10.3期 经济学人翻译参考-L2 Act before the tyrant dies-中国高翻团队
考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：美国中期选举
考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：美国中期选举America's mid-term elections美国中期选举The silent centre沉寂的中间地带If moderates don't vote next week, extremists willthrive如果中立人士于下周不进行选举，极端主义者将会茁壮发展ALL political campaigns involve a certain amount oflooking voters straight in the eye and lying to them. But America's mid-term electioncampaign has involved more flim-flam than most. The Republicans, if you believe Democraticattack ads, oppose equal pay for women, want to ban contraception and just love it when bigcorporations ship American jobs overseas. The Democrats, according to Republicans, havestood idly by as Islamic State terrorists—possibly carrying Ebola—prepare to cross the southernborder. And they, too, are delighted to see American jobs shipped overseas.所有的政治活动都包含了一定数量的撒谎现象，但是美国中期的选举活动已经包含了比大多情况下更多的欺骗。
如果你相信民主党发出的具有攻击性的广告所说的:共和党们反对妇女同工同酬，想要废止避孕法，并且大企业将美国的工作机会扩展到海外。
考研英语经济学人双语阅读：英国禁毒
考研英语经济学人双语阅读：英国禁毒Britain Dug prohibition英国禁毒Banning the east African stimulant may backfire.东非的兴奋剂禁令可能会适得其反OUTSIDE a newsagent's shop in the Clapham Road,a south London thoroughfare, a man sucks on arolled-up cigarette and asks passers-by whetherthey want to buy some cannabis.在伦敦大街南部的克拉彭路的一个报刊亭旁，一个人正叼着卷烟问路人他们是否需要大麻。
But shoppers seem more interested in khat, a mild narcotic popular with Ethiopians, Somalisand Yemenis.但消费者似乎对阿拉伯茶—在俄塞俄比亚人、索马里人和也门人群中颇受欢迎的一种轻度镇定剂。
Inside, the shopkeeper pulls out bundles of the yellowish leaf and explains that it is the lastbatch he will sell.店里内部，店主拿出少许淡黄色叶片并说明这些是他将卖出的最后一批货了。
“After tomorrow, they stop, no more,”he says.“明日之后，再没有这些东西了，”他说。
On June 24th the sale of khat was prohibited in Britain, almost a year after Theresa May, thehome secretary, told the House of Commons that she intended to ban it.6月24日，阿拉伯茶的销售在英国被喊停，这距离内政部长Theresa May告知下议院她将下令禁止阿拉伯茶几乎有一年的时间了。
经济学人最新中英对照
The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结，太珍贵了！！1、绝对优势（Absolute advantage）如果一个国家用一单位资源生产的某种产品比另一个国家多，那么，这个国家在这种产品的生产上与另一国相比就具有绝对优势。
2、逆向选择（Adverse choice）在此状况下，保险公司发现它们的客户中有太大的一部分来自高风险群体。
3、选择成本（Alternative cost）如果以最好的另一种方式使用的某种资源，它所能生产的价值就是选择成本，也可以称之为机会成本。
4、需求的弧弹性（Arc elasticity of demand）如果P1和Q1分别是价格和需求量的初始值，P2 和Q2 为第二组值，那么，弧弹性就等于-（Q1-Q2）（P1＋P2）/（P1-P2）（Q1＋Q2）5、非对称的信息（Asymmetric information）在某些市场中，每个参与者拥有的信息并不相同。
例如，在旧车市场上，有关旧车质量的信息，卖者通常要比潜在的买者知道得多。
6、平均成本（Average cost）平均成本是总成本除以产量。
也称为平均总成本。
7、平均固定成本( Average fixed cost）平均固定成本是总固定成本除以产量。
8、平均产品（Average product）平均产品是总产量除以投入品的数量。
9、平均可变成本（Average variable cost）平均可变成本是总可变成本除以产量。
10、投资的β(Beta）β度量的是与投资相联的不可分散的风险。
对于一种股票而言，它表示所有现行股票的收益发生变化时，一种股票的收益会如何敏感地变化。
11、债券收益(Bond yield）债券收益是债券所获得的利率。
12、收支平衡图（Break－even chart）收支平衡图表示一种产品所出售的总数量改变时总收益和总成本是如何变化的。
收支平衡点是为避免损失而必须卖出的最小数量。
13、预算线(Budget line）预算线表示消费者所能购买的商品X和商品Y的数量的全部组合。
经济学人中英对照23
It is a remarkable exhibit of revolutionary kitsch. The museum is new, inaugurated on September 28th 2007. Yet on a recent Saturday afternoon it was empty; not one person among the throngs of Cubans and tourists strolling down Calle Obispo felt inspired to cross its threshold. With the mixture of friendly warmth and necessary opportunism that characterises Cubans nowadays, one of the bored women attendants was soon asking your correspondent's wife if she could spare a packet of antacids (“medicines are very scarce”).
