Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension （Skimming and Scanning)Directions: In this part, you will hav

Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)

Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

Don't Destroy the Essential Catalyst of Risk

Since the spring, and most acutely this autumn, a global contagion (传染)of fear and panic has choked off the arteries of finance, compounding a broader deterioration in the global economy.

Financial institutions have an obligation to the broader financial system. We depend on a healthy, well-functioning system but we failed to raise enough questions about whether some of the trends and practices that had become commonplace really served the public's long-term interests.

Seven important lessons

As policymakers and regulators begin to consider the regulatory actions to be taken to address the fallings, I believe it is useful to reflect on some of the lessons from tiffs crisis.

The first is that risk management should not be entirely predicated on historical data. In the past several months, we have heard the phrase" multiple standard deviation events" more than a few times. If events that were calculated to occur once in 20 years in fact occurred much more regularly, it does not take a mathematician to figure out that risk management assumptions did not reflect the distribution of the actual outcomes. Our industry must do more to enhance and improve scenario analysis and stress testing.

Second, too many financial institutions and investors simply outsourced their risk management. Rather than undertake their own analysis, they relied on the rating agencies to do the essential work of risk analysis for them. This was true at the inception(初期)and over the period of the investment, during which time they did not consider other indicators of financial deterioration.

This over-dependence on credit ratings coincided with the dilution of the desired triple A-rating. In January 2008, there were 12 triple A-rated companies in the world. At the same time, there were 64, 000 structured finance instruments, such as collateralized debt obligations, rated triple A. It is easy and appropriate to blame the rating agencies for lapses in their credit judgments. But the blame for the result is not theirs 'alone. Every financial institution that participated in the process has to accept its share of the responsibility.

Third, size matters. For example, whether you owned $5 billion or $50 billion of (supposedly) low-risk super senior debt in a CDO, the likelihood of losses was, proportionally, the same. But the consequences of a miscalculation were obviously much bigger if you had a $50 billion exposure.

Fourth, many risk models incorrectly assumed that positions could be fully hedged. After the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management mid the crisis in emerging markets in 1998, new products such as various basket indices and credit default swaps were created to help offset a number of risks. However, we did not, as an industry, consider carefully enough the possibility that liquidity would dry up, making it difficult to apply effective hedges.

Fifth, risk models failed to capture the risk inherent in off-balance sheet activities, such as structured investment vehicles. It seems clear now that managers of companies with large off-balance sheet exposure did not appreciate the full magnitude of the economic risks they were exposed to; equally worrying, their counterparties were unaware of the full extent of these vehicles and, therefore, could not accurately assess the risk of doing business.

Sixth, complexity go

A．Commercial banks.

B．Financial institutions.

C．The ministry of finance.

D．The Wall Street.