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  3. In 1929 John D. Rockefeller decided it was time to sell shares when even a shoeshine boy offered him a share tip. During the pas

In 1929 John D. Rockefeller decided it was time to sell shares when even a shoeshine boy offered him a share tip. During the pas

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问题     In 1929 John D. Rockefeller decided it was time to sell shares when even a shoeshine boy offered him a share tip. During the past week The Economist’s economics editor has been advised by a taxi driver, a plumber and a hairdresser that "you can’t go wrong" investing in housing—the more you own the better. Is this a sign that it is time to get out? At the very least, as house prices around the world climb to ever loftier heights, and more and more people jump on to the buy-to-let ladder, it is time to expose some of the fallacies regularly trotted out by so many self-appointed housing experts.
    One common error is that house prices must continue to rise because of a limited supply of land. For example, it is argued that "house prices will always rise in London because lots of people want to live here". But this confuses the level of prices with their rate of change. Home prices are bound to be higher in big cities because of land scarcity, but this does not guarantee that urban house prices will keep rising indefinitely—just look at Tokyo’s huge price-drops since 1995. And, though it is true that a fixed supply of homes may push up house prices if the population is rising, this would imply a steady rise in prices, not the 20% annual jumps of recent years.
    A second flawed argument is that low interest rates make buying a home cheaper, and so push up demand and prices. Lower interest rates may have allowed some people, who otherwise could not have afforded a mortgage, to buy a home. However, many borrowers who think mortgages are cheaper are suffering from money illusion.
    Interest rates are not very low in real, inflation-adjusted terms. Initial interest payments may seem low in relation to income, but because inflation is also low it will not erode the real burden of debt as swiftly as it once did. So in later years mortgage payments will be much larger in real terms. To argue that low nominal interest rates make buying a home cheaper is like arguing that a car loan paid off over four years is cheaper than one repaid over two years.
    Fallacy number three is a favourite claim of Alan Greenspan, chairman of America’s Federal Reserve. This is that price bubbles are less likely in housing than in the stock-market because higher transaction costs discourage speculation. In fact, several studies have shown that both in theory and in practice bubbles are more likely in housing than in shares. A study by the IMF finds that a sharp rise in house prices is far more likely to be followed by a bust than a share-price boom.
The views of Alan Greenspan and the author of the text on price bubbles are
选项 A、complementary.
B、identical.
C、opposite.
D、similar.
答案C
解析 这是一道细节题，测试考生对原文重要细节的识别和把握能力。本题的答案信息来源在全文的尾段，尤其尾段的前三句，前三句的大意是：“第三个谬见是美联储主席Alan Greenspan喜欢说的话，即：由于较高交易成本不利于投机，所以与证券市场相比价格泡沫在住房市场上出现的可能性较小。实际上，若干研究已经表明：无论在理论上还是实践中，泡沫更有可能存在于住房市场。而不是证券市场。”由此可以推断出本题的正确答案应该是C选项“opposite”(相对立的)。
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