Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist. Сергей Кузнецов

firm and an industry that had become accustomed to obscurity will have to get used to the limelight.

      Mr Hayward set out to replace flash and fluff with nuts and bolts.

      London, once a blue-blooded cocoon.

      Сhina is quite open to yarn, but not jerseys, diamonds, but not jewelry.

      Public transport in Los Angeles has a great future, and always will.

      Mr Toyoda had been reading "How the Mighty Fall", a book by Jim Collins, an American management guru. In it, Mr Collins (best known for an earlier, more upbeat work, "Good to Great") describes the five stages through which a proud and thriving company passes on its way to becoming a basket-case. First comes hubris born of success; second, the undisciplined pursuit of more; third, denial of risk and peril; fourth, grasping for salvation; and last, capitulation to irrelevance or death.

      There are lots of other jobs that aren't real. Designing a new plastic soapbox, making pokerwork jokes for public-houses, writing advertising slogans, being an MP, talking to UNESCO conferences. But the money's real work.

      In theory, the case for joint ventures was compelling. The foreign partner provided capital, knowledge, access to international markets and jobs. The Chinese partner provided access to cheap labour, local regulatory knowledge and access to what used to be a relatively unimportant domestic market. The Chinese government protected swathes of the economy from acquisitions, but provided land, tax breaks and at least the appearance of a welcome to attract investment. "For a joint venture to be successful," says Jonathan Woetzel of McKinsey, a consultancy, "you have to plan for it to die".

      He was waltzing from job to job.

      China is full of small and medium-sized companies that have fingers in many pies, taking advantage of opportunities as they arise.

      In Britain there's London, London and London. In America there are scores of hubs.

      The food stamps participation has soared since the recession began). By April 2010 it had reached almost 45m, or one in seven Americans. The cost, naturally, has soared too, from $35 billion in 2008 to $65 billion last year. Only those with incomes of 130 % of the poverty level or less are eligible for them. The amount each person receives depends on their income, assets and family size, but the average benefit is $133 a month and the maximum, for an individual with no income at all, is $200. Those sums are due to fall soon, when a temporary boost expires. Even the current package is meagre. Melissa Nieves, a recipient in New York, says she compares costs at five different supermarkets, assiduously collects coupons, eats mainly cheap, starchy foods, and still runs out of money a week or ten days before the end of the month.

      Business people are fond of accusing business academics of being all mouth and no trousers (if the accusers are British) or all hat and no cattle (if they are Texan).

      The ultimatum they received from euro-zone leaders at the G20 summit in Cannes to reform their economies – or else.

      In a country where oil cash still enhances the allure of office, can only spell turbulent times ahead.

      In 1500 Europe's future imperial powers controlled 10 % of the world's territories and generated just over 40 % of its wealth. By 1913, at the height of empire, the West controlled almost 60 % of the territories, which together generated almost 80 % of the wealth.

      In Central Asia the most successful companies are sinecures of nepotism.

      Insurance is banking's boring cousin: it lacks the glamour, the sky-high bonuses and the ever-present whiff of danger.

      Fill up an SUV's fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year.

      Foundations were laid timber by timber, railway sleeper by railway sleeper.

      Germany's hyperinflation in 1923 – it became cheaper to burn banknotes than to buy fuel.

      Corruption is often blamed on plata o plomo – meaning silver or lead, bribes or threats.

      Global business has been rocked by crises, from Enron to the financial meltdown. Harvard Business School (HBS), alas, played a role. Enron was stuffed with HBS old boys, from the chief executive, Jeff Skilling, downward. The school wrote a sheaf of laudatory case studies about the company. Many of the bankers who recently mugged the world's taxpayers were HBS men.

      Hayward is in the meat grinder of public opprobrium along with Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, and Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota.

      Contrary to popular belief, traffic in Atlanta is not always hellish. There are a good few days each year when it is merely purgatorial.

      Consumer spending accounts for about 70 % of U.S. economic activity.

      Sin taxes have a long history as a fiscal wheeze: Parliament first introduced levies on beer and meat in 1643 to finance its fight against the Crown. Levies on alcohol have persisted: tax is now around 53p on a pint of beer, £ 2.18 per bottle of wine and £ 8.54 on a bottle of whisky. Tobacco was originally taxed as an imported luxury; today, duty on cigarettes accounts for about three-quarters of the price of a packet of cigarettes. Laziness is a harder sin to target, but one weapon against it is fuel duty: 23 % of car journeys are of less than two miles, so walking or cycling are reasonable alternatives for at least some trips. Fuel taxes also target a greater ill – the exhaust fumes that contribute to global warming. Tax, including VAT, accounts for 63 % of the price of petrol.

      As the old saw has it, they tax neither you nor me but the man behind the tree.

      Brazil's brief recession of 2009 was a fall onto a trampoline.

      Several other countries show evidence of what might be dubbed the "DOG factor": a discount for obnoxious governments. Iran, like Russia a target of Western sanctions, trades on a p/e of just 5.6 and has a total stockmarket value of $131 billion; were it to be rated on a par with the average emerging market, its market value would be $292 billion, so its DOG factor is $161 billion or 55 %. One trillion dollars. That may be the cost to Russian investors of Vladimir Putin's rule. It is the equivalent of about $7,000 for every Russian citizen. The calculation stems from the fact that investors regard Russian assets with suspicion. As a result, Russian stocks trade on a huge discount to much of the rest of the world, with an average price-earnings ratio (p/e) of just 5.2. At present, the Russian market has a total value of $735 billion. If it traded on the same p/e as the average emerging market (12.5), it would be worth around $1.77 trillion.

      Humanity spends over 1 trillion minutes a month on mobiles or nearly 2 million years.

      All it takes to be a photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, is "one finger, one eye and two legs".

      A psychiatrist argues that companies display all the characteristics of a psychopath: callous disregard for others' feelings, inability to maintain relationships, a willingness to bend any rule and break any law if it advances their interests, and an obsession with amassing power and money.

      As Bob Monks, a shareholder activist, puts it, "the American shareholder cannot nominate directors, he cannot remove them, he cannot – except at the arbitrary pleasure of the SEC – communicate advice to them. Democracy is a cruelly misleading word to describe the situation of the American shareholder in 2006."

      Across a vast continent a "westering" people established the novus ordo seclorum that is on every dollar bill.

      Cuba is the only country in the world where it is not necessary to work – the country can no longer afford this.

      How can you spot the venture capitalists at a business conference? They're the people who are always hunting for the exits.

      In George Orwell's "Animal Farm" the mighty cart-horse, Boxer, inspires the other animals with his heroic cry of "I will work harder". He gets up at the crack of dawn to do a couple of hours' extra ploughing. He even refuses to take a day off when he splits his hoof. And his reward for all this effort? As soon as he collapses on the job he is carted off to the knacker's yard to be turned into