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Questions 1～3
Lincoln expected that America would become a nation doubtful about its heroes and its history. In his astonishing address to the Young Men"s Lyceum of Springfield, Ⅲ., on Jan. 27, 1838, on "the perpetuation of our political institutions", the 28-year-old Lincoln foresaw the inevitable rise in a modern democracy like ours of skepticism and worldliness. Indeed, he worried about the fate of free institutions in a maturing nation no longer shaped by a youthful, instinctive and (mostly) healthy patriotism.
Such patriotism is natural in the early years after a revolutionary struggle for independence. To the generation that experienced the Revolution and the children of that generation, Lincoln explained, the events of the Revolution remained "living history", and those Americans retained an emotional attachment to the political institutions that had been created. But the living memories of the Revolution and the founding could no longer be counted on. Those memories "were a fortress of strength; but what invading foemen could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls". So, Lincoln concluded, the once mighty "pillars of the temple of liberty" that supported our political institutions were gone.
Lincoln implored his fellow citizens in 1838 to replace those old pillars with new ones constructed by "reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason". He knew that such a recommendation—such a hope—was problematic. In politics, cold, calculating reason has its limits. In the event, it was Lincoln"s foreboding of trouble, not his hope for renewal, that turned out to be correct. The nation held together for only one more generation. Twenty-three years after Lincoln"s speech, the South seceded, and civil war came.
Lincoln managed, of course, in a supreme act of leadership, to win that war, preserve the union and end slavery. He was also able to interpret that war as producing a "new birth of freedom," explaining its extraordinary sacrifices in a way that provided a renewed basis for attachment to a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Perhaps the compromises made by the founding generation with the institution of slavery would have proved fatal in any case. Still, the fact is that the US was unable to perpetuate its political institutions peacefully after those who had lived through the Revolution died and even secondhand memories of America"s founding faded.
Now we find ourselves in a situation oddly similar to the one Lincoln faced in 1838. Lincoln delivered his Lyceum Address 62 years after the Declaration of Independence. We are now the same time span from the end of World War II. Our victory in that war—followed by our willingness to quickly assume another set of burdens in the defense of freedom against another great tyranny— marked the beginning of the US"s role as leader of the free world. Through all the ups and downs of the cold war and through the 1990s and this decade, the memories of World War II have sustained the US, as it did its duty in helping resist tyranny and expand the frontiers of freedom in the world.
The generation of World War II is mostly gone. The generation that directly heard tell of World War II from its parents is moving on. We have exhausted, so to speak, the moral capital of that war. Now we face challenges almost as daunting as those confronting the nation when Lincoln spoke. The perpetuation of freedom in the world is no more certain today than was the perpetuation of our free institutions then. Of course, we have the example of Lincoln to guide us. And Ferguson"s wry and sardonic account of the ways we remember him is heartening and even inspiring, almost despite itself or despite ourselves. But the failures of leadership of the 1840s and 1850s should also chasten us. Nations don"t always rise to the occasion. And the next generation can pay a great price when the preceding one shirks its responsibilities.What was Lincoln worried about as he delivered his address to the Young Men"s Lyceum of Springfield

答案： New Americans doubt their own heroes and history/rise of a m...

