Passage One

(1) The latest hot topic among economic talking heads is the coming currency war. According to conventional wisdom, there’s a risk that major countries will—simultaneously—try to revive their sluggish economies by pushing down the value of their currencies. That strategy could backfire, according to this line of thought, stifling international trade, tipping economies back into recession, and possibly causing depression-style hyperinflation to boot. Get ready to sell apples on the nearest street corner and buy your morning coffee with a wheelbarrow full of paper money. It all sounds very unpleasant.

(2) But the dogs of war are unlikely to slip their leash. In a classic currency war, a country prints money, holds interest rates down, or intervenes in foreign exchange markets in order to depress the value of its own currency. That makes the country’s exports cheaper and more attractive for foreign buyers. In theory, this can enable an economy to grow faster than would be possible on the basis of domestic demand alone. Only trouble is, if every country pursues a similar strategy, they all devalue their currencies at the same time and no country gains an advantage over its trading partners.

(3) It may look as though that’s what’s happening now, since many of the largest economies are following policies that could depress the value of their currencies. But they’re doing so for fundamentally different reasons—to address domestic economic problems rather than to boost exports. And while this creates some real risks, they aren’t the ones that the term “currency war” implies.

(4) Currency wars—and trade wars generally—have their origins in a 17th and 18th century economic theory known as mercantilism. The idea was that a country’s wealth comes from selling more than it buys. A colonial empire could achieve this positive balance of trade by acquiring cheap raw materials from its colonies and then ensuring that it exported more finished goods than it imported. This was usually accomplished with tariffs that made imports very expensive.

(5) Such an approach couldn’t work in the modern world. Countries don’t get cheap raw materials from colonies anymore. They have to buy them—especially oil—on the open market. So while currency devaluation makes exports cheaper for foreign buyers, it also makes essential imports more expensive. Countries with economies that are not fully developed may still depress their currencies to promote exports because they don’t have sufficient domestic demand to sustain their growth.

(6) Japan has pushed its currency down 17% since September, reversing the yen’s appreciation over the previous three years. And the US, as well as many European countries, advocate policies that appear to be aimed at devaluing their currencies, but they’re not doing it chiefly to foment (挑起) a trade war. The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing—buying bonds to swell the money supply—is aimed principally at stimulating domestic demand. European advocates of a cheaper euro currency, meanwhile, are hoping to make national debt easier to finance, not trying to pump up exports.

(7) The actual point of current policies is to lower the real cost of money—that is, the effective interest rate that borrowers pay after inflation is taken into account—in order to spur consumer spending and business investment. That reduciion can be achieved by pushing down interest rates and by allowing inflation. So rather than seeing what’s going on today as the beginning of a global trade war, we should think about it as a side effect of economic stimuius. And in theory, as economies recover, the policies could be reversed before chronic inflation becomes entrenched (确立). But as I said, there are risks to all this—and in practice, inflation can easily get out of hand.

(8) There isn’t a lot individuals can do to protect themselves against such a possibility. People about to retire should favor benefit options with the best cost-of-living increases. Real estate can be a smart buy now that prices are down so much, especially buying a home if it’s financially competitive with renting. Among financial investments, it makes sense to avoid long-term bonds because their payouts are fixed.

(9) So forget all the talk of a currency war. What’s going on has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with debt and growth and inflation. If the global economy is in danger of reliving the past, it will not be a repeat of the 1930s. Rather, it will be a repeat of the 1970s, when the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply to offset the economic slowdown caused by the oil crisis—and ended up encouraging double-digit inflation.

(10) Current easy money policies may well create some inflation, although perhaps not as much as 40 years ago. But in any event, revived growth with some inflation is preferable to stable prices accompanied by depression. The problems of the 1970s can all be overcome—except perhaps the hairstyles.

