决战1010精英组Economist阅读汇——makeithappen分贴

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Chinese economic data
Reading China's palm
A new leading indicator for China’s economy

May 20th 2010 | BEIJING | From The Economist print edition

IN THE back lanes of old Beijing, a fortune-teller inspects his customer’s palm under a magnifying glass, consults his I Ching tables, then scribbles the formulae of fate with a blunt pencil. His customers include many businessmen, he says, anxious to know more about their economic prospects.
这个例子的引入好有新意

palm
[pɑ(l)m /pɑːm]

n.
手掌, 手心; 一手宽; 前足掌; 一手长#棕榈; 胜利; 棕榈叶; 荣誉勋章

v.
把...藏于手中; 与...握手; 用手掌触摸; 把...硬塞给

China’s fortune-tellers now have fresh competition. On May 17th, after four years of research, the Conference Board, a research group, unveiled a new monthly index of leading indicators, which aims to foretell China’s immediate economic future. After sifting through the country’s notoriously patchy statistics, the Board compiled its index from six: the expectations of consumers; lending by banks; the supply of raw materials to industry, as measured by a central-bank survey of firms; the amount of floorspace developers have started to build; and the export orders received and supplies delivered to manufacturers, as measured by a survey of purchasing managers.
Sift
1 a : to put through a sieve

Because China’s economic present is almost as murky as its future, the Board also released a monthly “coincident” index, which provides a gauge of current activity. This index, based on indicators from electricity generation to passenger traffic, is more timely than the official GDP figure. It is also more volatile, perhaps because China’s official data tend to smooth things out (unlike its fortune-tellers, who can be brutally frank).

murky  

adj 昏暗的；浑浊的；朦胧的＝hazy
【记】murk（n 黑暗），mur墙，在监狱的墙里面－昏暗的
【反】lucid（adj 明晰的）；limpid（adj 清澈的）；pellucid（adj 透明的）；clear（adj 清楚的）"

brutally  

adv.
残忍地, 野蛮地

The Board has retrospectively calculated its new indices for every month back to 1986. The leading index would have successfully predicted the Chinese recession in 1988-89, as well as the sharp slowdown in 2008. As the Beijing fortune-teller says, “If I can tell you correctly about your past, I can tell you correctly about your future too.” 这个逻辑大赞！！！！

So what are China’s prospects? According to official figures, China’s economy grew by 11.9% in the year to the first quarter, raising fears of overheating. The Board’s leading economic index increased a little in March, thanks to the 153m square metres of floorspace started that month. But China-watchers should not read too much into a single month, the Board cautions. In April the authorities clamped down on property speculation. And judged over a six-month period (see chart), Chinese growth is not getting much stronger. As for your correspondent, according to the fortune-teller he will do well financially. But unlike China, he will spend money too liberally to accumulate much wealth.（不理解到底想表达什么呢？）
clamp down  
: to impose restrictions : CRACK DOWN <the police are clamping down on speeders>

整个文章都表达了对中国数据的不信任

makeithappenUID: 2585223

The future of the tablet computer
Not written in stone
The iPad is a success, but other tablets may not be
Jun 3rd 2010

tablet
[tab·let || 't&aelig;blɪt]

n.
平板, 笔记簿, 门牌

One tablet per model
THE iPad, Apple’s latest gadget, seems to have lived up to its maker’s lofty expectations: 2m of them have been sold in two months, with more presumably to follow after the device’s debut outside America on May 28th. But will the iPad’s success trigger explosive growth for other sorts of “tablet” computers, a category that had previously been seen a sideshow, much as the iPhone did for smart-phones?
The answer appears to be yes, if the proliferation of tablets at Computex, a trade show held this week in Taiwan, is anything to judge by. The exhibition floor was teeming with prototypes, especially from Taiwanese firms such as Acer and Asustek. Dell, an American rival, had unveiled its offering, Streak, a few days earlier. Even Google and One Laptop per Child, a charity, have tablets in the works.

proliferation
[pro·lif·e'ra·tion || prə‚lɪfə'reɪʃn]

n.
增殖; 扩散; 激增

teem
[tɪːm]

v.
倾住, 倾泻; 倒出; 把注入模具

prototype
[pro·to·type || 'prəʊtəʊtaɪp]

n.
原型

Yet the flurry of activity is deceptive. Not all the computer-makers rushing to produce tablets are convinced they will be a huge success; they are simply hedging their bets after their failure, in many cases, to predict the popularity of netbooks (no-frills laptops), which shot to success in 2008. Tellingly, most of the new devices will not hit the stores before the end of the year, if not later.