布告上广告着古巴革命防御各级委员会(CDRs)的博物馆，这些委员会是由菲德尔?卡斯特罗在1960年建立起来的社区团体，以作为他的革命的基层组织。建立广告的目的在于安排各项社会服务，并告知新近建立起的共产主义路线的异己省份或反叛省份。博物馆里摆设着一些陈列革命大事记的玻璃橱柜。在博物馆的室内的墙上贴着一些用放大的字体摘录的卡斯特罗演讲，并且还有一张显示革命防御各级委员会的成员加入趋势的图表。2007年，这些委员会的成员增加到了 840万古巴人，而全国总人数仅有1100万。博物馆内一楼有一处显眼的物品，那就是一条用石膏制作而成的一些几何模型，其中包括了一条具有古巴特色的街道，一些前门有着希腊复古风格石柱的房屋…，以及一些依次以显眼的粉色、黄绿色、牙膏蓝、桃色与柠檬色粉刷的各个房屋的正面。
8英语阅读-经济学人《Economics》双语版-Ready, fire, aim
《经济学家》读译参考（第8篇）：切尼打鹌鹑，误伤老律师Part AFeb 16th 2006From The Economist print editionReady, fire, aim预备！开火！瞄准！！Foreword：A vice-president, a ★quail[1] and the first glimmer of class warfare in hunting引言：一位副总统，一只鹌鹑，等级矛盾第一次在打猎中凸现。
is （1）a goldmine for both trivia addicts and congenital time-wasters.▲ Do you want to find out about American politicians who were killed in duels (17a______①_____ to the site)? Or about politicians who were murdered (86)? Or politicians who have been to outer space (6)? Or politicians who died while hunting or fishing (14)? Just point and click. But as yet the site doesn't have an entry for politicians who almost kill the poor ★saps[2] they are hunting or fishing with.对于喜欢捕风捉影的人和那些天生爱好浪费时间的人而言，政治墓园网站（）是一个极佳去处。
您想知道有多少美国政治家在决斗中丧生吗（该网站认为是17人）？有多少政治家遭谋杀（86人）？有多少政治家曾去过外太空（6人）？又有多少政治家在打猎或钓鱼时不幸身亡（14人）？点击便知。
《经济学人》杂志原版英文(整理完整版)之欧阳道创编
Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(6-7)Hard to digestA wealth of genetic information is to be found in the human gutBACTERIA, like people, can be divided into friend and foe. Inspired by evidence that the friendly sort may help with a range of ailments, many people consume bacteria in the form of yogurts and dietary supplements. Such a smattering of artificial additions, however, represents but a drop in the ocean. There are at least 800 types of bacteria living in the human gut. And research by Steven Gill of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, and his colleagues, published in this week's Science, suggests that the collective genome of these organisms is so large that it contains 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself.Dr Gill and his team were able to come to this conclusion by extracting bacterial DNA from the faeces of two volunteers. Because of the complexity of the samples,they were not able to reconstruct the entire genomes of each of the gut bacteria, just the individual genes. But that allowed them to make an estimate of numbers.What all these bacteria are doing is tricky to identify—the bacteria themselves are difficult to cultivate. So the researchers guessed at what they might be up to by comparing the genes they discovered with published databases of genes whose functions are already known.This comparison helped Dr Gill identify for the first time the probable enzymatic processes by which bacteria help humans to digest the complex carbohydrates in plants. The bacteria also contain a plentiful supply of genes involved in the synthesis of chemicals essential to human life—including two B vitamins and certain essential amino acids—although the team merely showed that these metabolic pathways exist rather than proving that they are used. Nevertheless, the pathways they found leave humans looking more like ruminants: animals such as goats and sheep that use bacteria to break down otherwise indigestible matter in the plants they eat.The broader conclusion Dr Gill draws is that peopleare superorganisms whose metabolism represents an amalgamation of human and microbial attributes. The notion of a superorganism has emerged before, as researchers in other fields have come to view humans as having a diverse internal ecosystem. This, suggest some, will be crucial to the success of personalised medicine, as different people will have different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial flora. Accordingly, the next step, says Dr Gill, is to see how microbial populations vary between people of different ages, backgrounds and diets.Another area of research is the process by which these helpful bacteria first colonise the digestive tract. Babies acquire their gut flora as they pass down the birth canal and take a gene-filled gulp of their mother's vaginal and faecal flora. It might not be the most delicious of first meals, but it could well be an important one.Zapping the bluesThe rebirth of electric-shock treatmentELECTRICITY has long been used to treat medical disorders. As early as the second century AD, Galen, a Greek physician, recommended the use of electric eels fortreating headaches and facial pain. In the 1930s Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, two Italian psychiatrists, used electroconvulsive therapy to treat schizophrenia. These days, such rigorous techniques are practised less widely. But researchers are still investigating how a gentler electric therapy appears to treat depression.Vagus-nerve stimulation, to give it its proper name, was originally developed to treat severe epilepsy. It requires a pacemaker-like device to be implanted in a patient's chest and wires from it threaded up to the vagus nerve on the left side of his neck. In the