Упражнение 2. Прочтите текст. Передайте ключевую информацию

Economy of France

1. Its economy places France among the top leading countries in Europe. It is one of Europe’s major importers and exporters with a wide range of items. France’s trading power makes it one of the top three largest traders in the European Union. French GDP reached at US$2.2 Trillions in 2006, with an annual growth rate of 2%. Growth rate of GDP has declined to 1.2 % in 2005 from 4 % in 2000. France is a member of the G8 countries, and is ranked fifth or sixth economy in the world by nominal GDP. France launched the euro in 1999 with its national currency being replaced completely by the beginning of 2002.

2. France is best known for its wines, cheese, and wheat. In fact, French agriculture accounts for around 25% of the total agricultural products of the European Union. This percentage can also be accounted for by the use of modern technology, EU subsidies, large areas of fertile land and good climate. However, agriculture contributes to the country’s GDP with only 2.5%. Nonetheless, the French government provides subsidies so that the agricultural sector continues to expand and increase its contribution to the GDP. This is also aimed at increasing exports.

3. As far as exports are concerned, the most important trading partners of France are UK, Germany, Spain and Italy. One of the most significant contributors to the national economy of France is the manufacturing industry with almost 27% to GDP. Also, France is the only European country except Russia and Sweden to own its national spaceport along with an important aerospace industry. Regarding imports, they consist primarily of cars and vehicles, aircraft, machinery, plastics and chemicals. These items are mostly imported from Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, UK, US and the Netherlands. As far as its balance of trade, it is interesting to note that in 2005, France imported goods worth US$471.36 billion and the exported goods worth US$439.22 billion.

4. France’s economy is a combination of private enterprise and government intervention. However, the latter has been declining substantially with the government selling off holdings in France Telecom, Air France, as well as the insurance, banking and defense sectors. Despite the decline, the government holds significant influence over key segments of infrastructure sectors. Tourism is also a very important contributor to national economy. In fact, France is the first tourist destination of the world with over 80 million foreign tourists every year, ahead of Spain and the United States.

Упражнение 3. Выполните устный перевод с опорой на текст

Two-way Interpreting (Dialogue and Liason Translation ) (А.П.Чужакин. Мир перевода -3. 2005, стр. 121- 135)

Interview with Igno van Waesberghe, ABN Amro, The Netherlands

Q: Расскажите об истории банка. Когда он был основан, как развивался?

A: When Benjamin Blijdenstein opened the London branch of his bank in 1858, the Dutch financier could scarcely have dreamed that almost 150 years later it would be the oldest surviving ancestor of any foreign bank in the City (of London). But his financing of the textile trade between Britain, Holland and the East Indies led directly to the presence in London of ABN Amro.

Q: Каково сегодняшнее положение банка?

A: Today ABN Amro is one of the biggest foreign banks in the City and a prominent international universal bank. It owns the old stockbroking firm of Hoare Govctt, asset managers Carrington Pembroke, and the venture capital company Causeway The bank also has a securities joint venture with Rothschild.

Q: А как был создан сам банк ABN Amro?

A: Tracing ABN Amro's ancestry back to Blijdenstein is to reveal a slice of European economic history. ABN was created by the merger in 1964 of DeTwentsche Bank, the name given to Blijdenstcin's bank in the 1860s, and Netherlands Trading Company. ABN used to be near the old Stock Exchange building, a stone's throw from the Bank of England. After the merger with Amro, the combined bank moved to discreet contemporary premises in Moorgate which, complete with interior courtyard, waterfalls and glass-sided lifts, convey an atmosphere of Dutch civility. The bank expects to move .soon into a building still under construction at 250 Bishopsgate, on the edge of Spitalfietds.

Q: Каковы основные сферы деятельности банка? Какие опера­ции он провел в последнее время?

A: The bank has three main lines of business in the City: corporate finance, private banking, and transaction banking. Corporate banking is the mainstay. Perhaps the best known recent corporate finance deal was the involvement with Granada's takeover of Forte (hotels). But among the bank's main areas of concentration are the energy sector (including financing energy trade in the North Sea), media and telecommunica­tions, Pharmaceuticals and chemicals, utilities, and other financial institutions. The private banking is run from Switzerland. ABN Amro's London branch provides the gateway for private banking clients to do business in Britain. Private banking, although small, is growing rapidly and ABN Amro prides itself on being able to offer a truly international service.

