mind that when I say “the thief convinces the bank he’s you”, I’m not talking about a brilliant actor and master of disguise who imitates your voice and mannerisms well enough to fool your own mother. No, all that’s necessary to fool a bank is your birth date and US social security number, or just discarded credit card offer taken from your bin.
Why are lenders so careless with their money? The snarky answer is: because they know taxpayers will bail them out. But identity theft was a problem in America long before phrases like “too big to fail” entered our vocabulary. I became an identity-theft statistic nine years ago, when I opened my mail to find a bill for a maxed- out credit card I never knew I had. I spent over two weeks cleaning the mess: filing police reports, calling the company, sitting on hold, getting disconnected and calling back to sit on hold again. Considering my salary back then, I spent over a thousand dollars’ worth of my time and wasn't entitled to a penny in damages.
It all could easily have been avoided, had the company made a minimal effort to ensure they were loaning money to me rather than my dishonest doppelganger. So why didn't they? Because that would take time -at least a day or two. And if people had to wait a day between applying for and receiving credit, on-the-spot loans would be impossible. Every major retail chain in America pushes these offers: “Apply for a store credit card and receive 15% off your first purchase!” From the lenders’ perspective, writing off a few bad ID-theft debts is cheaper than losing the lucrative “impulse buyer” market.
But that would change if companies had to pay damages to identity theft victims. Should they have to? The supreme court of the state of Maine is currently pondering that question. In March 2008 the Hannaford supermarket chain announced that hackers broke into their database and stole the credit card information of over 4 million customers, some of whom sued Hannaford for damages. None of the customers lost money, of course, but they felt-as I did-that their time and effort are worth something too.
It’s too early to know how the court will rule, but I’ll make a prediction anyway: nothing will change from the consumers’ perspective, and protecting lenders from their own bad habits will continue to be our unpaid job. When the worldwide economic meltdown started, I naively thought the subsequent tightening of credit lines would at least make identity theft less of a problem than before. But I was just being silly.
31.After suffering from identity theft, you_____________. [A] should pay for money the bank lost
[B] are required to report to your bank immediately
[C] have to assume the cost of getting your identity back [D] won’t have to take any loss caused by it
32.What’s the real meaning of “too big to fail” in para. 2? [A] Leaders are so big that they couldn’t fail at all. [B] Leaders won’t pay for their loaning carelessness. [C] Leaders are big enough to pay for any large loans. [D] America is big enough to solve any problems. 33. The 3rd paragraph mainly talks about___________. [A] Why companies take efforts to avoid identity theft
[B] The reason of companies’ effortlessness to help avoid identity theft [C] The reason of taking time to solve the problem of identity theft [D] The cause of companies offering on-the-spot loans
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34. The example in the 4th paragraph is cited to show that________. [A] Companies have paid for damages to identity theft victims [B] Customers often suffer from identity theft in America [C]Companies should be responsible for identity theft [D]Companies often suffer from identity theft in America
35. What’s the author’s attitude to current solutions to identity theft? [A] Disappointed [B] Confident [C] Complicated [D] Optimistic
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Death is a difficult subject for anyone, but Americans want to talk about it less than most. They have a cultural expectation that whatever may be wrong with them, it can be fixed with the right treatment, and if the first doctor does not offer it they may seek a second, third or fourth opinion. Legal action is a constant threat, so even if a patient is very ill and likely to die, doctors and hospitals will still persist with aggressive treatment, paid for by the insurer or, for the elderly, by Medicare. That is one reason why America spends 18% of its GDP on health care, the highest proportion in the world. That does not mean that Americans are getting the world's best health care. For the past 20 years doctors at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice have been compiling the “Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care”, using Medicare data to compare health-spending patterns in different regions and institutions. They find that average costs per patient during the last two years of life in some regions can be almost twice as high as in others, yet patients in the high-spending areas do not survive any longer or enjoy better health as a result. Ira Byock is the director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. His book is a plea for those near the end of their life to be treated more like individuals and less like medical cases on which all available technology must be let loose. With two decades' experience in the field, he makes a good case for sometimes leaving well alone and helping people to die gently if that is what they want. That does not include assisted suicide, which he opposes. But it does include providing enough pain relief to make patients comfortable, co-coordinating their treatment among the different specialists, keeping them informed, having enough staff on hand to see to their needs, making arrangements for them to be cared for at home where possible—and not officiously keeping them alive when there is no hope. But it is not easy to decide when to stop making every effort to save someone's life and allow them to die gently. The book quotes the case of one HIV-positive young man who was acutely ill with multiple infections. He spent over four months in hospital, much of the time on a ventilator, and had countless tests, scans and other interventions. The total bill came to over $1m. He came close to death many times, but eventually pulled through and has now returned to a normal life. It is an uplifting story, but such an outcome is very rare. Dr Byock's writing style is not everybody's cup of tea, but he is surely right to suggest better management of a problem that can only get worse. As life expectancy keeps on rising, so will the proportion of old people in the population. And with 75m American baby-boomers now on the threshold of retirement, there is a limit to what the country can afford to spend to keep them going on and on.