Passage Two

(1) A few years back, my three-year-old son Max had an unyielding passion for Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Piece by piece, he accumulated a rather impressive collection. But here is the thing that fascinated me as a parent: every time Max received a new train that he had obsessed about, which he just had to have, he promptly took out the catalog to identify the next train that he could no longer live without. So once he acquired Thomas, Fearless Freddie had to be next, then Clarabel, followed by Duncan, Rusty, Diesel 10, and so on.

(2) As parents, we naturally anticipated after each purchase that Max would finally consider his collection complete. But for Max, what was equally natural was to expect his train portfolio to continue to expand indefinitely, or at least until the enchantment (魔力) ended. A big part of the thrill (狂喜) of building his collection in the first place was the possibility of its everlasting expansion and enhancement.

(3) What Max’s experience demonstrates is that there is no such thing as a perfectly and permanently satisfied customer. Put another way (换句话说), customers by nature are insatiable and continuously yearn for things they don’t yet possess. Their satisfaction frontier is always beyond their grasp.

(4) Therefore, trying to enduringly satisfy your customers is dangerously misguided. Instead, you should strive to infatuate them—over and over again. Infatuation implies a very strong yet short-lived attraction, which captures the true essence of customer experience. Understanding its implications (含义) is critical for your ability to maintain ongoing relevance (关联).

(5) Let’s dig a little deeper. Any successful and well-received offering first creates an infatuation interval in which customers are fixated on its novelty, seduced by its perceived benefits, and blinded to its potential shortcomings. However, such an interval is by definition (必然) fleeting. As the veil of infatuation wears off, customers will no longer feel privileged but instead fully entitled to receive the offering’s benefits.

(6) Their shift in attitude represents the transition to the entitlement period, in which customers will take notice of and express all the things that could make the offering even better for them. If you let your customers enter and then linger in the entitlement period without heeding their suggestions or demands, they will become increasingly critical and at some point turn away from your offering altogether.

(7) To retain customer attention, companies have to continuously refresh the customer experience, introducing new dimensions at just the right time to keep the flame of infatuation burning.

(8) Let me give an illustration. In the 2000s, airlines launched personal entertainment systems in economy class cabins on intercontinental flights. The system provided each passenger with a television screen and a hand-held remote along with access to dozens of movies, television shows, games, and musical selections. This was huge. It gave passengers control of how they would spend their time in the air. It instantaneously lifted the tedium of extended flying. Not surprisingly, the entertainment system caused a wave of excitement among passengers, who fully embraced its capabilities. But this elation did not last indefinitely. After a while, critical chatter (唠叨)—then outright complaints—started to creep in, becoming more and more frequent: “Why can’t the system be used during the entire flight and not just at flying altitude? Why can’t the movie selection be changed more frequently? Why aren’t the earphones better?”

(9) Consider the progression here. In the beginning, passengers welcomed the new offering with childlike gratitude and giddiness, finding themselves squarely at the start of the infatuation interval. But as the entertainment system’s novelty began to wear off, they started to notice and voice its apparent shortcomings and how it should be made better. Finally, they transitioned to the entitlement period, in which they regarded the system as the status quo (现状) and demanded it be enhanced further.

(10) To make use of the infatuation interval phenomenon, you first have to envelop your customers in an experience that evokes genuine elation (兴高采烈). Second, look to create features that stretch your offering’s infatuation interval to be as long as possible. Then generate a continuous stream of infatuation intervals, so that as soon as one is nearing its end, you launch enticing innovations that elicit a new one. The idea is to keep your customers in a perpetual cycle of infatuation, and to attract more and more new customers with each cycle.

(11) For insights on what fresh features to introduce to create new infatuation intervals, collect and analyze customer feedback regularly and rigorously. For instance, you might collect feedback from early adopters who’ve already transitioned to the entitlement period. Or, more powerfully, you can anticipate latent desires that customers themselves are yet unable to express.

