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  3. Business has slowed, layoffs mount, but executive pay continues to roar-at least so far. Business Week’s annual survey finds tha

Business has slowed, layoffs mount, but executive pay continues to roar-at least so far. Business Week’s annual survey finds tha

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问题     Business has slowed, layoffs mount, but executive pay continues to roar-at least so far. Business Week’s annual survey finds that chief executive officers(CEOs)at 365 of the largest companies got compensation last year averaging $3. 1 million-up 1. 3 percent from 1994.
    Why are the top bosses getting an estimated 485 times the pay of a typical factory worker? That is up from 475 times in 1999 and a mere 42 times in 1980. One reason maybe what experts call the "Lake Wobegon effect". Corporate boards tend to reckon that "all CEOs are above average"-a play on Garrison Keillor’s famous line in his public radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, that all the town’s children are "above average". Consultants provide boards with surveys of corporate CEO compensation. Since directors are reluctant to regard their CEOs as below average, the compensation committees of boards tend to set pay at an above-average level. The result: pay levels get ratcheted(一步步地增加)up.
    Defenders of lavish CEO pay argue there is such a strong demand for experienced CEOs that the free market forces their pay up. They further maintain most boards structure pay packages to reflect an executive’s performance. They get paid more if their companies and their stock do well. So companies with high-paid CEOs generate great wealth for their shareholders.
    But the supposed cream-of-the-crop executives did surprisingly poorly for their shareholders in 1999, says Scott Klinger, author of this report by a Boston-based Organization United for a Fair Economy. If an investor had put $10,000 apiece at the end of 1999 into the stock of those companies with the 10 highest-paid CEOs, by year-end 2000 the investment would have shrunk to $8,132. If $10,000 had been put into the Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks, it would have been worth $9,090. To Mr. Klinger, these findings suggest that the theory that one person, the CEO, is responsible for creating most of a corporation’s value is dead wrong. "It takes many employees to make a corporation profitable."
    With profits down, corporate boards may make more effort to tame executive compensation. And executives are making greater efforts to avoid pay cuts. Some CEOs, seeing their options "under water" or worthless because of falling stock prices, are seeking more pay in cash or in restricted stock.
The expression "cream-of-the-crop" in the first sentence of paragraph 4 most probably means______.
选项 A、creative
B、high-quality
C、delicious
D、crisp
答案B
解析 A creative“创造的”；B high-quality“高质量的”；C delicious“美味的”；D crisp“脆弱的”。第四段第一句“被看作素质极高的CEO，却做得出奇地差”，故答案应为B高质量的。
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