经济学人286:TrueCar来势汹汹
AMERICANS looking for a new car nowadays often use online price-comparison sites such as AutoTrader, Edmunds and eBay to find the best deal. Most such sites charge dealers a small fee for passing on sales leads from shoppers who have submitted their
经济学人287:雪佛龙与巴西的石油工业
THE flow of oil from cracks in the seabed off the coast of Rio de Janeiro has long since slowed to a mere trickle. Not so the retribution against Chevron, an American oil company that was drilling in the Frade oilfield on November 7th when a sudden r
经济学人288:再次憧憬未来 Reimagining the Future
THAT city will, in the course of time, become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great monied operations, predicted DeWitt Clinton, governor of New York in 1824. He was speaking about the effect
经济学人289:美国众议院的茶党成员
SINCE the 2010 mid-term elections, tea party Republicans have enjoyed influence out of proportion to their numbers. They forced Barack Obama and congressional Democrats to accept spending cuts without any tax increases to keep the government from shu
经济学人290:美国掀起限制堕胎的浪潮
JANUARY is a busy month in capitals across America. New laws are implemented; Congress and legislatures reconvene, hoping to pass more. If ones political party is in the minority, this is a terrifying prospect. For opponents of abortion, the outlook
经济学人291:美国的生产率增长还能持续多久?
EVERYONE complains that corporate America is reluctant to hire additional workers. Far less attention has been paid to the flip side of the jobless recovery: the remarkable improvement in American productivity. How long can this continue? I see no li
经济学人292:又一条落网之鱼 Another one in the net
ONE of the unforgettable experiences to be had in California is to go whale watching in Monterey Bay. Nancy Black, a licensed marine biologist, is one of the scientists who lead these commercial outings, besides doing her own whale research. As Lawre
经济学人293:关塔那摩战俘营迎来十周年纪念日
GEORGE BUSH wanted to close it. So did John McCain. And Barack Obama promised to do so within a year of taking office. But nearly three years since then, and ten years after the first inmates stepped through its barbed-wired gates in January 2002, th
经济学人294:金色降落伞 Golden Parachutes
RICH rewards for departing bosses are not popular. After Sir Fred Goodwin led Royal Bank of Scotland into a ditch and dumped the bill on British taxpayers, he left with a pension of over ?700,000 ($980,000) a year. The Sun, a tabloid, said he had scr
经济学人295:马里奥•蒙蒂已重铸意大利在欧声誉
BEFORE the European Union summit on January 30th, Italys new prime minister, Mario Monti, will have visited the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the British prime minister, David Cameron, whom he saw on Jan
经济学人296:创业国度的未来如何?
THE young must shout if they want to be heard. In a stone hangar in the old port of Jaffa, 30 entrepreneurs have five minutes each to present their start-up companies to a panel of digital luminaries and an audience that includes potential investors.
经济学人297:美国煤炭遭遇的燃眉之急
A FREIGHT train, its dozen cars loaded with coal covered in a light dusting of snow, snaked through the narrow valley, sometimes following the two-lane highway and sometimes crossing it. The valley was silent and snowy, and though it was two days int
经济学人298:课之以税,还是甘之以饴?
DOES raising taxes on those who are doing well economically stifle growth and slow down the recovery? That depends on how rich people behave when their taxes rise. Do they work less when they are allowed to keep a smaller chunk of their income? Do th
经济学人299:德意志证券交易所和纽约泛欧证券交易所
FOR the chief executives of Deutsche Boerse (DB) and NYSE Euronext, this weeks hobnobbing in Davos was strictly business. A $9.5 billion plan to unite the two exchanges was derailed in early December when European Commission staff revealed they were
经济学人300:纽约州长安德鲁•科莫
FOR four years New York was adrift. When Eliot Spitzer, a crusading lawyer, became governor in 2007, his uncompromising ways caused political gridlock in Albany, the state capital. Just over a year later, he was caught frolicking with a prostitute an