flurry
[flur·ry || 'flɜrɪ /'flʌrɪ]

n.
疾风, 慌张, 飓风

v.
使恐慌; 使狼狈; 激动; 慌张

deceptive
[de'cep·tive || -ptɪv]

adj.
迷惑的, 骗人的; 欺诈的; 虚伪的

It is still unclear what people will use tablets for, says Jeff Orr of ABI Research. They are unlikely to edge out established devices such as televisions, personal computers, games consoles and smart-phones. Most buyers so far have been habitual early-adopters of new gadgets. But tablets may find a niche, he believes, as portable video players and magazine racks.
Much will depend on price. The cheapest iPad costs $499. For tablets to become a mass-market product like DVD players, analysts reckon, the price must fall to $100 at most. Some iPad clones are to be sold at this level, but they lack many of its most attractive features. Fancier tablets could become cheaper, however, if mobile-telecoms operators were to subsidise them, as they do with handsets.
This points to another barrier. To maximise their usefulness, tablets need a fast wireless-internet connection. But so far only a third of American households have Wi-Fi, reckons ABI Research. And mobile-data services are not getting cheaper, at least for heavy users. On June 2nd AT&T ditched its all-you-can-eat plan for iPads, which cost $30 a month, and replaced it with tiered rates.
What is more, tablets are less about hardware than about the software and services that run on them. Users of iPads can already download more than 5,000 applications from Apple’s online store. Such variety is a distant prospect for owners of tablets powered by other operating systems, such as Google’s Android. Yet the more competition there is among operating systems and devices, the more common tablets are likely to become.
Some of the most muscular players in the industry are still in the locker room. Hewlett-Packard is said to have killed the Slate, which was to be based on Microsoft’s Windows, and is now reportedly working on a tablet using an operating system from Palm, the smart-phone maker that HP recently bought. Microsoft will certainly re-enter the fray, although none of its operating systems seems a good fit for tablets. Nokia, too, has yet to unveil its plans.

fray  

n 吵架＝brawl；激烈争执或辩论；v 使惊恐；使害怕；使磨损
【记】flay（vt 剥皮；抢夺；严厉批评）中的l像刀，可以剥皮，抢劫fray中的r像嘴－吵架
【区】foray（n 突袭）for ray：为了光明"

ABI Research thinks only 8m will be sold worldwide this year and that they will not become a mass-market device before the middle of the decade, by which time it foresees annual sales of 57m. Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year. And it is not even a third of the global market for smart-phones in 2009.
But tablets may still have a big impact, argues Carolina Milanesi of Gartner, another research firm. Television-makers, for instance, may introduce more interactive features and computer-makers launch app stores in response. All very gratifying for tablet manufacturers, no doubt, but not exactly a money-spinner.

spinner
[spin·ner || 'spɪnə(r)]

n.
纺纱工人; 纺纱机; 旋床工人; 旋式诱饵

The Economist Newspaper | Business

makeithappenUID: 2585223

The Economist Newspaper | Business
BP's mounting troubles
Hole below the water
Failure to stem the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico spells trouble for BP
Jun 3rd 2010

THE relief well with which BP is planning to put a definitive end to the oil spill polluting ever more of the Gulf of Mexico is drilling down into the sea floor at a rate of about 60 metres (200 feet) a day. The company’s share price is dropping considerably faster. On June 1st it plummeted by 13%. It had already declined by 24% over the six weeks since the loss of the exploration rig Deepwater Horizon and the start of the spill. All told the company has lost &pound;42 billion ($62 billion) in value since the crisis started.

rig
[rɪg]

n.
装备, 服装, 帆具

v.
为装配帆及索具; 为装配构件; 装束, 打扮; 草草作成, 临时赶造

The latest drop was prompted by the news on May 29th that BP’s attempt to plug the leak with a “top kill” had failed. The company now plans to cut through the pipe from which oil is leaking and cap it with a fitting that will funnel oil to ships on the surface; it may also use equipment installed for the top kill to drain off oil. These steps may slow the flow of oil into the sea, perhaps substantially, but they will not stop it altogether, and carry a slight risk of increasing it. The funnel would also have to be removed if a hurricane were to strike.
A complete stop will have to wait for one of the two relief wells to get down to 5,500 metres, intersect with the leaking well and plug it. August is spoken of as the earliest date for this sort of success, hurricanes permitting. If numerous attempts have to be made, as they sometimes are, it is conceivable that the leak could continue for the rest of the year.

funnel
[fun·nel || 'fʌnl]

n.
漏斗, 烟囱, 漏斗状的东西

v.
通过; 注入

Barack Obama, under increasing criticism for his handling of the disaster, has promised to “bring those responsible to justice”. On June 1st his attorney-general, Eric Holder, visited Louisiana and announced that he was exploring both civil and criminal charges against BP and the other firms involved in the drilling. Criminal action could leave BP facing massive fines on top of the costs of the effort to stop the leak, the clean-up operations and claims for damages by companies and individuals that have been affected. So far BP has spent some $1 billion; that said, it made $6.1 billion in the first quarter of 2010. It is profitable enough to absorb $20 billion in spill-related losses while paying a $10 billion dividend, as it did last year. That would reassure anxious investors, but worry rating agencies (on June 3rd Fitch trimmed BP's ratings) and outrage politicians who want the dividend scrapped.
Robert Reich, a former secretary of labour, has suggested that BP’s American operations should be put under temporary receivership to allow the government to take control of plugging the leak. This seems unlikely. But the idea that the company as a whole might be taken over has become significantly more likely as its share price has plummeted. BP’s market capitalisation is now less than that of its rival, Royal Dutch Shell (see chart), which has discussed a merger before and may now be contemplating one again. The scale of the stock’s fall makes it possible that the foreseeable losses, huge as they are, have not only been priced in, but even overpriced.
Reputational loss, and the possibility of losing further access to the gulf, where BP is a large player, are harder to calculate while the spill and its attendant inquiries continue. When the waters finally clear, though, there could be some interesting sharks swimming in them.

