growth rate, the easier it is for the economy to recover after a bubble bursts, so long as its fiscal and external finances are in reasonable shape. Rapid growth in nominal GDP means that asset prices do not need to fall so far to regain fair value, bad loans are easier to work off and excess capacity can be more quickly absorbed by rising demand. The experience of Japan in the 1960s suggests that if China’s bubble bursts, it will hurt growth temporarily but not lead to prolonged stagnation.
However, it is Japan’s experience after the 1980s that most influences the thinking of policymakers in Beijing. Many blame Japan’s deflation and its lost decades of growth on the fact that its government caved in to American demands for an appreciation of the yen. In 1985 central banks in the big rich economies agreed, in the Plaza Accord, to intervene to push down the dollar. By 1988 the yen had risen by more than 100% against the greenback. One reason why policymakers in Beijing have resisted a big rise in the yuan is that they fear it could send their economy, like Japan’s, into a deflationary slump.
Yet Japan’s real mistake was not that it allowed the yen to rise, but that it had previously resisted an appreciation for too long, so that when it did happen the yen soared. A second error was that Japan tried to offset the adverse economic effects of a strong yen with over-lax monetary policy. If policy had been tighter, the financial bubble would have been smaller and its aftermath less painful.
This offers two important lessons to China. First, it is better to let the exchange rate rise sooner and more gradually than to risk a much sharper appreciation later. Second, monetary policy should not be too slack. Raising reserve requirements is a small step in the right direction. Despite the bears’ growling, China’s economic collapse is neither imminent nor inevitable. But if it continues to draw the wrong lesson from the tale of Japan, then one day its economy may look just as tatty.

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注：是什么能让波音公司在1935年失去美国下一代轰炸机的机会？又是什么能让美国10%的医院都愿意采用，并且大大降低了手术的伤亡率？
很简单：”The checklist manifesto”！小小的工具，最大限度地降低错误的发生。

Cutting down on errors

Ticking off

Jan 14th 2010
From The Economist print edition

Illustration by Daniel Pudles

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

ON OCTOBER 30th 1935, the US Army Air Corps held a competition to see which company would build the country’s next-generation of long-range bombers. The result looked preordained(注定的). Boeing’s “flying fortress” could fly farther and faster than any previous bomber, and carry more bombs. Martin and Douglas’s offering was a pup by comparison. But the fortress crashed shortly after take-off. Martin and Douglas won by default and Boeing almost went bankrupt. (1935年，波音和马丁、道格拉斯公司为美国下一代轰炸机的竞争。不错的例子！)

“The Checklist Manifesto(声明)” is both a meditation(冥想，陈思) on the growing complexity of the world and a how-to book on coping with that complexity. Atul Gawande argues that humanity is in danger of sinking under the weight of knowledge, as scientists accumulate(积累) ever more information and the professions splinter(碎片，微小的东西) into
minute(分钟，记录) varying specialities. (难句类型：插入语，sink …into…) (Atul Gawande 对知识膨胀的看法。科学家们积累了过多的信息和职业的零碎的知识，以至于人类可能冒着被这些不同专业的信息淹没的危险。) The reason why the flying fortress crashed was that, in the words of a contemporary newspaper, it was “too much airplane for one man to fly”. Confronted with four engines rather than two, the pilot forgot to release a vital locking mechanism.

Mr Gawande’s solution to this problem is beguilingly(迷人的，有吸引力的) simple: the checklist. Checklists are what the author describes as a “cognitive net”, a mechanism that can help prevent experienced people from making errors due to flawed memory and attention, and ensure that teams work together. All sorts of people use them. Builders use them to make sure that the bits of complicated structures are assembled on time. Chefs use them to make sure that your lobster is done to your taste. The aircraft industry, once plagued(困扰，折磨) by accidents, uses them particularly well—not only to make sure that pilots take off safely but also to learn from disasters. Whenever planes crash safety experts quickly incorporate the lessons that have been learned into the pilots’ checklists.

Mr Gawande, who is a surgeon by profession as well as a contributor to the New Yorker, where he has written extensively about health care, thinks that his own profession is ripe for a checklist revolution. Medicine is advancing at an astonishing pace. Hundreds of journals churn out learned articles on cutting-edge research. Surgeons perform 200m major operations a year, a growing number of them in the developing world. But doctors are plagued by avoidable failure and the medical profession as a whole has no reliable mechanism for learning from its mistakes.