normal course of events, this provides an electrical pulse to the vagus nerve for 30 seconds every five minutes.This treatment does not always work, but in some cases where it failed (the number of epileptic seizures experienced by a patient remaining the same), that patient nevertheless reported feeling much better after receiving the implant. This secondary effect led to trials for treating depression and, in 2005, America's Food and Drug Administration approved the therapy for depression that fails to respond to all conventional treatments, includingdrugs and psychotherapy.Not only does the treatment work, but its effects appear to be long lasting. A study led by Charles Conway of Saint Louis University in Missouri, and presented to a recent meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, has found that 70% of patients who are better after one year stay better after two years as well.The technique builds on a procedure called deep-brain stimulation, in which electrodes are implanted deep into the white matter of patients' brains and used to “reboot” faulty neural circuitry. Such an operation is a big undertaking, requiring a full day of surgery and carrying a risk of the patient suffering a stroke. Only a small number of people have been treated this way. In contrast, the device that stimulates the vagus nerve can be implanted in 45 minutes without a stay in hospital.The trouble is that vagus-nerve stimulation can take a long time to produce its full beneficial effect. According to Dr Conway, scans taken using a technique called positron-emission tomography show significant changes in brain activity starting three months after treatment begins. Thechanges are similar to the improvements seen in patients who undergo other forms of antidepression treatment. The brain continues to change over the following 21 months. Dr Conway says that patients should be told that the antidepressant effects could be slow in coming.However, Richard Selway of King's College Hospital, London, found that his patients' moods improved just weeks after the implant. Although brain scans are useful in determining the longevity of the treatment, Mr Selway notes that visible changes in the brain do not necessarily correlate perfectly with changes in mood.Nobody knows why stimulating the vagus nerve improves the mood of depressed patients, but Mr Selway has a theory. He believes that the electrical stimulation causes a region in the brain stem called the locus caeruleus (Latin, ironically, for “blue place”) to flood the brain with norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter implicated in alertness, concentration and motivation—that is, the mood states missing in depressed patients. Whatever the mechanism, for the depressed a therapy that is relatively safe and long lasting is rare cause for cheer.The shape of things to comeHow tomorrow's nuclear power stations will differ from today'sTHE agency in charge of promoting nuclear power in America describes a new generation of reactors that will be “highly economical” with “enhanced safety”, that “minimise wastes” and will prove “proliferation resistant”. No doubt they will bake a mean apple pie, too.Unfortunately, in the world of nuclear energy, fine words are not enough. America got away lightly with its nuclear accident. When the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania overheated in 1979 very little radiation leaked, and there were no injuries. Europe was not so lucky. The accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 killed dozens immediately and has affected (sometimes fatally) the health of tens of thousands at the least. Even discounting the association of nuclear power with nuclear weaponry, people have good reason to be suspicious of claims that reactors are safe.Yet political interest in nuclear power is reviving across the world, thanks in part to concerns about globalwarming and energy security. Already, some 441 commercial reactors operate in 31 countries and provide 17% of the planet's electricity, according to America's Department of Energy. Until recently, the talk was of how to retire these reactors gracefully. Now it is of how to extend their lives. In addition, another 32 reactors are being built, mostly in India, China and their neighbours. These new power stations belong to what has been called the third generation of reactors, designs that have been informed by experience and that are considered by their creators to be advanced. But will these new stations really be safer than their predecessors?Clearly, modern designs need to be less accident prone. The most important feature of a safe design is that it “fails safe”. Fo r a reactor, this means that if its control systems stop working it shuts down automatically, safely dissipates the heat produced by the reactions in its core, and stops both the fuel and the radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactions from escaping by keeping them within some sort of containment vessel. Reactors that follow such rules