Журавлева Сборник текстов для подготовки аспирантов-економистов 2011
.pdferwise raise additional funds to make any regular coupon payments and refund the principal when the bonds mature.
Barometer of the economy
At the stock exchange, share prices rise and fall depending, largely, on market forces. Share prices tend to rise or remain stable when companies and the economy in general show signs of stability and growth. An economic recession depression, or financial crises could eventually lead to a stock market crash. Therefore the movement of share prices and in general of the stock indexes can be an indicator of the general trend in the economy.
Major stock exchanges:
London Stock Exchange, the City of London
New York Stock Exchange, New York City Sao Paolo Stock Exchange Sao Paolo
Australian Securities Exchange 's Sydney Exchange Centre, Sydney Borsa Italiana, Milan Stock Exchange
Tokyo Stock Exchange, Tokyo Toronto Stock Exchange, Toronto Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Frankfurt Paris Stock Exchange, Paris
SWX Swiss Exchange, Zurich Mexican Stock Exchange, Mexico City
Unit 3
Mini-census
Crowded Quarters
Sep 30th 2010, 13:39 by The Economist online | WASHINGTON, DC
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IT IS hard to be an optimist about the housing market these days, but those so inclined like to note that as long as the population keeps grow-
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ing, so should the demand for homes. But what if the larger population decides to share the same number of homes? America's census bureau has been publishing massive amounts of data from several, parallel surveys of the population in recent weeks. One of its more intriguing findings is that after shrinking for decades, households have started to grow. Last year the average household had 2.59 people, up from 2.56 two years earlier, marking the first increase since 1993.
This is not because parents are having more children. According to Julia Coronado and Yelena Shulyatyeva of BNP Paribas, a bank, it is because the children they have are taking longer to move out. They calculate that the proportion of adults aged 25 to 34 still living with their parents has risen to 13.4%, from 12.7% in 2008. There are other signs that Americans are more inclined to stay put these days. The proportion of people who changed homes last year fell to 14.9% from 15.4% in 2007, due no doubt both to the lack of employment opportunities and the inability to sell a home that is worth less than its mortgage. People are delaying marriage: the proportion of people who have never been married rose sharply, to 28.6% of women and 35.2% of men. They are also having fewer children.
Much of this is almost certainly a response to the recession and the surge in unemployment. For young people who have lost their job or cannot find their first one, living with their parents becomes more attractive. Census data have corroborated the devastating impact on households. Median income fell 0.7% after inflation, in 2009, finishing the decade down a shocking 5%; the poverty rate rose to 14.3%, the highest since 1994, from 13.2% and the proportion of the population lacking health insurance also rose, to 16.7%. As the economy recovers, some of those people will move out of their shared homes and buy their own. But the reversal could be a way off, and slight. Ms Coronado notes that household size shrank over recent decades first as birth rates declined, then as baby boomers' children moved out. The latter is almost a spent force. Another factor that had driven down household sizes in the last decade was the proliferation of mortgages allowing people to buy their first home with little or no money down. That was unsustainable.
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If households are slow to shrink back, it has sobering implications for many industries. It will slow the process of reoccupying vacant homes and bringing construction back to life. Larger households means more people sharing televisions, refrigerators and cars, and so fewer sales of new ones. The share of households with two or more cars dropped to 57.5% from 58.2% in 2007. When young people do move out, they are more likely to rent than buy. The proportion of households who rent has risen sharply since 2007, as has the number of people in each rental household. At least the homes themselves are not getting any smaller. The typical home has more bedrooms than it did two years ago. But, as Ms Coronado speculates, the cleanliness of the bathroom has probably deteriorated.
Unit 4
AIG has another go at selling its Asian operations
Sep 29th 2010, 15:55 by The Economist online | KUALA LUMPUR
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THE old saying that life insurance is sold, not bought, has never been truer than for AIA, AIG’s Asian life-insurance business, which is embarking on its third attempt to sell itself this year. A listing in Hong Kong was approved on September 21st, meetings with big institutional investors began on the 27th, and the public offering is expected to take place on October 29th. Getting the deal done will be something of an achievement given how inept the American insurer and its government handlers have been so far in dealing with the dispersal of its Asian operations. An initial attempt to list AIA was pulled in March in favour of an outright sale to Prudential, a British insurer. That deal collapsed in June because Prudential had trouble raising the money to pay. A similar path has been followed for the sale of AIG’s Taiwanese life-insurance operations. A deal announced last October was finally abandoned earlier this
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month when the buyer’s murky financing and potential ties to the Chinese mainland fell foul of Taiwan’s regulators. The botched deals have created uncertainty among employees and potential customers, a particularly toxic condition for insurance companies. To ensure the AIA listing does go through this time, extraordinary steps have been taken. AIG has hired 11 investment banks as “bookrunners” and four others as “global co-ordinators” to head the sale. Putting all the big investment banks on the payroll reduces the likelihood that any facet of the deal will be criticised by analysts, but the banks' overlapping client coverage means that it will do little to increase demand for the shares. Worse still, to generate the amount of commissions needed to satisfy such a large pool of banks, the offering size may be stretched and its price diminished.
