The Economist整理版(《經(jīng)濟學(xué)人》原版英文,有4000詞匯

1、Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(2-3)Moving marketsShifts in trading patterns are making technology ever more importantAN INVESTOR presses a button, sending 1,000 small “buy orders to a stock exchange. The exchanges computer system instantly kicks in, but a split second later, 99% of the orders are ca

2、ncelled. Having found the best price, the investor makes his trade discreetly, leaving no visible trace on the marketall in less time than it takes to blink. His stealth strategy remains intact.Events like this happen many times a day, as floods of orders from active hedge funds and “algorithmic tra

3、derswho use automated programs to buy and sellrush through the information-technology systems of the worlds exchanges. The average transaction size on leading stock exchanges has fallen from about 2,000 shares in the mid-1990s to fewer than 400 today, although total trading volume has soared. But ex

4、changes systems have to cope with more than just a growing onslaught of “buy and “sell messages. Customers want to trade in more complicated ways, combining different types of assets on different exchanges at once. Then, as always, there is regulation. All this is pushing technology further to the f

5、ore.Recent embarrassments at the Tokyo Stock Exchange have illustrated what can happen when systems fail to keep up with the times. In just the past few months, the importance of technology has been plain in mergers (those of the New York Stock Exchange and Archipelago, and NASDAQ and INET); collabo

6、rations (the decision by the New York Board of Trade to use the Chicago Board of Trades trading platform); and the creation of off-exchange trading networks (including one unveiled recently by Citigroup).Technology is hardly a new element in financial markets: the advent of electronic trading in the

7、 1980s (first in Europe, later in America) helped to globalise financial markets and drove up trading volumes. But having slowed after the dotcom bubble it is now demanding ever more of exchanges and intermediaries attention. Investors can now deal more easily with exchanges or each other, bypassing

8、 traditional routes. As customers demands and bargaining power have increased, so the exchanges have had to ramp up their own systems. “Technology created the monster that has to be addressed by more technology, says Leslie Sutphen of Calyon Financial, a big futures broker.Aite Group, a research fir

9、m, reckons that in America alone the securities and investment industry spent $26.4 billion last year on IT (see chart), and may spend $30 billion in 2021. Sell-side firms spend most: J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley each splashed out more than $2 billion in 2004, while asset-management firms su

10、ch as State Street Global Advisors, Barclays Global Investors and Fidelity Investments spent between $250m and $350m apiece. With brokerage fees for trades whittled down, many have concluded that better technology is one way to cut trading costs and keep customers.Testing all enginesGlobal growth is

11、 looking less lopsided than for many yearsLARRY SUMMERS, a Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, once said that “the world economy is flying on one engine to describe its excessive reliance on American demand. Now growth seems to be becoming more even at last: Europe and Japan are revving up, as ar

12、e most emerging economies. As a result, if (or when) the American engine stalls, the global aeroplane will not necessarily crash.For the time being, Americas monetary policymakers think that their economy is still running pretty well. This week, as Alan Greenspan handed over the chairmanship of the

13、Federal Reserve to Ben Bernanke, the Fed marked the end of Mr Greenspans 18-year reign by raising interest rates for the 14th consecutive meeting, to 4.5%. The central bankers also gave Mr Bernanke more flexibility by softening their policy statement: they said that further tightening “may be needed

14、 rather than “is likely to be needed, as before.Most analysts expect the Fed to raise rates once or twice more, although the economy slowed sharply in late 2005. Real GDP growth fell to an annual rate of only 1.1% in the fourth quarter, the lowest for three years. Economists were quick to ascribe th

15、is disappointing number to special factors, such as Hurricane Katrina and a steep fall in car salesthe consequence of generous incentives that had encouraged buyers to bring purchases forward to the third quarter. The consensus has it that growth will bounce back to an annual rate of over 4% in the

16、first quarter and stay strong thereafter.This sounds too optimistic. A rebound is indeed likely in this quarter, but the rest of the year could prove disappointing, as a weakening housing market starts to weigh on consumer spending. In December sales of existing homes fell markedly and the stock of

17、unsold homes surged. Economists at Goldman Sachs calculate that, after adjusting for seasonal patterns, the median home price has fallen by almost 4% since October. Experience from Britain and Australia shows that even a soft landing for house prices can cause an acute slowdown in consumer spending.