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Questions 4～6
When Dana Hale adopted her son four years ago, she says she had to "play hardball" with her boss to get the same paid leave granted colleagues who give birth. The Washington employment lawyer knew then that if she and her self-employed husband adopted again, it would be under new management. So Hale began researching adoption-friendly workplaces, and soon focused on Capital One. The big financial-services company, headquartered in McLean, Va., offers $ 5,000 in assistance per adopted child, plus six weeks of paid leave. More important to Hale, the company fosters a supportive culture for adoptive parents, who network through a corporate intranet site. "I specifically chose Capital One so I could adopt more children," says Hale, 44, on the eve of a trip to Ukraine to bring home two teenage sisters.
Adoption has become an employment issue. Because more women delay parenthood to pursue careers during their prime childbearing years, some seek alternative avenues to build their families. With each adoption costing up to $ 30,000 and often demanding mounds of paperwork and weeks of travel, workers are asking their employers for help. They"re getting it, mainly from companies in competitive industries hungry to attract and keep talent. Google, JPMorgan Chase, Abbott Laboratories, Avon and Motorola have all added adoption assistance to their buffet of benefits. In 1990, only 12% of 1,000 companies surveyed by Hewitt Associates offered financial assistance for adoption. By 2006, 45% of companies did. Rita Sorensen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, estimates that in 2007 fully half of employers provide adoption benefits and that within five years those offerings will be considered standard.
Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy"s, may have kicked off the trend 15 years ago when he began urging other CEOs to assist employees with adoption. Himself an adoptee, Thomas started his foundation to help find permanent homes for children in the US foster-care system. (More than 140,000 currently await adoption, according to Sorensen.) This year the foundation began tracking corporations and ranking them according to the generosity of their benefits. Of companies that provide adoption assistance, it found that $ 4,700 is offered on average per adoption and about double that if a child has special needs or is from foster care. Companies are also giving workers an average of five weeks of paid parental leave.
Even as employers retreat from providing expensive benefits like lifetime health coverage, they are finding that adoption assistance is relatively inexpensive—and yields disproportionately high rewards in employee loyalty, community goodwill and solid-gold p. r. Unlike maternity benefits, adoption assistance isn"t covered by medical or disability insurance, meaning the entire cost must come directly from an employer"s pocket. Still, only 0.5% of employees tap adoption benefits, but the assistance is so appreciated that workers gush about it to colleagues, spreading the warm, fuzzy corporate feelings. "Not to cheapen it, but it"s cost-effective goodwill," says Sorensen, "one that doesn"t hit the bottom line very hard. " Greg Rasin, a partner with Proskauer Rose who advises employers on benefits, points out that at the very least, the Families and Medical Leave Act compels employers with more than 50 workers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Legal bonus: offering adoption benefits might shield them from lawsuits by workers seeking parity with those who receive maternity leave.
Offering adoption assistance was an easy call for Steve Steinour, CEO of Citizens Financial Group and the father of two adopted children. "We knew from experience that for most Americans, adoption is an unaffordable option," he says. Citizens—a bank based in Providence, R. I. , with 25,000 employees—provides up to $ 21,000 in aid, a sum that helped put it at the top of the Dave Thomas Foundation"s list of adoption-friendly workplaces. Though Steinour says retention is much greater among the 100 or so workers who have used the benefits, he admits that this impact is hard to quantify for shareholders. "You can"t translate everything into a direct payback," he says.
Payback comes in the form of loyalty and gratitude from employees like Paula Cavallaro, a Citizens trust administrator. Already the parents of Amanda, 12, Cavallaro and her husband had "talked and talked" about adopting another child. The Cavallaros received $10,000 from Citizens to adopt Anny, 13, from Colombia last summer (employees receive more for special-needs adoptions). "We would still have done it, but having the benefit just made it so much easier," says Cavallaro, 48. "I will always, always, always be grateful for the help. "Why does the author tell the story of Dana Hale at the beginning of the passage

答案： To show that adoption becomes an employment issue. More wome...

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Questions 1～3
Lincoln expected that America would become a nation doubtful about its heroes and its history. In his astonishing address to the Young Men"s Lyceum of Springfield, Ⅲ., on Jan. 27, 1838, on "the perpetuation of our political institutions", the 28-year-old Lincoln foresaw the inevitable rise in a modern democracy like ours of skepticism and worldliness. Indeed, he worried about the fate of free institutions in a maturing nation no longer shaped by a youthful, instinctive and (mostly) healthy patriotism.
Such patriotism is natural in the early years after a revolutionary struggle for independence. To the generation that experienced the Revolution and the children of that generation, Lincoln explained, the events of the Revolution remained "living history", and those Americans retained an emotional attachment to the political institutions that had been created. But the living memories of the Revolution and the founding could no longer be counted on. Those memories "were a fortress of strength; but what invading foemen could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls". So, Lincoln concluded, the once mighty "pillars of the temple of liberty" that supported our political institutions were gone.
Lincoln implored his fellow citizens in 1838 to replace those old pillars with new ones constructed by "reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason". He knew that such a recommendation—such a hope—was problematic. In politics, cold, calculating reason has its limits. In the event, it was Lincoln"s foreboding of trouble, not his hope for renewal, that turned out to be correct. The nation held together for only one more generation. Twenty-three years after Lincoln"s speech, the South seceded, and civil war came.
Lincoln managed, of course, in a supreme act of leadership, to win that war, preserve the union and end slavery. He was also able to interpret that war as producing a "new birth of freedom," explaining its extraordinary sacrifices in a way that provided a renewed basis for attachment to a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Perhaps the compromises made by the founding generation with the institution of slavery would have proved fatal in any case. Still, the fact is that the US was unable to perpetuate its political institutions peacefully after those who had lived through the Revolution died and even secondhand memories of America"s founding faded.
Now we find ourselves in a situation oddly similar to the one Lincoln faced in 1838. Lincoln delivered his Lyceum Address 62 years after the Declaration of Independence. We are now the same time span from the end of World War II. Our victory in that war—followed by our willingness to quickly assume another set of burdens in the defense of freedom against another great tyranny— marked the beginning of the US"s role as leader of the free world. Through all the ups and downs of the cold war and through the 1990s and this decade, the memories of World War II have sustained the US, as it did its duty in helping resist tyranny and expand the frontiers of freedom in the world.
The generation of World War II is mostly gone. The generation that directly heard tell of World War II from its parents is moving on. We have exhausted, so to speak, the moral capital of that war. Now we face challenges almost as daunting as those confronting the nation when Lincoln spoke. The perpetuation of freedom in the world is no more certain today than was the perpetuation of our free institutions then. Of course, we have the example of Lincoln to guide us. And Ferguson"s wry and sardonic account of the ways we remember him is heartening and even inspiring, almost despite itself or despite ourselves. But the failures of leadership of the 1840s and 1850s should also chasten us. Nations don"t always rise to the occasion. And the next generation can pay a great price when the preceding one shirks its responsibilities.Why does the author mention the American civil war in the passage