Mr Gawande is a persuasive champion of his cause. He helped pioneer the use of checklists in American hospitals. By the end of 2009 10% of hospitals in America and a further 2,000 elsewhere had introduced checklists, reducing avoidable deaths as a result, partly thanks to his efforts. He is also an eloquent(雄辩的，有口才的，有说服力的) writer. That said, this book becomes a bit wearying after a while. The examples blur into each other and the conclusion is always the same—checklists are where it’s at. “The Checklist Manifesto” started out as a New Yorker article. A magazine article is how it should have remained. Even as a short book it is bloated and repetitive.

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Art.view

Eastern eyes

Jan 13th 2010
From Economist.com

The rarefied world of Chinese export porcelain

THE West’s trade with China has been at the forefront of globalisation since the days of Marco Polo. Pieces of eight, minted out of South American silver, crossed the Pacific and were used up and down the coast of Asia.
Indeed, interruptions in this silver trade ultimately helped bring on the collapse of the Ming dynasty in China in the early 17th century. Later exchanges of tea, spices and then opium(鸦片) served to enrich Western merchants, particularly from Britain.

By the 18th century, British, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish and American trade with China was so well established that the new wealthy merchant class it created had taken to emulating the trappings of the landed gentry, designing coats of arms and commissioning entire porcelain services on which to flaunt them. No marriage or promotion was complete without a specially made plate to commemorate it.(18世纪，中国精美的瓷器在欧洲的受欢迎程度。)

This upward social mobility gave rise to a new phenomenon, the manufacture of Chinese porcelain and paintings for the export market.

Two centuries on, Chinese export porcelain attracts a quite different collector from those seeking Chinese porcelain proper. Whereas all Chinese treasures—whether jade, porcelain, lacquer, bamboo or rhinoceros horn—have an aesthetic appeal that prizes rarity, delicacy and symbolism above all, export porcelain speaks to the academic collector or, less politely, the “anorak” or “train-spotter”. (难句类型：插入语，合理化原则)The form is based on Meissen or other soft-paste porcelain, but it is not really European. Nor is it particularly Chinese, although it was made there.

Instead, it is a bit of a mish-mash. It appeals to buyers who seek to complete a particular series defined by decorative patterns, special coats of arms or links between different families.

Elinor Gordon, who died last July at the age of 91, was the consummate(圆满的，完美的) American dealer/collector of Chinese export porcelain. She bought widely in Britain, Holland and Portugal, and for more than half a century sold her wares from her Pennsylvania home and at antiques fairs up and down the East Coast. Her private collection, which will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York on January 23rd, shows just how much American-related export porcelain she managed to gather together.

Many of the pieces feature complicated combinations of different coats of arms. Several pieces stand out, such as a grandly decorated orange oval platter of modest size, which boasts an American eagle (pictured above). Estimated at $12,000-18,000, it belongs to a pattern known as “Fitzhugh”, of which so few pieces were made it is suspected that they all were once part of the same service.
Several other pieces are connected to a single ship, the Empress of China, which in 1784 became the first American vessel to trade directly with China. The Society of the Cincinnati was founded in May 1783 for commissioned officers who had served in the continental army or navy during the American revolution. The founder’s aide-de-camp, Major Samuel Shaw, was responsible for ordering all the services decorated with the society’s badge. He first travelled to China on Empress of China, and spent more than ten years working the same route, dying at sea on a return trip in 1794. A plate from one of the earliest Cincinnati services, which is believed to have belonged to George Washington, is estimated to fetch $30,000-50,000, and another smaller, later Cincinnati plate $12,000-18,000.
John Morgan was a carpenter on the same first outward journey on Empress of China, and died on the return. The ship’s log notes that his effects included two punch bowls. Ms Gordon owned several Morgan pieces, including a small tureen estimated here at $3,000-5,000 and a larger version, both with lids, estimated at $7,000-9,000.

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Communist cars

Junk box

Jan 14th 2010
From The Economist print edition

The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History.