are called “passive”. Most modern designs are passive to someextent and some newer ones are truly so. However, some of the genuinely passive reactors are also likely to be more expensive to run.Nuclear energy is produced by atomic fission. A large atom (usually uranium or plutonium) breaks into two smaller ones, releasing energy and neutrons. The neutrons then trigger further break-ups. And so on. If this “chain reaction” can be controlled, the energy released can be used to boil water, produce steam and drive a turbine that generates electricity. If it runs away, the result is a meltdown and an accident (or, in extreme circumstances, a nuclear explosion—though circumstances are never that extreme in a reactor because the fuel is less fissile than the material in a bomb). In many new designs the neutrons, and thus the chain reaction, are kept under control by passing them through water to slow them down. (Slow neutrons trigger more break ups than fast ones.) This water is exposed to a pressure of about 150 atmospheres—a pressure that means it remains liquid even at high temperatures. When nuclear reactions warm the water, its density drops, and the neutrons passing through it are no longer slowedenough to trigger further reactions. That negative feedback stabilises the reaction rate.Can business be cool?Why a growing number of firms are taking global warming seriouslyRUPERT MURDOCH is no green activist. But in Pebble Beach later this summer, the annual gathering of executivesof Mr Murdoch's News Corporation—which last year led to a dramatic shift in the media conglomerate's attitude tothe internet—will be addressed by several leading environmentalists, including a vice-president turned climatechangemovie star. Last month BSkyB, a British satellite-television company chaired by Mr Murdoch and run by hisson, James, declared itself “carbon-neutral”, having taken various steps to cut or offset its discharges of carboninto the atmosphere.The army of corporate greens is growing fast. Late last year HSBC became the first big bank to announce that itwas carbon-neutral, joining other financial institutions, including Swiss Re, a reinsurer, and Goldman Sachs, aninvestment bank, in waging war on climate-warminggases (of which carbon dioxide is the main culprit). Last yearGeneral Electric (GE), an industrial powerhouse, launched its “Ecomagination” strategy, aiming to cut its output ofgreenhouse gases and to invest heavily in clean (ie, carbon-free) technologies. In October Wal-Mart announced aseries of environmental schemes, including doubling the fuel-efficiency of its fleet of vehicles within a decade.Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain's biggest retailers, are competing fiercely to be the greenest. And on June 7thsome leading British bosses lobbied Tony Blair for a more ambitious policy on climate change, even if that involvesharsher regulation.The greening of business is by no means universal, however. Money from Exxon Mobil, Ford and General Motorshelped pay for television advertisements aired recently in America by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, with thedaft slogan “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life”. Besides, environmentalist critics say, some firmsa re engaged in superficial “greenwash” to boost the image of essentially climate-hurting businesses. Take BP, themost prominent corporate advocate of action on climatechange, with its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign, highprofileinvestments in green energy, and even a “carbon calculator” on its website that helps consumers measuretheir personal “carbon footprint”, or overall emissions of carbon. Yet, critics complain, BP's recent record profits arelargely thanks to sales of huge amounts of carbon-packed oil and gas.On the other hand, some free-market thinkers see the support of firms for regulation of carbon as the latestattempt at “regulatory capture”, by those who stand to profit from new rules. Max Schulz of the ManhattanInstitute, a conservative think tan k, notes darkly that “Enron was into pushing the idea of climate change, becauseit was good for its business”.Others argue that climate change has no more place in corporate boardrooms than do discussions of other partisanpolitical issues, such as Darfur or gay marriage. That criticism, at least, is surely wrong. Most of the corporateconverts say they are acting not out of some vague sense of social responsibility, or even personal angst, butbecause climate change creates real business risks andopportunities—from regulatory compliance to insuringclients on flood plains. And although these concerns vary hugely from one company to the next, few firms can besure of remaining unaffected.Testing timesResearchers are working on ways to reduce the need for animal experiments, but new laws mayincrease the number of experiments neededIN AN ideal world, people would not perform experiments on animals. For the people, they are expensive. For theanimals, they are stressful and often