答案： The author mentions the American civil war in order to show ...

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Questions 4～6
When Dana Hale adopted her son four years ago, she says she had to "play hardball" with her boss to get the same paid leave granted colleagues who give birth. The Washington employment lawyer knew then that if she and her self-employed husband adopted again, it would be under new management. So Hale began researching adoption-friendly workplaces, and soon focused on Capital One. The big financial-services company, headquartered in McLean, Va., offers $ 5,000 in assistance per adopted child, plus six weeks of paid leave. More important to Hale, the company fosters a supportive culture for adoptive parents, who network through a corporate intranet site. "I specifically chose Capital One so I could adopt more children," says Hale, 44, on the eve of a trip to Ukraine to bring home two teenage sisters.
Adoption has become an employment issue. Because more women delay parenthood to pursue careers during their prime childbearing years, some seek alternative avenues to build their families. With each adoption costing up to $ 30,000 and often demanding mounds of paperwork and weeks of travel, workers are asking their employers for help. They"re getting it, mainly from companies in competitive industries hungry to attract and keep talent. Google, JPMorgan Chase, Abbott Laboratories, Avon and Motorola have all added adoption assistance to their buffet of benefits. In 1990, only 12% of 1,000 companies surveyed by Hewitt Associates offered financial assistance for adoption. By 2006, 45% of companies did. Rita Sorensen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, estimates that in 2007 fully half of employers provide adoption benefits and that within five years those offerings will be considered standard.
Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy"s, may have kicked off the trend 15 years ago when he began urging other CEOs to assist employees with adoption. Himself an adoptee, Thomas started his foundation to help find permanent homes for children in the US foster-care system. (More than 140,000 currently await adoption, according to Sorensen.) This year the foundation began tracking corporations and ranking them according to the generosity of their benefits. Of companies that provide adoption assistance, it found that $ 4,700 is offered on average per adoption and about double that if a child has special needs or is from foster care. Companies are also giving workers an average of five weeks of paid parental leave.
Even as employers retreat from providing expensive benefits like lifetime health coverage, they are finding that adoption assistance is relatively inexpensive—and yields disproportionately high rewards in employee loyalty, community goodwill and solid-gold p. r. Unlike maternity benefits, adoption assistance isn"t covered by medical or disability insurance, meaning the entire cost must come directly from an employer"s pocket. Still, only 0.5% of employees tap adoption benefits, but the assistance is so appreciated that workers gush about it to colleagues, spreading the warm, fuzzy corporate feelings. "Not to cheapen it, but it"s cost-effective goodwill," says Sorensen, "one that doesn"t hit the bottom line very hard. " Greg Rasin, a partner with Proskauer Rose who advises employers on benefits, points out that at the very least, the Families and Medical Leave Act compels employers with more than 50 workers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Legal bonus: offering adoption benefits might shield them from lawsuits by workers seeking parity with those who receive maternity leave.
Offering adoption assistance was an easy call for Steve Steinour, CEO of Citizens Financial Group and the father of two adopted children. "We knew from experience that for most Americans, adoption is an unaffordable option," he says. Citizens—a bank based in Providence, R. I. , with 25,000 employees—provides up to $ 21,000 in aid, a sum that helped put it at the top of the Dave Thomas Foundation"s list of adoption-friendly workplaces. Though Steinour says retention is much greater among the 100 or so workers who have used the benefits, he admits that this impact is hard to quantify for shareholders. "You can"t translate everything into a direct payback," he says.
Payback comes in the form of loyalty and gratitude from employees like Paula Cavallaro, a Citizens trust administrator. Already the parents of Amanda, 12, Cavallaro and her husband had "talked and talked" about adopting another child. The Cavallaros received $10,000 from Citizens to adopt Anny, 13, from Colombia last summer (employees receive more for special-needs adoptions). "We would still have done it, but having the benefit just made it so much easier," says Cavallaro, 48. "I will always, always, always be grateful for the help. "Why are an increasing number of employers providing adoption assistance to their staff

答案： To attract and keep talents. Adoption assistance is not cost...