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36. According to Paragraph 1, the disproportional large spending in health care stems from [A] Americans' failure to admit death as part of their life [B] doctors' inclination to overtreat the patient [C] a culture that is obsessed with youth and health [D] a legal system which has a bias in favor of patients
37. The author cited the findings of Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical practice to illustrate that [A] the medical care quality differs widely from region to region [B] there is little that hospitals can do in saving people's lives [C] a lot of medical resources are wasted
[D] the American medical system is notorious for its low cost-effectiveness 38. The central idea of Ira Byock's book is to appeal to the hospital to [A] save every life with every possible means [B] help people to die if that is his/her will
[C] make people feel comfortable in their remaining hours
[D] consider whether the cure is worthwhile before conducting it
39. In the author's opinion the example of the HIV-positive young man in Paragraph 5 [A] eliminates the possibility of applying gentle dying process in medicare [B] is merely an extreme case that should not be taken as a standard
[C] emphasizes the importance of aggressive treatment even with slim hope [D] is used as an irony of the current state of American medical system
40. According to the author, the American government will the proposal of gentle dying [A] disapprove of [B] divide at [C] hesitate at [D] side with
Part B
Directions:
Reading the following text and answer the questions by finding a subtitle for each of the marked parts or paragraphs. There are two extra items in the subtitles. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points)
[A] Convincing evidence: US is losing its appeal in the eyes of multinationals [B] Biggest hindrance: US divided political system [C] American future: stuck in the middle
[D] Overstated statement: US overall competitiveness is declining [E] Voice of experts: pessimism pervades academic world [F] Economic outlook: bad but not desperate
[G] Undisputed fact: US is losing its economic edge 41. Is America fading? America has been gripped by worries about decline before, notably in the 1970s, only to roar back. But this time it may be serious. There is little doubt that other countries are catching up. Between 1999 and 2009 America’s share of world exports fell in almost every industry: by 36 percentage points in aerospace, nine in information technology, eight in communications equipment and three in cars. Private-sector job growth has slowed dramatically,
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and come to a halt in industries that are exposed to global competition. Median annual income grew by an anemic 2% between 1990 and 2010. 42. The March issue of the Harvard Business Review is devoted to “American competitiveness”. The Review reports that declinism is prevalent among HBS alumni: in a survey, 71% said that American competitiveness would decline in the coming years. 43. America is losing out in the race to attract good jobs. Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business points out that multinational firms increased employment in America by 24% in the 1990s. But since then they have been cutting back on jobs in America. They have moved dull repetitive tasks abroad, and even some sophisticated ones, too. The proportion of the employees of American multinationals who work for subsidiaries abroad rose from 21.4% in 1989 to 32.3% in 2009. The share of research-and-development spending going to foreign subsidiaries rose from 9% in 1989 to 15.6% in 2009; that of capital investment rose from 21.8% in 1999 to 29.6% in 2009. 44. America’s political system comes in for particularly harsh criticism: 60% of HBS alumni said that it was worse than those in other advanced countries. David Moss of HBS argues that such complaints are nothing new: American politicians have been squabbling about the role of government ever since Thomas Jefferson butted heads with Alexander Hamilton. But in the past this often led to fruitful compromises. But such compromises are rarer these days. Republicans and Democrats are more ideologically divided, and less inclined to make pragmatic concessions. 45. For all this gloom, the Review’s gurus argue that, as Bill Clinton said in his first inaugural address, there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. The country has huge strengths, from its world-beating universities to its tolerance of risk-taking. It has a highly diverse market: firms that seek cheap labour can move to Mississippi, where wages are a third lower than those in Massachusetts. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of HBS points to the extraordinary amount of innovation that is going on not just in Silicon Valley but across the country. Yet it is difficult to read this collection of essays without a sense of foreboding. The one thing that worries the HBS alumni more than anything else—the state of American politics—is the most difficult to fix. The political pendulum swings unpredictably, making it hard to plan for the future. Should companies assume that they will have to abide by Mr Obama’s health-care law when it comes into effect in 2014, or will the Republicans have repealed it by then? No one knows.
Section III Translation
46. Direction:
Translate the following text from English into Chinese. Write your translation on the ANSWER SHEET . (15 points)
Age has its privileges in America, and one of the more prominent of them is senior citizen discount.Anyone who has reached a certain age is automatically entitled to dazzling array of price reductions at nearly every level of commercial life. Practically unheard of a generation ago, the
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