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Barclays and HSBC
巴克莱和汇丰
Happier days
幸福时光

Aug 3rd 2009
From Economist.com

HSBC and Barclays battle bad debts, but their investment banks boom
汇丰和巴克莱正为坏账浴血奋战，可旗下的投行却春风得意

WHEN the rug was pulled from under Britain’s big banks, only HSBC and Barclays remained upright, avoiding state rescue by raising capital from private sources. Now their sense of superiority is likely to be compounded by first-half results. On Monday August 3rd both banks reported big profits. By contrast, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, which are now state-controlled, are both forecast to make losses.
英国各大银行风雨飘摇之时，只有汇丰和巴克莱傲然独立，躲过了从私人资本筹集资金活命之灾。而今上半年运转良好，他们可能加倍自豪。8月3日（周一），两行都汇报了高额利润。相比之下，现在由国家控股的劳埃德银行集团和苏格兰皇家银行都被冠以亏损之测。
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Economist Intelligence Unit Briefing
经济学人智库简报

Uncertainty in the year ahead
未来一年的不确定因素

Jul 28th 2009
From the Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire

China‘s economy should grow by 8% this year and next, but significant risks remain
中国经济在今明两年应该会增长8％，但是重大风险依然存在
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Financial reform
金融改革

More to do
路漫漫

Jul 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Banking reform should aim at those regulated, not just the regulator
银行改革不要只盯着监管者，也要关注被监管者

“MR OSBORNE…has embarked on a half-baked plan of destruction,” thundered a London banker in a letter to the Financial Times. Not all City folk have been so scathing. But plans to abolish the Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced by George Osborne, the Conservative shadow chancellor of the exchequer, on July 20th caused consternation among many of the regulated, as well as at the giant financial watchdog itself.

一位伦敦银行家在写给《金融时报》的信中大吼：“奥斯本正实行不成熟的毁灭计划”。不是所有的伦敦银行家都这么毫不留情。但是7月20日财政部保守党影子大臣乔治·奥斯本宣布废除金融服务局（FSA）的决议给众多被监管者一个措手不及，包括被废除的对象金融监管“大狗”自己。
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Lexington
列克星敦

The Obama cult
奥巴马粉丝团

Jul 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

If Barack Obama disappoints his supporters, they will have only themselves to blame
如果巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）让其支持者失望了，那也只能怨他们自己！

IN JANUARY 2007 Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said he was running for president to revive “our national soul”. He was not alone in taking an expansive view of presidential responsibilities. With the exception of Ron Paul, all the serious candidates waxed grandiloquent about their aims. John McCain said he modelled himself on Teddy Roosevelt, a man who “nourished the soul of a great nation”. Hillary Clinton lamented that America had no goals, and offered to supply some. And let us not forget the man they all sought to replace, George Bush, who promised, among other things, to “rid the world of evil”. Appalled by such hubris, a libertarian scholar called Gene Healy wrote “The Cult of the Presidency”, a book decrying the unrealistic expectations Americans have of their presidents. The book was written while Barack Obama’s career was still on the launch pad, yet it describes with uncanny prescience the atmosphere that allowed him to soar.
2007年一月，阿肯色州的前任州长麦克·哈克比（Mike Huckabee）宣称自己竞选总统是为了重塑“民族之魂”。他并不是唯一一个以如此自大的眼光看待总统职责的人。除了罗恩·保罗（Ron Paul），其余所有主要候选人都在往自己脸上贴金，大言不惭的鼓出自己的执政目标。约翰·麦凯恩（John Macain）表示，自己将以泰迪·罗斯福（Teddy Roosevelt）为榜样，因为后者“塑造了一个伟大国家的民族魂”。希拉里·克林顿（Hillary Clinton）因为觉得美国缺乏目标而痛惜不已，并且表示愿意为美国找寻前进的方向。还有，别忘了这些人力图要接替的那个家伙——乔治·布什（George Bush），他曾经在一堆承诺中表示要“让世界摆脱邪恶”。面对如此惊人的狂妄言论，一位叫做基恩·希利（Gene Healy）的自由论学者撰写了一部题为《总统崇拜》的书，公开反对美国民众对总统不切实际的期望。这本书是在巴拉克·奥巴马的事业还在起步阶段的时候写的，但是作者却不可思议的预见到了日后让他如日中天的大环境。
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A special report on the Arab world阿拉伯特别报道
All change, no change万变不离其宗
Jul 23rd 2009
Mountain above, volcano below山峦之下，火山暗涌