COMPETITION for the title of the worst car in the world is stiff. Aficionados of communist-era automobile disasters remember with fondness the East German Trabant, whose sputtering two-stroke engine and resinated papier-mâché bodywork barely deserved the devotion lavished on it by that country’s frustrated car-lovers. But even the Trabant was a luxury sedan compared with the Soviet Zaporozhets, a parody(拙劣的模仿) of a proper car notable for its gnat-sized and fire-prone engine.

These vehicles, along with their unmourned kin—Polonezes, Dacias, Wartburgs and Volgas—dominated their home markets in the planned economies of the Soviet empire. They represented the pinnacle(尖峰，顶峰) of consumer aspirations, attainable for humble private citizens only after many years on a waiting list.

But few of them came to the attention of Western car-buyers. The big exception was the product of the Zastava factory in the former socialist Yugoslavia. The Yugo (named after a south-easterly wind, not the country) became briefly, in the 1980s, a mass-market car in America, selling more than 100,000.

Jason Vuic provides a thoroughly(彻底的) researched and illuminating account of what turned into a spectacular disaster. The idea of selling the Yugo in North America, as pushed by an energetic but flaky American entrepreneur, Malcolm Bricklin, sounded compelling. The Yugo was admittedly neither stylish nor powerful, but it was indubitably cheap, selling for under $4,000, far less than any other new car on the market. It was, in essence, an obsolescent Fiat, based on technology acquired from the Italian car giant in a trade deal a decade earlier. Boosting America’s trade with Yugoslavia—in those days communist-run but not in the Kremlin camp—was politically popular in both countries. The idea of a reliable, no-frills car from an exotic source attracted millions of dollars’ worth of media coverage.
The only flaw was the car itself. Even after strenuous efforts to raise quality control at the Zastava plant, it was still hopelessly unreliable, and obsolete by the standards of the modern auto industry. The verdict of outside commentators was damning and unanimous. For the price of a new Yugo, consumers would find a second-hand car (of almost any kind) better value. The Yugo became a butt of jokes, rather as the Czechoslovak Skoda and Soviet Lada did in Europe. It was even described, unfairly, as dangerous. It wasn’t. But sales plummeted, and Mr Bricklin, not for the first time in his chequered business career, moved on swiftly from a collapsing company.
Mr Vuic spends rather too long on the business intricacies of the American end of the story. Tantalisingly underexplored is the clash between the low productivity, collectivist and decisionless culture of the Zastava plant and the go-getting American partners, determined, however quixotically, to make the Yugo into a world-beater. In fairness, he might also have mentioned that the quest was not inherently ridiculous. Other ex-communist countries, from worse starting places than Yugoslavia, have made a huge success of their auto industries, producing inexpensive and reliable cars for export customers. The real problem with the Yugo was that it failed in the world’s most demanding car market. Other east European cars of that era never even got far enough to try.

nvligreUID: 2689384

“WHAT is truth?” That was Pontius Pilate’s answer to Jesus’s assertion that “Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.” It sounds suspiciously like the modern argument over climate change.
A majority of the world’s climate scientists have convinced themselves, and also a lot of laymen, some of whom have political power, that the Earth’s climate is changing; that the change, from humanity’s point of view, is for the worse; and that the cause is human activity, in the form of excessive emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
A minority, though, are sceptical.Some think that recent, well-grounded data suggesting the Earth’s average temperature is rising are explained by natural variations in solar radiation, and that this trend may be coming to an end. Others argue that longer-term evidence that modern temperatures are higher than they have been for hundreds or thousands of years is actually too flaky to be meaningful.（提出气温上升的其它非人类的原因-----一方面……另一方面）
Such disagreements are commonplace in science. They are eventually settled by the collection of more data and the invention of more refined (or entirely new) theories.（可以用在argument） Arguments may persist for decades; academics may—and often do—sling insults at each other; but it does not matter a great deal because the stakes are normally rather low.
The stakes in the global-warming debate, however, could scarcely be higher. Scientific evidence /that climate change is under way, is man-made, and is likely to continue happening/ forms the foundation for an edifice of policy which is intended to transform the world’s carbon-intensive economy into one which no longer spews greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A lot of money, and many reputations—both academic and political—are involved.
Sceptics claim that this burden of responsibility is crushing the spirit of scientific inquiry. Scientists, they maintain, are under pressure to bolster the majority view. The recent publication of embarrassing e-mails from the University of East Anglia, an important centre of climate science (see article), revealing doubts about data and a determination not to air such concerns publicly, has strengthened these suspicions.