painful.That ideal world, sadly, is still some way away. People need new drugs and vaccines. They want protection fromthe toxicity of chemicals. The search for basic scientific answers goes on. Indeed, the European Commission isforging ahead with proposals that will increase the number of animal experiments carried out in the EuropeanUnion, by requiring toxicity tests on every chemical approved for use within the union's borders in the past 25years.Already, the commission has identified 140,000 chemicals that have not yet been tested. It wants 30,000 oftheseto be examined right away, and plans to spend between €4 billion-8 billion ($5 billion-10 billion) doing so. Thenumber of animals used for toxicity testing in Europe will thus, experts reckon, quintuple from just over 1m a yearto about 5m, unless they are saved by some dramatic advances in non-animal testing technology. At the moment,roughly 10% of European animal tests are for general toxicity, 35% for basic research, 45% for drugs andvaccines, and the remaining 10% a variety of uses such as diagnosing diseases.Animal experimentation will therefore be around for some time yet. But the hunt for substitutes continues, and lastweekend the Middle European Society for Alternative Methods to Animal Testing met in Linz, Austria, to reviewprogress.A good place to start finding alternatives for toxicity tests is the liver—the organ responsible for breaking toxicchemicals down into safer molecules that can then be excreted. Two firms, one large and one small, told themeeting how they were using human liver cells removed incidentally during surgery to test various substancesforlong-term toxic effects.PrimeCyte, the small firm, grows its cells in cultures over a few weeks and doses them regularly with the substanceunder investigation. The characteristics of the cells are carefully monitored, to look for changes in theirmicroanatomy.Pfizer, the big firm, also doses its cultures regularly, but rather than studying individual cells in detail, it counts cellnumbers. If the number of cells in a culture changes after a sample is added, that suggests the chemical inquestion is bad for the liver.In principle, these techniques could be applied to any chemical. In practice, drugs (and, in the case of PrimeCyte,food supplements) are top of the list. But that might change if the commission has its way: those140,000screenings look like a lucrative market, although nobody knows whether the new tests will be ready for use by2009, when the commission proposes that testing should start.Other tissues, too, can be tested independently of animals. Epithelix, a small firm in Geneva, has developed anartificial version of the lining of the lungs. According toHuang Song, one of Epithelix's researchers, thefirm'scultured cells have similar microanatomy to those found in natural lung linings, and respond in the same way tovarious chemical messengers. Dr Huang says that they could be used in long-term toxicity tests of airbornechemicals and could also help identify treatments for lung diseases.The immune system can be mimicked and tested, too. ProBioGen, a company based in Berlin, is developing anartificial human lymph node which, it reckons, could have prevented the near-disastrous consequences of a drugtrial held in Britain three months ago, in which (despite the drug having passed animal tests) six men sufferedmultiple organ failure and nearly died. The drug the men were given made their immune systems hyperactive.Such a response would, the firm's scientists reckon, have been identified by their lymph node, which is made fromcells that provoke the immune system into a response. ProBioGen's lymph node could thus work better than animaltesting.Another way of cutting the number of animalexperiments would be tochange the way that vaccines are tested, according to CoenraadHendriksen of the Netherlands Vaccine Institute. At the moment, allbatches of vaccine are subject to the same battery of tests. DrHendriksen argues that this is over-rigorous. When new vaccine culturesare made, belt-and-braces tests obviously need to be applied. But if abatch of vaccine is derived from an existing culture, he suggests that itneed be tested only to make sure it is identical to the batch from which itis derived. That would require fewer test animals.All this suggests that though there is still some way to go before drugs,vaccines and other substances can be tested routinely on cells ratherthan live animals, useful progress is being made. What is harder to see ishow the use of animals might be banished from fundamental research.Anger managementTo one emotion, men are more sensitive than women MEN are notoriously insensitive to the emotional world around them. At least, that is the stereotype peddled by athousand women's magazines. And a study by two researchers at the University of Melbourne, inAustralia,confirms that men are, indeed, less sensitive to emotion than women, with one important and suggestiveexception. Men are acutely sensitive to the anger of other men.Mark Williams and Jason Mattingley, whose study has just been published in Current Biology, looked at the way aperson's sex affects his or her response to emotionally charged facial expressions. People from all cultures agreeon what six basic expressions of emotion look like. Whether the face before you is expressing anger, disgust, fear,joy, sadness or surprise seems to be recognised universally—which suggests that the expressions involved areinnate, rather than learned.