The Wall Street Journal Weekly Quiz · Web view"We want to do something different that is bigger," Mr. Gelner recalls telling the Unilever marketing executives. "It's very difficult

The Wall Street Journal Education Program Weekly Review & QuizCovering front-page articles from Sept 8-14, 2007Professor Guide with Summaries Fall 2007Developed by: Scott R. Homan Ph.D., Purdue University

Questions 1 – 12 from The First Section, Section A

Weak Jobs Data Boost Likelihood of a Rate CutBy SUDEEP REDDY, TIMOTHY AEPPEL and GREG IPSeptember 8, 2007; Page A1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118916737881920585.html

The first employment drop in four years suggests damage from the severe housing slump is beginning to ripple through the U.S. economy, and makes it all but certain the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this month to try to avert a sharp slowdown.The surprise disappearance of 4,000 nonfarm jobs in August -- economists had expected 100,000 would be created, based on data such as jobless claims and private-sector job estimates -- was driven by losses in construction and manufacturing, the Labor Department said. The August figures represent "an ongoing weakening that became decidedly worse with the financial turbulence," said Bank of America economist Peter Kretzmer. "This is likely to signal a point at which consumer spending doesn't have the kind of resilience it had earlier."Harley-Davidson Inc., the iconic motorcycle maker based in Milwaukee, announced yesterday that it is lowering its third-quarter shipments to between 86,000 and 88,000 units from a previous projection of 91,000 to 95,000 units due to slumping domestic demand. The company's stock price fell more than 9% Friday.The nation's unemployment rate remained at a historically low 4.6% in August. Analysts said that some parts of the report appeared fluky and that the job market may not be as weak as it suggests. For example, public-school employment fell sharply for the second-straight month. That might reflect problems making seasonal adjustments for teachers' summer break, which could start or end outside of a particular month's survey period.Moreover, other economic reports are more upbeat: In recent days, there have been several indications that the credit crisis isn't spreading to the wider economy. A survey by the Institute for Supply Management indicated manufacturing continued to expand last month, for example, and both retail sales and auto sales have been stronger than expected.To Wall Street, a softening job market is an especially troublesome sign. During good times, strong employment encourages consumption of goods and services, which supports corporate profits, making the profitable companies' shares more attractive to buy. Any weakness in that chain can become a powerful reason to sell stocks.The jobs report appears to seal the case for the Fed to cut short-term interest rates when policy makers meet Sept. 18, but the size of any such cut remains up in the air.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118916737881920585.html

The jobs report stoked fears of recession, sending shockwaves through financial markets as investors scrambled to sell stocks and buy longterm government securities as a safe haven. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 249.97 points, or 1.9%, to 13113.38.Adding to concerns: Employment numbers for June and July were revised sharply downward. That means the job market was weakening even before financial turmoil erupted last month as long-festering concerns about rising delinquencies on riskier loans known as subprime mortgages suddenly spread to other markets. Moreover, some analysts said the jobs picture is likely to darken further; yesterday's report covered employment activity only through mid-August, so it doesn't include subsequent job losses in the mortgage-financing industry.Indeed, Countrywide Financial Corp., one of the nation's largest mortgage lenders, on Friday said it plans to cut as many as 12,000 jobs -- which would be about a fifth of its work force. The company has been forced to slash its lending and is expected to report a loss for the current quarter largely because it is no longer able to sell many types of loans now deemed too risky by investors, who gobbled up such loans until recently. And IndyMac Bancorp Inc., another big home-mortgage lender, said it plans to eliminate about 10% of its 10,000-member work force over coming months.The weak report raised imm ere expecting at least a quarter-percentage-point cut, from the current federal-funds target rate of 5.25%, and a high probability of a half-point cut.

1. The first employment drop in _____ suggests damage from the severe housing slump is beginning to ripple through the US economy.a. 3 years b. 4 years Correctc. 5 yearsd. 6 years

2. To Wall Street, a softening job market is an especially troublesome sign. During good times, strong employment encourages consumption of goods and services, which supports corporate profits, making the profitable companies' shares more attractive to buy. Any weakness in that chain can become a powerful reason to sell ________.a. bonds b. dollarsc. stocks Correctd. real estate

A Mother Takes On MITBy ELIZABETH BERNSTEINSeptember 10, 2007; Page A1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118938714106322174.html

On April 12, Sue Kayton learned that her son, a 22-year-old senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had gone missing. Four days later, a student at Virginia Tech killed 32 people on that campus.The following week, while Virginia Tech was being criticized for withholding information about the gunman due to its privacy policy, MIT's own privacy policy was



leading it to reject Ms. Kayton's requests for information she believed would help her find her son. The administration refused to allow Ms. Kayton access to her son's dorm room or to his computer files. It demanded a subpoena even after her son was listed in a national missing persons database.MIT's position "added to the anguish level immeasurably," says Ms. Kayton, who traveled to MIT's Cambridge, Mass., campus to search for her son, Daniel Barclay, herself. MIT's administrators "didn't want to deal with me."School officials say they acted appropriately. "Privacy is important," says MIT Chancellor Phillip Clay. He says MIT protects student privacy not only because it's the law, but because it is central to maintaining students' trust. "Different students will do different things that they absolutely don't want their parents to know about," he says. "Students expect this kind of safe place where they can address their difficulties, try out lifestyles and be independent of their parents."The Virginia Tech massacre raised national awareness of one of the thorniest aspects of the relationship between colleges and parents: student privacy. For decades, colleges were legally considered to be taking on the responsibilities of parents. Then a series of court decisions starting in the 1960s, amid the women's rights and civil-liberties movements, awarded students more legal rights. Now the pendulum is swinging back, as the generation that fought for students' rights becomes a generation of parents.Mr. Clay, MIT's chancellor, says students have a much closer relationship to their parents than 10 or 20 years ago. He's noticed more parents coming with their children to attend the school's April tour for admitted students. He says he has even seen parents accompany their children to dentist appointments at the campus health clinic.In 2000, MIT's staunch defense of student privacy came under scrutiny after the death of student Elizabeth Shin, ruled a suicide by the medical examiner. Her parents later agreed to a settlement from MIT after complaining officials should have alerted them to signs of their daughter's distress.In the wake of the much-publicized case and settlement, MIT has overhauled the way it deals with students' mental health. The school won't say whether the Shin case affected its privacy policy for all its students.The 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or Ferpa, bars schools from sharing information in a student's record without that student's permission. But the law provides several exceptions. Among them: if there's a "health or safety emergency" or if the student is declared a dependent on his or her parents' taxes.Daniel's parents declared him as a dependent on their taxes. But MIT only recognizes the "health or safety emergency" contingency -- a situation it said didn't apply to Daniel despite his being declared a missing person. As a result, MIT made its campus police obtain a subpoena before releasing his electronic records, including his email records.There's now debate over whether Ferpa should be changed. Last month, the Virginia Tech Review Panel issued a 260-page report. It recommended university policy recognize that law enforcement has an educational interest in student records. The report also recommended that the Department of Education "allow more flexibility" in defining an emergency exception.In reaction to the report, an MIT spokeswoman said the school reviews "all of our policies and procedures periodically. Every university across the country is likely to take


a renewed look at their policies given the events of Virginia Tech and the content of the report."Legal experts say college campuses vary in their approaches to interpreting Ferpa. While many schools in liberal Massachusetts won't immediately turn over student information to the police, others in the South strongly support police intervention, says Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law, in Gulfport, Fla. After Virginia Tech, "people will go in a direction of safety over privacy," he predicts.Growing up in the affluent Silicon Valley suburb of Menlo Park, Calif., Daniel Barclay was a skinny, brainy kid. He loved to read and was something of a local celebrity -- leading his team to victory four years in a row on the San Francisco-area trivia TV show "Quiz Kids." He was shy, with few close friends.A computer consultant who eschews makeup and favors jeans and T-shirts, 50-year-old Ms. Kayton is an MIT graduate herself. She is articulate and direct, with a matter-of-fact manner. She says she and her son were close but that he didn't like to talk about "emotional stuff."Arriving at MIT in 2003, Daniel was on track to earn a bachelor's degree in economics as well as a bachelor's and a master's in political science, all in four years. Socially awkward, he had few friends his first few years at college.The second semester of his sophomore year, Daniel took off. He stopped living in his dorm and dropped out of contact with his parents for several weeks, although he continued attending classes sporadically and emailing friends. Ms. Kayton says she called MIT repeatedly requesting that someone locate her son, who as it turned out was living in classrooms and the library. She says MIT administrators found Daniel and recommended he receive counseling at the mental-health center or leave school. Daniel chose counseling, she says. MIT declined to comment.Ms. Kayton says the counselor initially rebuffed her efforts to speak to him, but Daniel gave her and her husband permission to speak to the counselor after they warned their son they would otherwise cease paying his tuition. She says she was told that "they saw no sign of depression or mental illness. They said they saw a kid who was physically sick and he needed to fatten himself and get some sleep." Ms. Kayton says Daniel later attributed his disappearance to a girl who was harassing him at his dorm, even jumping in the shower naked with him. MIT declined to comment, citing privacy issues.When he became a junior, Daniel joined the school's debate team and began to make close friends at MIT for the first time. When she saw him last March, Ms. Kayton says Daniel "was just steaming with happiness."Just a few weeks later, some of Daniel's new debate-team friends noticed he had skipped a seminar and a debate meeting and had failed to show up for his favorite class three times. For days, he hadn't answered his cellphone or returned emails.The last day Daniel's family heard from him was Sunday, April 8. He posted a cryptic "away" message on his AOL Instant Messenger program: "dan has to meet with some sketchy people he thought he'd never have to deal with ever again." When Daniel's sister asked him about the message, he told her that he had to go to east Cambridge to see "very sketchy" people.On Thursday night, April 12, a friend named Michelle Zimmermann called Daniel's parents and told them his friends were worried because they couldn't find him. She also


