2009 高级英语阅读

1. When-and-if the industry recovers, it will have been fundamentally altered. Passengers can expect fewer flights overall and anemic service to smaller airports, as airlines focus on large, profitable hubs.

2. Until more do so, the bank-driven alternative system of funding will continue to misallocate capital. This is a fair criticism. But the market has shown that it can fulfill its function as a viable long-term alternative to the bank debt that has always dominated European financial intermediation. In the early part of this year it provided a flood of liquidity to telecoms issuers as equity investors‟ enthusiasm for that industry dried up. The issuance has since also dried up, but it represented progress.

3. It is unlikely that the U.S. can negotiate and submit for approval any new agreements for at least three years, and it will take even longer for these agreements to affect the economy. Moreover, if past trade deals are any indication, fast track and new trade deals are likely to curtail growth, not increase it.

4. Take the case of Unilever, one of the world‟s largest consumer-goods companies, with annual sales of about $50 billion. This mammoth Anglo-Dutch group in July bought Laocai, a Chinese pickled-vegetable and soy-sauce brand that it plans to take global within the next five years. Unilever wouldn‟t specify exactly how much it has earmarked for building recognition of Laocai among consumers.

5. The most pressing question right now is what will happen in TV, already reeling from a big drop in advertising. Although the new season has been pretty well purged of any references that might be deemed offensive in the wake of the attack, there is serious doubt about viewers tastes in the future.

6. It may take some time for Wall Street to overcome its fear and share Greenspan‟s good mood. Says Henry Kaufman, a New York-based investment manager and economic forecaster: “People took such a beating. You‟re got to wipe out those memory banks.

7. Besides bringing in additional revenue, a global brand also burnishes a company‟s image in China, stimulating sales among status-conscious domestic consumers. For example, state-owned soft-drinks maker jianlibao has developed its overseas market in part to “establish

a good image”, which in turn enhances consumption at home.

8. Nor was it about price-earnings multiples rising to the Ionosphere. It was-and is-about an economy capable of growing more rapidly without inflation than it did during the long slump of 1973 to 1995, because of technology-driven increases in productivity, the world‟s best financial system, and the unleashing of entrepreneurial energies through deregulation.

9. For all that it has clearly had profound effects already, and will have even deeper ones after January 1, the euro by itself can only do so much. It is best seen as one, albeit central, element of a bigger project: to create a true single market in Europe.

10. Lousy returns, lumbering giant firms, too many funds---can the industry right itself?

11. Now, of course, many of the celebrated dealmakers of the …90s have run into a brick wall. With Wall Street suddenly turning a cold eye toward the aggressive acquisitions accounting and leverage that drove much of the growth of the past decade, such acquisitive high-fliers as WorldCom, Tyco, and Conseco (CNC) have fallen out of favor with investors.

12. The EU is expected to undergo the largest expansion of its borders ever. Up to 10 countries could join the EU in2004, although some difficult areas for negotiations remain, including agriculture. The candidate countries, and to a lesser extent the EU, will likely benefit from