问答题

Questions 1～3
Lincoln expected that America would become a nation doubtful about its heroes and its history. In his astonishing address to the Young Men"s Lyceum of Springfield, Ⅲ., on Jan. 27, 1838, on "the perpetuation of our political institutions", the 28-year-old Lincoln foresaw the inevitable rise in a modern democracy like ours of skepticism and worldliness. Indeed, he worried about the fate of free institutions in a maturing nation no longer shaped by a youthful, instinctive and (mostly) healthy patriotism.
Such patriotism is natural in the early years after a revolutionary struggle for independence. To the generation that experienced the Revolution and the children of that generation, Lincoln explained, the events of the Revolution remained "living history", and those Americans retained an emotional attachment to the political institutions that had been created. But the living memories of the Revolution and the founding could no longer be counted on. Those memories "were a fortress of strength; but what invading foemen could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls". So, Lincoln concluded, the once mighty "pillars of the temple of liberty" that supported our political institutions were gone.
Lincoln implored his fellow citizens in 1838 to replace those old pillars with new ones constructed by "reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason". He knew that such a recommendation—such a hope—was problematic. In politics, cold, calculating reason has its limits. In the event, it was Lincoln"s foreboding of trouble, not his hope for renewal, that turned out to be correct. The nation held together for only one more generation. Twenty-three years after Lincoln"s speech, the South seceded, and civil war came.
Lincoln managed, of course, in a supreme act of leadership, to win that war, preserve the union and end slavery. He was also able to interpret that war as producing a "new birth of freedom," explaining its extraordinary sacrifices in a way that provided a renewed basis for attachment to a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Perhaps the compromises made by the founding generation with the institution of slavery would have proved fatal in any case. Still, the fact is that the US was unable to perpetuate its political institutions peacefully after those who had lived through the Revolution died and even secondhand memories of America"s founding faded.
Now we find ourselves in a situation oddly similar to the one Lincoln faced in 1838. Lincoln delivered his Lyceum Address 62 years after the Declaration of Independence. We are now the same time span from the end of World War II. Our victory in that war—followed by our willingness to quickly assume another set of burdens in the defense of freedom against another great tyranny— marked the beginning of the US"s role as leader of the free world. Through all the ups and downs of the cold war and through the 1990s and this decade, the memories of World War II have sustained the US, as it did its duty in helping resist tyranny and expand the frontiers of freedom in the world.
The generation of World War II is mostly gone. The generation that directly heard tell of World War II from its parents is moving on. We have exhausted, so to speak, the moral capital of that war. Now we face challenges almost as daunting as those confronting the nation when Lincoln spoke. The perpetuation of freedom in the world is no more certain today than was the perpetuation of our free institutions then. Of course, we have the example of Lincoln to guide us. And Ferguson"s wry and sardonic account of the ways we remember him is heartening and even inspiring, almost despite itself or despite ourselves. But the failures of leadership of the 1840s and 1850s should also chasten us. Nations don"t always rise to the occasion. And the next generation can pay a great price when the preceding one shirks its responsibilities.In what ways does our current situation resemble that of Lincoln"s time

答案： The same time span from the end of World War II as Lincoln"s...

