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
34
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
Modernindustrialsocietygrantslittlestatustooldpeople.Infact,suchasocietyhasasystemofbuilt-inobsolescence.The
Modernindustrialsocietygrantslittlestatustooldpeople.Infact,suchasocietyhasasystemofbuilt-inobsolescence.The
Networktelevision,magazine,anddirectmail—thatwillbethebiggainersinadvertisingrevenuesnextyear.
Whenonehasgoodhealth,________shouldfeelfortunate.
Fornearlyacentury,twoUnitedStatesgovernmentalagencies,theUnitedStatesArmyCorpsofEngineersandtheBureauofRecla
PessimismconcerningtheeconomicfuturewaspervasiveinWesternEuropeancountriesinthelate1970s.
Howmuchtotellterminallyillpatientsislefttothediscretionofthedoctor.
Hewaslookingimpatientatthevisitingsalesman,whoshowednosignsofgettingreadytoleave.
随机试题
不相容选言推理否定肯定式、肯定否定式的有效性可以通过下面的真值表得到证明:()
非竞争性抑制剂存在时,酶促反应动力学的特点是
小强由妈妈带着到牙防所做窝沟封闭,大夫检查后告诉可以不做,因为小强的牙
下列关于市场风险的说法,错误的是()。
在一次测验中,小利的数学只考了59分,小利找到沈老师,求老师加1分让自己及格,沈老师分析了小利的平时情况,考虑到这是一次随机测验,就对她说:“给你1分不行,但我可以借你1分,下次考试你要还老师10分。”小利很高兴地答应了。这以后,小利认真听课,在随后的一次
根据以下资料,回答116-120题。浙江省以2008年11月1日零时为时点,进行厂全省5‰人口抽样调查工作。2008年11月1日零时,浙江省的常住人口为5116万人,年末全省常住人口为5120万人,比2007年末增长1.19%。全省
大学生要牢固确立在中国共产党领导下走中国特色社会主义道路、为实现中华民族伟大复兴而奋斗的共同理想和坚定信念。关于社会主义。理解正确的有()
Thebattletopreventoratleastslowglobalwarminghasintensifiedinthepastyearasscientistshavelearnedmoreaboutthe
SupposeyouacceptthepersuasivedatathatinequalityhasbeenrisingintheUnitedStatesandmostadvancednationsinrecent
ItriedveryhardtopersuadehimtojoinourgroupbutImetwithaflat______.
最新回复
(
0
)