reported Daniel's disappearance to the MIT police, which gets its law-enforcement authority from the state. The police began interviewing other friends and checked Mr. Barclay's empty dorm room.The next day, Ms. Kayton called some of Daniel's friends. One of them, then-freshman Leslie Nachbar, was worried. Daniel had recently admitted he had a crush on her, she had explained to him that she didn't share his feelings, and they argued, she said. A draft of Daniel's master's thesis was due that day, but he didn't surface.Although she says her son hadn't used his school identification card since April 8, Ms. Kayton says the police and Barbara Baker, MIT's senior associate dean for students, told her it wasn't unusual for students to take a break from school or drop out of communication to study. She says Ms. Baker offered to help with hotel arrangements if Ms. Kayton chose to visit. But Ms. Kayton says school administrators, citing privacy policy, refused to allow her access to Daniel's dorm room or his computer files. "They were convinced he was gone to stay with friends and what was the big deal," she says.Undeterred -- and convinced something was wrong -- Ms. Kayton boarded a red-eye flight from San Jose, Calif., on Saturday. She says she was armed with two lock-picking kits and special software designed to crack computer passwords.On Sunday, as a nor'easter raged outside, Ms. Kayton entered her son's room -- she declines to say how -- and searched for clues. Daniel's friends stopped by to help. In a pocket of a blue blazer, Ms. Zimmermann discovered a receipt for $112.21 from a Wal-Mart store in nearby Lynn, Mass. Among the items: a $10 inflatable boat, an oar, two packages of nylon cord, a sleeping bag, a folding knife, a flashlight, black dress socks and a 28-pound bag of cat-box litter. Daniel did not own a cat.Ms. Kayton headed toward Daniel's desktop computer. The weekend of April 8 he had reviewed maps of the Boston area, she says. In his last search, she says he checked the weather.Ms. Kayton says she contacted all of her son's instant-messenger chat buddies, as well as people he had emailed and friends listed on his Facebook page. She says she obtained his cellphone records by filling out a California subpoena form herself and sending it without a judge's signature to his cellphone provider. She says she called everyone he had last called. No one had seen Daniel or knew where he might be.Some of Ms. Kayton's tactics made Daniel's friends uncomfortable. "All of us felt weird she was going through his instant-message conversations," says Linda Fang, a senior at the time. "It was as if [because] she was his mother, she had a right to them."On her son's computer, Ms. Kayton also found a 20-odd page journal. It contained real and made-up conversations, quotes from movies, expressions of his feelings for Ms. Nachbar, and a to-do list that mentioned a meeting with people in east Cambridge.Ms. Kayton shared her discoveries with the MIT police, requesting that Mr. Barclay be listed as a missing person. Two days after they learned he was missing, MIT police say, they listed Daniel in the national missing persons database. At this point he had been missing one week.The next day, Monday, April 16, came the Virginia Tech massacre. Early that week, Ms. Kayton says she asked MIT for access to the files her son had stored on the school's server. She was told she would need a subpoena. With the help of her attorney husband, Ms. Kayton filled out another California subpoena form herself and sent it to MIT without a judge's signature. The school rejected it. Ms. Kayton says she was angry and


frustrated. "They're protecting the privacy of someone who's been gone a week?" she says.Meanwhile, the MIT police, led by Lt. Al Pierce, were conducting their own search, contacting police departments of local municipalities and inquiring at all local hospitals. At their request, the state police asked the Coast Guard to search Boston Harbor. No one turned up any clues.On Tuesday, April 17, the MIT police asked the district attorney in Cambridge for a subpoena for Mr. Barclay's electronic files, and on Wednesday, April 18, the district attorney's office faxed it to the school. While it is difficult to generalize, a number of campus police chiefs and prosecutors say it is unusual to subpoena a school for a student's records in a noncriminal investigation.Ms. Kayton sent an email to the university's president, Susan Hockfield, complaining that she was being stonewalled. Ms. Baker, the associate dean, called Ms. Kayton and told her that the school was doing everything it could. On Thursday afternoon, an MIT deputy general counsel mailed a letter addressed to Daniel saying the school would release the information no earlier than the close of business that day, Thursday, April 19.At 11:30 p.m. Thursday night, a week after that first phone call from Ms. Zimmermann, Mr. Barclay's parents answered a knock on their hotel-room door and discovered Lt. Pierce and two MIT police detectives. The officers said a body of a young man wearing an MIT T-shirt had been found floating off Cape Cod, near Sandwich, Mass., that afternoon. The next morning, Mr. Barclay's parents identified their son's body.

3. The federal privacy act that bars schools from sharing information in a student's record without that student's permission is called _____.a. Darpa b. Mitpac. Privacy 1974d. Ferpa Correct

4. The Virginia Tech massacre raised national awareness of one of the thorniest aspects of the relationship between colleges and parents: ___________.a. tuition payments b. student livingc. student privacy Correctd. student debt

In Shift, Auto Workers Flee to Health-Care JobsBy JEFFREY MCCRACKEN September 11, 2007; Page A1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118947456678423358.html

DETROIT -- In the mid-1960s, Horace Warren joined one of the largest worker migrations in U.S. history. He moved here from Alabama to take a job in the booming auto industry, and for more than 40 years Detroit's Big Three provided jobs for Mr. Warren and his children.



Now his family is part of a huge new wave of migration away from the auto industry. As manufacturers here attack bloated costs by trimming excess workers with expensive union jobs, they have offered buyouts that have let tens of thousands of employees launch new careers. Among these former auto workers, the most popular choice is the very field that auto-industry executives have blamed for their competitive woes: health care.In the past year, both of Mr. Warren's daughters have left auto-manufacturing jobs to attend nursing school. His youngest, Angela Davis, built engines for 11 years at a Chrysler plant here. But when Chrysler Group offered her a $100,000 buyout, she decided on nursing. "We know a lot of money goes to health care from the auto makers," the 35-year-old mother of three says. "They talk about it all the time -- especially during our contract talks."Ford says 40% of its former workers who are going to school are studying in medical fields -- more than half specializing in nursing, followed by radiology, dental hygiene and pharmacology. "Health care is where the jobs are," says Marty Mulloy, Ford's head of labor relations, who helped develop Ford's education buyout plan and is handling this summer's UAW contract talks.GM and Chrysler say they do not track their former hourly workers' career choices. But the UAW and Michigan colleges say many GM and Chrysler workers are applying for nursing and other health-care programs. Both manufacturers have asked Ford about its education buyout plan, people familiar with the labor talks say.Former auto workers say they are drawn to health care because the jobs pay well and are less vulnerable to being outsourced. Registered nurses currently have an annual mean salary of nearly $60,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. Dental hygienists earn about $62,000. By comparison, auto-manufacturing jobs currently pay about $54,000.Workers say the jobs are also a welcome break from repetitive work. Chris Pengov, a 48-year-old native of Norwalk, Ohio, spent the past 15 years with Ford, most recently tightening lug nuts and installing rims and tires on Econoline vans and other vehicles at a plant in Avon Lake, Ohio. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," he says. "That's what happens working on the line."Mr. Pengov, who has a 23-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old granddaughter, says he had been researching a move to health care for the past few years. In January, he was among what he estimates were 600 Avon Lake workers to accept a buyout or early retirement. (Ford declined to provide plant-by-plant information on early worker departures.) Mr. Pengov took an education buyout and is now in his second semester at Mercy College of Northwest Ohio in Toledo. He says he is considering specializing in radiology or health-information services."Either way I will absolutely, positively be 100% happier," he says.Former UAW members are also being pushed toward health care by auto makers and government officials, who note a growing demand in the field. The American Association of College Nursing estimates the U.S. currently has 126,000 nursing vacancies. By 2014, the U.S. will require 1.2 million new and replacement nurses, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many of the nation's 2.9 million nurses retire and aging baby boomers need increasing amounts of care.