There is no doubt that politics and science make uncomfortable bedfellows. Politicians sell certainty. Science lives off doubt. The creation /of the Inter governmental Panel on Climate Change to establish a consensus on the science /was an excellent idea for policymakers, who needed a strong scientific foundation for their deliberations, but it sits uncomfortably with a discipline that advances by disproving accepted theories and overturning orthodoxies.

Some would argue that, in matters of great public import, scientific dissent should be silenced. It can, it is true, do harm. When AIDS first reared its ugly head, no one knew what caused it. Gradually, the virus responsible was isolated, identified and then attacked successfully with drugs designed specifically to inhibit its reproduction. A few scientists, though, refused to accept the evidence, and some politicians used their arguments to justify inaction. Since one of those politicians was Thabo Mbeki, then president of South Africa, hundreds of thousands who might have been saved by an anti-AIDS policy grounded in scientific reality died as a result of his policies.
Yet the damage in that case was done by the politicians. A leader who is determined to pursue a wrong-headed course will always find some scientist to support him. A world in which that were not true would be one in which a dangerously narrow consensus had taken hold.
This newspaper believes that global warming is a serious threat, and that the world needs to take steps to try to avert it. That is the job of the politicians. But we do not believe that climate change is a certainty. There are no certainties in science. Prevailing theories must be constantly tested against evidence, and refined, and more evidence collected, and the theories tested again. That is the job of the scientists. When they stop questioning orthodoxy, mankind will have given up the search for truth. The sceptics should not be silenced.

rafaelUID: 2702393

After Haiti's earthquake
Growing deadlierJan 18th 2010 | MEXICO CITY
From Economist.com
The death toll mounts in Haiti, as aid and rescuers fail to reach earthquake victims
AFP
SIX days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, the extentof the damage and suffering is becoming clearer. The misery exceedseven the most pessimistic expectations. There are no reliable estimatesof the death toll, but according to Jean-Max Bellerive, the primeminister, the government disposed of 20,000 bodies in the first fourdays after the tremor, most of them dumped into mass graves without anyattempt to determine their identities. Despite these efforts,Port-au-Prince, the capital, is still littered with corpses andsurvivors have resorted to placing toothpaste or orange peel undertheir noses to fight the stench. On Sunday January 17th, Mr Belleriveguessed that 70,000 people had died in Port-au-Prince and Leogane (thecity closest to the epicentre), before counting those killed in thecountry’s heavily affected south-western peninsula.
Both Haiti’s endemic misery and the obstacles for rescue workers arein the spotlight. Earthquakes of similar magnitude have struck biggercities in richer countries and claimed just a few dozen lives. But theabsence of building codes in Haiti, as well as a severe wood shortagebecause of mass deforestation, mean that many structures in urban areasare made of thin, low-quality concrete. Such concrete is both prone tocollapse and dangerous for those who are hit by it or buried beneathit. Ironically, some of the country’s poorest benefited from living intin-roofed shacks, which were much easier to escape from.
      Yet the majority of victims did not perish during the 35-secondtremor. Ted Constan of Partners in Health, an American NGO, says thatsome 200,000 people were probably injured or trapped but not killed bythe quake. He estimates that an additional 25,000 of them have died oneach day that has passed since the tremor, as a result of treatableailments（小病） such as bleeding, dehydration, suffocation and infection.
Haiti has not suffered from a lack of donations. America and theWorld Bank have pledged $100m each, and most countries in the Americasand Europe have sent personnel, food or equipment. There are 27different rescue teams with some 1,500 workers on the ground. Americais also dispatching 10,000 soldiers to restore order and distributesupplies.
But logistical（後勤的） obstacles posed by Haiti’s crushed infrastructure andmostly absent government have frustrated these efforts. The capital'sairport has just one working runway and no functioning control tower,so many flights are delayed or diverted. The port's main pier crumbledinto the sea and its cranes were destroyed, preventing shipments byboat. Roads remain blocked by rubble. Both machinery and transport havebeen hampered by fuel shortages. A new “humanitarian corridor” is beingcleared from a larger airport in the neighbouring Dominican Republic,which should help with deliveries, but for most people trapped by thequake it is quickly becoming too late.
The security situation has also complicated relief efforts. Althoughmost of Port-au-Prince is a ghostly calm, pockets of violence haveforced some rescue workers to retreat. Young thugs wielding machetes orsharp pieces of wood prowl the streets, staking their claims to goodslooted from shops and warehouses. A number of accused thieves have beenkilled, either by mobs or police. Some foreign officials have calledfor the government to issue an emergency decree and establish a curfew,but such a policy would be unenforceable. Besides, many people havenowhere indoors to go to.
For now, Haiti is at least benefiting from the internationalattention. Both Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, andBan Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, visited over the weekend.America has granted undocumented Haitian immigrants an 18-monthreprieve and France has temporarily stopped deporting them. Senegal haseven offered free land to Haitians who want to move there.
But such attention will have to be sustained for years if thecountry is to recover from the worst catastrophe in its tragic history.The state and its infrastructure will have to be rebuilt, which willcost much more than even the hundreds of millions of dollars pledged asaid so far. The reconstruction bill after Hurricane Mitch, which causedfar less damage when it struck Central America in 1998, reached $6.3billion. Shortly after the Haitian quake, Barack Obama promisedHaitians that “you will not be forsaken, you will not be forgotten”.Given Haiti’s extreme poverty and its lack of strategic importance, theAmerican president's words will be truly tested in the months and yearsahead.

