更多"[单选题]Text3 Mention price cartels an"的相关试题:
[单选题]Text3 Mention price cartels and many people will think of big,overt ones like the one OPEC runs for oil and the now-extinct one for diamonds.But at least as damaging are the many secret cartels in sucb unglamorous areas as ball-bearings and cargo rates,which go on unnoticed for years,quietly bumping up the end cost to consumers of all manner of goods and services.Collusion among producers to rig prices and carve up markets is thriving,with the cartels growing ever more intricate and global in scope.Competition authorities have uncovered several whopping conspiracies in recent years,including one in which more than 20 airlines worldwide had fixed prices on perhaps 20 billion of freight shipments.They were fined a total of 3 billion;and so far the compensation claims from ripped-off customers comfortably exceed l billion.One academic study found that the typical cartel raised the price of the goods or services in question by 20%.Another suggested that cartels were robbing poor countries'consumers of tens of billions ofdollars a year:if so,negating all the aid that rich countries'governments send them.Investigators are still unravelling a huge global network of cartels among suppliers of a wide range of car parts.Makers of seat belts,radiators and foam seat-stuffing have had hefiy fines slapped on them.Earlier this month the European Commission fined five makers of automotive bearings a total of 953m（1.32 billion）.This week its investigators raided a bunch of makers of car exhausts.Also in recent days,Brazilian prosecutors have charged executives from a dozen foreign train-makers accused ofrigging bids for rail and subway contracts in the country's main cities.Price-fixing has infected high finance,too.Some of banking's biggest names stand accused offiddling interest-rate and foreign-exchange benchmarks.The good news is that enforcement has got tougher,smarter and more coordinated.Gone are the days when price-fixers got a slap on the wrist.Firms can expect swingeing fines,and bosses can go to jail.Since many cartels now operate across borders,so do investigators:American and Japanese trustbusters joined forces to flush out the car-parts cartels.And incentives for whistleblowers have also increased:around 50 countries now offer immunity or reduced penalties for snitches.That is all for the better,but the penalties for price-fixing remain too mild.The best study of the issue so far concluded that,given the still-low risk of detection,collusion pays.Yet beyond a certain point-which the fines now imposed by American and European regulators have probably reached-fines inflict so much damage on guilty companies that they undermine competition instead of enhancing it.The answer is stiffer prison sentences,particularly for senior executives.American courts,only too ready to lock up other types of miscreants for a long time,have rarely jailed egregious price-fixers for anything like the maximum of ten years that the law allows.Other countries have even more scope to increase sentences.
The best title of this text may be______
A.Cartels-Hopeless Struggle
B.Cartels-Move Severe Purushment
C.Cartels-Should be Motivated
D.Cartels-a Bad State
[单选题]Text 3 Over the past decade,many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors—habits—among consumers.These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks or wipe counters almost without thinking,often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.“There are fundamental public health problems,like dirty hands instead of a soap habit,that remain killers only because we can't figure out how to change people's habits，”said Dr.Curtis,the director of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene&Tropical Medicine.“We wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically.”The companies that Dr.Curtis turned to—Procter&Gamble,ColgatePalmolive and Unilever—had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers'lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines.If you look hard enough,you'll find that many of the products we use every day—chewing gums,skin moisturizers,disinfecting wipes,air fresheners,water purifiers,health snacks,teeth whiteners,fabric softeners,vitamins—are results of manufactured habits.A century ago,few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day.Today,because of shrewed advertising and public health campaigns,many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavitypreventing scrub twice a day,often with Colgate,Crest or one of the other brands.A few decades ago,many people didn't drink water outside of a meal.Then beverage companies started bottling the production of faroff springs,and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long.Chewing gum,once bought primarily by adolescent boys,is now featured in commercials as a breath freshener and teeth cleanser for use after a meal.Skin moisturizers are advertised as part of morning beauty rituals,slipped in between hair brushing and putting on makeup.“Our products succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns,”said Carol Berning,a consumer psychologist who recently retired from Procter&Gamble,the company that sold$76 billion of Tide,Crest and other products last year.“Creating positive habits is a huge part of improving our consumers'lives,and it's essential to making new products commercially viable.”Through experiments and observation,social scientists like Dr.Berning have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through relentless advertising.As this new science of habit has emerged,controversies have erupted when the tactics have been used to sell questionable beauty creams or unhealthy foods.
Which of the following does NOT belong to products that help create people's habits?
A.Tide.
B.Crest.
C.Colgate.
D.Unilever.
[单选题]Many people use wood stoves and fireplaces to heat their homes．Scientists have become worried about the smoke that they give off．Harmful chemicals are in the smoke．The smoke is causing air pollution．The pieces of pollution,called soot,are floating in the air．They are too tiny to see．Scientists must use a microscope to see them.
Small amounts of soot are safe,but large amounts can be dangerous．The govenment wants to limit this kind of pollution．It may stop people from using their fireplaces.
The air is tested every day．When soot levels are high,more than 65 micrograms of soot per cubic meter,factories must stop making smoke．The government thinks that limit should be much lower.
