2. 外语
  3. It seems like Americans use credit cards for everything. It’s a lot easier to spend money that you don’t see, isn’t it? Many Ame

It seems like Americans use credit cards for everything. It’s a lot easier to spend money that you don’t see, isn’t it? Many Ame

admin2011-01-04  42
问题     It seems like Americans use credit cards for everything. It’s a lot easier to spend money that you don’t see, isn’t it? Many Americans spend money that isn’t even there and get deeper and deeper in debt. Why do so many people spend more than they have? "Buy now, pay later" has become an American way of life. Recently, American households spent nearly 11 billion dollars more than they earned, creating a negative saving rate.
    There are two ideas—one, living within your means, and the idea that living on debt is a great equalizer(平衡装置). They both have validity because it is important that someone live within their means over their lifetime. When people are young and they are earning money, but they have very little savings, they almost have to borrow in order to own a house or own a car. But as they grow older, they should develop the habit of saving, so that by the time they reach the end of their earning life, they have savings to live on in retirement, and live within their means.
    "Buy now, pay later" worked very well for us in the 1990s, but one suspects it won’t work forever. The only thing that concerns me is that Americans are so contented, so optimistic, so unconcerned about any bumps in the road that many American households, not all of them, but many American households are very heavily extended in personal credit, a lot of credit card debt. People are paying very high prices for houses and borrowing heavily against those prices; and if we do run into a bump in the road, a recession, there are going to be a lot of households, not all of them, but many households that Ml be severely squeezed. That means we’re more vulnerable to serious financial distress than Japan is. Japan has been in financial distress for ten years, but one reason it’s been able to weather that is that the households had been very conservative, had a lot of savings, were very liquid, and were able to weather difficult times. And many American households would now be less able to do that because they are so heavily in debt.
The chief concern of the author is that
选项 A、Americans are too optimistic about the world future
B、Americans are too contended to live within their means
C、America is vulnerable to serious financial distress
D、economic recession is on the horizon
答案C
解析 观点推断题。文中第三段提及美国人太乐观、太不在意将来的事情。从倒数第三句“That means we’re more vulnerable to serious financial distress than Japan is”(那意味着我们对严重经济萧条的承受力还不如日本)可以看出作者对美国的经济危机的承受力的关注与担心。故选项C正确。
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