spill
[spɪl]

n.
溢出, 涌出, 溅出#木片, 纸捻; 小金属棒; 小塞子; 销子

v.
使溢出; 洒; 使散落; 溢出; 充满; 涌流

makeithappenUID: 2585223

Jun 3rd 2010
He may find help in Hong Kong

MANY firms doing business in China agree to use Hong Kong as a forum to resolve legal disputes, in an effort to avoid China’s notoriously arbitrary and corrupt courts.( I like these word but not the meaning)
Now some of their customers have had a similar idea: the families of four children poisoned in China by tainted milk in 2008 have sued in Hong Kong for compensation.

On May 27th Hong Kong’s Small Claims Tribunal, which handles claims of HK$50,000 ($6,400) or less without the intercession of lawyers, dismissed the case, largely on jurisdictional grounds. But that is unlikely to be the last word: an appeal is in the works. Although the sums involved are trivial (no more than HK$35,000 in any of the four cases), if the complaints were to succeed the ramifications would be enormous.

tribunal
[tri·bu·nal || traɪ'bjuːnl]

n.
法官席, 法庭, 法院

ramification
[ram·i·fi·ca·tion || ‚r&aelig;mɪfɪ'keɪʃn]

n.
分枝, 树枝, 分歧

The plaintiffs had sued Fonterra, a dairy co-operative based in New Zealand. It has a subsidiary registered in Hong Kong that held a 43% stake, and three out of seven board seats, in Sanlu, a dairy firm that adulterated its products with melamine, causing mass illness. Sanlu has since gone bust; four of its senior executives have been jailed. But many of the victims have received little or no compensation.

melamine
['meləmɪn /-mɪːn]

n.
密胺; 三聚氰胺

jail
[dʒeɪl]

n.
监牢, 拘留所, 监狱

v.
监禁, 下狱

In rejecting the petition, the court noted that the plaintiffs resided on the Chinese mainland, the tainted goods had been made and sold there, and the alleged injury inflicted there too, making China the appropriate venue for a trial. Moreover, Fonterra was not a controlling shareholder and consequently could not be held responsible for Sanlu’s conduct.

But Peng Jian, a Beijing lawyer advising the families, has argued that in practice courts in the mainland are closed to the plaintiffs. Sharon Hom, the director of Human Rights in China, an NGO, contends that the base of the defendant, rather than the plaintiffs, is the most important. Given that Fonterra followed a common practice by using Hong Kong as a legal base for its Chinese operations, that argument alone is sending a shudder through the territory’s businesses. So is the idea that minority owners of Chinese joint ventures could be held liable for the actions of their partners, since Chinese law often limits foreign firms to minority stakes, and foreign shareholders frequently complain of being kept in the dark by the locals.

Mr Peng is said to have many more plaintiffs lined up to lodge claims should the initial ones make headway. Given the Chinese courts’ reputation for indifference when it comes to product liability, the pool of potential complaints must be vast. If nothing else, the suit draws attention to that.

makeithappenUID: 2585223

This house believes that foreigners should intervene in Somalia
About this debate

Somalia has been a failed state since 1991. Of its 8m people, 3m are in need of food aid. It is insecure and violent, with travel by foreigners under armed guard and limited to a few well-defended enclaves. Much of central and south Somalia is controlled by Islamist militias, some of them affiliated to al-Qaeda. There are already foreign fighters in the country from Pakistan, the Caucasus and beyond. The Islamists impose an unbending reading on sharia law on the communities they control. They provide extremist religious education for illiterate Somali youths. Given the demographics of Somalia—half of the Somali population is under 20—a status quo may push the country towards an even more dangerous future. Many Somali Islamists are committed to attacking "Christian" Ethiopia and Kenya, with the revanchist goal of securing a caliphate of Greater Somalia. Foreign fighters want to use Somalia as a hiding place for Saudi al-Qaeda fighters and as an operational base in the global jihad. Meanwhile, Somali pirates continue to profitably attack international shipping offshore. NATO, Chinese, Russian and other navies patrolling Somali waters admit that, given the expanse of waters, they can deter but not stop the pirates. The real problem, they say, is on land. So, is foreign military intervention the best way to serve the humanitarian needs of ordinary Somalis and the security interests of the region? If it is, is it better to act sooner rather than later?

enclave  ['enkleiv]   

n. 被包围的领土

unbending  ['ʌn'bendiŋ;ʌn'bendiŋ]

adj. 不妥协的，坚决的，不屈的

动词unbend的现在分词

revanchist  [rə'v&aelig;ntʃist]

n. 恢复失地运动者

adj. 复仇的

caliphate  ['k&aelig;lifeit;'k&aelig;liˌfeit]

n. 哈里发职位（辖区等）

jihad  [dʒi'hɑ:d]   

n. 讨伐异教徒，拥护运动