Factories produce the most smoke and soot．But the government thinks that all types of burning should be limited．The soot levels from factories and homes could be limited．Home owners may have to install new wood stoves that they comply with the new law．Or,they may not be able to bum on days when the air quality is bad.
Residents of some towns are fined if they violate the burning ban．Scientists hope these new regulations will make the air cleaner and less harmful to breathe.
Why is it dangerous to burn too much wood?
A.The fire could burn yo
B.It's not healthy to be too war
C.Harmful chemicals are released in the so
D.The smoke is filled with un see able tiny piece
[单选题]Text 4 Many people talked of the 288,000 new jobs the Labor Department reported for June,along with the drop in the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent,as good news.And they were right.For now it appears the economy is creating jobs at a decent pace.We still have a long way to go to get back to full employment,but at least we are now finally moving forward at a faster pace.However,there is another important part of the jobs picture that was largely overlooked.There was a big jump in the number of people who report voluntarily working part-time.This figure is now 830,000（4.4 percent）above its year ago level.Before explaining the connection to the Obamacare,it is worth making an important distinction.Many people who work part-time jobs actually want full-time jobs.They take part-time work because this is all they can get.An increase in involuntary part-time work is evidence of weakness in the labor market and it means that many people will be having a very hard time making ends meet.There was an increase in involuntary part-time in June,but the general direction has been down.Involuntary part-time employment is still far higher than before the recession,but it is down by 640,000（7.9percent）from its year ago level.We know the difference between voluntary and involuntary part-time employment because people tell us.The survey used by the Labor Department asks people if they worked less than 35 hours in the reference week.If the answer is“yes”,they are classified as working part-time.The survey then asks whether they worked less than 35 hours in that week because they wanted to work less than full time or because they had no choice.They are only classified as voluntary part-time workers if they tell the survey taker they chose to work less than 35 hours a week.The issue of voluntary part-time relates to Obamacare because one of the main purposes was to allow people to get insurance outside of employment.For many people,especially those with serious health conditions or family members with serious health conditions,before Obamacare the only way to get insurance was through a job that provided health insurance.However,Obamacare has allowed more than 12 million people to either get insurance through Medicaid or the exchanges.These are people who may previously have felt the need to get a full-time job that provided insurance in order to cover themselves and their families.With Obamacare there is no longer a link between employment and insurance.
Which part of the jobs picture was neglected?
A.The prospect of a thriving job market.
B.The increase of voluntary parttime jobs.
C.The possibility of full employment.
D.The acceleration of job creation.
[单选题]题目 26
T.he novel ( )by many people today.
A. is read
B. are read
C. reads
D. were read
[单选题]Text 3 According to the old saw,anyone who wishes to maintain respect for sausages and laws should not see how either are made.Congress has just finished validating that saying by engaging in the sorry every-five-years exercise known as drafting a farm bill.This mess of subsidies and regulations claims to protect U.S.agriculture,not just from the vagaries of pests,crop diseases and weather but also from the ups and downs of the free market itself.Inevitably,the farm bill showers benefits on well-to-do business owners who don't need or deserve taxpayer help under the cover of deliberately obscure terms such as"federal milk marketing orders".It's true that farm income has dropped in each of the past four years because of falling commodity prices,but Congress showered agribusiness with taxpayer largesse when incomes reached all-time highs a half-decade ago,too.Clumsy manipulation by government probably exacerbates market swings.Where is it written that this one sector deserves federally guaranteed profitability'?You will hear a Iot about the need for food security,but it's mostly nonsense:A mere 6.3 percent of Americans'consumer expenditures were on food consumed at home in 2016,according to the Agriculture Department.This was easily the lowest percentage in the world,as it has been for many years.Even in the wildly unlikely event it doubled,we'd still be better off than developed countries such as Sweden and France.If Congress really wanted to help farmers,it would do something to stop President Trump's trade war,which has provoked retaliatory tarif{s by many countries against U.S.farm exports.This year's process has introduced a new level of ugliness to this inherently unlovely law.The House version of the farm bill,passed with Republican votes only,would add a work requirement to the government's largest food aid program for the poor,the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,or SNAP.Helping poor people buy groceries is the main way the farm bill actually enhances food security;for decades,linking SNAP to farm subsidies in a single bill has been the price of urban lawmakers'support for rural corporate welfare.Mr.Trump applauded the measure,which would make most adult SNAP recipients（up to 7 million people）spend 20 hours per week either working or participating in a state-run training program as a condition of receiving benefits,which at present average$125 per month to 42.3 million Americans.Democratic representatives,mostly from urban America,and several Republicans,too,recoiled.Correctly,they cited the bill's insufficient funding for training programs,as well as the added paperwork and administrative burden.They might also have noted the bill's juxtaposition of tougher eligibility criteria for the poor with continued sugar price supports for agribusinesses in the South and Midwest.A large bipartisan majority of the Senate rejected the work requirement,which may mean that it can't survive the conference committee.The mere fact that it has gotten this far,however,tells you something about farm-bill politics in general and the priorities of the Republican House in particular.The old saw is cited to introduce a bill that____.
A.can improve the free market
B.aims to reform farm subsidies
C.is made public too soon
D.has too many drawbacks