Prize assets
Such convoluted steps are a pity given the underlying strength of what is being sold. AIG went bust during the financial crisis because of longstanding mismanagement of a derivatives business; but its Asian operations are a remarkable collection of assets. AIA is the leading life insurer in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Macau and Brunei; the largest foreign-owned life insurer in China; and among the top three life insurers in Indonesia. In Malaysia it is said that when a baby arrives so does an AIA agent to sell products tied to financing education.
All of these Asian operations are wholly owned, a position that under current regulations would be difficult if not impossible to replicate in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and China. No other insurer has similar scope. Asia’s rising prosperity and the emergence of a vast population eager to put aside money for the future create a remarkable opportunity for companies that sell investments through a sales force. If it did not have to repay so much money to American taxpayers, AIG would presumably be clinging tightly to such a collection of prize assets. The strength of AIA's prospects is demonstrated by the fact that, even during a period of uncertain ownership and churning management, it has continued to grow. The prospectus is expected to predict that the firm's operating profits will exceed $2 billion this fiscal year, a record. Revenues
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are expected to have risen by 14%, a powerful performance even if some competitors, notably the Chinese life insurers, are growing twice as fast. Prudential, through its own substantial Asian operations, was aware enough of AIA’s potential to launch its own, ultimately unaffordable bid. Such a strong position in such a high-growth market really should not be this hard a sell.
Unit 5
Warm up activities
Do you often read newspapers? Or do you prefer to know news online? What pages do you usually read? What page do you usually start? Here you have some abstracts from Middle East countries newspapers about Israel – Palestine conflict.
Read them and give your attitude to national conflicts, using the words from vocabulary.
Middle East press on the settlements
Sep 28th 2010, 16:58 by The Economist online
WITH the status of direct peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis in question after Benyamin Netanyahu's refusal to extend a moratorium on settlement building, commentary in the Arab and Israeli media showed little optimism for the future of negotiations.
In a speech to the UN General Assembly last week, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, declared that Israel "must choose between peace and the continuation of settlements". His sentiments were widely echoed in the Arab media.
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Written hours before the end of the moratorium, an editorial in alAyyam, a Palestinian newspaper, forecast an end to negotiations, and called for Israel to be held responsible for the failure:
It is hard to see how a satisfactory solution could miraculously emerge within the next few hours. So it seems safe to say that negotiations will stop. What happens if the Palestinian side announces its withdrawal, just as negotiations resume? What position will America take? From his podium at the UN, didn’t Barack Obama ask Israel to stop settlement activity? Will America hold Israel accountable for the failure of the negotiations? We certainly hope it does so.
Another Palestinian daily, al-Quds, agreed that Mr Abbas should not back down on the issue of settlements:
There is no doubt that building settlements and continuing the occupation completely contradict any peace efforts. Negotiations should not be a cover for this kind of politics. They should be stopped immediately if Israel fails to commit to the settlement freeze. We want to stress the importance of halting settlement construction and putting an end to the Judaization of Jerusalem. Exempting the holy city from the settlement freeze is a serious issue and should not be allowed under any circumstances.
Nazih al-Qasous, writing in Jordanian daily al-Dustour argues that Mr Netanyahu’s refusal to end settlement construction—and the Obama administration’s failure to force him to do soare signs that peace was not a priority:
There is an important reality that the Palestinians and the Arabs should recognise: Israel does not want to withdraw from the occupied West Bank and it does not want peace. If it does, why insist on building settle-
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ments in the West Bank, even though Israel is supposed to withdraw from this land to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state there? If America, Russia and the European Union—which make statements all the time against the establishment of settlementswanted to achieve peace they would have forced Israel to comply with the UN Security Council resolutions with threats of economic sanctions and an international boycott.
Others in the regional media, however, criticised Mr Abbas for making the contentious issue of settlements central to negotiations. Abdel Rahman al-Rashed writes in al-Shara al-Awsat, a pan-Arab daily:
Mahmoud Abbas deserves the award for the world's worst negotiator, to be celebrated either with the collapse of the peace talks or a freeze on settlement building. With all due respect, he was wrong when he downgraded the demands of the Palestinian people to simply stopping settlement building (which has become his greatest ambition). There are two parties happy with what he's achieved: extremist Israelis and Hamas, which wants to sabotage anything in which it doesn't play a part.
A Syrian daily, al-Watan, was also critical of Mr Abbas but chose to focus its attentions on the moratorium itself, arguing that the settlement freeze did not live up to its name:
What's worse is that the debate during negotiations was about a settlement freeze which, it seems, is a flexible and interchangeable term. Its literal meaning implies stopping construction. Its actual meaning—and clearly the definition preferred by Israel - suggests a readiness at any time to continue settlement activity which never stopped in the first place.