5. Ford says ______ of its former workers who are going to school are studying in medical fields, more than half specializing in nursing, followed by radiology, dental hygiene and pharmacology.a. 10% b. 30%c. 40% Correctd. 60%

6. Former UAW members are also being pushed toward health care by auto makers and government officials, who note a growing demand in the field. The American Association of College Nursing estimates the U.S. currently has 126,000 nursing vacancies. By 2014, the U.S. will require ________ new and replacement nurses, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.a. 1.2 million Correctb. 2.2 millionc. 2.2 Billiond. 2.9 million

Cranky Skies: Fliers Behave Badly Again As 9/11 Era FadesBy SUSAN CAREYSeptember 12, 2007; Page A1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118953945479924099.html

For a brief time after Sept. 11, 2001, civility seemed to reign in the skies above America."We had the most humble passengers ever," says Frank Slade, a 16-year flight attendant who now works for Northwest Airlines. " 'Yes, ma'am.' 'No, sir.' "Today, the picture isn't so pretty. Mr. Slade says he has been verbally assaulted by passengers twice in the past six months, and he had a third insubordinate flier ejected before the plane took off. "They're not restrained at all in manner," he says.American Airlines told the Transportation Security Administration in July, that a passenger on a flight to New York had slapped a flight attendant across the face when the plane was ordered emptied in Miami after bad weather kept the flight from leaving. Police were called.After a summer of packed flights, delays, lengthy security procedures and dwindling on-board amenities, airlines are dealing with what many employees, experts -- and frequent fliers themselves -- feel is a worrisome deterioration in passenger comportment."Abnormal, aberrant or abusive behavior in the context of the air-travel experience" is back with a vengeance, says Andrew Thomas, an assistant professor of business at the University of Akron, who has written books about air rage and aviation "insecurity" and maintains a Web site called airrage.org5.Mr. Thomas sees an entitlement mind-set in today's flying public, especially among business travelers. "Nobody tells a lot of these guys 'no,' " he says. "So when a flight attendant tells them to turn off the phone or the BlackBerry or that they can't have another drink, they don't know how to hear 'no,' " he says.The numbers of unruly passenger cases tracked by government agencies vary and in many instances underreport the problem, according to authorities. The Federal Air


http://airrage.org/


Marshal Service shows a steady increase from 2004, when it began automated record keeping. Airport police at some large hubs also say their numbers are up in the past few years, and anecdotal evidence suggests the problem -- along with numerous lesser displays of passenger rudeness and intolerance -- is on the rise.Mala Amarsingh, a JetBlue Airways Corp. attendant, was standing in the Las Vegas airport in June, waiting to hitch a ride to New York to start her shift. An intoxicated female passenger approached her, started cursing, threatened to beat her up and then spit in her face. The flight attendant says she lost her cool, cursed back at the passenger and later was terminated by the airline for "inappropriate behavior." JetBlue won't comment about personnel matters, but says "customers traveling today are more frustrated by delays and perceived service lapses."Ms. Amarsingh thinks "uniformed flight attendants are walking targets for passenger frustrations," which "absolutely" have gotten worse in her more than six years in the job.Sara Nelson, a United Airlines flight attendant and spokeswoman for the flight attendants union, says she "wouldn't necessarily say passengers are more out of control." But declining service standards mean "they have more opportunities to show their unreasonable side."Ms. Nelson says she recently witnessed a female business traveler in her 50s grab an agent in the jetway when the United worker took away the traveler's carry-on bag to check because the overhead bins were full. Ms. Nelson says she also saw family members whose flight was canceled "claw" a customer-service agent until her arms bled when the agent couldn't get them onto another flight.Bill Horoszko, a Hinckley, Ill., chemical marketer and frequent flier, observes that "tension levels have just gone through the roof" because of delays, cancellations and long security lines. But travelers share the blame, he says."It's like [passengers] are entitled to be ignorant, rude and arrogant because they purchased a ticket," he says. "People are so full of themselves now it's ungodly."In July, a doctor who missed his Northwest flight in Seattle allegedly called 911 three times to say there was a bomb on board, hoping the plane would return so he could make the flight, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle. The plane did come back, but the doctor was arrested for allegedly making a false threat against an aircraft.Last month, a female United Airlines baggage employee at Dulles Airport called the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority police after a passenger allegedly attempted to enter an employees-only area, pushed aside the woman's outstretched arm and refused to leave. Officers interviewed the traveler, U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat from Chula Vista, and before releasing him advised him that the United worker would be pursuing charges.A local magistrate issued a summons for the congressman to appear in court Oct. 2 on misdemeanor assault and battery charges. Rep. Filner, in a statement, said, "I did not want things to turn out as they did, with offense obviously taken and much misunderstanding." Earlier he disputed accounts of the incident as factually incorrect and said the charges were "ridiculous."United says it "regrets that the customer experienced a delay in claiming his bag."Some passengers choose to fight carriers' service lapses with nonviolent means. For Greg Hansen, president of a Portland, Ore., marketing and research company, the last straw


was a May 14 United flight to San Francisco that was delayed for nearly three hours because of mechanical problems. He says the carrier should have alerted him about the delay before he got to the airport, since the airline knew about it at least two hours before the scheduled departure. He complains that United agents in Portland didn't have any information about the delay.A longtime United flier, Mr. Hansen sent numerous emails to airline officials, including Glenn Tilton, chairman and chief executive of UAL Corp., United's parent company. Mr. Hansen sent a reporter copies of many of them.Ultimately, Mr. Hansen sent the CEO an invoice demanding immediate payment of $100,000 for "lost productivity, missed business meetings and personal activities, lack of on-time arrival, failure to deliver the promise, stress, and related damages" going back to 2004.

7. Mala Amarsingh, a JetBlue Airways Corp. attendant, was standing in the Las Vegas airport in June, waiting to hitch a ride to New York to start her shift. An intoxicated female passenger approached her, started cursing, threatened to beat her up and then spit in her face. The flight attendant says she lost her cool, and cursed back at the passenger. The flight attendant was disciplined by: a. being lectured by management b. being terminated Correctc. being forced to apologized. being forced to become a luggage handler

8. Greg Hansen, president of a marketing and research company was delayed for nearly three hours because of mechanical problems. He says the carrier should have alerted him about the delay before he got to the airport, since the airline knew about it at least two hours before the scheduled departure. A longtime United flier, Mr. Hansen sent numerous emails to airline officials, including Glenn Tilton, chairman and chief executive of UAL Corp., United's parent company. Mr. Hansen sent a reporter copies of many of them.Ultimately, Mr. Hansen sent the CEO an invoice demanding immediate payment of ___________ for "lost productivity, missed business meetings and personal activities, lack of on-time arrival, failure to deliver the promise, stress, and related damages" going back to 2004.a. $1000 b. $10,000c. $100,000 Correctd. $1,000,000

At MTV, a New Show That Pushes DeodorantBy SUZANNE VRANICASeptember 13, 2007; Page A1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118963983165125765.html

Next week, MTV plans to air "The Gamekillers," a new TV series about young men's quests to win over women. It may not be obvious to viewers, but the series is also about Unilever PLC's quest to sell more Axe antiperspirant.



Alert fans might connect the dots. The Axe brand name pops up a few times during certain scenes in the show. Posters put up at certain college campuses say: "An AXE Attractions production The Gamekillers."The subtle connections between "Gamekillers" and Axe are the result of a carefully crafted compromise between MTV, which doesn't want people to think it's airing an extended deodorant commercial, and Unilever, which wants to peddle more product. It's a compromise being negotiated increasingly in the entertainment industry nowadays, as a growing number of marketers attempt to subtly promote their products by creating and backing entertainment programs.Some of the country's best-known marketers including PepsiCo Inc., Burger King Holdings Inc. and Bacardi Ltd.'s Grey Goose are experimenting with new types of product-pitching entertainment, not just for television but for the Web and even movie theaters.Known in the industry as "branded entertainment," the approach has its roots in early TV advertising. In the 1940s and 1950s, marketers produced shows like the "Colgate Comedy Hour"; the term "soap operas" originated from the soap peddlers who created the daytime fare. Advertiser-produced entertainment faded after production costs soared.For the past few decades, advertisers bought TV commercials or, more recently, paid TV networks to insert their products into the storyline of a show. But advertisers are increasingly rethinking the value of these approaches. Consumers can easily tune out traditional ads by changing the channel or speeding through commercial breaks with digital video recorders. And placing a product into a program can sometimes appear too obviously a promotional device. The idea of branded content is to create advertising so subtle it won't alienate potential customers.Getting "branded entertainment" on the air isn't easy. While Unilever's ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty originally envisaged the show as a TV series, the company initially agreed to finance development of a single episode. That one-hour show aired several times last year on MTV, drawing enough of an audience that the Viacom Inc.-owned cable channel agreed to air another five episodes.Branded entertainment has another big hazard: If it's too subtle, it could easily go over the heads of viewers. "The No. 1 job of the program is to be good entertainment. But the second big thing is, it has to have a deep connection to the brand," says Tom Cotton, president of Conductor, an entertainment and marketing firm in Santa Monica, Calif. "That is challenging."The landscape is littered with failed experiments. Several years ago, Nike Inc. produced "Sneaker Heads," a full-length film about the underground sneaker-collecting culture. The film never made it to the big screen. Nike says the project was in 2004 and adds it has had "great success in the branded-content zone."In February, brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos. unveiled an online entertainment network dubbed Bud.TV. The site, which cost the company about $15 million to create, flopped. In May, the company acknowledged it had a problem and revamped the Web site to make it edgier, in hopes of luring more traffic. Still, in July and August the number of visitors to the site was so low it failed to meet Web-tracking firm comScore Inc.'s threshold for measurability. A spokesman for Anheuser-Busch declined to comment.