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley showed the participants in their study photographs of these emotional expressions inmixed sets of either four or eight. They asked the participants to look for a particular sort of expression, andmeasured the amount of time it took them to find it. The researchers found, in agreement with previous studies,that both men and women identified angry expressions most quickly. But they also found that anger was morequicklyidentified on a male face than a female one.Moreover, most participants could find an angry face just as quickly when it was mixed in a group of eightphotographs as when it was part of a group of four. That was in stark contrast to the other five sorts of expression,which took more time to find when they had to be sorted from a larger group. This suggests that something in thebrain is attuned to picking out angry expressions, and that it is especially concerned about angry men. Also, thishighly tuned ability seems more important to males than females, since the two researchers found that men pickedout the angry expressions faster than women did, even though women were usually quicker than men to recognizeevery other sort of facial expression.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley suspect the reason for this is that being able to spot an angry individual quickly hasa survival advantage—and, since anger is more likely to turn into lethal violence in men than in women, the abilityto spot angry males quickly is particularly valuable.As to why men are more sensitive to anger than women, it is presumably because they are far more likely togetkilled by it. Most murders involve men killing other men—even today the context of homicide is usually aspontaneous dispute over status or sex.The ability to spot quickly that an alpha male is in a foul mood would thus have great survival value. It would allowthe sharp-witted time to choose appeasement, defence or possibly even pre-emptive attack. And, if it is right, thisstudy also confirms a lesson learned by generations of bar-room tough guys and schoolyard bullies: if you wantattention, get angry.The shareholders' revoltA turning point in relations between company owners and bosses?SOMETHING strange has been happening this year at company annual meetings in America:shareholders have been voting decisively against the recommendations of managers. Until now, mostshareholders have, like so many sheep, routinely voted in accordance with the advice of the people theyemploy to run the company. This year managers have already been defeated at some 32 companies,including household names such as Boeing, ExxonMobil and GeneralMotors.This shareholders' revolt has focused entirely on one issue: the method by which members of the boardof directors are elected. Shareholder resolutions on other subjects have mostly been defeated, as usual.The successful resolutions called for directors to be elected by majority voting, instead of by thetraditional method of “plurality”—which in practice meant that only votes cast in favour were counted,and that a single vote for a candidate would be enough to get him elected.Several companies, led by Pfizer, a drug giant, saw defeat looming and pre-emptively adopted a formalmajority-voting policy that was weaker than in the shareholder resolution. This required any director whofailed to secure a majority of votes to tender his resignation to the board, which would then be free todecide whether or not to accept it. Under the shareholder resolution, any candidate failing to secure amajority of the votes cast simply would not be elected. Intriguingly, the shareholder resolution wasdefeated at four-fifths of the firms that adopted a Pfizer-style majority voting rule, whereas it succeedednearly ninetimes out of ten at firms retaining the plurality rule.Unfortunately for shareholders, their victories may prove illusory, as the successful resolutions wereall“precatory”—meaning that they merely advised management on the course of action preferred byshareholders, but did not force managers to do anything. Several resolutions that tried to imposemajority voting on firms by changing their bylaws failed this year.Even so, wise managers should voluntarily adopt majority voting, according to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen&Katz, a Wall Street law firm that has generally helped managers resist increases in shareholder power butnow expects majority voting eventually to “become universal”. It advises that, at the very least,managers should