Passage 4

Inside the great investment houses on Wall Street, business has taken a surprising turn downward.
Even after taxpayer bailouts restored bankers profits and pay, the great Wall Street money machine is
decelerating. Big financial institutions, including commercial banks, are still making a lot of money. But
given unease in the financial markets and the economy, brokerages and investment banks are not making
nearly as much as their executives, employees and investors had hoped.

After an unusually sharp slowdown in trading this summer, analysts are rethinking their profit forecasts
for 2010. The activities at the heart of what Wall Street does selling and trading stocks and bonds, and
advising on mergers are running at levels well below where they were at this point last year, said
Meredith Whitney, a bank analyst who was among the first to warn of the subprime mortgage disaster and
its impact on big banks.

Worldwide, the number of stock offerings is down 15 percent from this time last year, while bond
issuance is off 25 percent, according to Capital IQ, a research firm. Based on these trends, Ms. Whitney
predicts that annual revenue from Wall Streets main businesses will drop 25 percent, to around $42
billion in 2010, from $56 billion last year. While the numbers will not be known until after the third
quarter ends and financial companies begin reporting earnings in October, the pace of trading this summer
was slow even by normal summer standards. Trading in shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange
was down by 11 percent in July from 2009 levels, and August volume was off nearly 30 percent.

Whats happened in the third quarter is that after a very slow summer, people expected things to come
back, said Ms. Whitney. But they havent, and the inactivity is really squeezing everyone. The
downward slide on Wall Street parallels a similar shift in the broader economy, which has slowed
considerably since showing signs of a nascent recovery this spring. And if banks come under pressure, all
but the safest borrowers may struggle to get loans. With less than two weeks to go in the third quarter,
companies will be hard-pressed to fulfill earlier, more optimistic expectations.

Its like the marathon: if youre five miles behind, you cant make that up in the last 10 minutes of the
race, said David H. Ellison, president of FBR Fund Advisers, a money management firm that specializes
in financial companies. Many banks are barely scraping by in traditional Wall Street business. As a result,
executives, portfolio managers and analysts say that even the mighty Goldman Sachs, which posted a
profit every day for the first three months of the year, is unlikely to deliver the kind of profit growth that
investors have come to expect.

Banks are also scaling back on making bets with their own money known as proprietary trading
another huge profit source in recent years that will soon be forbidden under terms of the financial reform
legislation passed by Congress this summer.

One of the rare bright spots for Wall Street recently has been the issuance of junk bonds, as ultra-low
interest rates encourage investors to seek out riskier debt that carries a higher yield. But that will not be
enough to offset the weakness elsewhere, said one top Wall Street executive who insisted on anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak publicly for his company, and because final numbers would not
be tallied until the end of the month. To make matters worse, he said, many Wall Street firms increased
their work forces in the first half of the year, before the mood shifted and worries of a double-dip
recession arose. If activity remains anemic, firms could soon begin cutting jobs again.

Ms. Whitney says the gloomy short-term predictions foreshadow a series of lean years in the broader
financial services industry. Indeed, she said the Street faced a resizing not seen since the cutbacks that
followed the bursting of the dot-com bubble a decade ago.

We expect compensation to be down dramatically this year, she wrote in a recent report. She predicts
the American banking industry will lay off 40,000 to 80,000 employees, or as many as 1 in 10 of its
workers. That may be extreme, but Ms. Whitney argues that the boom years are not coming back anytime
soon. As both consumers and companies cut back on debt, and financial reform rules put the brakes on
profitable niches like derivatives and proprietary trading, the engines of earnings growth for the last
decade will continue to sputter.

10. Suggest an appropriate title for the passage?
1. Wall Streets Profit Engines Slow Down
2. Wall Street sinks the economy with itself
3. The Economics of greed plays out
4. Never say die spirit of Wall Street

11. The primary purpose of the author of the passage is:
1. to highlight the negligence of Wall Street and the ensuing implications.
2. to predict a future corrective course of action for Wall Street and prove how it help it recover
from the mess it is in.
3. to highlight the problems that pervade Wall Street at the moment and how would be continuing in
the future.
4. to point out the flaws in the method of operation of Wall Street.




12. Identify the tone that the author of the passage adopts.
1. Vituperative
2. Disparaging
3. Concerned
4. Depressing

Passage 5

The manner in which Andrew Flintoff chose today to acknowledge a fitness battle lost even as the tightest
County Championship for years was coming to its conclusion did him little credit. What abject,
thoughtless timing, a slap in the face for the game that nurtured him and set him on the road to fame and
considerable fortune. He and his advisers are sufficiently familiar with the machinations of many media
desks which know little of county cricket and care even less, seeing only celebrity and names, to
understand what would be placed top of the agenda. It is an uncharacteristic faux pas at odds with
someone known for the generosity of his spirit.