Упражнение 4. Выполните подготовленный перевод с листа ( Мешков-Лэмберт)

Связь с воздушным и морским транспортом: новые маршруты путешествий и перевозок Воздушные и морские маршруты слу­жат не только для внутренних перевозок, но являются также звеньями междуна­родной транспортной сети. Сейчас реали­зуется ряд проектов по улучшению воз­душного сообщения в Японии: строится новый международный аэропорт под Осакой: местные аэропорты обустраивают для выполнения международных рейсов и круглосуточной работы транспортных агентств: на случай аварийных ситуаций или стихийных бедствий создается систе­ма связи между четырьмя национальны­ми центрами по управлению авиаперевоз­ками. Авиакомпании снижают цены для частных пассажиров и делают скидки при предварительной покупке билетов. Морские перевозки составляют сегодня 44% от всех грузовых перевозок в стране. Новые электронные сети, такие как SHIPNETS, создаются для обмена информа­цией между крупнейшими морскими порта­ми. Небольшие японские гавани часто силь­но загружены, поэтому для них использова­ние техники играет решающую роль.

Connections with air and sea transport: new freight and passenger routes Air and sea routes are not just for in­ternal traffic; they also form the links of an international transport chain. Japan has several projects in hand aimed at im­proving air communications; a new inter­national airport is under construction near the city of Osaka, and local airports are being updated for international serv­ices and round-the-clock operation. Also, four national freight control centres are to be interlinked to cope with accidents and natural disasters. Airlines are cutting prices for private passengers and giving discounts for pre-booked flights. Marine transport amounts today for 44% of the country's total freight traffic. New electronic networks (such as SHIP-NETS) have been set up to exchange infor­mation between the major seaports. Many small Japanese harbours, though, are often overburdened with work, and use of the lat­est technology is of paramount importance.

Упражнение 5. (Е.В. Бреус. Теория и практика перевода с английского на русский)

Test

Упражнение 6.

Задание. Прослушав текст, составьте свой собственный «профиль». Объясните на английском языке какими качествами, по мнению психолога, должен обладать человек, чтобы преуспевать в жизни.

10 (More) Reasons You're Not Rich

Many people assume they aren't rich because they don't earn enough money. If I only earned a little more, I could save and invest better, they say. Becoming a millionaire has less to do with how much you make, it's how you treat money in your daily life.

The list of reasons you may not be rich doesn't end at 10 (having bad habits? not having goals? not being prepared? trying to make a quick buck? relying on others to handle your money? investing in things you don't understand? being financially afraid and ignoring your finances?)

Here are 10 more possible reasons you aren't rich: (take a pencil to check up yourself)

1. You care what your car looks like: A car is a means of transportation to get from one place to another, but many people don't view it that way. Instead, they consider it a reflection of themselves and spend money every two years or so to impress others instead of driving the car for its entire useful life and investing the money saved.

2. You feel entitlement: If you believe you deserve to live a certain lifestyle, have certain things and spend a certain amount before you have earned to live that way, you will have to borrow money. That large chunk of debt will keep you from building wealth.

3. You lack diversification: There is a reason one of the oldest pieces of financial advice is to not keep all your eggs in a single basket. Having a diversified investment portfolio makes it much less likely that wealth will suddenly disappear.

4. You started too late: The magic of compound interest works best over long periods of time. If you find you're always saying there will be time to save and invest in a couple more years, you'll wake up one day to find retirement is just around the corner and there is still nothing in your retirement account.

5. You don't do what you enjoy: While your job doesn't necessarily need to be your dream job, you need to enjoy it. If you choose a job you don't like just for the money, you'll likely spend all that extra cash trying to relieve the stress of doing work you hate.

6. You don't like to learn: You may have assumed that once you graduated from college, there was no need to study or learn. That attitude might be enough to get you your first job or keep you employed, but it will never make you rich. A willingness to learn to improve your career and finances are essential if you want to eventually become wealthy.

7. You buy things you don't use: Take a look around your house, in the closets, basement, attic and garage and see if there are a lot of things you haven't used in the past year. If there are, chances are that all those things you purchased were wasted money that could have been used to increase your net worth.

8. You don't understand value: You buy things for any number of reasons besides the value that the purchase brings to you. This is not limited to those who feel the need to buy the most expensive items, but can also apply to those who always purchase the cheapest goods. Rarely are either the best value, and it's only when you learn to purchase good value that you have money left over to invest for your future.

9. Your house is too big: When you buy a house that is bigger than you can afford or need, you end up spending extra money on longer debt payments, increased taxes, higher upkeep and more things to fill it. Some people will try to argue that the increased value of the house makes it a good investment, but the truth is that unless you are willing to downgrade your living standards, which most people are not, it will never be a liquid asset or money that you can ever use and enjoy.

10. You fail to take advantage of opportunities: There has probably been more than one occasion where you heard about someone who has made it big and thought to yourself, "I could have thought of that." There are plenty of opportunities if you have the will and determination to keep your eyes open.

Упражнение 7. Выполните подготовленный перевод с листа.