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Questions 7～10
It is with a queasy feeling that the world"s bankers enter 2008. Within 12 months, they have seen record profits crumble, once-booming debt businesses blighted by write—owns, and the troubles of some former high-flyers in the mortgage industry threaten the soundness of the financial system. Fresh obstacles loom in 2008, including a new regulatory regime, known as Basel 2, whose shortcomings have emerged even before it has been officially born. More worrying still would be a slowdown in the world economy.
That is not all. The maelstrom in credit markets in 2007 exposed flaws in a banking model that has transformed the finance industry: the banks" ability to sell loans that they don"t want to keep to investors hungry for high-yielding assets. This "U-Haul" model of distributed risk had been widely considered one of the marvels of modern finance, until trouble hit.
The ability of American banks to turn their loans, via Wall Street"s alchemists, into packages of high-yielding securities and sell them to investors was supposed to have enabled banks to diversify their exposure to credit risk. Bank failures had for years been minimal, even during the Asian and Russian debt crises of 1997 and 1998 and the dotcom collapse. By keeping fewer loans on their balance sheets, banks reported stronger returns on their assets, helping to generate bumper earnings.
The coming year will test how much of that risk has indeed been spread, and how much of the diversification was illusory. Did banks simply replace the risk of lending on their own doorstep with exposures from outside their sphere of expertise Some lenders appear to have bamboozled naive borrowers into taking on mortgages they couldn"t afford, knowing they could sell the unsound loans into the market with few questions asked. Others made themselves vulnerable by financing long- term loans in the short-term money markets, rather than from depositors or through issuance of bonds. They were strangled when the money markets seized up.
Taking such risks will be far harder in 2008, because everyone has been sharply reminded of the maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities that is at the heart of banking. So banks will have to court depositors, not the capital markets. When they make loans, they will have to keep them, monitor them and ensure repayment, rather than passing them on like hot potatoes. "There will be a mad rush back to traditional banking," predicts Dick Bove, banking analyst at Punk Ziegel.
The process will not be smooth. Politicians, especially in the American Congress, may tie up lenders with red tape. And Basel 2, with its new capital-adequacy framework for banks, will be roiled out across the European Union from January (it will affect some American banks in 2009). At least for less sophisticated banks, it leans heavily on rating agencies as arbiters of credit quality. But their credibility has been damaged by the over-optimistic assessments they made of some of the riskier debt instruments. Basel 2 also focuses on credit risk, and largely skates over the fickleness of liquidity that bedevilled markets in 2007.
It has been a long time since banks have faced such torments, but their business has always been a cyclical one and only the foolish will have forgotten that. (As the saying goes, a banker is someone who lends you an umbrella when it is sunny, and asks for it back when it rains.) To tide them over, all those profits have left banks with plenty of capital in the vaults. Should that run out, central bankers in America and Europe have also shown a remarkable willingness to provide liquidity to the financial system to prevent panic.
Tougher conditions are also reducing competition from non-bank financial players, which had flourished in the easy-money era. Aggressive mortgage banks, such as Countrywide in America and Northern Rock in Britain, have revealed their frailties. The big American banks—such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase—have retail-banking franchises that may expand by acquiring stricken competitors. The same holds true for well-capitalised retail banks in Europe. Investment banks that falter may find nationwide American banks offering to buy them; or European banks such as Italy"s UniCredit taking audacious advantage of their hour of need.
Lurking in the background is another potential source of support, deep-pocketed governments in China and the Middle East, keen to invest part of their wealth in Western banks" assets and expertise. According to Morgan Stanley, sovereign-wealth funds spent $ 26 billion in the six months to October 2007 on big financial firms such as Barclays, a British bank, Blackstone, a private-equity group, and the London Stock Exchange. Banks, for their part, covet access to big emerging markets, and a strategic stake sold to the Chinese government, say, may ease the way to a strategic stake in a Chinese bank.
But government ownership of banks is always tricky. That should not be forgotten just because an injection of yuan, roubles or petrodollars might provide a quick and easy way to keep a bad bank on life support.Give a brief introduction to the "U-Haul" model and its significance

答案： a banking model of distributed risk/used to be considered as...

问答题

Questions 4～6
When Dana Hale adopted her son four years ago, she says she had to "play hardball" with her boss to get the same paid leave granted colleagues who give birth. The Washington employment lawyer knew then that if she and her self-employed husband adopted again, it would be under new management. So Hale began researching adoption-friendly workplaces, and soon focused on Capital One. The big financial-services company, headquartered in McLean, Va., offers $ 5,000 in assistance per adopted child, plus six weeks of paid leave. More important to Hale, the company fosters a supportive culture for adoptive parents, who network through a corporate intranet site. "I specifically chose Capital One so I could adopt more children," says Hale, 44, on the eve of a trip to Ukraine to bring home two teenage sisters.
Adoption has become an employment issue. Because more women delay parenthood to pursue careers during their prime childbearing years, some seek alternative avenues to build their families. With each adoption costing up to $ 30,000 and often demanding mounds of paperwork and weeks of travel, workers are asking their employers for help. They"re getting it, mainly from companies in competitive industries hungry to attract and keep talent. Google, JPMorgan Chase, Abbott Laboratories, Avon and Motorola have all added adoption assistance to their buffet of benefits. In 1990, only 12% of 1,000 companies surveyed by Hewitt Associates offered financial assistance for adoption. By 2006, 45% of companies did. Rita Sorensen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, estimates that in 2007 fully half of employers provide adoption benefits and that within five years those offerings will be considered standard.
Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy"s, may have kicked off the trend 15 years ago when he began urging other CEOs to assist employees with adoption. Himself an adoptee, Thomas started his foundation to help find permanent homes for children in the US foster-care system. (More than 140,000 currently await adoption, according to Sorensen.) This year the foundation began tracking corporations and ranking them according to the generosity of their benefits. Of companies that provide adoption assistance, it found that $ 4,700 is offered on average per adoption and about double that if a child has special needs or is from foster care. Companies are also giving workers an average of five weeks of paid parental leave.
Even as employers retreat from providing expensive benefits like lifetime health coverage, they are finding that adoption assistance is relatively inexpensive—and yields disproportionately high rewards in employee loyalty, community goodwill and solid-gold p. r. Unlike maternity benefits, adoption assistance isn"t covered by medical or disability insurance, meaning the entire cost must come directly from an employer"s pocket. Still, only 0.5% of employees tap adoption benefits, but the assistance is so appreciated that workers gush about it to colleagues, spreading the warm, fuzzy corporate feelings. "Not to cheapen it, but it"s cost-effective goodwill," says Sorensen, "one that doesn"t hit the bottom line very hard. " Greg Rasin, a partner with Proskauer Rose who advises employers on benefits, points out that at the very least, the Families and Medical Leave Act compels employers with more than 50 workers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Legal bonus: offering adoption benefits might shield them from lawsuits by workers seeking parity with those who receive maternity leave.
Offering adoption assistance was an easy call for Steve Steinour, CEO of Citizens Financial Group and the father of two adopted children. "We knew from experience that for most Americans, adoption is an unaffordable option," he says. Citizens—a bank based in Providence, R. I. , with 25,000 employees—provides up to $ 21,000 in aid, a sum that helped put it at the top of the Dave Thomas Foundation"s list of adoption-friendly workplaces. Though Steinour says retention is much greater among the 100 or so workers who have used the benefits, he admits that this impact is hard to quantify for shareholders. "You can"t translate everything into a direct payback," he says.
Payback comes in the form of loyalty and gratitude from employees like Paula Cavallaro, a Citizens trust administrator. Already the parents of Amanda, 12, Cavallaro and her husband had "talked and talked" about adopting another child. The Cavallaros received $10,000 from Citizens to adopt Anny, 13, from Colombia last summer (employees receive more for special-needs adoptions). "We would still have done it, but having the benefit just made it so much easier," says Cavallaro, 48. "I will always, always, always be grateful for the help. "What does the author mean by saying that "Offering adoption assistance was an easy call for Steve Steinour... " (Para.5)