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While members of the governing coalition and settler movement leaders support Mr Netanyahu's end to the settlement freeze, commentators in Israel's English-language media tend to oppose the renewed construction.
Opposition to settlement building is widespread in opinion columns, with a prominent exception in Michael Freund's "Rev Up the Bulldozers," published on Arutz Sheva, a right-wing news site. Mr Freund, expressing a view widely held by settlement supporters, argues that:
...settlements are not the obstacle to peace. They never have been. The true obstacle to peace remains what it has always been: the Palestinian refusal to accept a permanent and sovereign Jewish presence in the land of Israel.
In the right-of-the-centre Jerusalim Post, however, David Newman argues that as the settlements grow, evacuating them as part of a two-state solution becomes increasingly difficult, writing that "every additional house, family and road make a peace agreement less plausible." He continues, condemning Netanyahu's decision:
Israel is the stronger side in this ongoing conflict and, as such, is the one able to make the critical concessions and lead the way. They should be seen as concessions from a position of strength and not, as the right wing argues, a sign of surrender. [...] Back to square one. No settlement freeze, no significant peace talks. All of us, Israelis and Palestinians alike, will suffer the consequences.
The editorial board of Ha-‘aretz, a left-leaning Israeli newspaper, similarly criticises the settlements as antithetical to the peace process, and highlights the impact of the settlements on Palestinians living in the West Bank:
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There is no greater folly than expanding the settlements at the height of peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state. [...] Expanding the settlements undermines any diplomatic agreement, damages Israel's international standing and increases the occupier's pressure on West Bank Palestinians, whose lands are being stolen and whose day-to-day lives are bound by the limitations of checkpoints and roads built for the settlers.
On Ynetnews, the English version of the Israeli news source, Yedioth Ahronoth, Uri Misgov laments Mr Netanyahu's decision as being against Israel's own interests:
The settlements contradict Israel’s interest because they make it more difficult to partition the land, thereby threatening the continued existence of the Zionist enterprise...The settlements are our folly. There is great symbolism in the fact that at this time too, the fate of the diplomatic process will be determined by settlement construction, rather than security arrangements, the return of refugees, or sovereignty in Jerusalem.
Vocabulary
accountable − обязанный отчитываться, ответственный, подотчёт-
ный Syn: responsible; понятный, объяснимый Syn: explainable negotiations – переговоры; ведение переговоров
contradict – противоречить, возражать Syn: contravene; опровергать,
отрицать Syn: deny , disprove , refute
exempt – свободный, освобождённый (от обязанностей, налога, военной службы) ; пользующийся привилегиями exempt from tax – освобожденный от налога; свободный, независимый; не подлежащий контролю
circumstances – обстоятельства, условия, положение дел
withdraw – withdrew , withdrawn – отодвигать, отдёргивать; отни-
мать, забирать; отзывать; отводить
deserve – заслуживать, быть достойным чего-л.
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downgrade – наклон, склон, уклон ; падение, упадок (морали, культуры) ; понижать (в звании, должности, статусе); приуменьшать, принижать; переводить в низшую категорию, снижать сортность literal meaning – буквальное, прямое значение
imply – предполагать, подразумевать, заключать в себе, значить widespread – широко распространённый
prominent – выступающий; торчащий; выпуклый, рельефный, выступающий вперёд; Syn: protuberant ; заметный, видный, бросающийся в глаза; Syn: conspicuous; выдающийся, знаменитый, из-
вестный Syn: outstanding , leading
plausible – благовидный, внешне честный или правдоподобный ; Syn: specious; похожий на правду, правдоподобный (о каком-л. высказывании) ; внушающий доверие (о внешности, поведении) ; вполне убедительный (об информации)
condemn – осуждать, порицать
concession – уступка territorial concessions – территориальные уступки tariff concessions – тарифные уступки tax concessions – нало-
говые льготы; признание (какого-л. факта) ; допущение, допуск Syn: admission; концессионный договор, концессия (договор на сдачу государством предприятий или участков земли); концессия (предприятие, организованное на основе концессионного договора) surrender – сдаваться; капитулировать
consequence – (по)следствие, результат (чего-л.), важность, значимость
antithetic(al) – антитетический (философ.); прямо противоположный
highlight – отводить главное место; выдвигать на первый план Syn: feature; подчёркивать, выделять
folly – неосмотрительность, недальновидность, непредусмотрительность; глупость; недомыслие; глупый поступок или идея; без-
рассудный поступок или поведение. Syn: inability to think things out , thoughtlessness; прихоть, причуда (особенно какое-л. дорогостоящее и невыгодное предприятие).
undermine – делать подкоп, подкапывать; минировать; взрывать, подрывать Syn: mine; подрывать, расшатывать
partition – расчленение; деление, раздел, разделение; Syn: division; распределение Syn: distribution; линия раздела, граница
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