rafaelUID: 2702393

Northern Ireland
All still to play forJan 14th 2010 | BELFAST
From The Economist print edition
The shenanigans could not have been more lurid, but the peace process may nonetheless be edging forward
AP
AFTER a deluge of destabilising scandal in Belfast politics, thepossibility has suddenly emerged of an advance which could help torescue Northern Ireland’s battered peace process. Power-sharing had hitserious difficulties even before the wayward wife of its firstminister, Peter Robinson, detonated the biggest scandal ever to comeout of Belfast. Disagreement over the vexed issue of how and how fastto devolve responsibility for justice and policing from London toStormont was proving an increasing irritant in relations betweenunionists and republicans.
As the matter festered bad-temperedly, revelations broke concerningIris Robinson, who was not only the wife of Northern Ireland’s firstminister but, as a Democratic Unionist member of the Belfast Assembly,Westminster MP and local councillor, a significant political figure inher own right. The lurid tale encompassed finances, politics and sex,instantly putting Northern Ireland back on the international map: MrsRobinson has been in the newspapers as far away as Australia and Japan.
This fusion of the political and the salacious may have fascinatedthe world, but it also shook up the peace process to the point wheremany thought it might collapse. As The Economist went topress, that remained a possibility: for one thing, no one can be surethat more damaging disclosures do not lurk in the pipeline. But theaffair has also triggered a round of intensive last-ditch negotiationson justice and policing. On January 14th Brian Cowen, the primeminister of Ireland, met his British counterpart, Gordon Brown, todiscuss the matter, perhaps scenting a deal in the air. There is atleast a chance that what might have been a ruinous setback will insteadbe transformed into an opportunity.
       The Robinson scandal was not the first to hit the headlines. Inrecent weeks Sinn Fein’s president, Gerry Adams, the most importantfigure in republicanism, became embroiled in a child-abuse scandal（中國官員很少有這種類型的新聞耶，一般都是情色啦，行賄啦）involving one of his brothers. It emerged in late December that LiamAdams had abused his young daughter for years and that, although thefamily say they informed the authorities, he went on to work in youthorganisations and remained active in Sinn Fein. Gerry Adams is accusedof not taking sufficiently firm action against his brother, and ofmisleading assertions that Sinn Fein had kicked him out.
These revelations have raised unanswered questions, but they do notappear to have inflicted major damage on Sinn Fein. While the bodypolitic was still absorbing them, however, the Iris Robinson affairerupted on an astonished public.
It was revealed on January 6th that, in a scenario eerilyreminiscent of the 1960s movie “The Graduate”, the 59-year-old wife ofthe first minister had seduced the 19-year-old son of a late friend acouple of years ago. Suddenly Belfast had its own Mrs Robinson, whoshared not just the name but also the inclinations of the Hollywoodcharacter.
But there was more. As a local councillor she had helped theteenager, Kirk McCambley, win a contract to run a café. His bid for thebusiness was given credibility by the £50,000 ($95,000) that she raisedfor him, soliciting cheques from two local building developers.According to Mr McCambley, she insisted on keeping £5,000 for herself.In council she voted for his bid without revealing her role in thematter, as regulations require.