答案： For most Americans adoptions are too expensive to afford. Wo...

问答题

Questions 7～10
It is with a queasy feeling that the world"s bankers enter 2008. Within 12 months, they have seen record profits crumble, once-booming debt businesses blighted by write—owns, and the troubles of some former high-flyers in the mortgage industry threaten the soundness of the financial system. Fresh obstacles loom in 2008, including a new regulatory regime, known as Basel 2, whose shortcomings have emerged even before it has been officially born. More worrying still would be a slowdown in the world economy.
That is not all. The maelstrom in credit markets in 2007 exposed flaws in a banking model that has transformed the finance industry: the banks" ability to sell loans that they don"t want to keep to investors hungry for high-yielding assets. This "U-Haul" model of distributed risk had been widely considered one of the marvels of modern finance, until trouble hit.
The ability of American banks to turn their loans, via Wall Street"s alchemists, into packages of high-yielding securities and sell them to investors was supposed to have enabled banks to diversify their exposure to credit risk. Bank failures had for years been minimal, even during the Asian and Russian debt crises of 1997 and 1998 and the dotcom collapse. By keeping fewer loans on their balance sheets, banks reported stronger returns on their assets, helping to generate bumper earnings.
The coming year will test how much of that risk has indeed been spread, and how much of the diversification was illusory. Did banks simply replace the risk of lending on their own doorstep with exposures from outside their sphere of expertise Some lenders appear to have bamboozled naive borrowers into taking on mortgages they couldn"t afford, knowing they could sell the unsound loans into the market with few questions asked. Others made themselves vulnerable by financing long- term loans in the short-term money markets, rather than from depositors or through issuance of bonds. They were strangled when the money markets seized up.
Taking such risks will be far harder in 2008, because everyone has been sharply reminded of the maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities that is at the heart of banking. So banks will have to court depositors, not the capital markets. When they make loans, they will have to keep them, monitor them and ensure repayment, rather than passing them on like hot potatoes. "There will be a mad rush back to traditional banking," predicts Dick Bove, banking analyst at Punk Ziegel.
The process will not be smooth. Politicians, especially in the American Congress, may tie up lenders with red tape. And Basel 2, with its new capital-adequacy framework for banks, will be roiled out across the European Union from January (it will affect some American banks in 2009). At least for less sophisticated banks, it leans heavily on rating agencies as arbiters of credit quality. But their credibility has been damaged by the over-optimistic assessments they made of some of the riskier debt instruments. Basel 2 also focuses on credit risk, and largely skates over the fickleness of liquidity that bedevilled markets in 2007.
It has been a long time since banks have faced such torments, but their business has always been a cyclical one and only the foolish will have forgotten that. (As the saying goes, a banker is someone who lends you an umbrella when it is sunny, and asks for it back when it rains.) To tide them over, all those profits have left banks with plenty of capital in the vaults. Should that run out, central bankers in America and Europe have also shown a remarkable willingness to provide liquidity to the financial system to prevent panic.
Tougher conditions are also reducing competition from non-bank financial players, which had flourished in the easy-money era. Aggressive mortgage banks, such as Countrywide in America and Northern Rock in Britain, have revealed their frailties. The big American banks—such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase—have retail-banking franchises that may expand by acquiring stricken competitors. The same holds true for well-capitalised retail banks in Europe. Investment banks that falter may find nationwide American banks offering to buy them; or European banks such as Italy"s UniCredit taking audacious advantage of their hour of need.
Lurking in the background is another potential source of support, deep-pocketed governments in China and the Middle East, keen to invest part of their wealth in Western banks" assets and expertise. According to Morgan Stanley, sovereign-wealth funds spent $ 26 billion in the six months to October 2007 on big financial firms such as Barclays, a British bank, Blackstone, a private-equity group, and the London Stock Exchange. Banks, for their part, covet access to big emerging markets, and a strategic stake sold to the Chinese government, say, may ease the way to a strategic stake in a Chinese bank.
But government ownership of banks is always tricky. That should not be forgotten just because an injection of yuan, roubles or petrodollars might provide a quick and easy way to keep a bad bank on life support.Give a brief explanation of Basel 2.