18、American consumers have been the main engine not just of their own economy but of the whole worlds. If that engine fails, will the global economy nose-dive? A few years ago, the answer would probably have been yes. But the global economy may now be less vulnerable. At the World Economic Forum in Dav

19、os last week, Jim ONeill, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, argued convincingly that a slowdown in America need not lead to a significant global loss of power.Start with Japan, where industrial output jumped by an annual rate of 11% in the fourth quarter. Goldman Sachs has raised its GDP growth

20、forecast for that quarter (the official number is due on February 17th) to an annualized 4.2%. That would push year-on-year growth to 3.9%, well ahead of Americas 3.1%. The bank predicts average GDP growth in Japan this year of 2.7%. It thinks strong demand within Asia will partly offset an American

21、 slowdown.Japans labour market is also strengthening. In December the ratio of vacancies to job applicants rose to its highest since 1992 (see chart 1). It is easier to find a job now than at any time since the bubble burst in the early 1990s. Stronger hiring by firms is also pushing up wages after

22、years of decline. Workers are enjoying the biggest rise in bonuses for over a decade.Pass the parcelOnline shoppers give parcels firms a new lease of lifeTHINGS must be going well in the parcels business. At $2.5m for a 30-second TV commercial during last weekends Super Bowl, an ad from FedEx was th

23、e one many Americans found the most entertaining. It showed a caveman trying to use a pterodactyl for an express delivery, only to watch it be gobbled up on take-off by a tyrannosaur. What did the world do before FedEx, the ad inquired? It might have asked what on earth FedEx did before the arrival

24、of online retailers, which would themselves be sunk without todays fast and efficient delivery firms.Consumers and companies continue to flock in droves to the internet to buy and sell things. FedEx reported its busiest period ever last December, when it handled almost 9m packages in a single day. O

25、nline retailers also set new records in America. Excluding travel, some $82 billion was spent last year buying things over the internet, 24% more than in 2004, according to comScore Networks, which tracks consumer behaviour. Online sales of clothing, computer software, toys, and home and garden prod

26、ucts were all up by more than 30%. And most of this stuff was either posted or delivered by parcel companies.The boom is global, especially now that more companies are outsourcing production. It is becoming increasingly common for products to be delivered direct from factory to consumer. In one even

27、ing just before Christmas, a record 225,000 international express packages were handled by UPS at a giant new air-cargo hub, opened by the American logistics firm at Cologne airport in Germany. “The internet has had a profound effect on our business, says David Abney, UPSs international president. U

28、PS now handles more than 14m packages worldwide every day.It is striking that postal firmsonce seen as obsolete because of the emergence of the internetare now finding salvation from it. People are paying more bills online and sending more e-mails instead of letters, but most post offices are making

29、 up for that thanks to e-commerce. After four years of profits, the United States Postal Service has cleared its $11 billion of debt.Firms such as Amazon and eBay have even helped make Britains Royal Mail profitable. It needs to be: on January 1st, the Royal Mail lost its 350-year-old monopoly on ca

30、rrying letters. It will face growing competition from rivals, such as Germanys Deutsche Post, which has expanded vigorously after partial privatisation and now owns DHL, another big international delivery company.Both post offices and express-delivery firms have developed a range of services to help

31、 ecommerce and eBays traderswho listed a colossal 1.9 billion items for sale last year. Among the most popular services are tracking numbers, which allow people to follow the progress of their deliveries on the internet.A question of standardsMore suggestions of bad behaviour by tobacco companies. M

32、aybeANOTHER round has just been fought in the battle between tobacco companies and those who regard them as spawn of the devil. In a paper just published in the Lancet, with the provocative title “Secret science: tobacco industry research on smoking behaviour and cigarette toxicity, David Hammond, o

33、f Waterloo University in Canada and Neil Collishaw and Cynthia Callard, two members of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, a lobby group, criticise the behaviour of British American Tobacco (BAT). They say the firm considered manipulating some of its products in order to make them low-tar in the eye

34、s of officialdom while they actually delivered high tar and nicotine levels to smokers.It was and is no secret, as BAT points out, that people smoke low-tar cigarettes differently from high-tar ones. The reason is that they want a decent dose of the nicotine which tobacco smoke contains. They theref

35、ore pull a larger volume of air through the cigarette when they draw on a low-tar rather than a high-tar variety. The extra volume makes up for the lower concentration of the drug.But a burning cigarette is a complex thing, and that extra volume has some unexpected consequences. In particular, a big

36、ger draw is generally a faster draw. That pulls a higher proportion of the air inhaled through the burning tobacco, rather than through the paper sides of the cigarette. This, in turn, means more smoke per unit volume, and thus more tar and nicotine. The nature of the nicotine may change, too, with

37、more of it being in a form that is easy for the body to absorb.According to Dr Hammond and his colleagues, a series of studies conducted by BATs researchers between 1972 and 1994 quantified much of this. The standardised way of analysing cigarette smoke, as laid down by the International Organisatio

38、n for Standardisation (ISO), which regulates everything from computer code to greenhouse gases, uses a machine to make 35-millilitre puffs, drawn for two seconds once a minute. The firms researchers, by contrast, found that real smokers draw 50-70ml per puff, and do so twice a minute. Dr Hammondss c

39、onclusion is drawn from the huge body of documents disgorged by the tobacco industry as part of various legal settlements that have taken place in the past few years, mainly as a result of disputes with the authorities inthe United States.Dr Hammond suggests, however, the firm went beyond merely inv