When Mr Robinson learned of her financial dealings he insisted themoney be returned. Most of it was sent back, though some remainsmissing. The accusation against him is that he did not inform anypolitical authorities about his wife’s failure to declare an interest.
Mr Robinson discovered the affair only on March 1st 2009, he said;that night his wife attempted to commit suicide. Mrs Robinson has nowdisappeared from public view . Adeclaration that she was to leave all her public positions was followedby an announcement that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) hadexpelled her.
The scandal involving the famously buttoned-up first minister’s wifeblew up from nowhere. Mrs Robinson has been a vociferous champion ofChristian family values. But the image of the “Swish Family Robinson”had already been tarnished in the Westminster expenses affair last yearwhen it emerged that the dynasty—the Robinsons employ fourrelatives—received over £500,000 a year from the public purse. Inaddition Mrs Robinson had attempted to claim for such extravagant itemsas a £300 Mont Blanc pen.
But all this is far more incendiary. Mr Robinson insists that hepersonally committed no procedural breach, and has attempted to putpolitical distance between his wife and himself. But as instalmentfollows sensational instalment, his position remains precarious. He hasstepped aside for some weeks while financial inquiries are carried out.Meanwhile Arlene Foster, the enterprise, trade and investment ministerat Stormont, is acting as first minister.
The effect of the current scandal has been to turn an existingstand-off on power-sharing into a full-blown crisis. A central figurein the fledgling political settlement, Mr Robinson may or may not beback. The DUP which he heads is entirely Protestant and deeplyfundamentalist, and the once potent Robinson brand is now reckonedelectorally damaged goods. But though Mr Robinson is not, perhaps,Belfast’s most popular politician, he is beyond doubt the ablestexponent of the Protestant and unionist cause. His departure from thepolitical scene would be a real blow to the Belfast Assembly.
If it should fold, or even go into suspension for a time, the peaceprocess will be in serious trouble. No one expects a return tofull-scale violence, but a dangerous political vacuum would be created.The recent booby-trap bomb attack on a Catholic police officer, whichleft him critically injured, was a reminder of the continuing menace ofdissident republican groups.
Talks on policing have been going on for months, and the Britishgovernment, like Sinn Fein, has grown increasingly impatient over theDemocratic Unionists’ failure to close the deal. The party now has abig reason to do so quickly: a Sinn Fein walkout from the talks couldtrigger Assembly elections, in which the DUP fears being punished byaffronted Protestant voters. Signs are this week that the party mayhave got down to serious dealing.

nvligreUID: 2689384

Gre word
Good structure
Good point
Unfamiliar word

Latin America

After Haiti's earthquake

Growing deadlier

Jan 18th 2010 | MEXICO CITY
From Economist.com

The death toll mounts in Haiti, as aid and rescuers fail to reach earthquake victims