Счастье в деньгах 1. Мне всю жизнь твердили, что не в деньгах счастье, и надо сказать, я и сам этому верил. Однако в последнее время мое мнение на этот счет перемени­лось. Деньги могут принести счастье, и, как правило, так и случается. Взять хотя бы моих друзей, суп­ругов Шмик. Честные трудяги, они живут в бедности. Совсем ничего не имеют, кроме друг друга, конечно. Так вот: они — несчастные люди. Другие мои друзья, супруги Смаг, совсем другое дело: он банкир, она получила наследст­во от отца. Зимой они живут на Парк Авеню, летом — в Вест-гэмптоне, если только не отпра­вятся отдыхать за границу. В общем, на жизнь они тратят мас­су денег. И надо сказать, людей счастливее просто не сыскать.	You Can Buy Happiness All my life I've been told you can't buy happiness, and I must say I used to believe it. But lately I've changed my mind. Money can buy happiness and usually does. Take my friends, the Schmicks. They're poor, honest, hard-work­ing people. All they have — each other, and they are miserable. Then take my friends, the Smugs — he's banker; she inhe­rited money from her father. They live on Park Avenue in the winter and Westhampton in the summer, unless they go abroad. Everything they do costs money, and you won't find happier people any­where.
2. Шмики живут в крохотной квар­тирке в Бруклине, там же прово­дят отпуск. Правда, иногда, ко­гда станет совсем уже невмоготу, ездят купаться в Фар Рокуэй. Г-жа Шмик однажды сказала мне: "Наша жизнь, конечно, ли­шена многих благ, доступных богачам. И ты думаешь, мы по­этому чувствуем себя обездолен­ными? Совершенно правильно думаешь, так оно и есть". Смаги, напротив, вполне до­вольны жизнью. Однажды, выпив лишнего, г-н Смаг сказал мне: "Знаешь, в молодости я был влюблен в бедную девушку; она работала секретаршей. Потом я познако­мился со своей нынешней же­ной. Она была богата, поэтому я решил жениться на ней. Так вот, представляешь, недавно я встретил ту свою бедную под­ругу. Как же она подурнела! Чтобы выглядеть молодо, жен­щине нужны деньги. Я рад, что выбрал тогда богачку".	The Schmicks live in a small apartment in Brooklin in the win­ter, and they vacation in the same small apartment in Brooklin in the summer. When they really get desperate, they go to Far Rockway for a swim. Once Mrs. Schmick said to me, "We may not have all the comforts and pleasures of the rich, but do you think that makes us unhappy? You bet your sweet life does." The Smugs, on the other hand, wouldn't have it any other way. Mr. Smug told me, one night when he'd had a few drinks too many, "You know, when I was young, I was in love with a poor girl who worked as a secretary. Then I met my wife who was rich, so I decided to marry her. You know something? I bumped into that poor girl a few weeks ago and she had gone all to pieces. It takes money for a woman to keep looking1 young. I was sure glad I married the rich girl."
3. Иногда счастье супругов Смаг все же бывает омрачено. И они могут повздорить. В таких слу­чаях г-жа Смаг отправляется в Калифорнию — погостить у дру­зей. У Шмиков тоже бывают ссо­ры. Но г-же Шмик ехать неку­да, поэтому они с мужем орут друг на друга до тех пор, пока не приедет полиция. В прошлом году их оштрафовали на тридцать дол­ларов за нарушение обществен­ного спокойствия. Смаги зовут к себе в гости влия­тельных людей и знаменитостей,и те приходят, потому что хо­зяева — богачи. У Шмиков в гостях бывают только против­ные родственники, которые по­том жалуются, что еда и вино были дурны.	The Smugs are not happy all the time. Sometimes they fight and then Mrs. Smug flies off to Cali­fornia to visit friends. But the Schmicks fight, too. Only, when they get into a quarrel, Mrs. Schmick has no place to go, so they yell at each other until the police come. Last year the Schmicks were fined thirty dol­lars for disturbing the peace. The Smugs entertain a lot of im­portant and influencial people who accept their invitations be­cause the Smugs are rich. The Schmicks can only afford to en­tertain relatives they don't like, who complain afterward about the food and liquor.
4. Отношения с детьми у Смагов и „ Шмиков тоже складываются по-разному. Смаг говорит: "У нас двое детей. Мы даем им все самое лучшее. Частные шко­лы, уроки верховой езды, тре­нер по теннису, вечеринки с официантами — мы, не ску­пясь, платим за все, поэтому дети у нас умненькие, веселые, довольные жизнью". "Мы не можем дать детям ни­чего, кроме любви и заботы. Они ненавидят нас за это", — признается Шмик. Смаг сказал мне как-то: "Я ста­раюсь объяснить детям, как важ­но быть богатым и какие гро­мадные преимущества это дает. Они очень хорошо все понимают и уважают меня за мудрость". Шмик же рассказывает: "Я го­ворю детям, что деньги — это не главное. Что есть в жизни вещи поважнее: любовь, дружба, се­мья. Так ты представляешь, что они делают? Они рассказывают всем в округе, что отец их, мол, рехнулся".	When it conies to children, the Smugs and Schmicks also differ. Smug told me, "We have two children. We've given them the best of everything. Private schools, riding lessons, tennis lessons, ca­tered parties — we've bought ev­erything for them that money will buy, and they're smart, happy, contented children." Schmick, on the other hand, told me, "We haven't been able to give our children anything but love and devotion — and they hate us." Smug told me, "I've tried to im­press on the children the impor­tance of being rich and the great benefits that can be derived from having money. They know exactly what I'm talking about, and they respect me for my wisdom." Schmick said, "I tell my kids money isn't everything. There are some values in life that are much more important, such as love, friend­ship, and family. And you know what they do? They go around the neighborhood and tell every­one, 'Our father is nuts.'
5. В экономическом, социальном и интеллектуальном отношениях семья Смагов и семья Шмиков являют полную противополож­ность друг другу. Но, поскольку они живут в Америке, стране больших возможностей, настоя­щая разница между ними заклю­чается только в том, что Смаги счастливы, а Шмики — нет.	And so it goes with Smugs and Schmicks — economically, so­cially, and intellectually, they are poles apart. But because they live in America, the land of opportu­nity, the only difference between them is that the Smugs are happy and the Schmicks are not.