答案： a new regulatory regime/establishes a capital-adequacy frame...

问答题

Questions 7～10
It is with a queasy feeling that the world"s bankers enter 2008. Within 12 months, they have seen record profits crumble, once-booming debt businesses blighted by write—owns, and the troubles of some former high-flyers in the mortgage industry threaten the soundness of the financial system. Fresh obstacles loom in 2008, including a new regulatory regime, known as Basel 2, whose shortcomings have emerged even before it has been officially born. More worrying still would be a slowdown in the world economy.
That is not all. The maelstrom in credit markets in 2007 exposed flaws in a banking model that has transformed the finance industry: the banks" ability to sell loans that they don"t want to keep to investors hungry for high-yielding assets. This "U-Haul" model of distributed risk had been widely considered one of the marvels of modern finance, until trouble hit.
The ability of American banks to turn their loans, via Wall Street"s alchemists, into packages of high-yielding securities and sell them to investors was supposed to have enabled banks to diversify their exposure to credit risk. Bank failures had for years been minimal, even during the Asian and Russian debt crises of 1997 and 1998 and the dotcom collapse. By keeping fewer loans on their balance sheets, banks reported stronger returns on their assets, helping to generate bumper earnings.
The coming year will test how much of that risk has indeed been spread, and how much of the diversification was illusory. Did banks simply replace the risk of lending on their own doorstep with exposures from outside their sphere of expertise Some lenders appear to have bamboozled naive borrowers into taking on mortgages they couldn"t afford, knowing they could sell the unsound loans into the market with few questions asked. Others made themselves vulnerable by financing long- term loans in the short-term money markets, rather than from depositors or through issuance of bonds. They were strangled when the money markets seized up.
Taking such risks will be far harder in 2008, because everyone has been sharply reminded of the maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities that is at the heart of banking. So banks will have to court depositors, not the capital markets. When they make loans, they will have to keep them, monitor them and ensure repayment, rather than passing them on like hot potatoes. "There will be a mad rush back to traditional banking," predicts Dick Bove, banking analyst at Punk Ziegel.
The process will not be smooth. Politicians, especially in the American Congress, may tie up lenders with red tape. And Basel 2, with its new capital-adequacy framework for banks, will be roiled out across the European Union from January (it will affect some American banks in 2009). At least for less sophisticated banks, it leans heavily on rating agencies as arbiters of credit quality. But their credibility has been damaged by the over-optimistic assessments they made of some of the riskier debt instruments. Basel 2 also focuses on credit risk, and largely skates over the fickleness of liquidity that bedevilled markets in 2007.
It has been a long time since banks have faced such torments, but their business has always been a cyclical one and only the foolish will have forgotten that. (As the saying goes, a banker is someone who lends you an umbrella when it is sunny, and asks for it back when it rains.) To tide them over, all those profits have left banks with plenty of capital in the vaults. Should that run out, central bankers in America and Europe have also shown a remarkable willingness to provide liquidity to the financial system to prevent panic.
Tougher conditions are also reducing competition from non-bank financial players, which had flourished in the easy-money era. Aggressive mortgage banks, such as Countrywide in America and Northern Rock in Britain, have revealed their frailties. The big American banks—such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase—have retail-banking franchises that may expand by acquiring stricken competitors. The same holds true for well-capitalised retail banks in Europe. Investment banks that falter may find nationwide American banks offering to buy them; or European banks such as Italy"s UniCredit taking audacious advantage of their hour of need.
Lurking in the background is another potential source of support, deep-pocketed governments in China and the Middle East, keen to invest part of their wealth in Western banks" assets and expertise. According to Morgan Stanley, sovereign-wealth funds spent $ 26 billion in the six months to October 2007 on big financial firms such as Barclays, a British bank, Blackstone, a private-equity group, and the London Stock Exchange. Banks, for their part, covet access to big emerging markets, and a strategic stake sold to the Chinese government, say, may ease the way to a strategic stake in a Chinese bank.
But government ownership of banks is always tricky. That should not be forgotten just because an injection of yuan, roubles or petrodollars might provide a quick and easy way to keep a bad bank on life support.What is Punk Ziegel"s view over the 2008 trend of banking in America

答案： turn back to traditional banking/banks have to keep their de...