Getting that one episode of "Gamekillers" on the air was a two-year odyssey. In 2005 BBH executive William Gelner flew to Chicago, where Unilever's Axe team works, to pitch a new Axe Dry marketing campaign.As part of its ad campaign, Mr. Gelner suggested the consumer-product titan produce a TV series, which eventually became a quasi-reality show that focused on a young man's quest to win over a woman. He would need to overcome the vigorous efforts of numerous over-the-top characters -- the "Gamekillers" -- to unnerve him. If the young man "stayed cool" under pressure (Axe Dry's marketing message), he'd get the girl.In the dimly lit meeting room hung a dozen cardboard posters, each featuring a character. There was "The One Upper," a boastful young man designed to make the hero feel insecure; "The Drama Queen," a young woman whose frequent hysterics hijack the hero's moment; and "British Accent Guy," who attracts women with his European flair. Eventually they would decide all the "Gamekillers" -- as well as the young woman -- would be actors. Everyone would be in on the joke except the young man himself.In his pitch, Mr. Gelner stressed the need to do something new. "We want to do something different that is bigger," Mr. Gelner recalls telling the Unilever marketing executives. "It's very difficult to reach youth with a 30-second commercial."While the Unilever people agreed, the idea of launching a show worried them. "Unilever isn't asking me to get into the content-development business," says David Rubin, Axe's brand-development director for North America. "What Unilever wants me to do is sell more Axe deodorant."Mr. Rubin also worried that a show with too much product placement would turn off young, skeptical consumers. Mr. Gelner's suggestion: Make the connection between the show and the antiperspirant a subtle one. Unilever could, for example, use the characters and distinctive typography of the show's titles in the planned $35 million ad campaign that would be launched when the program began airing.After discussing the idea with colleagues, Mr. Rubin and the Axe team eventually agreed to let BBH develop the concept and find a network to air it. Recognizing the agency lacked experience producing anything longer than a 30-second commercial, Mr. Gelner brought in Radical Media Inc., a New York TV-production firm, to help develop the program.The agency also teamed up with the entertainment division of WPP Group PLC's GroupM, Unilever's media-services firm, to shop the idea around Hollywood. Unsurprisingly, some entertainment executives were skeptical the ad executives could produce a series. Mr. Gelner -- who left BBH for another agency last May -- remembers hearing: "How do I know you can do this...and how do I know that it will be great?"Still, many networks listened. They had to. Facing intensifying competition for ad dollars from the Web, television executives need to please advertisers. Unilever, which markets everything from Ben & Jerry's ice cream to Dove soap, is one of the world's biggest advertisers, spending $809 million on ads in the U.S. last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence.MTV proved the most open to the idea. The channel had previously worked with Radical Media and advertisers on program development. It also helped that Unilever was already a big advertiser on MTV, spending over $10 million on the network in 2005, according to TNS Media Intelligence.


While it wasn't willing to immediately approve a series, MTV agreed to air a one-hour special, to be financed by Unilever at a cost of about $2 million.Production began in November 2005. Heavily stylized, with the eccentric feel of a film made by director Wes Anderson, the show followed the travails of Aaron, a recent college graduate trying to woo a young woman in New York named Danielle. Aaron had five dates to succeed, but each encounter is interrupted by a "Gamekiller." In one scene, Aaron is visibly stunned and his jaw drops while an intellectual named "IQ" showed off his abilities to Danielle. A graphic of a meter popped up intermittently on the screen, measuring Aaron's effort to keep "his cool."

9. MTV plans to air "The Gamekillers," a new TV series which is an example ofa. “product placement”b. “branded entertainment” Correctc. “extended commercial entertainment”d. “product insertion”

10. The product being pitched in "The Gamekillers," show isa. Axe deodorant Correctb. Nike sneakersc. Pepsi sodad. Ben & Jerry's ice cream

GE's Environment Push Hits Business RealitiesBy KATHRYN KRANHOLDSeptember 14, 2007; Page A1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118973485406827339.html

Two years ago, General Electric Co. Chairman Jeffrey Immelt vowed to make GE a corporate leader in addressing climate change. Since then, Mr. Immelt says, he's heard a refrain from some big GE customers: "'Can't you just shut up and sell us stuff?' That would be a paraphrase, maybe with a few blanks in between."Customer grumbling isn't the only hurdle facing the effort to bring earth-friendly policies to a $163 billion-a-year conglomerate that sells everything from airplane engines to light bulbs. Some of Mr. Immelt's underlings have questioned whether carbon-dioxide emissions are a proven cause of climate change.And he himself is willing to push GE only so far. "I don't want to change the economic flow of the company," Mr. Immelt says. So GE continues to sell coal-fired steam turbines and is delving deeper into oil-and-gas production. Meanwhile, its finance unit seeks out coal-related investments including power plants, which are a leading cause of carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S.Yet these limitations haven't stopped GE from making a big marketing to-do of its commitment to the environment. Indeed, the primary focus of the conglomerate's marketing efforts these days is a $1 million-a-year campaign to publicize its search for "innovative solutions to environmental challenges."GE has dubbed its campaign "ecomagination," and Mr. Immelt calls it a success. GE is on track to sell $14 billion of its self-described environmentally friendly products this



year, and projects the total will grow more than 10% annually through 2010. GE says it reduced its own greenhouse-gas emissions by 4% between 2004 and 2006, even as revenue grew 21%.In January, Mr. Immelt backed a proposal to cap industrial carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S. A government-imposed cap would likely limit CO2 emissions by big manufacturers and power plants, both of which are important GE customers.His own lieutenants acknowledge that Mr. Immelt is creating friction. "Is there a tension there? Of course there is," says Lorraine Bolsinger, who runs the ecomagination program. "This is a big tough issue. The whole world is moving in a new direction. We've got to try to keep pace."GE is "looking toward the future but they are not yet giving up all of the past," says Dan Bakal, director of electric-power programs for Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups.Mr. Immelt's environmental outlook was shaped in part by GE's long struggle with regulators and advocacy groups over New York's Hudson River, where GE had legally discharged toxic polychlorinated biphenyls in the 1960s and 1970s. Mr. Immelt also dealt with environmental rules while at GE's plastics division in the 1980s and 1990s. Shortly after taking over as GE chairman in 2001, Mr. Immelt agreed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop a cleanup plan for the Hudson.Another big environmental issue arose quickly. In 2002, religious groups submitted a shareholder proposal asking GE to count its emissions of global-warming gases. GE opposed the resolution, which won a surprisingly strong 20% of shareholder votes.The following year, Mr. Immelt surprised the shareholder activists by pledging at the annual meeting to count GE's global-warming emissions.Mr. Immelt says several factors contributed to his decision. GE had a growing roster of technologies, including wind turbines and a fuel-efficient airplane engine, that could be marketed as environmentally friendly. GE's factories in places like Europe and Japan faced limits on their carbon-dioxide emissions. Mr. Immelt also says a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report had convinced him that global warming was a "technical fact."Mr. Immelt wanted GE to help draft government rules on climate change, instead of playing defense as it had with the Hudson River. "We are much better as a company getting ahead of [climate-change policy] than we are pretending like it doesn't exist," he says.Mr. Immelt says global warming isn't a moral issue for him. "I never put it in right versus wrong," he says. Rather, he believes that making changes to address potential climate change is a political necessity.As GE officials set out to count the company's emissions, Mr. Immelt consulted executives who had launched environmental programs, including DuPont Co. Chairman and CEO Charles Holliday Jr.

11. Two years ago, General Electric Chairman Jeffrey Immelt vowed to make GE a corporate leader in addressing _________.a. global poverty b. Aids educationc. climate change Correct


d. global clean water

12. In 2002, religious groups submitted a shareholder proposal asking GE to count its emissions of ___________. GE opposed the resolution, which won a surprisingly strong 20% of shareholder votes.a. polychlorinated biphenyls b. plasticsc. oil and gasd. global warming gases Correct

Questions 13 – 17 from Marketplace

Ex-CEOs Are Looking For Some Challenges In Their Second ActsBy CAROL HYMOWITZSeptember 10, 2007; Page B1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118937952913421993.html

Paul Charron, the retired chief executive of Liz Claiborne, doesn't want to spend his days playing golf."I still want to work -- but I don't miss being in my car at 5:30 every morning and having a headache by 6:30," says Mr. Charron, who stepped down at the end of 2006, after 12 years at the helm.He is among those executives who have left the corner office but aren't ready to totally retire. They want new jobs where they can satisfy their own needs rather than those of investors and directors -- and get some relief from the grueling schedules and pressures they faced as CEOs in big companies. Mostly, they want to keep learning by taking on new challenges.Finding these jobs, however, requires patience. It also requires much soul-searching, something many hard-charging executives don't have much practice at doing after decades spent making swift decisions and managing others.Mr. Charron, 65 years old, who still keeps an office at Liz Claiborne's New York headquarters, has sought advice from other former CEOs about what to do. "Everyone says I'm more likely to find something worthwhile that makes me happy if I take my time," he says.So, during the past eight months, he has been mulling over the possibilities. At least he has decided what he doesn't want to do. He doesn't want to devote all his time to charity work. He doesn't want to become a full-time professor, although he's happy to be teaching part-time this fall semester at Notre Dame, his alma mater. He also doesn't see himself running another public company where he'd have to oversee daily operations and "squeeze every quarter out for shareholders," he says. "I've done that already."For now, he wants to stick with business so he can use his knowledge of consumer products and the retail and fashion industries. But he wants to focus on setting strategy and mentoring other executives, the part of business he loves most. He's hoping, he says, for "the signal, where my heart and head come together and I know 'this is what I should do.' "He's still waiting.



Some executives who have gone before him hold out the promise of unexpected opportunities and rewards at the end of the search. Richard Block spent decades running an entertainment-packaging company with two partners before selling it in 2000. He stayed on for a few years, then decided, "corporate bureaucracy wasn't for me." He stopped going to his office.The change, he says, resulted in a "black hole period" of uncertainty that was "painful but deliberate. I figured if I cut the cord I'd have to find something different." Then, a friend introduced him to the founder of Getting Out and Staying Out, which offers mentoring and job counseling to young prisoners in New York.Mr. Block now spends two days a week at Riker's Island working with inmates 18 to 24 years old who are enrolled in the prison's high school, and some additional time with former prisoners. "In business, what I loved most was motivating others and that's what I'm doing here -- only with young people who have started out with so little," he says.When one prisoner told him he might want to become an electrician, Mr. Block helped him do an Internet search about the requirements. He coaches others who have completed their prison sentences about how to conduct themselves during job interviews and helps them learn about companies."Lots of the time, I'm just hitting singles and doubles," yet also seeing results, says Mr. Block, who is 67. Fewer than 10% of prisoners who stick with the program have ended up back in prison within three years, he says.Other executives -- especially those who quit CEO jobs when they were still in their 50s -- haven't made the dramatic switches they thought they would. After ruminating about his early dream of being a musician, Ken Freeman, 57, former CEO of Quest Diagnositcs, instead jumped to private-equity firm KKR. He advises and helps manage a variety of concerns in which KKR is invested. "It's challenging, it's intense and it's the right fit for me now," Mr. Freeman says.But who knows, he says, in five or 10 years he may be doing something entirely different.

