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  3. Many people -- especially the baby-boomers born between 1946 and 1964, who will be retiring over the next 20 years or so -- will

Many people -- especially the baby-boomers born between 1946 and 1964, who will be retiring over the next 20 years or so -- will

admin2010-10-28  35
问题      Many people -- especially the baby-boomers born between 1946 and 1964, who will be retiring over the next 20 years or so -- will be asking themselves whether they will have enough to keep them comfortable in their old age, even if they save a lot. After all, it is generally accepted that they cannot rely on the state. The burden on the taxpayer would be too great.
     But, as already noted, financial wealth is just a claim on the assets produced by the economy. Making pensions a claim on the private sector rather than the public purse does not change the problem. Will businesses in 20 years’ time be producing enough income to pay the rewards and bond interest to pay baby-boomers their private-sector pensions? And what will happen to asset prices if the boomers try to cash what they hold?
     In demographic(人口统计学) terms, asset markets could be seen as a pyramid scheme, in which each generation aims to sell its accumulated savings to the next. Provided the next generation is larger than the one that preceded it, the savers can sell their assets at higher prices. That was the case for much of the 20th century.
     The baby-boomers will upset the pattern. If they retire at 65, they will start offloading their assets in 2011. And even in America, which has fewer demographic problems than Japan, there are not enough new savers coming along to replace them. Some hope that emerging markets will solve the problem, by acting as buyers of developed market assets and a source of higher returns for investors in rich countries, but: the theory is unproven.
    In a 136-page report, "The Business of Ageing", John Llewellyn and Camille Chaix-Viros of Nomura, a Japanese bank, examine the potential effect on financial markets of ageing Western populations.  As the baby-boomers run down their savings to fund their retirement, you would expect, other things being equal, real interest rates to rise (because the supply of savings will fall, relative to demand).  As a consequence of this, the valuation of assets such as bonds and equities should come under pressure. Evidence partly backs up this theory. For example, economists can plot a relationship between the proportion of the population aged between 35 and 59 (when people save most) and the level of real interest rates. The relationship has been negative, as theory would predict, since the 1980s (lots of savings kept interest rates low). The strong Western stockmarkets of the 1990s coincided with the boomers’ peak savings years.  
What can we learn about the baby-boomers in the first paragraph?
选项 A、They are not among people questioning about their future.
B、They believe they can live a comfortable life in old age.
C、Most of them don’t want to depend on the state.
D、Other people should worry about their old age instead of them.
答案C
解析 事实细节题。作者在定位句中提到，很多人，尤其是baby-boomers都在担心自己的积蓄不够自己安度晚年，接着在本段第二句指出：it is generally accepted that they can not rely on the state，由此可见他们大多数都不愿意依赖同家解决自己的养老问题，C 符合题意。
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