adopt the Pfizer model, if only to avoid becoming the subject of even greater scrutinyfrom corporate-governance activists. Some firms might choose to go further, as Dell and Intel have donethis year, and adopt bylaws requiring majority voting.Shareholders may have been radicalised by the success last year of a lobbying effort by managersagainst a proposal from regulators to make it easier for shareholders to put upcandidates in boardelections. It remains to be seen if they will be back for more in 2007. Certainly, some of the activistshareholders behind this year's resolutions have big plans. Where new voting rules are in place, they plancampaigns to vote out the chairman of the compensation committee at any firm that they think overpaysthe boss. If the 2006 annual meeting was unpleasant for managers, next year's could be far worse. Intangible opportunitiesCompanies are borrowing against their copyrights, trademarks and patentsNOT long ago, the value of companies resided mostly in things you could see and touch. Today it liesincreasingly in intangible assets such as the McDonald's name, the patent for Viagra and the rights toSpiderman. Baruch Lev, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, puts theimplied value of intangibles on American companies' balance sheets at about $6 trillion, or two-thirds ofthe total. Much of this consists of intellectual property, the collective name for copyrights, trademarksand patents. Increasingly, companies and their clever bankers are usingthese assets to raise cash.The method of choice is securitisation, the issuing of bonds based on the various revenues thrown off byintellectual property. Late last month Dunkin' Brands, owner of Dunkin' Donuts, a snack-bar chain, raised$1.7 billion by selling bonds backed by, among other things, the royalties it will receive from itsfranchisees. The three private-equity firms that acquired Dunkin' Brands a few months ago have used thecash to repay the money they borrowed to buy the chain. This is the biggest intellectual-propertysecuritisation by far, says Jordan Yarett of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm that hasworked on many such deals.Securitisations of intellectual property can be based on revenues from copyrights, trademarks (such aslogos) or patents. The best-known copyright deal was the issue in 1997 of $55m-worth of “Bowie Bonds”supported by the future sales of music by David Bowie, a British rock star. Bonds based on the films ofDreamWorks, Marvel comic books and the stories of John Steinbeck have also been sold. As well asDunkin' Brands, several restaurant chains andfashion firms have issued bonds backed by logos andbrands.Intellectual-property deals belong to a class known as operating-asset securitisations. These differ fromstandard securitisations of future revenues, such as bonds backed by the payments on a 30-yearmortgage or a car loan, in that the borrower has to make his asset work. If investors are to recoup theirmoney, the assets being securitised must be “actively exploited”, says Mr Yarett: DreamWorks mustcontinue to churn out box-office hits.The market for such securitisations is still small. Jay Eisbruck, of Moody's, a rating agency, reckons thataround $10 billion-worth of bonds are outstanding. But there is “big potential,” he says, pointing out thatlicensing patented technology generates $100 billion a year and involves thousands of companies.Raising money this way can make sense not only for clever private-equity firms, but also for companieswith low (or no) credit ratings that cannot easily tap the capital markets or with few tangible assets ascollateral for bank loans. Some universities have joined in, too. Yale built a new medical complex withsome of the roughly $100m it。
经济学人中英对照
Immigration law移民法Our town我们的城镇A small city passes a controversial immigration ordinance內布拉斯加小镇通过了一项有争议的移民法令SOME of the earliest settlers of Nebraska were Germans. During the first world war the state forbade any teaching in their native language. But that was long ago. These days, just outside the tidy little city of Fremont, a new batch of residents is trying to settle in. The Regency II trailer park houses immigrants, mostly from Mexico. Many of the trailers are just flimsy boxes. Others are painted brightly, or sport day lilies on a small lawn. One house has an American flag beside it. And on June 21st the Regency displayed a white sign at its entrance with the message: “V ote No”.内布拉斯加州最早的定居者中有一些是德国人。
在第一次世界大战期间，该州曾禁止德裔居民用母语教学。
但这是很久以前的事了。
这些天来，就在整洁的弗里蒙特小镇外围，一批新的居民正试着安顿新家。
Regency II拖车场的居民都是移民，多数来自墨西哥。
经济学人双语阅读：世界银行 亟待重整
【经济学人】双语阅读：世界银行亟待重整Finance and economics财经商业Reforming the World Bank世界银行，亟待重整Zen and the art of poverty reduction禅宗思想及扶贫艺术Calm and confusion at the world's biggest development institution世界最大发展机构—平静与骚乱并存THE World Bank may need a period of quiet reflection, but this was ridiculous.世界银行可能需要一段时间来安静的反思，但这在过去是荒谬可笑的。