Упражнение 8. Прочтите, обращая внимание на разговорные формулировки. Выскажите собственное мнение.

What would you do with £125 million?

The world's biggest single lottery jackpot - £125 million - could be won on Friday night in the EuroMillions draw. The odds of winning are 76 million to one, but what would you do if you won such a colossal sum? And is it obscene that so much money could be won by just one person?

1. Yes, it is obscene that one person could win all that money (£125 million), but no more obscene than paying footballers, pseudo-celebrities and CEOs huge amounts of money just for doing their job. I note that their work often does not concern caring for other people. As G.B. Shaw observed in the words of Alfred Dolittle: It's always the deserving poor. Am I not as deserving as anyone else? I'd like to see the jackpot go to many winners. Carlyle Braden, Croydon

2.I would pay off my crippling debts (one of the few sad reasons I play the lottery). I would then take my wife out for dinner to celebrate and probably book a skiing holiday for us and our little daughter. I would then have a long, hard think about where and how I/we want to live the rest of our lives. I would like to give some money to a good cause and I might just start a charity, maybe fund an educational programme. I would make sure that my parents', siblings' and cousins' immediate needs were addressed. I would love to study, travel, play musical instruments better and become a good tennis player. Learning to fly, helping fund young entrepreneurs, conservation, discovering new artists are all on the wish list. Finally, give up smoking - no need for any more! Name and address withheld

3. Anyone who has a personal wealth of in excess of £1 million has a tremendous responsibility. Think about Mathew 19:24: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Of course, you may not want to enter God's kingdom; you may not believe God exists. Even if that is the case, the principle holds true; as a person, you will be changed by great wealth - and not necessarily for the better. No-one could blame you for securing the future for yourself,  your family and anyone else close to you but that would leave a great deal of change from £125 million and there are plenty of worthwhile issues or causes in the world that could benefit. Who knows? You might still make it through the eye of that needle. Tom Edwards, Bromley

4. Instead of getting worked up over whether the Euromillions jackpot is "obscene", I am spending exactly what I always spend on my lottery flutter (£3) and naturally hoping I'll get lucky. It's not much but if I didn't play I couldn't win. And if not this time, then maybe next time. Francis Ingle, Ware

5. Donate 100 million pounds to The Gates Foundation to help save Africa from the AIDS epidemic. Keep the rest for my family. Clyde Jackson, Seattle

6. It would make life a lot easier. I would give some away to close family and friends, but nothing more than what I would receive in the first year's interest. I would travel the world first class for a year or two and then spend a disgusting amount on a home in the sun overlooking the sea and live the life of riley. £125,000,000 would just fit the bill. Jason Vander Sluis, Brighton

7. Yes, it is an obscene amount of money to fall into the wrong hands and could quite simply destroy the winner's life. But ... can you imagine how many good things could be done with that much money? I imagine it would be difficult to keep winning a secret so I would make it very clear that at least £120 million would be put immediately into a trust fund, and that I would not read any begging letters. I would pay off my family's mortgages and take a long holiday to think about things. Then with my new-found freedom (from work) I would become a philanthropist and spend my new working days deciding which projects and charities worthy of my money. What a glorious thought! Jan Elliott, Portrush, Northern Ireland

