Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist - Кузнецов Сергей Александрович - Страница 14
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Hayward is in the meat grinder of public opprobrium along with Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, and Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota.
Contrary to popular belief, traffic in Atlanta is not always hellish. There are a good few days each year when it is merely purgatorial.
Consumer spending accounts for about 70 % of U.S. economic activity.
Sin taxes have a long history as a fiscal wheeze: Parliament first introduced levies on beer and meat in 1643 to finance its fight against the Crown. Levies on alcohol have persisted: tax is now around 53p on a pint of beer, £ 2.18 per bottle of wine and £ 8.54 on a bottle of whisky. Tobacco was originally taxed as an imported luxury; today, duty on cigarettes accounts for about three-quarters of the price of a packet of cigarettes. Laziness is a harder sin to target, but one weapon against it is fuel duty: 23 % of car journeys are of less than two miles, so walking or cycling are reasonable alternatives for at least some trips. Fuel taxes also target a greater ill – the exhaust fumes that contribute to global warming. Tax, including VAT, accounts for 63 % of the price of petrol.
As the old saw has it, they tax neither you nor me but the man behind the tree.
Brazil's brief recession of 2009 was a fall onto a trampoline.
Several other countries show evidence of what might be dubbed the "DOG factor": a discount for obnoxious governments. Iran, like Russia a target of Western sanctions, trades on a p/e of just 5.6 and has a total stockmarket value of $131 billion; were it to be rated on a par with the average emerging market, its market value would be $292 billion, so its DOG factor is $161 billion or 55 %. One trillion dollars. That may be the cost to Russian investors of Vladimir Putin's rule. It is the equivalent of about $7,000 for every Russian citizen. The calculation stems from the fact that investors regard Russian assets with suspicion. As a result, Russian stocks trade on a huge discount to much of the rest of the world, with an average price-earnings ratio (p/e) of just 5.2. At present, the Russian market has a total value of $735 billion. If it traded on the same p/e as the average emerging market (12.5), it would be worth around $1.77 trillion.
Humanity spends over 1 trillion minutes a month on mobiles or nearly 2 million years.
All it takes to be a photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, is "one finger, one eye and two legs".
A psychiatrist argues that companies display all the characteristics of a psychopath: callous disregard for others' feelings, inability to maintain relationships, a willingness to bend any rule and break any law if it advances their interests, and an obsession with amassing power and money.
As Bob Monks, a shareholder activist, puts it, "the American shareholder cannot nominate directors, he cannot remove them, he cannot – except at the arbitrary pleasure of the SEC – communicate advice to them. Democracy is a cruelly misleading word to describe the situation of the American shareholder in 2006."
Across a vast continent a "westering" people established the novus ordo seclorum that is on every dollar bill.
Cuba is the only country in the world where it is not necessary to work – the country can no longer afford this.
How can you spot the venture capitalists at a business conference? They're the people who are always hunting for the exits.
In George Orwell's "Animal Farm" the mighty cart-horse, Boxer, inspires the other animals with his heroic cry of "I will work harder". He gets up at the crack of dawn to do a couple of hours' extra ploughing. He even refuses to take a day off when he splits his hoof. And his reward for all this effort? As soon as he collapses on the job he is carted off to the knacker's yard to be turned into glue and bonemeal.
"The bad news is we didn't hit oil," ran the old wildcatter's joke. 'The good news is we didn't find gas."
Capitalism can make you well off. And it also leaves you free to be as unhappy as you choose. To ask any more of it would be asking too much.
Investors who believe in the beta mousetrap may find that the rodents have already escaped with the cheese.
The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
The American dream: a big car, a big house and Big Macs far all.
No one knows what future volatility will be.
“ Food, wine, fun, joy, pleasure, luck, beauty, happiness
Asked if anything interrupted his sleep, Helmut Kohl said it was night-time forays to the fridge.
In 1755 Samuel Johnson's dictionary defined oats as "a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people".
They harvest the apples by cutting the tree branches.
Players of Pokémon Go have collectively walked nearly 9bn kilometres since the smartphone game was released last year.
I want tequila and dancing and girls and democracy.
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