经济学人下载:世界银行亟待重整On September 10th 300 bankers joined Thich Nhat Hanh, an 87-year-old Vietnamese monk and founder of the Order of Interbeing, for a day of mindful meditation with Jim Kim, the bank's president and an admirer of Mr Hanh.九月十日，300名银行家以及世界银行行长吉姆金同现年87岁的越南高僧一行禅师进行了为期一天的静心冥想的活动。
一行禅师创立了相即共修团，且吉姆金是他的崇拜者之一。
It was all very Zen, one member of staff told the Washington Post.一切都弥漫着佛教气息，其中一位银行家对华盛顿邮报如是说。
Afterwards, Mr Hanh and 20 brown-robed brethren led a walking meditation through Washington —though since the traffic police did not show up, the quiet contemplation was marred by the not-so-Zen honking of angry drivers.在这之后，一行禅师和其他20名身穿棕色长袍的同胞们在华盛顿进行了步行禅修的活动。
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Leaders 2Act before the tyrant dies在暴君去世前采取行动The world needs to prepare for a Zimbabwe without Robert Mugabe 世界需准备好应对没有罗伯特·穆加贝(Robert Mugabe)的津巴布韦IN ZIMBABWE they are waiting for rain. The region’s worst drought in a decade has withered the maize (or corn) crop, which came in at only about half the size of last year’s. The poor harvest has left at least 1.5m people—more than one in every eight—in desperate need of food aid.津巴布韦人盼望雨水的降临。
该地区遭受了10年来最严重的干旱，大量玉米作物枯萎，产量只有去年的一半。
收成不好导致全国超过八分之一的人口——至少150万人急需粮食援助。
For Zimbabwe’s long-suffering people, waiting has become a national vocation. For 15 years since he rigged a general election in 2000, Zimbabweans have waited for the chance to be shot of Robert Mugabe. He has ruled the country since its independence in 1980, and so gravely wrecked its economy that people are poorer today than they were 25 years ago. Of late, despairing of democratic change, they have simply waited for the 91-year-old to succumb to mortality.长期饱受折磨的津巴布韦人一直在等待。
从15年前，也就是2000年罗伯特·穆加贝操纵大选开始，人们就在等待时机摆脱他的控制。
1980年津巴布韦独立，穆加贝开始执政，国家在他的统治下经济严重衰退，如今人们的生活水平还不如25年前。
最近，人们已不再寄期望于民主变革，他们仅仅等待着这位91岁老人的死期。
The parched harvest and weak economy mean that their patience may soon be rewarded: if Mr Mugabe does not die first, it looks increasingly possible that he may be pushed out by his party, Zanu-PF, over which his ruthless control is slipping. To be sure, he has weathered economic and political crises before. But this time things are different.惨淡的收成和衰退的经济意味着人们的耐心等待很快就会有所回报：穆加贝已无法再用铁腕控制他的党派——爱国阵线(Zanu-PF)，很有可能在去世前就被拉下台。
诚然，穆加贝以前都能安然度过经济和政治危机，但这次的情况有所不同。
One reason is that Mr Mugabe’s mental powers seem at last to be failing him. He recently read out the very same speech that he had delivered to parliament only three weeks earlier. Still more pressing is the fact that his government is running out of the money it needs to pay the public servants, especially policemen and soldiers, who keep it in power and whose wages gobble up more than 80% of public spending.原因之一在于穆加贝的精神状态渐渐不复从前。
他最近把之前对国会的演讲于三周后又重复了一遍。
更加严峻的问题是政府无力向公务员支付薪水，尤其是警察和军人的工资，而警察和军人负责维护政府稳定，他们的工资占公共支出的80%以上。
In previous crises Mr Mugabe could usually pull a rabbit out of the hat. When his popularity fell, he seized land from white farmers and gave it to his supporters. And when, as a result, the money ran out, he printed more. Now Mr Mugabe’s hat is out of rabbits. The government cannot borrow from abroad because it defaulted on its foreign loans in 1999; even China has balked at helping. Nor can it print money, because it was forced to adopt dollars to tame the hyperinflation that rampaged in 2008. And because Zimbabwe imports more than it exports, its supply of currency is shrinking, driving it into deflation. Official estimates of growth are divorced from reality. The amount of beer sold, a good measure of the economy, has dropped by 8% in the past year. Electricity in Harare, the capital, is often cut off for 18 hours a day. Firms are shedding thousands of workers.穆加贝通常有办法应对以往发生的危机。
当他的支持率下降的时候，他就从白人农民手中夺取土地，分给他的支持者。
当他的政府没钱的时候，他就印钞。
如今的穆加贝已经无计可施。
由于政府在1999年就拖欠了外债，其他国家不可能再借钱给他，就连中国也拒绝帮助。
印钞也不大现实，因为津巴布韦在2008年就已被迫使用美元以应对恶性通货膨胀的肆虐。
此外，由于津巴布韦的进口量大于出口量，导致货币供应短缺，最终造成通货紧缩。
官方对经济增长的估计是脱离现实的。
作为衡量经济的重要指标，啤酒的销售量在去年下降了8%。
首都哈拉雷(Harare) 经常每天停电18小时。
工厂裁员人数更是成千上万。
Zimbabwe’s only way out is to make peace with its creditors, which include the IMF and Western governments, in order to get new loans and forgiveness of its foreign debt, which stands at over 100% of GDP. This month the finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, will present a reform plan that includes spending cuts and changes to some of the laws that are holding back investment, such as one insisting that all firms are majority-owned by black Zimbabweans.津巴布韦的外债超出其国民生产总值一倍还多。
政府只有与包括国际货币基金组织和西方政府在内的借贷者处理好关系，才能免除外债并获得新的贷款。
本月，财政部长帕特里克·奇纳马萨(Patrick Chinamasa) 将推行一项改革，包括削减开支和修改阻碍投资的法律，如坚决要求津巴布韦黑人应拥有企业多数股权的法律条款。
Be kind but firm宽容而严格The dilemma for the West is whether to bail out the government with debt relief and new loans—or wait for the demise of the tyrant. The choice need not be so stark. Relative reformists such as Mr Chinamasa should be encouraged, despite his record as a serial human-rights abuser when he was minister of justice; even more sinister party chiefs are sharpening their knives for the succession.西方面临这样一个两难抉择：是通过减免债务和提供新的贷款来帮助津巴布韦，还是等待暴君去世。
其实做出这个抉择没有那么艰难。
尽管奇纳马萨在担任司法部长时曾一度被指控违反人权，甚至其他党魁正在“磨刀霍霍”争夺下一任总统的职位，但是像他们这样的改革者应该得到鼓励。