首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The patient, E. Z. , is in failing health, and the European surgeons are arguing bitterly at the operating table. The Greek doct
The patient, E. Z. , is in failing health, and the European surgeons are arguing bitterly at the operating table. The Greek doct
admin
2014-09-09
72
问题
The patient, E. Z. , is in failing health, and the European surgeons are arguing bitterly at the operating table. The Greek doctors call for a feeding tube, oxygen, antibiotics, the works. Nonsense, say the Germans. Get the patient up on his feet and slap him around a little. What he really needs is to lose some weight. Never mind that each is acting in accordance with his own self-interest. It’ s the profligate Greeks, whose screw-ups helped drag Europe into its deepest crisis since World War II, who are mostly right in this argument—and the disciplined, hard-working Germans who are mostly wrong. Europe’s economy is already so weak that Teutonic belt-tightening, however meritorious in ordinary times, threatens to push the Continent into a deep and long-lasting recession.
The European stimulus-vs. -austerity debate that raged throughout 2011 is a replay of the one from the Great Depression. Then it was a Briton, John Maynard Keynes, arguing the case for boosting demand and an Austrian, Friedrich Hayek, wanting to purge the rottenness from the system. It’s a measure of the discipline’s meager progress that economists and policymakers haven’ t managed to settle this dispute in the intervening 80 years. The very human tendency to mix up economics and morality is what makes the Keynesian case for expansionary government policy hard for politicians to defend. From the standpoint of righteousness and clean living, the Germans are way ahead of the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, and the Italians. Saving and investing are virtuous for families; it’s hard for people to imagine that on the scale of nations, too much frugality can cause problems.
Frugality can backfire, however—and in 2011, it did. Keynes had put his finger on the problem, calling it the "paradox of thrift." One person’s spending is another’s income, he observed. So when everyone spends less in a recession, incomes fall. The more people try to save, the more the economy slows, and the harder it gets to put money aside.
There’s even a related "paradox of toil. " It says that when an economy is stuck in a rut, with interest rates at or near zero, cutting wages can backfire. Wage cuts lead to expectations of deflation and cause employment to fall rather than rise, says the person who coined the new paradox, Gauti Eggertsson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That’s a scary thought for the Greeks, who are hoping they can keep the euro but effect an internal devaluation based on lower wages, and in the process make their economy competitive again.
Austerity got a fair shot in Europe in 2011, and it’s failing. Countries on the periphery are attempting to close budget deficits through a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts. The hope is that evidence of financial probity will impress the financial markets, lower interest rates, and give the private sector the confidence to spend and invest, revving up growth. Instead, nearly the complete opposite is taking place. Government retrenchment sucked demand out of the economy, depressing tax revenue and making balance even harder to achieve. Private forecasts of European growth sank throughout the past year as this dynamic played out. A 2012 recession is highly possible, although as of late November the European Central Bank staff economists were still predicting growth of 0. 4 percent to 1 percent in the coming year.
There’s no doubt that Southern Europe needs to earn its way out of debt by running trade surpluses instead of chronic deficits. In other words, it needs to act more Germanic. But it’s impossible for every country to run a trade surplus, just as it’s impossible for every person to be a better-than-average driver. Italy and the others can manage to run trade surpluses only if Germany agrees to do the opposite, importing more than it exports. If we’re going to expect the Greeks to act like Germans, the reverse needs to happen as well. Germany needs to live a little, spend more, relax in Mykonos—in other words, be more Mediterranean. That’s a lot to expect, since the German people have been convinced by the current crisis that laxity is the road to ruin.
As 2012 beckons, it seems increasingly likely that the euro zone is headed for a crackup. Stephen A. King, the chief global economist of HSBC, believes that the only solution for Europe is for creditors and debtors to focus on their mutual interest in healthy economic growth. A pro-growth consensus would break down the inhibitions against aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus. Yet nothing of the sort will happen, King says, until it’s blatantly obvious that only dramatic action will prevent a breakup of the common currency. "The world has to go crazy before you can do crazy things," he concludes. "That’s what the Fed waited for, and that’s what the ECB will have to wait for. " Stand back from the operating table—here comes the defibrillator.
What is the European stimulus-vs. -austerity debate?
选项
答案
facing the deepest economic crisis since World War II/European countries are arguing over how to deal with it/as each eountry is acting in accordence with the self-interest/different strategies are proposed/showing a tendency "to mix up economics and morality"/a dispute not settled in the past 80 years/the focus: whether to stimulate demand or to advocate thrift to get over the current economic crisis
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/BXSO777K
本试题收录于:
NAETI高级口译笔试题库外语翻译证书(NAETI)分类
0
NAETI高级口译笔试
外语翻译证书(NAETI)
相关试题推荐
Modernindustrialsocietygrantslittlestatustooldpeople.Infact,suchasocietyhasasystemofbuilt-inobsolescence.The
Sheattributeshergoodhealthtotheregularjogginginthemorninganddeepbreathingeachday.
Uponcompletinghisexaminationoverthepatient,thedoctorofferedhisjudgmentofherconditions.
Thecentralgovernmenthopestocurtailmilitaryspendinginthenextyear.
Lackgovernmentsupport,theyhadtoapproachsponsors,organizers,andmusiciansontheirown.
Butstill:asrailtravelisdisrupted,thousandsofpeoplewillonceagainseethewithfuryattheoperatingcompanies’shortco
Fornearlyacentury,twoUnitedStatesgovernmentalagencies,theUnitedStatesArmyCorpsofEngineersandtheBureauofRecla
Inspiteofillhealthandaphysicaldisabilitythatthreatenedhercareer.CarsonMcCullerscompletedanovelinthesummerof
Howmuchtotellterminallyillpatientsislefttothediscretionofthedoctor.
Hewaslookingimpatientatthevisitingsalesman,whoshowednosignsofgettingreadytoleave.
随机试题
血液中大分子进入胸腺的顺序是
下列疾病均有血清尿素氮增高而血清肌酐正常,但不包括
计算机硬件系统由中央处理器、硬盘、显示器、键盘和鼠标五大基本部件构成。()
应当逮捕的犯人如果在逃,公安机关可以直接向全国发布通缉令。( )
在元代画家的笔下,花鸟画已经成为借物抒情、托物言志的途径,这种发展无疑丰富了花鸟画的内涵。发展至明清时期,许多花鸟画家更把家国观念、道德品评、祈求幸福等传统的人文精神寄托于画中,有些画家甚至将花鸟内容个性化,借以表达喜怒哀乐。因此,画家创作时重视追求境界多
规模报酬递增的工厂会不会面临要素报酬递减的情况?
党的十五大在深刻总结所有制结构改革经验的基础上,第一次明确提出,公有制为主体、多种所有制经济共同发展,是我国社会主义初级阶段的基本经济制度。实践充分证明,这一基本经济制度的确立
新发展理念的“根”和“魂”是()
一个罐子里装有黑球和白球,黑、白球数之比为R:1,现有放回地一个接一个地抽球,直到抽到黑球为止,记X为所抽的白球数.这样做了n次以后,我们获得一组样本:X1,X2,…,Xn,基于此,求R的最大似然估汁.
Nowadays,wecanpurchasethingson-line.
最新回复
(
0
)