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A 20-year bull market has convinced us all that CEOs are geniuses, so watch with astonishment the troubles of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul O'Neill. Here are two highly regarded businessmen, obviously intelligent and well-informed, foundering in their jobs. Actually, we shouldn't be surprised. Rumsfeld and O'Neill are not doing badly despite having been successful CEOs but because of it. The record of senior businessmen in government is one of almost unrelieved disappointment. In fact, with the exception of Robert Rubin, it is difficult to think of a CEO who had a successful career in
government.
Why is this？ Well, first the CEO has to recognize that he is no longer the CEO. He is at best an adviser to the CEO, the president. But even the president is not really the CEO. No one is. Power in a corporation is concentrated and vertically structured. Power in Washington is diffuse and horizontally spread out. The secretary might think he's in charge of his agency. But the chairman of the congressional committee funding that agency feels the same, In his famous study "Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents," Richard Neustadt explains how little power the president actually has and concludes that the only lasting presidential power is "the power to persuade.'
Take Rumsfeld's attempt to transform. the cold-war military into one geared for the future. It's innovative but deeply threatening to almost everyone in Washington. The Defense secretary did not try to sell it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, the budget office or the White House. As a result, the idea is collapsing.
Second, what power you have, you must use carefully. For example, O'Neill's position as Treasury secretary is one with little formal authority. Unlike Finance ministers around the world, Treasury does not control the budget. But it has symbolic power. The secretary is seen as the chief economic spokesman for the administration and, if he plays it right, the chief economic adviser for the president.
O'Neill has been publicly critical of the IMF's bailout packages for developing countries while at the same time approving such packages for Turkey, Argentina and Brazil. As a result, he has gotten the worst of both worlds. The bailouts continue, but their effect in bolstering investor confidence is limited because the markets are rattled by his skepticism.
Perhaps the government doesn't do bailouts well. But that leads to a third rule: you can't just quit. Jack Welch's famous law for re-engineering General Electric was to be first or second in any given product category, or else get out of that business. But if the government isn't doing a particular job at peak level, it doesn't always have the option of relieving itself of that function. The Pentagon probably wastes a lot of money. But it can't get out of the national-security business.
The key to former Treasury secretary Rubin's success may have been that he fully understood that business and government are, in his words, "necessarily and properly very different." In a recent speech he explained, "Business functions around one predominate organizing principle, profitability ... Government, on the other hand, deals with a vast number of equally legitimate and often potentially competing objectives -- for example, energy production versus environmental protection, or safety regulations versus productivity."
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On September 29, 1998, Hurricane Georges made landfall in Biloxi, Mississippi, after devastating Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and several islands of the Caribbean with torrential rains and winds up to 160 km/h (100 mph). Few people lost
their lives along the Gulf Coast of the United States, although hundreds died in the Caribbean.
This was a very different outcome from 1900, when a powerful Gulf Coast hurricane made an unexpected direct hit on Galveston, Texas, killing at least 6,000 people. Vastly improved hurricane warnings explain the different circumstances at either end of the 20th century residents of Galveston had no advance warning that a storm was approaching, while residents of Biloxi had been warned days in advance of Georges's approach, allowing for extensive safety precautions.
At the same time that people in Biloxi were thankful for the advance warning, some residents of New Orleans, Louisiana, 120 km (75 mi) to the west, were less satisfied. A day before Georges made landfall, forecasters were predicting that the hurricane had a good chance of striking New Orleans. Because much of New Orleans lies below sea level, the city is at risk for flooding. In addition, because New Orleans has a large population in vulnerable locations, emergency management officials must begin evacuations well before a storm strikes. But evacuation costs money: businesses close, tourists leave, and citizens take precautionary measures. The mayor of New Orleans estimated that his city's preparations for Georges cost more than $ 50 million. After the full fury of Georges missed New Orleans, some residents questioned the value of the hurricane forecasts in the face of such high costs.
The differing views on the early warnings for Hurricane Georges illustrate some of the complexities involved in predicting disasters. Disaster prediction is more than just forecasting the future with advanced technology it is also a process of providing scientific information to the government officials and other decision makers who must respond to those predictions.
In general, the process has three phases. First, there is the challenge of forecasting the event itself. In the case of Georges, scientists worked to predict the future direction and strength of the hurricane days in advance.
A second important challenge is communicating the forecast to decision makers. Because forecasts are always uncertain, a central factor in disaster predictions is communicating this uncertainty. Uncertainty is usually described in terms of odds or probabilities, much like daily weather forecasts. The media plays an important role in communicating predictions and their uncertainty to the public.
The third part of the process is the use of predictive information by decision makers. Even the most accurate information is of little value if the decision maker does not use it appropriately, for example in deciding whether to order an evacuation. If there is a breakdown in any of these three phases of prediction, the result is increased danger and a higher risk of loss of life.
According to the passage, the purpose of disaster prediction is to
President Clinton received Salman Rushdie probably because
The three American officials arriving in Baghdad
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions.
听力原文： The United States Defense Department says genetic testing has identified the human remains found in the wreckage of a US Air Force jet that was missing on a training flight nearly a month ago. A Defense Department statement said the remains are identified as belonging to the pilot flying the A-10 jet which left the training formation and disappeared in circumstances which have still not been established. The wreckage of the aircraft which was armed with bombs was found last week in Snell in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
The disappearance of the A-10 jet was due to
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