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

In 1929 John D. Rockefeller decided it was time to sell shares when even a shoe-shine boy offered him a share tip. During the pa

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问题     In 1929 John D. Rockefeller decided it was time to sell shares when even a shoe-shine 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 instance, 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 1990. 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. But 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 is a share-price boom.
The term "fallacies" (Paragraph 1) most probably means________.
选项 A、ridiculous strategies
B、obsolete methodologies
C、mistaken beliefs
D、far-fetched assertions
答案C
解析 这是一道词汇题，测试考生准确理解原文中重要词语的能力。原文首段尾句中的“fallacies”一词的含义是“谬论，谬见；谬误”，故本题的正确选项是C“mistaken beliefs”(错误的认识)。考生在阅读时如果遇到生词，应该把握上下文和全文中心主旨进行推断。
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