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  3. Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of a new discussion paper looking at "the return of

Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of a new discussion paper looking at "the return of

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问题    Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of a new discussion paper looking at "the return of the East Asian savings glut". A summary of his paper begins in arresting fashion with statistics: 【R1】__________
   Prior to the financial crisis, many economists fretted about the problem of global imbalances. Measurement error aside, global trade balances; surpluses in some countries offset deficits in others.
   Why do such imbalances matter? They can create problems in a few ways. Large surpluses can be a side effect of very high savings rates, for example. The large imbalances of the 2000s seemed to reflect unnaturally high savings, which contributed to a "global savings glut" that depressed interest rates and encouraged reckless borrowing. 【R2】__________These sorts of problems still apply in some circumstances.
   Yet another worry has grown more salient in the post-crisis period: the demand drain imposed on the global economy by surplus countries. A rising surplus in one country implies a rising deficit in another. That deficit represents a demand drain; spending that might otherwise have taken place within the economy flowing abroad into another economy. 【R3】__________However, when interest rates are near zero and political constraints prevent governments from using active fiscal policy, the demand drain is dangerous: it generally results in weaker demand, and slower growth.
   Imbalances today look slightly different than they did a decade ago. Then, America accounted for nearly all of the global deficit, while oil-exporting economies were responsible for most of the surplus. Oil balances are less important now, since America produces much more oil domestically than it used to, and since global oil prices have fallen. Instead, the surplus countries are high-saving goods exporters in Europe and East Asia. The big deficit economies, somewhat strikingly, are now America, Australia, Britain and Canada. 【R4】__________ The split is a weird one which deserves more investigation.
   The tricky matter is to work out what will happen next to global imbalances. Mr Setser notes that East Asian surpluses are rising partly because rates of domestic saving are high, but also because investment rates in countries like Korea have been falling. 【R5】__________Depending on how Brexit unfolds, Britain, which had been a rather generous contributor to global demand thanks to its whopping current-account deficit, might find itself pushed rather roughly by financial reality toward a more balanced current account—as the tumbling pound forces Britons to cut back on imports, for example.
   [A] These economies are all of a type: Enghsh-speaking, of course. Rich. But they are also highly financialised economies which specialise in the export of high-value services and safe assets, in the form of both government securities and land.
   [B] Large imbalances can be unhealthy for countries on both sides of the zero; the deficit countries consuming more than they produce risk accumulating unmanageably high debts, while surplus countries can suffer from economic distortions associated with the policies that boost net exports.
   [C] After shrinking dramatically during the crisis and global recession, the imbalances have begun to rebound and are now back to about 1.5% of GDP.
   [D] These countries do suggest a growing vulnerability across the global economy to any future shocks to demand, from excessively rapid increases in American interest rates, for instance.
   [E] The combined savings of China, Japan, Korea and Singapore is about 40 percent of their collective GDP, a thirty-five-year high.
   [F] Meanwhile, Japan continues to run a rather large budget deficit; were it not for that, its current account surplus would likely be larger. And in Europe, recovery has been built atop large and growing current-account surpluses.
   [G] It is not a terribly big deal when the deficit economy can easily use monetary or fiscal policy to step on the accelerator and boost domestic spending: from the government, for instance, or through increased domestic investment.
【R1】
选项
答案E
解析 第一段讲到经济学家Brad Setser的新论文讨论了东亚储蓄过剩的问题，空格前说的是这篇论文以引人注目的内容开篇，冒号表明空格要填的是这个引人注目的内容，而且可能与东亚储蓄过剩问题相关。E讲述了中、日、韩、新四个亚洲国家的combined savings的情况，呼应上文的“东亚储蓄过剩”。此外，E的a thirty-five-year high“为35年来最高值”，则体现了空格前的in arresting fashion“以引人注目的方式”，而40 percent和a thirty-five-year high也与空格前的with statistics相符，故确定本题选E。
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