8. I'd set up organizations such as John Bird's Big Issue, fund practical overseas aid programmes, finance independent bookshops, re-establish libraries, buy a television network and related media outlets, pay off my brother's mortgage, buy my daughter a house and generally go about performing spontaneous and unsolicited acts of unexpected generosity! Sue Cremer, Seabrook, Hythe

9. This jackpot has coaxed me to buy a ticket for the first time ever.  If I win, I plan on buying a volcanic island on which to build an underground lair, a big leather swivel chair and a white cat.  Then, I'm planning on just laughing a lot. Simon Clark, London

10. I would not tell anyone that I had won the money and would continue to live my life in the same way as I have lived it so far. Robin Valentine, London

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES

A global effort to keep food prices from soaring higher

1.Faced with rising international food prices, governments around the world are cooking up measures to protect domestic supplies and keep a lid on prices at home. Russia has banned grain exports until the end of the 2011 harvest. South Korea and the Philippines have suspended some of their import duties on foodstuffs such as fish and powdered milk. In December, Sri Lanka released rice stocks and re-imposed a price ceiling that had been removed in October. And across the Mideast and North Africa, governments have kept food prices low by using big subsidies. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations recently warned that in December its food price index surpassed its previous peak of early summer 2008, fed by particularly sharp increases in sugar, cooking oils and fats. Corn and soy prices were also moving up quickly, with corn hitting a 29-month high Friday.

2.In Bangladesh, rice prices jumped 8 percent in December. In India, the price of onions soared 80 percent in just one week."Now everyone is having fears of going back to the levels of 2007-08," said Sudakshina Unnikrishnan, a Barclays Capital commodities analyst. Rising food prices may have been an ingredient in the instability in Tunisia that drove that country's president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, from office Thursday. The demonstrations and riots against Ben Ali were sparked in December by a license dispute between police and a fruit-and-vegetable vendor, who set himself on fire in protest. Earlier this week, one of the measures Ben Ali used in a futile bid to cling to power was to cut prices for sugar, cooking oil and other commodities.

3.But other countries, big and small, are struggling to deal with rising inflation rates. China this month boosted interest rates in an effort to cool its economy and calm inflation, which has been particularly strong for food. In Armenia, hit by adverse weather, "the contraction of agricultural output and a rise in imported wheat prices have translated into higher food prices," the International Monetary Fund said last month. "Comprising nearly half of the weight of the consumer price index, higher food prices have pushed annual inflation over 9 percent in recent months."Some of the factors feeding the rise in food prices - floods in Australia, last summer's drought in Russia, and bad weather in South America - are temporary, says Unnikrishnan. But, she adds, "if you're looking at next year or a few years out, the trading range has shifted higher on emerging market demand, lower inventories and biofuel policies that are adding a new layer of demand onto the market."

4.Despite surging prices in other countries, food prices in the United States remained relatively stable in December, rising a modest 0.1 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday. But U.S. consumer prices overall jumped last month by 0.5 percent owing to a sharp increase in fuel costs, particularly for gasoline. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, warns that long-term food trends are worrisome, especially for soybeans. He notes that in 1995 China produced the same amount of soybeans it consumed, but since then production has stayed the same and consumption has jumped fivefold.

5.World demand for soy, used largely as an ingredient in livestock feed, is rising at a rate of more than 6 percent a year, Brown says, but crop yields are fairly constant. As a result, he said, the amount of land devoted to growing soy has risen at an unsustainable rate. More land in the United States is devoted to growing soy than to wheat, he said. In Brazil, more land is used for soybeans than for all grains combined. Above all, Brown said, water shortages and climate change will constrain output. Every one-degree Centigrade increase in temperature will reduce grain yields by 10 percent, he said.

6.That will take some time, however. For the moment, analysts are looking more closely at seasonal factors. Unnikrishnan said wheat prices might not reach their 2008 peak because global stocks are about 45 percent higher than they were then. But markets for corn are tighter, she said; U.S. corn stocks have plunged to less than half their levels a year ago and lower than any time in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, China, traditionally a modest exporter of corn, has been importing it for the past six months. International agencies are worried about the effect of higher food prices on the world's poorest people. "We are really concerned about the impact of rising food prices on the most vulnerable. They are the ones who tend to be most hit," said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a World Bank managing director and former Nigerian finance minister.

