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Michael Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, is the ideal writer to analyze the behavior that led to the current credit crisis. The bad news is that he is only the editor of this collection of articles. The good news is that he has not been constrained by false modesty and has chosen six of his own pieces for this book. As one would expect, they are witty, incisive and original. Mr. Lewis also contributes an introduction to each of the sections dealing with the four main panics of the last 21 years; the stock market crash of 1987, the Asian crisis of 1997-98 , the bursting of the dotcom bubble after 2000 and the current housing and banking bust. It is worth remembering, as we think the gloomy economic future, how each of the previous three crises was greeted with apocalyptic (天启的) headlines. "How many times does the end of the world as we know it needs to arrive before we realize that it’s not the end of the world as we know it" Mr. Lewis writes, in perhaps the most telling sentence of the book. The compiler’s contribution apart, the selection is a mixed bag. The aim was to give readers a flavor of sentiment before the bubbles burst, as well as analysis of the result. But the result is too much flat news stories and the book only really comes to life with the last two sections ,perhaps because the follies of dotcom valuations and subprime loans(次级抵押贷款) seem so fresh in the memory. It is hard not to miss days when Computer.com( a website for new users of technology) was able to spend 60% of its seed funding on a 90-second ad during the 2000 Super Bowl. Or when the shares of Books-A-Million, a retailer, rose tenfold within three days on the back of an upgrade to its existing website. The book covered four panics of the last 21 years, before each of which Mr. Lewis gave a (an) ______.
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Yet with economies in free fall, managers also need up-to-date information about what is happening to their businesses, so that they can change course rapidly if necessary. Cisco, an American network-equipment giant, has invested over many years in the technology needed to generate such data. Frank Calderoni, the firm’s CFO, says that every day its senior executives can track exactly what orders are coming in from sales teams around the world, and identify emerging trends in each region and market segment. And at the end of each month, the firm can get reliable financial results within four hours of closing its books. Most firms have to wait days or even weeks for such certainty. Admittedly, Cisco’s financial results have not made happy reading recently because, in common with many other large technology companies, it has seen demand for its products decline in the downturn. In early February it announced that its fiscal second-quarter revenues of ＄9.1 billion were 7.5% lower than the same period in 2008 and that its profit had fallen by 27%, to ＄1.5 billion. In response to hard times, Cisco plans to cut ＄1billion of costs this year by, among other things, making use of its own video-conferencing and other communications technologies to reduce the amount its executives travel. It is also using these facilities to relay information from employees on the ground to its senior managers, and to get instructions from Cisco’s leaders back out to its 67,000 staff. A rapid exchange of information and instructions is especially valuable if the company wants to alter course in stormy times. If everybody in a company can rapidly grasp what they have to do and how it is changing, they are more likely to get the job done. But some firms are reluctant to share their goals with the wider world. Unilever, a big Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods group, has decided against issuing a 2009 financial forecast to investors, arguing that it is difficult to predict what is going to happen, given the dangerous state of the world economy. "We’re not just going to provide numbers for the sake of it," explains James Allison, the company’s head of investor relations. Other companies that have decided not to provide annual earnings estimates for 2009 include Costco, a big American retailer, and Union Pacific, an American railway company. Some firms, such as Intel, seem to have chosen to take things quarter by quarter. The giant chipmaker (芯片制造商) said in January that it would not issue an official forecast for the first quarter of 2009 after its fourth-quarter 2008 profit decreased by 90%. Several retail chains have also stopped providing monthly sales estimates because they cannot see what the future holds. Retailers, chipmakers and firms in many other industries may have a long wait before the economic fog finally lifts. What is important in the unstable time if a company wants to change strategies
Questions 19 to 21 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
Scientists have come up with a theory for why time flies when you are having fun and drags when you are bored. Scans have shown that (62) of activity in the brain change depending on how we focus on a task. Concentrating on time passing, as we do when bored, will (63) brain activity which will make it seem as though the clock is ticking more (64) . The research, by the French Laboratory of Neurobiology and Cognition, is published in the magazine Science. In the study, 12 volunteers watched an image while researchers (65) their brain activity using MRI(核磁共振成像) scans. Volunteers were given a (66) of tasks. In one they were told to concentrate simply on the duration of an image, in (67) they were asked to focus on the (68) , and in a third they were asked to concentrate on both duration and color. The results showed that a network of brain regions was (69) when more subjects were paid attention to duration. It is thought that if the brain is busy focusing on many aspects of a task, then it has to spread its resources thinly, and pays less (70) to time passing. Therefore, time passes without us really (71) it, and seems to go quickly. (72) , if the brain is not stimulated in this way, it concentrates its (73) energies on monitoring the passing of time. This may make time seem to (74) , but in fact it is probably a more accurate perception of reality. (75) the researchers found that the more volunteers concentrated on the duration of the images, the more (76) were their estimates of its duration.Lead researcher Dr. Jennifer Coull said many of the areas of the brain (77) in estimating time were the same that played a key role in controlling movement, and (78) for action. She said this overlap suggests that the brain may make sense of time as (79) between movements, in much the same way (80) musicians mark time with his foot, or (81) anticipate the sound of a starter’s pistol.
Passage OneQuestions 26 to 28 are based on the passage you have just heard.
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