13. Retired CEO’s who still want to worka. should devote their lives to charity work b. should be full-time professorsc. should take their time to find out what they really want to spend time doing Correctd. should look for another company to run

Shooting Messengers Makes Us Feel Better But Work DumberBy JARED SANDBERGSeptember 11, 2007; Page B1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118945866345322967.html

It was a perfect case of shooting the messenger, even if it seemed to Elliott Gordon like a protracted mugging.Last year, the former sales associate watched the fallout after one of his colleagues made a big sale that faltered. The salesman was assured that the goods would be shipped from a supplier, but only half of the inventory arrived.



A receiving clerk had to tell the salesman, who responded to the bad news by vowing to the clerk, "I will ruin your life," and then throwing him against the wall. He then kicked his own cubicle wall, "which in turn collapsed onto his neighbor's cubicle wall and thus started a domino effect of wrecking everyone's office in the row," Mr. Gordon recalls.The salesman then threw the clerk on top of the collapsed wall and used his phone receiver to smash his own computer screen, which popped like a blown light bulb."I just sat, staring at my computer screen with the cubicle wall to my right tented over my head," says Mr. Gordon.Everyone knows blaming the blameless bearer of bad news doesn't help, but we do it anyway. It's a symptom of the ill-aimed, trigger-happy nature of office blame, and the gulf between knowing a problem and solving it. Among the unwanted consequences: The shooter gets a one-way ticket from reality.We do it mostly because we're stupid, says management consultant Marshall Goldsmith, for whom the issue is a pet peeve. "It's easy to know theories. It's hard to change behavior," he says.Great success in business, he reminds us, hasn't always included growing up. "Have you ever read a history book that indicates that when you give men lots of status and money and power, they begin to act sane and rational?" he asks. "I never read that book."Also, some jobs are easier to mistake for skeet: waiters, customer-service personnel, employee relations and anyone who has to convey insurance-policy information, for example. Those middlemen aren't responsible for disruptive decisions or business failures. But they're the poor souls held accountable.Pearl Gabel, who works part time as a medical-clinic secretary, has to tell people all day long that the clinic doesn't take their insurance. She knows people are sick and exhausted, so she takes whatever gets thrown at her -- usually "darts of guilt." She tells them, "Sorry, I'm just a secretary, I don't make the rules."But even Ms. Gabel finds herself shooting messengers. The week before last she went to a doctor's office for a five-minute visit. It would cost $410, the receptionist informed her."I huffed at her. The doctor wasn't available to huff at," she says.Big bureaucracies are set up to place human barriers around decision makers. Today, there's the added protection of automated phones and Web sites that bury contact information for real people. So, the buck stops in the lower rungs of the hierarchy.The government agency where Andrew Mentzer once worked sent lower-level staffers to break the news to clients that they didn't get approved. He used to beg them not to shoot the messenger. "The true irony of the situation is sending in someone who is less qualified to address a hostile situation, and that creates more hostility, which makes it more likely for him to get shot," he says.The biggest business mistake Gerry Langeler ever made was when he presided over a software company working on a new version of its main product, which was increasingly late. When one vice president notified him that the release would be delayed again, Mr. Langeler made an example of the VP and fired him."I finally got so exasperated that I let the word go out that I simply did not want to hear any more 'excuses' about why the schedule could not be met," he says.He got his wish -- and paid dearly for it. "No one ever came forward to tell me the truth about the status of the program for a very long time thereafter," he says.


The software finally shipped two years later, and its development cost $100 million. He began to solicit bad news with a "Smokey the Bear Award" for employees who identified conflagrations before they spread. "If I hadn't shot the messenger, we still would have lost a lot of that money," he says, "but not all of it."

14. The phrase “shooting the messenger” meansa. blaming the person responsible for the problemb. aiming a gun at the courierc. blaming the person who delivers bad news Correctd. having a nervous breakdown in the office

Are Technology Limits In MP3s and iPods Ruining Pop Music?By LEE GOMESSeptember 12, 2007; Page B1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118953936892024096.html

If it seems like you are listening to music more but enjoying it less, some people in the recording industry say they know why. They blame that iPod that you can't live without, along with all the compressed MP3 music files you've loaded on it.Those who work behind-the-mic in the music industry -- producers, engineers, mixers and the like -- say they increasingly assume their recordings will be heard as MP3s on an iPod music player. That combination is thus becoming the "reference platform" used as a test of how a track should sound. (Movie makers make much the same complaint when they see their filmed images in low-quality digital form.)But because both compressed music and the iPod's relatively low-quality earbuds have many limitations, music producers fret that they are engineering music to a technical lowest common denominator. The result, many say, is music that is loud but harsh and flat, and thus not enjoyable for long periods of time."Right now, when you are done recording a track, the first thing the band does is to load it onto an iPod and give it a listen," said Alan Douches, who has worked with Fleetwood Mac and others. "Years ago, we might have checked the sound of a track on a Walkman, but no one believed that was the best it could sound. Today, young artists think MP3s are a high-quality medium and the iPod is state-of-the-art sound."It isn't. Producers and engineers say there are many ways they might change a track to accommodate an iPod MP3. Sometimes, the changes are for the worse.For example, says veteran Los Angeles studio owner Skip Saylor, high frequencies that might seem splendid on a CD might not sound as good as an MP3 file and so will get taken out of the mix. "The result might make you happy on an MP3, but it wouldn't make you happy on a CD," he says. "Am I glad I am doing this? No. But it's the real world and so you make adjustments."This shift to compressed music heard via an iPod is occurring at the same time as another music trend that bothers audiophiles: Music today is released at higher volume levels than ever before, on the assumption that louder music sells better. The process of boosting volume, though, tends to eliminate a track's distinct highs and lows.As a result, contemporary pop music has a characteristic sound, says veteran L.A. engineer Jack Joseph Puig, whose credits include the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton.



"Ten years ago, music was warmer; it was rich and thick, with more tones and more 'real power.' But newer records are more brittle and bright. They have what I call 'implied power.' It's all done with delays and reverbs and compression to fool your brain."All these engineers tend to be audiophiles, the sort who would fuss over a track to make it perfect. But they're beginning to wonder if they should bother."I care about quality, even though the kid on the street might like what he hears on MySpace, which is even worse than an MP3," said Stuart Brawley, an L.A. engineer who has recorded Cher and Michael Jackson. "We try to make the best quality sound we can, but we increasingly have to be realistic about how much time we can spend doing it."Howard Benson, who has done work for Santana and Chris Daughtry, says members of a studio recording crew will sometimes complain after a session, "I just spent all this time getting the greatest guitar and drums solo, and it ends up as an MP3."Even those who complain about MP3s say they own and enjoy iPods, and appreciate how they have made music so widely available. They just wish, they say, the device wasn't setting the technical standard for how music gets made.Of course, not all music producers agree that MP3s and iPods are affecting music in quite so bad a way. Larry Klein, noted for his work with Joni Mitchell, said, "If something sounds really good on an average pair of speakers, it will sound great on earbuds. I can't imagine mixing a record so that it sounds better on earbuds."And Clif Magness, who has recorded with Kelly Clarkson and Clay Aiken, says music recorded by young artists in living rooms via MP3s, while technically crude, can sometimes have an urgency and immediacy that might be missing from slick studio projects.When CDs were first introduced, they were regarded as cold and flat, compared with vinyl. But their sound improved as engineers learned the medium, a process many hope will happen again with MP3s and portable music players.Michael Bradford, who has produced Kid Rock, notes that as storage and bandwidth capabilities grow, music won't need to be as compressed. Even now, some audio buffs, such as Stereophile magazine columnist Michael Fremer, insist on a best-of-both-worlds approach to digital music. He uses $500 earbuds with his iPod to listen to digital, but uncompressed, music he captures from vinyl LPs.Still, engineers experience some nostalgia about earlier technologies. Says Mr. Saylor, "What we've lost with this new era of massive compression and low fidelity are the records that sounds so good that you get lost in them. "Dark Side of the Moon" -- records like that just aren't being made today."

15. The shift to compressed music heard via an iPod is occurring at the same time as another music trend that bothers audiophiles: Music today is _________.a. uncompressed b. high fidelityc. released at higher volume Correctd. analog

Keeping Nascar's Pedal to the MetalBy ADAM THOMPSONSeptember 13, 2007; Page B1



CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Many executives might run their grandmothers into the wall at 200 miles per hour to wield the kind of power that Brian France exerts over Nascar.Following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father at the head of Nascar, Mr. France maintains a business that for years has been described as a benevolent dictatorship. Closely held and union-free, Nascar has become the largest, richest sanctioning body in U.S. motor sports under the France family's watch.The 45-year-old Mr. France has authored fundamental changes in stock-car racing since taking over as chairman and chief executive in 2003. A transition to a new, more regulated racecar for teams in the Nextel Cup series, Nascar's highest level, is meant to keep costs down while improving competition and safety, though racing teams have complained it strips the sport of engineering creativity. A 10-race playoff known as the Chase for the Cup, which begins Sunday in Loudon, N.H., has also received mixed reviews.