Robot Economics

1. I've been saying for a few years that AI is going to be the next big thing, and I'm finally starting to feel vindicated and encouraged to see the word popping up with ever increasing frequency, along with "robot" and "humans losing jobs". (I'd like to see a chart of the prevalence of words like "AI" and "robot" on the net over time--seems like a feature Google or the Wayback Machine should have, but I haven't been able to turn one up. Anybody?) I do find it a bit discouraging though that there seems to be more mind-share given to doomsday concerns than to the technology itself. It's pretty rare I hear anyone ask "how do I code up an AI?", but I frequently get "how will all the out-of-work humans survive?" and "how do we keep the robots from taking over?" My own relatively safe prediction is that AI is going to happen a lot quicker than most people expect, but a lot slower than most people fear. And the consistency in that is in recognizing that intelligence, and even consciousness, just isn't all that big of a deal--neither so terribly hard to implement, nor so overwhelmingly powerful. (I think it would be a lot less confusing if we would just stop anthropomorphizing humans.)

2. Well, eventually the robots will take over, but if you consider that the natural human population is projected to level off and start declining by the end of the century anyway, it will probably happen as a gradual replacement rather than a war. In the long run, humans will live on as novelties in a robot world, and many will probably upload and graduate to immortality at the end of their biological lives anyway (or sooner, after enough "oh, I remember when I was a human--boy did that suck" conversations). In the meantime, it is an interesting question to ask how the economic landscape will evolve as robots start displacing unskilled human labor. I suppose the most convincing analogy that this is really a problem is to look at the productive value of horses over time. There was a period when a horse was a valuable worker--on the farm, for transportation, and elsewhere. But now they're pretty much relegated to entertainment, having been displaced in the workplace by more efficient (generally more specialized) machines. I don't know the stats, but I assume the number of (captive) horses to humans has declined sharply in the last couple of centuries.

3. Unfortunately, the number of humans of average intelligence isn't going to decline so easily, and we can't just turn them into glue, so what will they do? Joel* and others posed this view to me recently and I was more optimistic that the market would continue to find uses for the humans--but clearly I'm becoming less convinced of that. Perhaps the critical distinction from the historical evolution of technology and economics is that we are no longer talking about replacing someone with a machine that can do some job better, but rather we are replacing them with a machine that can do everything better. I.e., the machines are reaching a point where they are no longer just competing for jobs, but for the very role of being human. But the flip side of that, I continue to contend, is that efficiency correspondingly rises, and the cost of surviving becomes ever more trivial, and so ever more trivial pursuits become viable jobs.

4. An acquaintance of mine once dressed as a homeless person and sat with his hand out on the streets of Santa Cruz, just to see what it was like. He came home with $300--after one day. There are still lots of horses in the US even though most of them don't do much more to earn their keep than carry someone around for half an hour once or twice a month. Why would anyone hire a human when a robot could do the same thing for less? Why does anyone still ride a horse, or keep a dog or a cat? As efficiency increases and menial labor migrates to the machines, it may be simply the human touch becomes ever more valuable--to see a live band, to be served by a human waiter, even to have some guy walk up and greet you as the robots fill your gas tank, tell you the local news, ask you how your day is going. For these extra touches, you, the rare skilled human, may pay a little extra, and that little extra will go a long way--perhaps so long that that waiter serving your table only works a few weeks a year, kind of like that horse does now. But my final argument in favor of the unskilled-laborers continuing to prosper is simply this: Humans from all but the lowest tail of the bell curve have already long proven they are individually capable of producing more than they consume.

5. This alone is sufficient for survival (at current and increasing standards of living) baring a battle over basic resources. Robotco could give a poo about rain and fertile farm lands (any more than it needs to feed the few remaining human employees of Robotco) so it's hard to see how Robotco and its army of cheap labor could do anything but add efficiency to the existing chain of human needs and production. I can see there being an ever widening disparity in wealth between the owners of Robotco and the unskilled, uninvested masses, but that's been the case with every vital technology over the ages from oil to Pepsi--everyone is becoming wealthier with time, just some much faster than others. Comments?

Beijing Intensifies Effort to Curb Rising Home Prices

1. HANGHAI — China released several government measures on Wednesday aimed at curbing the growth of housing prices and preventing a property bubble from threatening its fast-growing economy.The State Council, China’s cabinet, ordered cities to better manage the supply of land, raise tax rates on the sale of apartments or houses held for less than five years and set price control goals for new homes. The government also said it would raise the minimum down payment for buyers of second homes to 60 percent from 50 percent. The measures were released on the council’s Web site late Wednesday, after a meeting led by the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, China’s top economic planner. The announcement represents Beijing’s latest attempt to gain some control over one of the nation’s most contentious issues: the affordability of housing and the prospect that soaring property prices could endanger the country’s economic boom.

