How to Rescue Global Economy Last year, the annual gathering of TIME’S Board of Economists on the first day of the World Eco

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问题                         How to Rescue Global Economy
    Last year, the annual gathering of TIME’S Board of Economists on the first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos was dominated by a debate over just how bad the then-gathering financial crisis would be, and whether the rest of the world would share in the economic comeuppance facing the U. S.
    This Jan. 28, on a day when the lowering snow-filled skies matched the mood of those inside the Davos Congress Center, there was no such debate. In a packed room for what has become an opening-day tradition, everybody agreed with Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach’s grim assessment that "this will most likely be the first year since the end of World War 2 when world GDP actually contracts". In fact, after Roach predicted 2.5% average global growth over the next three years, Keio University economist and former Japanese Minister for Internal Affairs Heizo Takenaka quipped that Roach was being "much more optimistic than expected". Depression or Recession?
    Later on, Roach and Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, who was in the audience, differed on whether we’re in a " proto-depression " ( Wolf) or a " global recession the likes of which we’ve never seen" ( Roach). There was also some disagreement over China’s growth prospects. World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin said he thought the country’s big fiscal stimulus plans, including massive expenditure on infrastructure, would keep growth above 7% per year. No one else was that confident.
    U.S. economic policy - and in particular its response to the current crisis—came under fire, and there were no U. S. officials on hand to defend themselves. Lawrence Summers, the top economic adviser in Barack Obama’s White House, had planned to take part in the discussion, bat canceled his trip to Davos shortly before everyone trudged their way through the snow to the Swiss mountain town. With lots of big economic decisions being made in Washington this week, especially on the shape of the Obama Administration’s stimulus package, U.S. officials and lawmakers were in short supply.
    Roach agreed that the key thing was to find a way to value and dispose of the bad debts on financial institutions’ books. "The issue here is to develop a pricing mechanism for toxic assets," he said. That was the original goal of the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program ( TARP ), introduced after the crisis really broke out into the open in September, but all the money so far has gone to capital injections. "Come on guys, let TARP be TARP," Roach said.
    Silver Lining
    Still, audience member Jacob Frenkel— a vice chair man of troubled U.S. insurer AIG and former governor of the Bank of Israel who was for many years an outspoken optimist at Davos-detected a "silver lining" in the current U. S. situation. "One of the problems we had last year was that there was an election in the United States, and we learned the lesson: Never have a financial crisis during an election year," he said. "We do not have an election year, so maybe there is a recovery."
    But whether it’s an election year or not, policymakers and financial institutions in the US. have tough choices to make. Nobody on the panel was cruel enough to blame the U. S. for the world’s woes. "We got the benefit of globalization," said Turkey’s Sahenk. "We all enjoyed these past 15 years. Let’s stop blaming people. It’s not the U. S. , it’s not us, it’s not them." But in large measure, it could in fact be the choices that the Obama Administration now makes that will determine whether the mood at next year’s Davos will be as dark as today’s skies—or whether some shafts of sunlight will be apparent on the snow covered Swiss mountains.
What is the assessment given by Morgan Stanley Asia chairman ?

选项 A、the world GDP firstly declines since the end of World War 2.
B、the world GDP firstly increrases since the end of World War 2.
C、the world GDP Basically stays unchanged since the end of World War 2.
D、people are always satisfied with the world GDP since the end of World War 2.

答案A

解析 语义理解题。由题干关键词“assessment given by Morgan Stanley Asia chairman”定位到第二段。本段第二句说:与会人员都同意摩根士丹利亚洲主席斯蒂芬洛奇冷酷残忍的评价,这很可能是继二战结束以来第一年全球国内生产总值真正减少。本题考查关键词“contracts”,意思是缩短、收缩。所以[A]“全球国内生产总值下降”为正确答案。[B]、[C]、[D]均与题意不符,故排除。
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