16. ________ has become the largest, richest sanctioning body in US motor sports under the France family's watch.a. Indycar b. IRCc. IRLd. Nascar Correct

Detroit Auto Makers Try Some New TricksBy NEAL E. BOUDETTESeptember 14, 2007; Page B1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118972842681227168.html

Just about every month, CNW Market Research meets with a group of would-be car buyers and plays a trick on them.Sometimes the company, which specializes in auto sales trends, takes a Toyota Camry, removes any identifying logos, and tells them it's a new model from one of the U.S.-based auto makers. Or it takes a domestic car and tells them it's a Toyota or another import make.Either way, the result is the same. "If they think it's an American car, the perception of the vehicle falls dramatically," said Art Spinella, vice president of the Bandon, Ore.-based firm. "Detroit really gets a bum rap in the U.S."Those negative impressions are now souring efforts by Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC to halt their long slide in U.S. market share. And for these Detroit auto makers, persuading import buyers to even consider a U.S. car is becoming the new battleground.The issue of public perception is coming into sharper focus now because experts say the Big Three, after years of concentrating on trucks and all but ignoring cars, have markedly improved the quality and look of their sedans and compacts. So in recent months, Detroit auto makers have been increasingly willing to experiment with aggressive marketing tactics to trumpet those changes.




17. Just about every month, CNW Market Research meets with a group of would-be car buyers and plays a trick on them. Sometimes the company, which specializes in auto sales trends, takes a Toyota Camry, removes any identifying logos, and tells them it's a new model from one of the US based auto makers. Or it takes a domestic car and tells them it's a Toyota or another import make. Either way, the result is the same. "If they think it's a(n) ________ car, the perception of the vehicle falls dramatically," said Art Spinella, vice president of the Bandon, Ore based firm.a. American Correctb. Japanesec. Germand. Korean

Questions 18 – 23 from Money & Investing

Free Lunch? It Might Serve Investor a ScamBy KELLY GREENE and KARA SCANNELLSeptember 8, 2007; Page B1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118921246526621276.html

For some members of the over-65 set, a free dinner at a fancy restaurant might sound like a welcome break from time with the grandkids.But Senate testimony in the past week suggests these meals are rife with fraud.Free-lunch seminars are a rapidly expanding tactic as investment salespeople target the estimated $15 trillion in assets controlled by Americans 65 and older. The aging bubble of wealthy baby boomers makes them "prime targets for scam artists," says SEC Chairman Christopher Cox.State securities regulators, in a hearing Wednesday in Washington, discussed recent prosecutions during a year-long examination of free-lunch meetings ahead of the Security and Exchange Commission's issuing a report Monday.What really happens when you trade surf-and-turf for a sales pitch? "Huge percentages of these things give out false information, make misrepresentations and sucker seniors in," says Joseph Borg of the North American Securities Administrators Association, which is made up of state securities regulators.A few things to watch for:Sins of Omission: In June, for example, the Utah Division of Securities fined World Group Securities Inc., of Duluth, Ga., $50,000 after finding that an investment adviser claimed as part of a sales pitch that a previous client had invited the investment adviser's family to join him on vacation -- but failed to disclose that the client was his father.A spokeswoman for World Group Securities declined to comment.Questionable Investments: Also in June, Missouri regulators issued a cease-and-desist order against an insurance agent who conducted seminars where he pitched annuities -- but then transferred clients' money to a type of retirement account called a self-directed IRA -- and emptied all but $12,000 from accounts valued at $1.3 million.In May, the Nevada Securities Division charged Nancy Nash and her company, Palace Worldwide Enterprises, with 26 felony violations including selling unregistered securities



and fraud. Investigators allege Ms. Nash used investors' money to pay other investors, "tricking them into believing they had invested in a legitimate enterprise," according to a statement by Nevada regulators.Representatives of Palace and Ms. Nash couldn't be reached to comment.Quid pro Quo: The pressure to reciprocate for even small favors can be a powerful tool in the hands of a con artist, according to an investment-fraud study last year by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Investor Education Foundation.At a dinner seminar in July in Atlanta, an insurance agent pitching equity-indexed annuities said several times he was picking up the tab for dinner. Attendees were also required to fill out paperwork for a follow-up appointment before dining.That's part of the game, says Mr. Borg of NASAA. "When they do the follow-up call, the high-pressure tactics start. It's one-on-one at the kitchen table," he says.

18. Free lunch seminars are a rapidly expanding tactic as investment salespeople target the estimated _______ in assets controlled by Americans 65 and older.a. $15 millionb. $5 trillionc. $15 trillion Correctd. $50 trillion

Investors' View Of Risk Returns To NormalBy JUSTIN LAHARTSeptember 10, 2007; Page C1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118938618650822150.html

For investors hoping the markets will settle down, here is a simple, sobering message: Don't hold your breath.After a long period of unusual stability in stock and bond markets, the wrenching losses of the past few months may have merely brought investors' perceptions of risk back to where they should have been in the first place."People were pricing things as if there was never going to be another recession, or even a financially difficult period or corporate default," says Byron Wien, chief investment strategist at hedge fund Pequot Capital Management. "We're moving toward normal."And normal might not be as stable as investors had come to believe.The Chicago Board Options Volatility Index, or VIX, which tracks the prices of call and put options on the S&P 500 index, is a popular measure of risk tolerance. Options can be used as insurance against losses from market swings, because an option allows an investor to buy or sell a stock at a preset price. The more worried investors get about losing money on investments, the more options cost, and the higher the VIX goes.

19. The Chicago Board Options Volatility Index, or VIX, which tracks the prices of call and put options on the S&P 500 index, is a popular measure of ___________.a. Consumer confidence b. Commoditiesc. Risk tolerance Correctd. Golf interest



Why Banks Should Account For ConduitsBy DAVID REILLYSeptember 11, 2007; Page C1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118947240386223283.html

When Allstate or AIG write insurance policies on hurricanes or car crashes, they account for possible losses. When banks write the equivalent of an insurance policy in the murky world of commercial paper, they don't record the commitment until a problem erupts.Banks such as Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have written what amounts to more than $250 billion in insurance to an important collection of affiliates in the past few years. In good times, these affiliates -- known as conduits and structured investment vehicles -- raise money in the commercial paper market and use the cash to finance investments. When they can't raise money in commercial paper markets, they can in some cases turn to the banks for loans.The commitments banks make to fund their affiliates are known as "liquidity backstop agreements." Given the turmoil in commercial paper markets recently, it would be nice to know more about them. But bank shareholders are largely in the dark about the potentially huge exposure.

20. The commitments banks make to fund their affiliates are known as _________a. “structured investment vehicles” b. “liquidity back-up plans” c. “conduits”d. "liquidity backstop agreements" Correct

High Gas Prices, A Crude Reality For Consumers?By SCOTT PATTERSONSeptember 12, 2007; Page C1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118955457433824444.html

This is all consumers need right now.Crude-oil prices are up 28% this year, hitting a Nymex closing record of $78.23 a barrel yesterday, despite OPEC's decision to boost production. (The inflation-adjusted high remains $101.57 a barrel, hit in April 1980.) Heating oil and gasoline prices also are marching higher.The moves make today's weekly petroleum status report from the Energy Information Administration a worthy read. The report tallies supply, demand and inventory trends in crude, gasoline and other energy products.With the economy slowing, you might expect energy demand to ease and put downward pressure on prices. But that isn't happening.Gasoline inventories in the U.S. recently hit their lowest level since September 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, according to the EIA. Total days available of gasoline stockpiles are 19.8, the lowest level since the EIA started tracking such data in 1991.




Gasoline supplies still haven't caught up with a shortage caused by refinery outages earlier this year, making the market tight.Crude-oil stockpiles tend to rise in the third quarter during a buildup ahead of the winter heating season. This year, demand in the quarter has outpaced supply for the first time since 2002. Stingy OPEC production and resilient demand from countries like China and India are squeezing inventories and pushing prices higher, said Energy Security Analysis Inc., an energy research group.That leaves little cushion for supply shocks caused by hurricanes or cold snaps, said Sarah Emerson, managing director at Energy Security. "The horse is out of the barn for 2007," she said. "We're going to have a tight market."Of course, economists have been warning for years that high energy costs could squeeze consumers. The hit hasn't been all that severe. But with recession fears looming, it is hardly a good time for consumers to be facing higher prices at the pump.Credit Crunch Puts Squeeze On Investors in TakeoversThe tide has turned sharply against stock investors who want more from private equity.Earlier this year, shareholders who owned companies like OSI Restaurant Partners and Clear Channel Communications pushed buyout shops to pony up more for takeovers. Now that private-equity firms and banks are having trouble tapping debt markets for the cash they need to finance takeovers, stock investors are taking whatever they can get.In July, Franklin Resources agitated against the $32 billion buyout of Texas utility TXU, saying it wanted more. Last month, Franklin said it would vote for the deal after all, citing "changing market conditions." The deal easily passed, winning the approval of 74% of shares outstanding.This morning comes a vote on another deal that had faced opposition: the buyout of payroll processor Ceridian. Pershing Square Capital Management, owner of about 15% of Ceridian, had been fighting the $5.2 billion offer by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Fidelity National Financial. Last month, Pershing reversed course and said the Lee offer was the best the company could get.Shareholders will bless the deal. Then the hard part begins for the bankers: persuading investors to buy the debt.

