This is the VOA Special English Economics Report from voaspecialenglish.com | http In early January, President Obama appointed Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This new government agency says it has already made home loans and credit card agreements easier for Americans to understand. But the Obama administration said the bureau cannot supervise financial products like home loans without a director. The president used a measure known as a recess appointment to fill the position. He nominated Mr. Cordray last July. But the opposition Republican Party blocked a vote in the full Senate.Mr. Obama announced the appointment during a visit to Ohio. It was his first political campaign trip of the year. He told the crowd that the severe economic crisis three years ago did not happen because of too many financial rules. Mr. Obama said: "Does anyone think the reason why we got into such a financial mess, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in a generation, that the reason was because of too much oversight of the financial industry? Of course not. We shouldn't be weakening oversight, we shouldn't be weakening accountability, we should be strengthening it!"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the president's appointment. Many Republicans oppose the new agency, saying its goals are not clear. They also want a group of people to lead the agency instead of a single director. The Consumer ...

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report from voaspecialenglish.com | http In early January, President Obama appointed Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This new government agency says it has already made home loans and credit card agreements easier for Americans to understand. But the Obama administration said the bureau cannot supervise financial products like home loans without a director. The president used a measure known as a recess appointment to fill the position. He nominated Mr. Cordray last July. But the opposition Republican Party blocked a vote in the full Senate.Mr. Obama announced the appointment during a visit to Ohio. It was his first political campaign trip of the year. He told the crowd that the severe economic crisis three years ago did not happen because of too many financial rules. Mr. Obama said: "Does anyone think the reason why we got into such a financial mess, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in a generation, that the reason was because of too much oversight of the financial industry? Of course not. We shouldn't be weakening oversight, we shouldn't be weakening accountability, we should be strengthening it!"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the president's appointment. Many Republicans oppose the new agency, saying its goals are not clear. They also want a group of people to lead the agency instead of a single director. The Consumer ...

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report, from voaspecialenglish.com This year's Consumer Electronics Show opened January seventh in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event is the world's biggest technology trade show. More than three hundred companies presented more than twenty thousand new products. The goals are to build excitement, make deals and get good reviews in the media. Industry sales dropped eight percent last year during the recession. Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, predicted that one area of strong sales this year will be mobile phones. That includes fifty-two million smartphones expected to be sold in the United States. Smartphones run applications and access the Internet. Google is launching the Nexus One -- which it calls a "superphone." This is its first attempt to sell its own device. The Nexus One will compete with Apple's popular iPhone. Apple is reportedly about to introduce a new digital tablet. Tablets are easy-to-hold screens that let you read and watch media or search the Web. An example is the Amazon Kindle. Like netbooks, tablets cost less than traditional laptop computers. But that can also mean smaller profits for manufacturers and sellers. Companies like Sony and Panasonic are introducing new television sets for watching three-dimensional TV. A three-D TV costs more than three thousand dollars. Americans are expected to buy four million of them this year. Sports broadcaster ESPN and the Discovery Channel plan ...

This is the VOA Special English Development Report, from voaspecialenglish.com The lack of clean drinking water is a major problem worldwide. The World Health Organization says more than one billion people live in areas where renewable water resources are not available. The problem is especially serious in Asia and the Pacific. A United Nations report says water availability in that area is the second lowest in the world, after Africa. Nearly seven hundred thousand people in Asia and the Pacific lack safe drinking water. The UN report notes that the world's poorest countries are also the ones that use the most water for agriculture. Agriculture uses about eighty percent of the water in the Asia-Pacific area. There has also been an increase in water used for industry. China and India more than tripled their industrial water use between nineteen ninety-two and two thousand two. The lack of clean drinking water around the world forces millions of people to drink unsafe water. This leads to an increase in diseases like diarrhea, the second leading cause of death in children under five. Floods, droughts, pollution and climate change have created even more problems. The Millennium Development Goals for two thousand fifteen call for a fifty percent decrease in the number of people without safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Scientists, governments and aid organizations around the world are increasing their efforts to meet these goals. Still, the UN says there is much work ...

I'm Carolyn Presutti with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | http Food companies say a new kind of maize could take the crunch out of corn chips and other popular foods. The big Swiss company Syngenta genetically engineered the maize to contain an enzyme called alpha amylase. The company says this enzyme will help the crop produce more ethanol, a renewable fuel, while using less water and energy. Syngenta official Jack Bernens says the enzyme breaks the starch down into sugar which then is fermented into ethanol. A two thousand seven law requires gasoline in the United States to contain renewable fuels. About forty percent of America's corn crop is being used this year to make ethanol. The Department of Agriculture has approved the genetically modified maize without restrictions. But five major groups in the food industry say they are concerned that the new maize could enter the food supply. In a joint statement they say the enzyme that breaks down starch could harm the taste of their products. For example, they say it might soften cereals and cause corn chips to lose their satisfying crunch. Mary Waters heads one of those food groups, the North American Millers' Association. She says even a small amount of the maize could cause problems if it mixes with corn used to make food. Snack foods made with corn are a six-billion-dollar industry in the United States.In two thousand one, genetically modified corn made by Syngenta was found in ...

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report, from voaspecialenglish.com The book industry is trying to get a good read on its future. These days, instead of turning paper pages, many readers reach for handheld devices. These electronic readers not only store books to show on a screen, they can also read them out loud. In July, Amazon lowered the price of its Kindle reader by sixty dollars to just under three hundred dollars. The device can download books wirelessly from a store on Amazon's Web site. Most new releases and bestsellers cost nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. Newspapers, magazines and other services are available for a monthly charge. Buyers of e-books get a good deal. Traditional hardcover books often cost around twenty-five dollars. But what about book publishers and writers? Their concerns about profits are like the ones voiced as the Internet began to change the music industry. Many e-books are already selling for ninety-nine cents. Books printed on paper are easily shared and resold by anyone. But e-books can act more like computer software licensed only to the user who buys them. And some Kindle users got a shock in July. They were surprised to find that copies of two books disappeared from their devices. These were ninety-nine cent versions of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm." Bloggers have had fun pointing out that "1984" is largely about censorship -- the suppression of information in a society led by Big Brother. Amazon explained that ...