Raging against the dying of the light is what the top competitors do. The belief in their omnipotence, that
injury is merely an obstacle to be overcome on an inevitable trip back to the mountain top, is the thing
that sustains them. They concede nothing, least of all to the passing of time. It is why anger creeps in at
any suggestion of mortality. In truth, though, he has now told us something that most would surely have
recognised as inevitable once he went under the surgeon's knife again, a little more than a year ago and
yet once more in the early summer.

The stories of coming engagements with teams around the world were pipe-dreams: his management have
been concentrating for some while on how best to handle his exit from the game and non cricketing
future. In spite of this he has suffered through countless painful hours of rehab over the last 12 months,
unstinting, conceding nothing, with an unquenchable desire to play cricket again not for the financial gain
and glory of it any longer (he will not go short in cricket's Valhalla) but simply because that is what he
loves doing. "It is not life-threatening," he remarked at the start of the week. "I've got a bad knee, that's
all." But undeniably, a part of him will have died now.

He was never one of the great all rounders, but a considerably better one than his statistics show
superficially. He had the capacity to impact. He could take a game and tear it from the grasp of the
opposition like no other contemporary in the England side. He was utterly indefatigable, never more so
than in his heroic bowling at Lord's last year which won England the match and which perhaps
precipitated his departure to the orthopedic operating theatre. When, in what was his last significant act
for England, he ran out Ricky Ponting at The Oval last year, with a direct hit from mid off, it was a
moment of inspiration. Only gifted players can produce such game-breakers on cue.

Unquestionably, except in his own mind, he was a better bowler than batsman, a rampaging world-class
fast bowler whose paltry three five-wicket hauls do not remotely do him justice. At times, perhaps, while
physically menacing, and bowling the heaviest of balls, his direction of attack, which slanted in to
right handers as his delivery arm went beyond the vertical, was not so disconcerting to the best players:
the Australian batsman Michael Slater once confided how he found him comfortable to get away through
midwicket on the angle. To left handers, though, he was a different proposition, not least from around
the wicket when the ball was reverse swinging, a method in which he was bettered only by Glenn
McGrath. His skill was in producing memorable spells, or overs, or even deliveries: the 50 overs he sent
down against Sri Lanka because he felt he had to, and at what cost to himself; the legendary over at
Edgbaston in 2005 when first he roasted Ponting and then dismissed him; the last gallant charge at Lord's.

He was too cumbersome on his feet, and technically deficient, to be a batsman of real quality, but once
more he could change a game with his power. At his best he could bat at six and lend the side crucial
balance, but he could not get the ugly runs when out of touch that top batsmen manage. Seven was ideal.

Sport needs its heroes and Flintoff became that. Here was someone whose achievements were beyond
reach of the aspirations of the public, yet who remained one of them. He batted as they would like to bat
and bowled as they would want. He was personable, liked his ale, got into scrapes. When a young boy got
bullied at school because he had said he knew Flintoff and wasn't believed, his hero turned up at the gates
to pick him up.

In an age when sportsmen are scrutinised and criticised for inappropriate behaviour, the nation warmed to
the tales of his post-Ashes bender and the open-top bus ride, his shades hiding " a thousand stories". They
laughed at the Fredalo incident in St Lucia, little more than a harmless jape in itself (he did not nearly
drown and have to be rescued), but one which carried the can for the indiscretions of others. If the
celebrations of his wickets became ever more theatrically choreographed (and he knows well enough the
value of the publicity they generate) then he was irresistible. They admired his chivalry. Of all the images
to come out of the 2005 series, it is that of Flintoff consoling Brett Lee at Edgbaston that is imprinted in
the memory.

How will he face the future? Time is on his hands now and the intensity of the rehab presumably will
drop away. He is a social animal and will have to be careful. But he will be in great demand too, not as a
TV pundit, of which there are plenty already and in which capacity he says he has no interest, but as a
celebrity, a person of genuine charisma. Already Ladbrokes are offering odds on a pantomime
appearance. There is no sportsperson around with whom corporate clients would rather spend a day or a
dinner. He has his Andrew Flintoff Foundation to occupy him. He will not be kicking his heels.

13. The primary purpose of the author of the passage is:
1. To show the degradations in the level and character of Andrew Flintoff
2. To sum up in totality the personality of Andrew Flintoff, with the good and bad all included.
3. To highlight the formation of Andrew Flintoff, as a brand and as a cricketer.
4. To highlight the effect of Andrew Flintoffs leaving on cricket.

14. Keeping in the mind the different parts of the passage, which one of the following tones does the
author not adopt during the course of the passage?
1. Castigating
2. Satirical
3. Ironical
4. Acclamation

15. Which one of the following best describes the organization of the passage?
1. A method used to analyze evidence regarding the persona of a person is described, an explanation
of the evidence is suggested, and then a conclusion is drawn from the evidence.
2. A hypothesis with regards to the nature of a person is presented, evidence supporting the
hypothesis is provided, and then the hypothesis is affirmed.
3. An analysis of the life of a person is presented, contradictory evidence as to formation of his
character is provided, and then a possibility for his future is suggested.
4. Some observations with regards to the life of person are made, evidence supporting those
observations is presented, and then a possibility for his future is speculated upon.