21. Gasoline inventories in the US ____ since September 2005.a. recently hit their highest levelb. recently hit their lowest level Correctc. have remained stabled. have fluctuated wildly

For U.S. Now, $80 Oil May Be Tough to BearBy ANN DAVISSeptember 13, 2007; Page C1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118960811819925155.html

With pit traders screaming, "Go, go, go" -- and economists sounding alarms -- the world oil benchmark price briefly topped $80 a barrel yesterday for the first time.



Last year, when crude was at similar levels, prices retreated and the economy stayed resilient. But this year, there are some significant differences, triggering concerns that prices could be headed higher and that the economy could be vulnerable.One main distinction: This time around, the economy isn't looking quite as healthy amid concerns about the weakened housing market and mortgage defaults.In addition, in 2006, oil inventories were higher because of market incentives to store oil, which meant energy buyers had a stockpile. By contrast, today, different market incentives have led to much lower oil inventories in key regions.That's troublesome, because the lack of a stockpile cushion means that any supply crunch could lead buyers -- oil refiners and speculators alike -- to quickly bid up crude-oil prices beyond a barrel, just as the economy appears vulnerable to recession.Indeed, oil stockpiles have continued to drain quickly as prices for "spot," or today's-price, oil far outpace prices for delivery a few months from now. Yesterday, the Energy Information Administration reported a higher-than-expected reduction in crude inventories last week.Yesterday, after hitting in intraday trading, the New York Mercantile Exchange's crude-futures contract settled at, up $1.68, or 2.1%. While that is an exchange record, oil has been higher in inflation-adjusted terms: The inflation-adjusted record is $101.57, hit in April 1980.News yesterday that the Houston Ship Channel, which serves five refineries and multiple chemical plants, closed ahead of Tropical Storm Humberto also helped propel prices.But clues that oil could touch $80 surfaced the day before, when markets rallied even after an announced production boost from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Many observers perceived the 500,000-barrel-a-day rise as stingy in the face of growing demand.The idea of OPEC bringing on just 500,000 barrels a day, and not until November, is like Ben Bernanke saying maybe we should lower interest rates 1/10th of 1%: It has no relevance," said Matt Simmons of Simmons & Co., an energy investment bank in Houston, and author of a controversial book contending Saudi oil reserves are less prolific than claimed.In addition, it takes an estimated two months for extra tankers to reach the U.S. from the Middle East."We believe the door to $80 and beyond remains open and beckons," said Barclays energy analysts Paul Horsnell and Kevin Norrish in a note yesterday.

22. The inflation adjusted record for Oil is __________, hit in April 1980.a. $80.18 b. $79.91c. $80d. $101.57 Correct

Consumers May Not Stop Spending YetBy JUSTIN LAHART September 14, 2007; Page C1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118972941426427196.html



Financial-market turmoil and a slowing job market could launch a powerful broadside against Americans' willingness to spend. But maybe not just yet.Coming days before the Federal Reserve meets on rates, today's bevy of economic reports -- including manufacturing-output figures, import prices and an update on the gap between how much the U.S. buys and sells abroad -- will be drawing more attention than usual.Topping the list is the Commerce Department's report on retail sales in August. Consumer spending has long been the bulwark of the economy, holding up in the face of high energy prices and the housing slowdown. The recent credit-market trouble appears to have made the housing situation even worse, and the unexpected decline in payrolls shown in the August jobs report suggests it may have made employers more cautious. That puts pressure on consumers' ability to spend -- the main reason economists recently raised their odds of a recession occurring.But in August, it appears retail sales held up. Car companies stepped up incentives, leading to a rebound in auto sales. Later school start dates in Florida and Texas pulled more back-to-school sales into August from July. A large drop in gasoline prices left more cash in shoppers' wallets. Economists polled by Dow Jones estimate overall sales rose 0.5% in August from July, while sales excluding autos rose 0.2%. That wouldn't be a barnburner, but neither would it be a sign the economy is falling out of bed."I wouldn't take a lot of comfort from a good number," says Lehman Brothers economist Ethan Harris. "It's too early to see a big weakening."Mr. Harris thinks spending will slowly fade. That may not bring about a recession but will keep the economy sluggish.

23. Economists polled by Dow Jones estimate overall sales rose 0.5% in August from July, while sales excluding autos _____________.a. rose 0.2% Correctb. fell 0.2%c. rose 0.3%d. fell 0.3%

Questions 24 – 26 from Personal Journal, Section D

Auto Makers Pile On Buyer IncentivesBy JONATHAN WELSHSeptember 11, 2007; Page D1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118946908493123214.html

The home-mortgage mess is hitting the auto business, as interest rates on car loans creep upward and many people find it hard to qualify for credit to buy a new vehicle. But for consumers with good credit, it's deal time.Auto dealers are eager to clear out a growing number of leftovers as 2008 models arrive. Some have more unsold current-year models than usual in stock, reflecting an industrywide sales picture that worsened through the year. Total U.S. auto sales could fall below 16 million vehicles this year, according to analysts -- the lowest in a decade. To



clear up the glut, some car makers -- especially the Big Three U.S. companies -- are using perks like rebates and low financing rates to attract interest.Buyers can get $500 cash back on Ford Motor Co.'s new-for-2007 Lincoln MKX, and Chrysler LLC is offering a $4,500 rebate on its 2007 minivans. Even the notoriously incentive-stingy Honda Motor Co. is offering below-market 2.9% financing on its popular Odyssey minivan. All told, the percentage of transactions involving rebates grew to 49% this summer from 42% a year ago, according to Power Information Network, a unit of researcher J.D. Power & Associates. In certain cases, buyers don't even have to settle for the outgoing model: Some 2008 models also carry surprising incentives. Chrysler's Jeep Commander, for example, offers a $3,000 rebate.Difficulties in the subprime-mortgage business and the broader decline of home prices in many markets have hurt other parts of the economy, but car makers, dealers and others in the auto industry are still assessing their effect. The housing market has a big impact on consumers' ability to afford a new vehicle, and many are buying less-expensive cars with fewer luxury features or putting off purchases altogether.The result has contributed to the retail auto sales slowdown. The National Automobile Dealers Association had predicted earlier this year that 2007 sales of cars and light trucks in the U.S. would total about 16.5 million, roughly the same as last year. Now the trade group says sales could fall as low as 16.1 million.At the same time, 24% of auto financing and leasing transactions in July and August had interest rates lower than 5%, compared with 33% in the year-earlier period, according to J.D. Power. In August, the average rate was 7.3%. Fuel prices also remain high, and a weak dollar continues to make certain European models expensive.The National Automobile Finance Association, a trade group that represents subprime lenders, says the mortgage crisis and changes to federal law that make it more difficult for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection have driven up the number of car-loan delinquencies. The group says nearly 12% of subprime vehicle loans reported by its members were delinquent last year, up from 6.5% a year earlier.Savvy consumers have known for years that autumn is the best time to shop for a car. The pending flood of new models in October and November drives dealers to more aggressively market vehicles from the outgoing model year in the fall.In the past 20 years or so, however, manufacturers have increasingly sought to set their new cars apart by bringing them to market at other times of the year. The practice has blurred the lines somewhat between this year's and next year's models. Manufacturers favor the approach because their vehicles tend to get more attention from consumers who aren't distracted by the regular introduction of several competing models. For dealers, it's a way to bring people into their showrooms during what would otherwise be slow periods.British off-road vehicle maker Land Rover, a unit of Ford, rolled out its LR2 compact luxury SUV in April as a 2008 model. The early introduction placed it ahead of similar models expected from rivals. The car maker's finance arm, Land Rover Capital Group, offers a 3.9% finance rate—on the low side for a new model. But consumers can often find attractive rates through banks and credit unions, so a car company's so-called captive finance businesses often use lower rates as a way to draw more customers who would otherwise arrange loans elsewhere.


Christopher Marchand, Land Rover's vice president of retail operations, says the 3.9% finance rate on the LR2 is "middle of the road" when compared with what buyers might find at a bank. Still, consumers who have watched finance rates increase lately are likely to find the rates attractive, says Paul Taylor, chief economist for the National Automobile Dealers Association."In an increasingly more difficult credit environment, a range of 3.9% to 7.9% is looking pretty good," Mr. Taylor says.The well-reviewed Kia Sedona minivan, a product of Hyundai Motor Co., is offering buyers $3,000 cash back on 2007 models. General Motors Corp. is dangling a huge rebate -- as much as $7,500 -- on its high-end Cadillac XLR, which lists for $78,335, and is offering 5.9% financing on the just-released 2008 Buick Enclave.Chrysler's Sebring, a midsize sedan that competes with top-selling models like Toyota Motor Corp.'s Camry and Honda's Accord, was redesigned about a year ago and is now available with 0% financing or a $1,500 rebate. Such deals are often advertised and relatively easy to find when researching cars on the Internet. However, there are other incentives that manufacturers dole out locally for dealers to use at their discretion.Toyota rarely offers incentives on its best-selling Camry sedan or most of its other models, but a Toyota spokesman says the company does use so-called dealer incentives "for tactical purposes," or on a case-by-case basis to attract customers.And they do attract customers, even to vehicles that might seem unappealing. Though sales of gas-guzzling large pickup trucks like the Ford F-150 and Dodge Ram are down 2.2% for the year, Mr. Taylor says, there was an upswing of 9.1% in August sales thanks to "vigorous incentive competition" among makers like GM, Ford and Toyota that included rebates in some cases of several thousand dollars.

