经济学人新闻阅读—word文档版

经济学人新闻阅读—word文档版
The proportion of children in America who are overweight has tripled over the past 20 years and now exceeds 17%, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The health problems that this causes include hypertension and type-2 diabetes, formerly known only among the nation’s overweight adult population. A group sponsored by the National Institute on Ageing has warned that this may be the first generation ever to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.
All the while, the proportion of children who take part in daily exercise at high school has dropped from 42% in 1991 to only 28% in 2004, according to the CDC. Snacking has greatly in-creased; the Government Accountability Office found in 2003 that 99% of America’s high schools now sell snacks and other food as well as providing lunches.
In an attempt to get the problem tackled at local level, Congress in 2004 passed an act directing school districts that get money from the national school-lunch programme to create "wellness" policies by the start of the 2006-07 school year. The districts were told to set standards for nutrition, physical activity and education about good food, then make sure that schools actually implement them.
One year after the deadline, the results are haphazard. School districts’ plans range from a few paragraphs long to more than 25 pages. Some states, like Texas and Arkansas, have preemptively set standards for school districts under their jurisdiction, forcing schools to ban fizzy drinks and junk food while increasing the amount of exercise the pupils take. Others offer guidelines rather than man-dates, with no repercussions for
schools that don’t comply. And in some are as, schools are being eased into change very slowly. Oregon’s legislature passed a bill in June that gives its schools ten years to meet its new physical-education requirements.
Last October the School Nutrition Association (SNA), a pressure group, analyzed health policies from the 100 largest school districts in the country, which account for almost a quarter of the nation’s primary-and-secondary-school students. Many districts had indeed created guidelines for nutrition education, physical activity and school food, as required, but the rules tended to be fairly broad. Some policies merely defaulted to the state recommendations and some to the federal government’s minimal requirements. The physical-activity guidelines were also varied; only 62% of schools made physical education obligatory.
Action for Healthy Kids, another schools-oriented NGO, also looked at a smattering of policies last year. Of the 112 districts it analyzed, only 30% specified a time requirement for physical-education classes and 42% offered only general guidelines for the sort of food and drink allowed to be sold in the schools. Cafeterias where nachos, French fries and cookies are tucked alongside salads, juice and fresh fruit do not encourage children to eat well.
The SNA has now done a follow-up. It found that less than half of the schools were implementing their nutrition-education guidelines and enforcing vending-machine rules. The sporty bits fared better, with 64% of the schools meeting their physical-education requirements.
Bringing the issue to a local level is meant to make up for the dearth of guidelines from the federal government. Other than banning chewing-gum and sweets from the cafeteria at
lunchtime, there are no national guidelines for food sold outside the school lunch programme, nor are there any requirements for physical education. So far, the 2004 act does not seem to be doing enough to change that.
(The Economist, 570 words)
Sep. 4, 2017
Turmoil in America’s subprime and asset-backed markets has hit Japan’s publicly tr aded financial markets more than perhaps any other country’s. At the height of the panic in mid-August the Nikkei 225 index fell by 9% in a single week, dipping 16% below its July peak. Despite a recovery of sorts the Nikkei is still 7% below its starting-point for the year. American shares, where the trouble all began, remain up on the year. Investors are squealing at the injustice of it.
To make matters worse, Japan’s currency has surged as hedge funds have unwound their positions in the carry trade-where people borrow cheap yen to sell in order to invest in higher—yielding assets overseas. That has left many ordinary Japanese savers facing not just paper losses as the yen climbed but also steep margin calls from foreign-exchange brokers. The yen has slipped back a bit but not enough to make good on losses.
Why should Japan, so far from the storm’s centre, have been hit so hard? Financial innovation of the sort that encouraged risk to multiply elsewhere is scarcely known in Japan. An unusually high proportion of household assets remains under the mattress or in bank deposits. Japanese financial institutions have only the smallest exposure to subprime debt. In general, the appetite for leverage is tiny in comparison with America’s or Europe’s. Richard Jerram of, Macquarie Research points out that
the value of all corporate bonds outstanding in Japan is equivalent to just under 10% of GDP, roughly the same ratio as subprime and other high-risk debt alone in America.
The simplest explanation is that Western banks, hedge funds and others hit by higher volatility, liquidity concerns or redemption calls sold whatever they could. The foreign-exchange market is hugely liquid, so carry-trade positions were easily unwound. The market for Japanese shares is also big and liquid—and disproportionately owned by foreign investors. Foreigners own 30% of Japan’s listed shares, and typically account for three-fifths of all trading (Japanese institutions tend to sit on their holdings). Huge foreign sell orders—the biggest since the world stock market crash of October 1987—sent Japan’s blue-chip shares skidding.
However susceptible Japan’s financial markets have been to the bursting of America’s credit bubble, plenty of analysts argue that the country is insulated from the economic consequences. Japan’s five-year-old recovery is led by domestic demand, they say, and by business investment in particular. As for trade flows, America matters less than it did, swallowing just 20% of Japan’s exports compared with nearly double that amount two decades ago. Optimists also point out that any American slowdown would presumably be felt most in the construction industry, a sector to which Japanese exports are not heavily exposed.
(The Economist, 448 words)。