(12) To understand the impact and progression of each interval, social media provides an unprecedented forum for the voluntary, unsolicited (自发的) expression of customer sentiment, which can be captured and interpreted. We use an analytic tool we’ve developed called the Infatuation Interval Index (I-Cubed) to score how deeply, how broadly, and how long an offering infatuates its target audience. The index measures the intensity and fluctuation of positive sentiment that customers are articulating about an offering by aggregating related activity on forums like Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. This gives us an immediate, simple, and real-time measure of an offering’s emotional pull on customers and indicates the optimal (最佳的) time to re-seduce them whenever the pull starts to weaken.

(13) So consider that you shouldn’t merely focus on providing your customers with a satisfying experience. Rather, you should aim to deliver them a string of experiences that keep them perpetually infatuated.

Passage Three

(1) In 70 C. E. the Roman army invaded Jerusalem and expelled the Jews from Judea and Samaria. Some of these Jews reached Spain and established thriving communities there. The most famous person to emerge from Spanish Jewry is Moshe Ben Maimon, a scientist, physician and a Torah Scholar.

(2) In the 15th century the Jews in Spain faced strong pressures to convert to Christianity and many yielded to this pressure and became Christians. In 1492 the king of Spain, Ferdinand, issued an edict to expel from Spain all remaining Jews who did not convert to Christianity.

(3) When the news of expulsion reached the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan (Emperor) Beyazit II issued a decree to welcome the Jews. A significant portion of those expelled thus came to Ottoman Empire and settled mostly in European parts of the Empire. The Turkish Jews are also identified as Sephardic Jews. This derives from the word Sepharad which in Hebrew means Spain.

(4) Since 1492, through five centuries, the Ottoman sultans and the modern day Turkish Republic, welcomed the Jews and offered them a safe haven from persecution in the European countries. The Ottoman Empire at its zenith became one of the largest empires in World History covering most of Mediterranean basin region extending from North Africa to Eastern Europe. It has been suggested that one of the characteristics that extended the domination (控制) of the Ottoman Empire was its allowance of religious freedom for the different nationalities and minorities under its rule. While many European nations expelled, persecuted or tried to convert the Jews under their dominion, the Turkish people of the Ottoman Empire, remained as an outstanding example of tolerance of different nationalities with different religions.

(5) Turkish people have been throughout history a nation with a strong army and strong national feelings. Yet, the Turkish history is also full of stories of humanity and tolerance. In war time they are a strong nation to avoid confrontation with, but they also know to become friends beyond the war times and zones. This, in my personal opinion is a consistent pattern of Turkish behavior in all of their extensive history through centuries.

(6) The history of the Ottoman Jews is rich with mutual complementary cultural influences. The Jews coming from Spain established the first printing presses that had just emerged as a most important tool of the modern culture. Many Jewish doctors served in the courts of Ottoman sultans and in the Ottoman army. Jews engaged in commerce enhanced trade between countries of the region for the benefit of all. The religious freedom allowed the flourishing of famous rabbis that produced outstanding works of comments on the Old Testament.

(7) Until World War I the Land of Israel also known as Palestine, remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. During this period the Jewish population in this region lived as loyal subjects of the greater Ottoman Empire. After World War I, the British Empire gained control of Transjordan and Palestine which ended in 1948 with the declaration of independence of the State of Israel.

(8) In pre World War II times Turkish government issued a decree prohibiting entry visas to Jews escaping the Nazi regime. Yet some Turkish diplomats in foreign countries worked hard to help Jews escape from deportation to concentration and death camps.

(9) In contrast to the policy of entry prohibition against refugees, the Turkish government decree left the doors open to Jewish scientists who came to Turkey. By first hand account I have heard stories of Turkish scientists honoring their German Jewish teachers who escaped to Turkey and taught in universities in Istanbul.

(10) During World War II, the Sephardic communities in Turkey and Bulgaria were the only communities that did not suffer the Nazi Holocaust, thanks to the wisdom of the leaders of these countries. In contrast, nearly the entire Sephardic Jewish community of Greece was killed during World War Ⅱ by the Nazi death machine.