2. In its release, the government said that its policies were already working and that surging property prices had been “contained since last April.” But challenges remained in a market that the government said was being driven up by speculators, the release said. Several major Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Chongqing, are considering experimenting with a property tax that would be aimed at speculators and help reduce the reliance on land sales for income. For much of the last six years, housing prices have skyrocketed in China’s coastal cities and even in inland provinces as the country has embarked on a major urbanization drive. In Shanghai, for instance, some apartments are selling for the equivalent of $10 million. The steady rise in housing prices has created a scramble by developers to acquire land. Many of China’s newly minted billionaires are real estate developers. But even state-owned companies are snapping up large tracts of land as speculative investments or to build luxury high-rises.

3. Beijing is increasingly worried about developers, often assisted by local governments, who illegally confiscate land, and about the growing anxiety among the public about the loss of affordable housing.Beijing also worries that its major state-owned banks could be at risk if the property market collapsed. The government has announced plans to build more affordable housing in major cities, but it has had only minor success in preventing property prices from rising. Government controls have seemed only to slow the rise of housing prices temporarily over the last six years. And then, after a while, they start soaring again. Many buyers believe that the government will not get too tough on the market because local governments depend on land sales for a significant portion of their income, so they have a strong incentive to keep prices high. Last year, according to the government, nationwide land sales rose 70 percent, to more than $400 billion. In its announcement on Wednesday, the government said it would set up an accountability mechanism and further regulate and control the property market.

Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds

1. WASHINGTON — The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. “The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,” the panel wrote in the report’s conclusions, which were read by The New York Times. “If we accept this notion, it will happen again.” While the panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, accuses several financial institutions of greed, ineptitude or both, some of its gravest conclusions concern government failings, with embarrassing implications for both parties. But the panel was itself divided along partisan lines, which could blunt the impact of its findings.

2. Many of the conclusions have been widely described, but the synthesis of interviews, documents and testimony, along with its government imprimatur, give the report — to be released on Thursday as a 576-page book — a conclusive sweep and authority. The commission held 19 days of hearings and interviews with more than 700 witnesses; it has pledged to release a trove of transcripts and other raw material online. Of the 10 commission members, the six appointed by Democrats endorsed the final report. Three Republican members have prepared a dissent focusing on a narrower set of causes; a fourth Republican, Peter J. Wallison, has his own dissent, calling policies to promote homeownership the major culprit. The panel was hobbled repeatedly by internal divisions and staff turnover. The majority report finds fault with two Fed chairmen: Alan Greenspan, who led the central bank as the housing bubble expanded, and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, who did not foresee the crisis but played a crucial role in the response. It criticizes Mr. Greenspan for advocating deregulation and cites a “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” under his leadership as a “prime example” of negligence.

3. It also criticizes the Bush administration’s “inconsistent response” to the crisis — allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse in September 2008 after earlier bailing out another bank, Bear Stearns, with Fed help — as having “added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.” Like Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Bush’s Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., predicted in 2007 — wrongly, it turned out — that the subprime collapse would be contained, the report notes. Democrats also come under fire. The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton’s term, is called “a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.” Timothy F. Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the crisis and is now the Treasury secretary, was not unscathed; the report finds that the New York Fed missed signs of trouble at Citigroup and Lehman, though it did not have the main responsibility for overseeing them. Former and current officials named in the report, as well as financial institutions, declined Tuesday to comment before the report was released.

4. The report could reignite debate over the influence of Wall Street; it says regulators “lacked the political will” to scrutinize and hold accountable the institutions they were supposed to oversee. The financial industry spent $2.7 billion on lobbying from 1999 to 2008, while individuals and committees affiliated with it made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions. The report does knock down — at least partly — several early theories for the financial crisis. It says the low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants; and the “aggressive homeownership goals” set by the government as part of a “philosophy of opportunity” were not major culprits. On the other hand, the report is harsh on regulators. It finds that the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to require big banks to hold more capital to cushion potential losses and halt risky practices, and that the Fed “neglected its mission.” It says the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates some banks, and the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversees savings and loans, blocked states from curbing abuses because they were “caught up in turf wars.”

5. “The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire,” the report states. “The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble.” The report’s implications may be felt more in the political realm than in public policy. The Dodd-Frank law overhauling the regulation of Wall Street, signed in July, took as its premise the same regulatory deficiencies cited by the commission. But the report is sure to be a factor in the debate over the future of Fannie and Freddie, which have been run by the government since 2008. Though the report documents questionable practices by mortgage lenders and careless betting by banks, one striking finding is its portrayal of incompetence. It quotes Citigroup executives conceding that they paid little attention to mortgage-related risks. Executives at the American International Group were found to have been blind to its $79 billion exposure to credit-default swaps, a kind of insurance that was sold to investors seeking protection against a drop in the value of securities backed by home loans. At Merrill Lynch, managers were surprised when seemingly secure mortgage investments suddenly suffered huge losses.