24. Total US auto sales could fall below ______ vehicles this year, according to analysts, the lowest in a decade.a. 10 million b. 12 millionc. 16 million Correctd. 18 million

Making the Grade: How to Get Your Kid A Good Credit ReportBy JONATHAN CLEMENTSSeptember 12, 2007; Page D1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118955043653224322.html

Like many college kids, my daughter Hannah ended up with a credit-card problem. But it wasn't the problem I feared.As students head off to college, many parents worry that their sons and daughters will apply for a fistful of credit cards and amass a heap of debt. Indeed, 42% of freshmen have credit cards, and they carry an average balance of $1,585, according to a study by college lender Nellie Mae.But in her freshman year, Hannah didn't rack up a single charge -- because she had a heck of a time just getting a card.



• Getting carded. To be honest, I don't really want Hannah to have a credit card. But I do want her to have a decent credit score. And one of the best ways to earn that score is to get a credit card, charge a small sum each month and then dutifully pay off the balance.But which card? For years, Hannah had regularly been offered credit cards by the Continental frequent-flier program, so I figured the folks there were eager for her business. Instead, what she got was a swift rejection.Next, Hannah applied for a credit card specifically designed for college students. That earned her another rejection, on the grounds she had insufficient credit history.That got me curious, so I headed to AnnualCreditReport.com1, where once a year you can get a free copy of your credit report from the three major credit bureaus. I retrieved one of Hannah's reports and, sure enough, she had no credit history.Indeed, credit expert John Ulzheimer, author of "You're Nothing but a Number," says pulling your kid's credit reports should probably be your first step. That will allow you to see what sort of history your child has and whether there are any errors that need correcting.• Seeking approval. Got a kid like Hannah, with no credit history? If your child has a checking or savings account, see if the bank will also give your kid a credit card. Alternatively, your child could apply for the store cards offered by many retailers, which are typically easier to get than general-use credit cards. College students might also respond to one of the credit-card solicitations they receive on campus. These, however, don't seem as prevalent as they used to be. Hannah has received only a few offers through the mail and has never seen a card issuer with a booth on campus, and some of her friends at other colleges report the same thing.If your child has a blemished credit history, the only option may be a secured card. With these cards, you put down maybe $300 or $500 as collateral. That sum then determines the card's credit line.Before applying for a secured card, check that the fees are reasonable, that the card issuer reports to the major credit bureaus and that the card converts to an unsecured card after a year or two, Mr. Ulzheimer says. Secured cardholders should charge only a nominal sum each month, since they could hurt their credit score by using more than 20% or 30% of their available credit.Another trick: If you buy a new or used car for your teenager, have your child cosign the auto loan. "I wouldn't buy a brand-new Hummer to establish a credit record for the kid," says Scott Bilker, founder of DebtSmart.com. "But if you're going to buy a car anyway, it would be a quick way to get a credit record."With Hannah, however, I didn't use any of the above strategies. Instead, I simply added her name to my Visa card. Within a month, the card's credit history was included in her credit report, so she's now in good shape to apply for a card on her own.There are two ways to add a child. In the past, many parents have included their children as authorized users. This strategy might work through the end of 2008, Mr. Ulzheimer says. But the credit bureaus are closing this loophole because it was being abused by some credit-repair businesses.What to do? You could add your child as a joint account holder. Be warned: While authorized users aren't legally liable for a card's debts, joint account holders are. In


http://AnnualCreditReport.com/

addition, if you want to end the arrangement, you can't just take your child off the joint account. Rather, you have to cancel the card entirely.

25. College student may have problems with credit cards such asa. not as many credit card companies are coming to campus b. difficulty getting a card because of insufficient credit historyc. getting into too much debtd. all of the above Correct

Beyond Ringtones and GamesBy JESSICA E. VASCELLARO and AMOL SHARMASeptember 13, 2007; Page D1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118965261525426131.html

Feeling guilty about leaving his wife behind during an extended business trip, Richard Davis sprang for a last-minute gift. Sitting on the runway at Boston's Logan Airport, he pulled out his BlackBerry, launched Digby -- a free shopping application he had downloaded to his device -- and purchased a bouquet of flowers, along with a miniature teddy bear, from retailer FTD.com with just a few clicks."My wife was really pleased," says Mr. Davis, 46 years old, who works for investment bank Needham & Co. LLC and lives in Wellesley, Mass. "It's pretty nice to be able to shop online from a hand-held."Retailers and wireless companies have been buzzing about enabling consumers to purchase everything from flowers to flat-screen television sets from their mobile phones for years. But mobile versions of popular online Web sites like Amazon.com have been slow to catch on because they have been difficult to find and can be painfully slow to load.Now new services, many of which are being offered for the first time through wireless carriers, are trying to make mobile commerce more mainstream. While many still require multiple steps and an agility with small screens, they are making mobile shopping easier through better interfaces, wider selections and more secure payment options.Ultimately, the services hope to transform the mobile commerce industry -- currently dominated by purchases of digital content such as ringtones and games -- into a mirror of the online shopping world where virtually any item can be retrieved with just a few clicks.Sprint Nextel Corp. today plans to announce its launch of Mobile Shopper, a mobile shopping service that is free minus charges for data usage. The service allows users to search for and buy items from some 30 stores, including Target and eBags, by clicking on a Web icon on the main menu of their data-enabled phones.Users can search among seven million items by entering the brand and style number or clicking through product-category menus. To make a purchase, users set up a mobile account with their shipping and credit-card information and enter their phone number and PIN.Retailers, for their part, are continuing to invest in improving their own mobile Web sites, often through partnerships with established online-payment companies. More than 35



retailers selling everything from DVDs to golf clubs, for example, are accepting PayPal Mobile Checkout, which eBay Inc. launched in July.The service allows consumers to purchase items from partner retailers from their PayPal accounts, which users can access with their standard PayPal user name and password or by their mobile number and PIN. Google Inc., which offers a mobile version of its Google Checkout online-payment service, recently entered the fray further by filing for a patent for its own mobile-payment system.Other companies are launching software applications. Digby, operated by 30 Second Software Inc., stores retailers' best-selling items within an application users download on their BlackBerry, refreshing the selection every night. Storing items this way can dramatically cut back the time it takes to find popular items like chocolates and books by reducing the number of times the service has to connect to the mobile Web. The company also provides access to more than one million products over the mobile Web.Digby, which takes a commission on all items sold through the service, eases the checkout process by allowing users to store their credit-card information on their phones.Barriers such as handset limitations and consumers' relatively low rates of adoption of mobile Internet services have prevented wireless carriers, who have extraordinary control over the types of services consumers can easily access on their phones, from investing heavily in the market.Carriers have generally preferred to be involved in billing customers for mobile media content like ringtones, for example, because it allows them to take a healthy cut of the transactions. But they will have to accept processing payments through credit cards and PayPal accounts if they want to make the mobile-shopping experience as much like shopping on a PC as possible. Sprint declined to comment on whether it will get any direct revenue from sales, saying it hopes to capitalize on interest in mobile shopping by signing up more subscribers for data plans.But new payment services and the growing adoption of other mobile Internet services such as music and video are causing carriers to take the market more seriously. Thom Russell, director of business development for consumer products at Verizon Wireless, says the carrier sees potential in a variety of approaches to mobile commerce, from mobile-phone coupons and promotions to handsets that double as credit cards. Such experimentation is more possible now than a few years ago, he said, because "our customers are getting much more technically savvy about the things that can happen on a phone," he says.AT&T Inc., meanwhile, conducted a trial earlier this year in which users were able to wave their phones over MasterCard PayPass systems in restaurants and other locations to make purchases that were charged to their credit cards. A spokesman for AT&T said the trial went well but the company hasn't announced plans to roll out the technology nationwide.By 2011, the total transaction value of mobile payments is forecast to reach $22 billion world-wide, according to Juniper Research, up from just $2 billion at the end of 2007. While the bulk of the transactions still happen in markets like Asia, where cellphones are more advanced, demand in North America is forecast to increase as handsets, connection speeds and services improve."Mobile phones are a great on-ramp to buying all kinds of goods and services on the Internet," says Anil Malhotra, senior vice president of alliances and marketing for Bango,


a United Kingdom-based firm that processes mobile transactions for carriers and helps companies develop mobile Web sites. Initially, products like flowers and small gifts might be the most popular mobile commerce purchases, Mr. Malhotra says. But over time, he expects the lines between shopping online via a PC and a cellphone will blur.Many consumers, though, remain unconvinced. While trying to purchase a DVD from a mobile version of Amazon recently, 27-year-old Serene Hammond of Washington, D.C., was hit with multiple error messages and quickly gave up. "It is a useless technology," says Ms. Hammond, who works for a pharmaceutical company and says she doesn't see the urgency of shopping from a phone when she is regularly around a computer. An Amazon spokesman said he looked into the complaint and that "everything is working just fine."Still, companies believe that demand for on-the-fly purchases will grow as the process becomes easier and are trying to make it so. 2B Wireless Inc.'s mShopper, which powers the new service from Sprint, reformats product listings so they render well on the mobile screen, reducing photo sizes and reducing extraneous text. The company also offers access to live customer-service agents.

26. By 2011, the total transaction value of mobile payments is forecast to reach ________ world wide, according to Juniper Research.a. $2 billion b. $12 billionc. $22 billion Correctd. $32 billion


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The Wall Street Journal Weekly Quiz · Web view"We want to do something different that is bigger," Mr. Gelner recalls telling the Unilever marketing executives. "It's very difficult