问答题

Questions 7～10
It is with a queasy feeling that the world"s bankers enter 2008. Within 12 months, they have seen record profits crumble, once-booming debt businesses blighted by write—owns, and the troubles of some former high-flyers in the mortgage industry threaten the soundness of the financial system. Fresh obstacles loom in 2008, including a new regulatory regime, known as Basel 2, whose shortcomings have emerged even before it has been officially born. More worrying still would be a slowdown in the world economy.
That is not all. The maelstrom in credit markets in 2007 exposed flaws in a banking model that has transformed the finance industry: the banks" ability to sell loans that they don"t want to keep to investors hungry for high-yielding assets. This "U-Haul" model of distributed risk had been widely considered one of the marvels of modern finance, until trouble hit.
The ability of American banks to turn their loans, via Wall Street"s alchemists, into packages of high-yielding securities and sell them to investors was supposed to have enabled banks to diversify their exposure to credit risk. Bank failures had for years been minimal, even during the Asian and Russian debt crises of 1997 and 1998 and the dotcom collapse. By keeping fewer loans on their balance sheets, banks reported stronger returns on their assets, helping to generate bumper earnings.
The coming year will test how much of that risk has indeed been spread, and how much of the diversification was illusory. Did banks simply replace the risk of lending on their own doorstep with exposures from outside their sphere of expertise Some lenders appear to have bamboozled naive borrowers into taking on mortgages they couldn"t afford, knowing they could sell the unsound loans into the market with few questions asked. Others made themselves vulnerable by financing long- term loans in the short-term money markets, rather than from depositors or through issuance of bonds. They were strangled when the money markets seized up.
Taking such risks will be far harder in 2008, because everyone has been sharply reminded of the maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities that is at the heart of banking. So banks will have to court depositors, not the capital markets. When they make loans, they will have to keep them, monitor them and ensure repayment, rather than passing them on like hot potatoes. "There will be a mad rush back to traditional banking," predicts Dick Bove, banking analyst at Punk Ziegel.
The process will not be smooth. Politicians, especially in the American Congress, may tie up lenders with red tape. And Basel 2, with its new capital-adequacy framework for banks, will be roiled out across the European Union from January (it will affect some American banks in 2009). At least for less sophisticated banks, it leans heavily on rating agencies as arbiters of credit quality. But their credibility has been damaged by the over-optimistic assessments they made of some of the riskier debt instruments. Basel 2 also focuses on credit risk, and largely skates over the fickleness of liquidity that bedevilled markets in 2007.
It has been a long time since banks have faced such torments, but their business has always been a cyclical one and only the foolish will have forgotten that. (As the saying goes, a banker is someone who lends you an umbrella when it is sunny, and asks for it back when it rains.) To tide them over, all those profits have left banks with plenty of capital in the vaults. Should that run out, central bankers in America and Europe have also shown a remarkable willingness to provide liquidity to the financial system to prevent panic.
Tougher conditions are also reducing competition from non-bank financial players, which had flourished in the easy-money era. Aggressive mortgage banks, such as Countrywide in America and Northern Rock in Britain, have revealed their frailties. The big American banks—such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase—have retail-banking franchises that may expand by acquiring stricken competitors. The same holds true for well-capitalised retail banks in Europe. Investment banks that falter may find nationwide American banks offering to buy them; or European banks such as Italy"s UniCredit taking audacious advantage of their hour of need.
Lurking in the background is another potential source of support, deep-pocketed governments in China and the Middle East, keen to invest part of their wealth in Western banks" assets and expertise. According to Morgan Stanley, sovereign-wealth funds spent $ 26 billion in the six months to October 2007 on big financial firms such as Barclays, a British bank, Blackstone, a private-equity group, and the London Stock Exchange. Banks, for their part, covet access to big emerging markets, and a strategic stake sold to the Chinese government, say, may ease the way to a strategic stake in a Chinese bank.
But government ownership of banks is always tricky. That should not be forgotten just because an injection of yuan, roubles or petrodollars might provide a quick and easy way to keep a bad bank on life support.According to the passage, how are non-bank financial bodies at present times

答案： aggressive mortgage banks revealed their frailties/big Ameri...