(11) After World War II, while the British rule tried to prevent the movement of the Jewish refugees into Israel, the modern day Turkish republic allowed its Jewish citizens freely to emigrate to Israel. The major wave of emigration from Turkey to Israel took place between 1940 and 1950. This migration from Turkey was not a result of a desire to escape from Turkey but rather emanated from the national desire to return to the homeland of their forefathers as each day three times a day they prayed to return to Jerusalem.

Passage Four

(1) “And she tied a bunch of violets with a tress of her pretty brown hair.”

(2) She sat in the yellow glow of the lamplight softly humming these words. It was Easter evening, and the newly risen spring world was slowly sinking to a gentle, rosy, opalescent slumber, sweetly tired of the joy which had pervaded it all day. For in the dawn of the perfect morn, it had arisen, stretched out its arms in glorious happiness to greet the Saviour and said its hallelujahs, merrily trilling out carols of bird, and organ and flower-song. But the evening had come, and rest.

(3) There was a letter lying on the table, it read:

(4) “Dear, I send you this little bunch of flowers as my Easter token. Perhaps you may not be able to read their meanings, so I’ll tell you. Violets, you know, are my favorite flowers. Dear, little, human-faced things! They seem always as if about to whisper a love-word; and then they signify that thought which passes always between you and me. The orange-blossoms—you know their meaning; the little pinks are the flowers you love; the evergreen leaf is the symbol of the endurance of our affection; the tube-roses I put in, because once when you kissed and pressed me close in your arms, I had a bunch of tube-roses on my bosom, and the heavy fragrance of their crushed loveliness has always lived in my memory. The violets and pinks are from a bunch I wore today, and when kneeling at the altar, during communion, did I sin, dear, when I thought of you? The tube-roses and orange-blossoms I wore Friday night; you always wished for a lock of my hair, so I’ll tie these flowers with them—but there, it is not stable enough; let me wrap them with a bit of ribbon, pale blue, from that little dress I wore last winter to the dance, when we had such a long, sweet talk in that forgotten nook (角落). You always loved that dress, it fell in such soft ruffles away from the throat and blossoms—you called me your little forget-me-not, that night. I laid the flowers away for a while in our favorite book—Byron—just at the poem we loved best, and now I send them to you. Keep them always in remembrance of me, and if ought should occur to separate us, press these flowers to your lips, and I will be with you in spirit, permeating your heart with unutterable love and happiness. “

(5) It is Easter again. As of old, the joyous bells clang out the glad news of the resurrection. The giddy, dancing sunbeams laugh riotously in field and street; birds carol their sweet twitterings everywhere, and the heavy perfume of flowers scents the golden atmosphere with inspiring fragrance. One long, golden sunbeam steals silently into the white-curtained window of a quiet room, and lay athwart a sleeping face. Cold, pale, still, its fair, young face pressed against the stain-lined casket. Slender, white fingers, idle now, they that had never known rest; locked softly over a bunch of violets; violets and tube-roses in her soft, brown hair, violets in the bosom of her long, white gown; violets and tube-roses and orange-blossoms banked everywhere, until the air was filled with the ascending souls of the human flowers. Some whispered that a broken heart had ceased to flutter in that still, young form, and that it was a mercy for the soul to ascend on the slender sunbeam. Today she kneels at the throne of heaven, where one year ago she had communed at an earthly altar.

(6) Far away in a distant city, a man, carelessly looking among some papers, turned over a faded bunch of flowers tied with a blue ribbon and a lock of hair. He paused meditatively awhile, then turning to the regal-looking woman lounging before the fire, he asked:

(7) “Wife, did you ever send me these?”

(8) She raised her great, black eyes to his with a gesture of ineffable (难以形容的) disdain, and replied languidly:

(9) “You know very well I can’t bear flowers. How could I ever send such sentimental trash to anyone? Throw them into the fire. “

(10) And the Easter bells chimed a solemn requiem as the flames slowly licked up the faded violets. Was it merely fancy on the wife’s part, or did the husband really sigh—a long, quivering breath of remembrance?

Passage Two

Passage Three

Passage Four