6. By one measure, for about every $40 in assets, the nation’s five largest investment banks had only $1 in capital to cover losses, meaning that a 3 percent drop in asset values could have wiped out the firm. The banks hid their excessive leverage using derivatives, off-balance-sheet entities and other devices, the report found. The speculative binge was abetted by a giant “shadow banking system” in which the banks relied heavily on short-term debt. “When the housing and mortgage markets cratered, the lack of transparency, the extraordinary debt loads, the short-term loans and the risky assets all came home to roost,” the report found. “What resulted was panic. We had reaped what we had sown.” The report, which was heavily shaped by the commission’s chairman, Phil Angelides, is dotted with literary flourishes. It calls credit-rating agencies “cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.” Paraphrasing Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” it states, “The fault lies not in the stars, but in us.” Of the banks that bought, created, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in mortgage-related securities, it says: “Like Icarus, they never feared flying ever closer to the sun.”

Приложение. Примеры УПС. Тексты 19, 20 и 21 из учебника «Linn Visson»

Text 19 V.I. Resin, First Deputy Premier, Moscow City Administration Russian-American Investment Symposium, 1999 (Harvard University, Boston, USA) (Читается с американским акцептом) Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, Distinguished colleagues, Attracting foreign capital and investments is one of the major areas of our municipal investment policy. This has become particularly important due to the recent economic problems resulting from the August decisions of the Russian government, of which you are aware, which complicated the financial situation in the country. I should like to particularly stress that Moscow, as an independent subject of the Federation has not renounced its commitments and continues to be a reliable associate for foreign partners. Moreover, Moscow is producing its own plan for a favorable investment climate, taking into account the need for: first: solid guarantees second: the establishment of most favored nation conditions third: simplification of the procedure for obtaining permission and documents, and finally, sound business relations between investors and the city administration. Any city which has begun to implement a plan for major changes cannot make do with only its own resources; it always needs external financing. Investment activity in Moscow is high in terms of the country as a whole. In 1997 foreign investors invested 8.5 billion US dollars in the Moscow economy, which accounted for 66% of investments in Russia. The same level was true for 1998. We understand that western investors are concerned about the degree of risk to their investments, and they are right in counting on a stable political situation in the country, on being guaranteed receipt of an appropriate return for their investments, on acceptable norms of legislation and insurance of their investments, etc.

Intervention at a Meeting of the Directors of World Bank and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) (Читается в нормальном и быстром темпе с американским акцентом) Mr. Chairman, Finding resources to finance development has always been a difficult problem, especially during the last few years, when there was the beginning of a trend towards a decline in official development assistance and a reduction in voluntary contributions to the operational activities of the UN, accompanied by a decline in prices of raw materials and energy resources. The problem of financing was further exacerbated by the growing financial crisis, for not only are foreign investors displaying understandable caution, but there are also very limited possibilities for mobilizing internal resources for development, particularly in countries which have been affected by the crisis. In this situation, we believe that favorable conditions for providing needy countries with resources for development can be fully realized if the financial crisis is overcome, and the stability of international financing and national finance systems is restored in the countries affected by the crisis. On this point I would like to ask a few questions of the President of the World Bank, Mr. Wolfenson: How do you assess the effectiveness of the measures taken by the international financial institutions to render assistance to countries affected by the crisis? Is there a need for special additional measures for the affected countries because of the aggravation of the crisis there and since its consequences may turn out to be highly pernicious for the global economy as a whole?

Text 21. Advertising (Interview with Konstantin Kostin, Head of the Advertising Department of a Bank) (Читается с американским акцентом) Recently, advertising has been in the forefront as a marketing tool which puts across the bank's products and the bank's image. Just look at how the "image" publicity of banks has changed: abstract slogans such as "A speck of gold in a sea of sand" are things we don't hear anymore. And just think of all those symbols of the power of banks at the beginning of the 90s — a heavy wooden desk, a cellular phone, a Swiss watch. Since then the market has really gone professional. The banks are getting very picky. In response to that there are new ads with very specific and clear business ideas. There's also that powerful weapon, meaningful silence. That's also an advertising trick. However, you have to go easy on that. Being silent for too long is just as bad as talking about yourself too often. Particularly in tough spots on the financial markets. I think that some of the silent banks should come out with their positions not just obliquely, but through direct advertising. The major goal of the advertising department is to provide advertising in support of the bank's development. I don't have any abstract goals. Like getting a hundred billion. There's a plan to sell the image. There's a timetable to provide ads for the products the bank is pushing, and, by the way, that accounts for a quarter of the estimate. As I see it, getting information to the public through publications and stories by experienced journalists is a lot better than going the direct advertising route. After all, a good journalist is seen as an expert by the public.

МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ГУМАНИТАРНЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ им. М.А. ШОЛОХОВА