SIX days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, the extent of the damage and suffering is becoming clearer. The misery exceeds even the most pessimistic expectations. There are no reliable estimates of the death toll, but according to Jean-Max Bellerive, the prime minister, the government disposed of 20,000 bodies in the first four days after the tremor（可以不用常见的earthquake）, most of them dumped into mass graves without any attempt to determine their identities. Despite these efforts, Port-au-Prince（太子港）, the capital, is still littered with （是杂乱）corpses（尸体） and survivors have resorted to placing toothpaste or orange peel under their noses to fight the stench）. On Sunday January 17th, Mr Bellerive guessed that 70,000 people had died in Port-au-Prince and Leogane (the city closest to the epicentre), before counting those killed in the country’s heavily affected south-western peninsula.（开头介绍此次地震的情况死亡人数和目前太子港的境况）
Both Haiti’s endemic misery and the obstacles for rescue workers are in the spotlight. Earthquakes of similar magnitude have struck bigger cities in richer countries and claimed just a few dozen lives. （类似规模的地震袭击富裕的国家生还人数不过就是数十个--------------用此句来说明此次地震的严重性和对海地危害之大-----自己写作的时候也可以用这种对比手法）But the absence of building codes in Haiti, as well as a severe wood shortage because of mass deforestation, mean that many structures in urban areas are made of thin, low-quality concrete. Such concrete is both prone to collapse and dangerous for those who are hit by it or buried beneath it. Ironically, some of the country’s poorest benefited from living in tin-roofed shacks, which were much easier to escape from.（分析造成死亡人数巨大的原因是因为房屋建筑质量问题）
Yet the majority of victims did not perish during the 35-second tremor. Ted Constan of Partners in Health, an American NGO（非政府组织）, says that some 200,000 people were probably injured or trapped but not killed by the quake. He estimates that an additional 25,000 of them have died on each day that has passed since the tremor, as a result of treatable ailments such as bleeding, dehydration, suffocation and infection.
Haiti has not suffered from a lack of donations. America and the World Bank have pledged $100m each, and most countries in the Americas and Europe have sent personnel, food or equipment. There are 27 different rescue teams with some 1,500 workers on the ground. America is also dispatching 10,000 soldiers to restore order and distribute supplies.
But logistical(后勤方面) obstacles posed by Haiti’s crushed infrastructure and mostly absent government have frustrated these efforts. The capital's airport has just one working runway and no functioning control tower, so many flights are delayed or diverted. The port's main pier crumbled into the sea and its cranes were destroyed, preventing shipments by boat. Roads remain blocked by rubble. Both machinery and transport have been hampered by fuel shortages. A new “humanitarian corridor” is being cleared from a larger airport in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which should help with deliveries, but for most people trapped by the quake it is quickly becoming too late.（从不同方面解释后勤保障的困难）
The security situation has also complicated relief efforts. Although most of Port-au-Prince is a ghostly calm, pockets of
（充满）violence have forced some rescue workers to retreat. Young thugs wielding machetes or sharp pieces of wood prowl the streets, staking their claims to goods looted from shops and warehouses. A number of accused thieves have been killed, either by mobs or police. Some foreign officials have called for the government to issue an emergency decree and establish a curfew（宵禁）, but such a policy would be unenforceable. Besides, many people have nowhere indoors to go to.
For now, Haiti is at least benefiting from the international attention. Both Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, visited over the weekend. America has granted undocumented Haitian immigrants an 18-month reprieve（缓期令） and France has temporarily stopped deporting them. Senegal has even offered free land to Haitians who want to move there.
But such attention will have to be sustained for years if the country is to recover from the worst catastrophe in its tragic history. The state and its infrastructure will have to be rebuilt, which will cost much more than even the hundreds of millions of dollars pledged as aid so far. The reconstruction bill after Hurricane Mitch, which caused far less damage when it struck Central America in 1998, reached $6.3 billion. Shortly after the Haitian quake, Barack Obama promised Haitians that “you will not be forsaken（遗弃）, you will not be forgotten”. Given Haiti’s extreme poverty and its lack of strategic importance, the American president's words will be truly tested in the months and years ahead

草莓酱爆虾UID: 2673312

America's health-care bill

Obama's Christmas present

Dec 24th 2009
From Economist.com

The Senate(参议院) votes to bring affordable health care for Americans a huge step closer

IT WAS, critics and admirers agreed, the most consequential vote in the Senate for more than 40 years; since, in fact, the bill that created America's state-run health scheme for the elderly(老人) back in 1965. On the morning of Christmas Eve, Barack Obama's promise to deliver affordable health care to every American moved a giant leap closer to(作出了离…更近一步的巨大飞跃) fulfillment as the chamber(室内的，私人的) voted, on strictly party lines(政党路线), in favour of a bill that has already been the best part of a year in the making(在形成中的).