40、estigating how people smoked. A series of internal documents from the late 1970s and early 1980s shows that BAT at least thought about applying this knowledge to cigarette design. A research report from 1979 puts it thus: “There are three major design features which can be used either individually o

41、r in combination to manipulate delivery levels; filtration, paper permeability, and filter-tip ventilation. A conference paper from 1983 says, “The challenge would be to reduce the mainstream nicotine determined by standard smoking-machine measurement while increasing the amount that would actually

42、be absorbed by the smoker. Another conference paper, from 1984, says: “We should strive to achieve this effect without appearing to have a cigarette that cheats the league table. Ideally it should appear to be no different from a normal cigarette.It should also be capable of delivering up to 100% mo

43、re than its machine delivery.Thanks to the banksCollege students learn more about market ratesA GOOD education may be priceless, but in America it is far from cheapand it is not getting any cheaper. On February 1st Congress narrowly passed the Deficit Reduction Act, which aims to slim Americas bulgi

44、ng budget deficit by, among other things, lopping $12.7 billion off the federal student-loan programme. Interest rates on student loans will rise while subsidies fall.Family incomes, grant aid and federal loans have all failed to keep pace with the growth in the cost of tuition. “The funding gap bet

45、ween what students can afford and what higher education costs has got wider and wider, says Claire Mezzanotte of Fitch, a ratings agency. Lenders are rushing to bridge the gap with “private student loansloans that are free of government subsidies and guarantees.Virtually non-existent ten years ago,

46、private student loans in the 2004-05 school year amounted to $13.8 billiona compound annual growth rate of almost 30%and they are expected to double in the next three years. According to the College Board, an association of schools and colleges, private student loans now make up nearly 22% of the vo

47、lume of federal student loans, up from a mere 5% in 1994-95.The growth shows little sign of slowing. Education costs continue to climb while pressure on Congress to pare down the budget deficit means federal aid will, at best, stay at current levels. Meanwhile, the number of students attending colle

48、ges and trade schools is expected to soar as the children of post-war baby-boomers continue matriculating.Private student loans are popular with lenders because they are profitable. Lenders charge market rates for the loans (the rates on federal student loans are capped) before adding up-front fees,

49、 which can themselves be around 6-7% of the loan. Sallie Mae, a student-loan company and by far the biggest dispenser of private student loans, disclosed in its most recent report that the average spread on its private student lending was 4.75%, more than three times the 1.31% it made on its federal

50、ly backed loans.All of this is good news when lenders are hungry for new areas of growth in the face of a cooling mortgage market. Private student loans, says Matthew Snowling of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, an investment bank, are probably “the fastest-growing segment of consumer financeand by far t

51、he most profitable oneat a time when finding asset growth is challenging. Last December J.P. Morgan, which already had a sizeable education-finance unit, snapped up Collegiate Funding Services, a Virginia-based provider of federal and private student loans. Companies from Bank of America to GMAC, th

52、e financing arm of General Motors, have jumped in. Other consumer-finance companies, such as Capital One, are whispered to be eyeing the market.In the beginning.How life on Earth got going is still mysterious, but not for want of ideasNEVER make forecasts, especially about the future. Samuel Goldwyn

53、s wise advice is well illustrated by a pair of scientific papers published in 1953. Both were thought by their authors to be milestones on the path to the secret of life, but only one has so far amounted to much, and it was not the one that caught the public imagination at the time.James Watson and

54、Francis Crick, who wrote “A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid, have become as famous as rock stars for asking how life works and thereby starting a line of inquiry that led to the Human Genome Project. Stanley Miller, by contrast, though lauded by his peers, languishes in obscurity as far as th

55、e wider world is concerned. Yet when it appeared, “Production of amino acids under possible primitive Earth conditions was expected to begin a scientific process that would solve a problem in some ways more profound than how life works at the momentnamely how it got going in the first place on the s

56、urface of a sterile rock 150m km from a small, unregarded yellow star.Dr Miller was the first to address this question experimentally. Inspired by one of Charles Darwins ideas, that the ingredients of life might have formed by chemical reactions in a “warm, little pond, he mixed the gases then thoug

57、ht to have formed the atmosphere of the primitive Earth methane, ammonia and hydrogenin a flask half-full of boiling water, and passed electric sparks, mimicking lightning, through them for several days to see what would happen. What happened, as the name of the paper suggests, was amino acids, the

58、building blocks of proteins. The origin of life then seemed within grasp. But it has eluded researchers ever since. They are still looking, though, and this week several of them met at the Royal Society, in London, to review progress.The origin question is really three sub-questions. One is, where d

59、id the raw materials for life come from? That is what Dr Miller was asking. The second is, how did those raw materials spontaneously assemble themselves into the first object to which the term “alive might reasonably be applied? The third is, how, having once come into existence, did it survive cond

60、itions in the early solar system?The first question was addressed by Patrick Thaddeus, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, and Max Bernstein, who works at the Ames laboratory, in California, part of Americas space agency, NASA. As Dr Bernstein succinctly put it, the chemical raw mate