IMAGINE an Arab Rip Abu Winkle who had fallen into a deep slumber some time in the early 1980s. If he woke up now, he would rub his eyes in disbelief at how little had changed.
设想19世纪80年代早期, 某个阿拉伯的瑞普-凡-温克尔(Rip Abu Winkle)[译者注:源于同名小说,此人黄粱一梦,世间千年已逝]某日陷入了长眠，如果他现在醒来，会不敢相信这个世界几乎没发生什么变化。
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Upheaval at Porsche
保时捷的剧变

Exit Wiedeking
魏德金出局

Jul 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

The predictable end of a long battle
一场旷日持久商战的如期结局

AP

Wiedeking and Härter, in happier times
魏德金与黑特，意气风发时

IN THE morning of July 23rd, Porsche announced the departure of its chief executive, Wendelin Wiedeking, and its chief financial officer, Holger Härter. The German maker of sports cars thus succumbed to what had appeared inevitable since May, when it called off its improbable attempt to take over Volkswagen, a carmaker 15 times its size.

保时捷(Porsche)在7月23号的早上宣布了其首席执行官文德林•魏德金(Wendelin Wiedeking)和首席财务官霍格尔•黑特(Holger Härter)已经离职的消息。自今年五月意图收购大众汽车(Volkswagen,一个规模为保时捷15倍的汽车制造商)失败以来，这家德国跑车制造商终于屈从于这个似乎不可避免的结局。
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Idea
理念

Globalisation
全球化

Jul 20th 2009
From Economist.com

Globalisation is the more or less simultaneous marketing and sale of identical goods and services around the world. So widespread has the phenomenon become over the past two decades that no one is surprised any more to find Coca-Cola in rural Vietnam, Accenture in Tashkent and Nike shoes in Nigeria. The statistic that perhaps best reflects the growth of globalisation is the value of cross-border world trade expressed as a percentage of total global GDP: it was around 15% in 1990, is some 20% today and is expected by McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, to rise to 30% by 2015.

全球化差不多就是在全世界范围内的市场的同步化以及商品和服务的统一化。在过去的20年里，这一现象已经变得极为普遍，以至于就算是在越南的一个小乡村里找到了一瓶可口可乐，或者是听说埃森哲咨询公司[译注1]开到了塔什干[乌兹别克斯坦共和国首都]，耐克买到了尼日利亚，也不会有人感到很惊讶。或许统计数字能比较好的反映全球化的发展情况：1990年，全球跨境贸易的总额只占全世界GDP的15%左右。今天，这个数字达到了20%。麦肯锡咨询公司[译注2]预则到2015年，这个数字会达到30%。
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Face value
商界精英
Turning up the gas
焕然一新的天然气行业
Jul 16th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Faisal Al Suwaidi has become a victim of his own success in creating a worldwide market for liquid natural gas
苏瓦伊迪在建造液化天然气全球市场的同时成为了自己成功事业的受害者。

RED flames shimmer behind a thick shroud of smoke at the Ras Laffan gas plant in Qatar. Methane from the bottom of the Persian Gulf is part-combusted and filtered in a spaghetti-like tangle of steel pipes. Further along, the gas is cooled in bulbous storage tanks to minus 160°C, turning it into liquid and reducing it to one-six-hundredth of its original volume, ready to be sent across the oceans aboard a new generation of supercarriers. Local officials boast that the plant will be the largest structure made by man in centuries when it is finished next year. Already it produces a quarter of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG).
在卡塔尔的拉斯拉凡天然气加工厂内，烟雾笼罩下的红色火焰微微发亮。来自波斯湾底部的甲烷气体在未完全燃烧后，经过那些像意大利面缠绕在一起的钢管来进行过滤。之后，气体进入球状储油罐内并冷却至零下160°C。在这里，气体压缩成体积约为同量气态天然气体积的1/600的液态天然气，并准备通过新一代的航空母舰越洋送往世界各地。当地官员夸口到，明年工厂建成后将会是几个世纪内最大的人造建筑。它目前已生产全球近四分之一的液化天然气（LNG）。
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Lexington
列克星敦

The passing of Palin
Jul 9th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Sarah Palin will never be president. But her resignation leaves a gap in American politics
萨拉佩林不会当总统，但她的辞职给美国政治留下了一个真空。

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