说明政府投票决议政府提供更加便宜的医疗保健这一事实。

The previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, failed at the same task, and that failure marked(常用表达，记住) the remaining(剩下的) seven years of his presidency(总统任期). Universal health care has been the most cherished goal of Democratic politicians for close to a century; and now, the shameful fact that a country as rich and powerful as America leaves tens of millions of(数以百万的) its citizens with only the most basic health care is on its way(在路上) to being expunged(擦去，删除). The bill still has tricky obstacles to negotiate before it ends up on the president's desk. But Mr Obama can reflect, as 2009 comes to an end, that his place in the pantheon(万神殿，名流群) of American reformers looks secure(安全的，稳当的).
以布什开头奥巴马结尾，表达了布什在位期间没能解决医疗保障的问题，且叙述了美国医保的现状，结尾以奥巴马可能带来转机提示下文。

There is plenty for the reformers to congratulate themselves about. Working within the framework of America's distinctive(有特色的，与众不同的) health system based on private providers, some 30m people who are not currently covered will be given access to health insurance via a system of subsidies(补助金) and regulated insurance exchanges. Life-time caps of payouts(花费) to sick people will be largely eliminated; insurance companies will lose the right to refuse coverage to applicants on the basis of(基于，根据) past or present ill-heath; and price discrimination against(对…歧视) older people will be sharply scaled back(响应缩减). Employers will be obliged to provide coverage for their workers, or face a stiff(严厉的) fine(罚款). Younger people, who often regard themselves as "invincibles(不可征服者)" with no need to insure themselves, will be required to do so.

具体分条列举新政府在医疗保障方面所做的改革，并给予+的态度。

On the other hand a golden opportunity to effect(v.招致，引起，完成) a root-and-branch(彻底的；过激的，极端的) reform of the cost side of the equation has been missed. America's health system, excellent though it is for those with good insurance, is hideously(讨厌的，骇人的) expensive. America spends twice the share of its national product on health care as any other industrialised nation, for overall results that are surprisingly mediocre(平庸的)(注意句式). This is because the set-up contains distortions(曲解) that encourage over-consumption and over-prescription. And the bill that has emerged from the Senate, like the version that was passed by the House earlier in the year, does far too little to tackle these problems. Will Congress(国会), after the bruising battles of 2009, be minded to come back for a second round any time soon? It seems unlikely.

转而分析改革的弊端，以及它并未产生良好的效果，-态度

Yet without radical change, the constantly increasing cost of caring for an aging population with ever-more advanced technologies risks bankrupting the government, which bankrolls(v.提供资金；n.资金) payment for the poor, for children, for its own employees and for the old. Extending health insurance to tens of millions more Americans is estimated to cost just under $900 billion over the next ten years. Though this amount is supposedly paid for in the shape of(以…形式) tax increases and spending cuts, those are savings that were urgently needed just to help contain(这里是”控制”) the swelling(膨胀的) budget deficit but which now will not be available for that purpose. As a reminder of that, the Senate rounded off(完成，使完美) its work for 2009 by voting to increase the national debt ceiling(天花板；最高限度) to $12.4 trillion; and it is sure to have to increase it again early in 2010, as next year will see another $1 trillion-plus(表达) federal deficit.

本段主要说明改革所花费的资金过多，有使政府面临破产的危险。

Republicans, of course, contend that for just this reason it would be far better for the health bill never to become law. That is possible, but unlikely. There will be difficult work ahead in January to reconcile the two versions of the bill that now exist, one passed by the House and the other by the Senate. But the chances are that this will go smoothly, as long as the House mostly defers to(服从) the Senate version, in recognition of(承认…而) the fact that the Senate bill passed with no safety-margin at all. While there are some substantial differences, mainly in the way that the bills are paid, and on the vexed(焦急的) question of abortion, the basics(基本原理，概要) of the two bills are pretty similar. Mr Obama seems to be on track for(在通往…的路径上) his goal of being able to sign the bill into law before he delivers his state-of-the-union(…级别的) address in late January.

本段说明新政府将要把这种改革写进法律里面。

The Republicans also contend that this is a bill that is deeply unpopular with most American voters, and polling data certainly backs the argument that support for the bill has been steadily declining since the summer: one reason, it is argued, that the Democrats were in such a hurry to get it passed before Christmas. If the Republicans are right, the Democrats will be hammered for it at mid-term elections in November. But it also may well be the case that, once the bill is passed, a lot of the poison will go out of the debate. The shortcomings(毛病) of the bill, in the form of higher deficits and possibly higher insurance premiums(额外费用), may well not be apparent to voters for quite some time.

论述这种改革带来的花费可能造成后患。