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 latest hot topic among economic talking heads is the coming currency war. According to conventional wisdom, there’s a risk t
The latest hot topic among economic talking heads is the coming currency war. According to conventional wisdom, there’s a risk t
admin
2015-01-09
51
问题
The latest hot topic among economic talking heads is the coming currency war. According to conventional wisdom, there’s a risk that major countries will—simultaneously—try to revive their sluggish economies by pushing down the value of their currencies. That strategy could backfire, according to this line of thought, stifling international trade, tipping economies back into recession, and possibly causing depression-style hyperinflation to boot. Get ready to sell apples on the nearest street corner and buy your morning coffee with a wheelbarrow full of paper money. It all sounds very unpleasant.
But the dogs of war are unlikely to slip their leash . In a classic currency war, a country prints money, holds interest rates down, or intervenes in foreign exchange markets in order to depress the value of its own currency. That makes the country’s exports cheaper and more attractive for foreign buyers. In theory, this can enable an economy to grow faster than would be possible on the basis of domestic demand alone. Only trouble is, if every country pursues a similar strategy, they all devalue their currencies at the same time and no country gains an advantage over its trading partners.
It may look as though that’s what’s happening now, since many of the largest economies are following policies that could depress the value of their currencies. But they’re doing so for fundamentally different reasons—to address domestic economic problems rather than to boost exports. And while this creates some real risks, they aren’t the ones that the term "currency war" implies.
Currency wars—and trade wars generally—have their origins in a 17th and 18th century economic theory known as mercantilism. The idea was that a country’s wealth comes from selling more than it buys. A colonial empire could achieve this positive balance of trade by acquiring cheap raw materials from its colonies and then ensuring that it exported more finished goods than it imported. This was usually accomplished with tariffs that made imports very expensive.
Such an approach couldn’t work in the modern world. Countries don’t get cheap raw materials from colonies anymore. They have to buy them especially oil on the open market. So while currency devaluation makes exports cheaper for foreign buyers, it also makes essential imports more expensive. Countries with economies that are not fully developed may still depress their currencies to promote exports because they don’t have sufficient domestic demand to sustain their growth.
Japan has pushed its currency down 17% since September, reversing the yen’s appreciation over the previous three years. And the U.S. , as well as many European countries, advocate policies that appear to be aimed at devaluing their currencies, but they’re not doing it chiefly to foment a trade war. The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing—buying bonds to swell the money supply—is aimed principally at stimulating domestic demand. European advocates of a cheaper euro currency, meanwhile, are hoping to make national debt easier to finance, not trying to pump up exports.
The actual point of current policies is to lower the real cost of money--that is, the effective interest rate that borrowers pay after inflation is taken into account in order to spur consumer spending and business investment. That reduction can be achieved by pushing down interest rates and by allowing inflation. So rather than seeing what’s going on today as the beginning of a global trade war, we should think about it as a side effect of economic stimulus. And in theory, as economies recover, the policies could be reversed before chronic inflation becomes entrenched. But as I said, there are risks to all this— and in practice, inflation can easily get out of hand.
There isn’t a lot individuals can do to protect themselves against such a possibility. People about to retire should favor benefit options with the best cost-of-living increases. Real estate can be a smart buy now that prices are down so much, especially buying a home if it’s financially competitive with renting. Among financial investments, it makes sense to avoid long-term bonds because their payouts are fixed.
So forget all the talk of a currency war. What’s going on has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with debt and growth and inflation. If the global economy is in danger of reliving the past, it will not be a repeat of the 1930s. Rather, it will be a repeat of the 1970s, when the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply to offset the economic slowdown caused by the oil crisis—and ended up encouraging double-digit inflation.
Current easy money policies may well create some inflation, although perhaps not as much as 40 years ago. But in any event, revived growth with some inflation is preferable to stable prices accompanied by depression. The problems of the 1970s can all be overcome - except perhaps the hairstyles.
Some large economies devalue the currency to
选项
A、decrease inflation.
B、boost exports.
C、revive economic growth.
D、start a trade war.
答案
C
解析
细节题。由题干中的large economies定位至第一段第二句“According to conventional wisdom,there’s a risk that major countries will—simultaneously—try to revive their sluggish economies by pushingdown the value of their currencies.”,根据传统的智慧,大国试图通过货币贬值来复苏其滞后的经济是有风险的。不难看出,大国进行货币贬值的目的在于复苏经济,故[C]为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/XgdO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
WhichofthefollowingisNOTcorrectaboutRaulandhiswork?
Whatcanjobsandworkprovideaccordingtothespeaker?
ThefollowingnovelswerewrittenbyMarkTwainEXCEPT
AudienceAudienceisaveryimportantconceptforwriting.Theaudienceinfluencesthecontent,structure,style,etcofyour
TheUnitedKingdomdoesnotshareborderwithanyothercountryEXCEPT______.
A、highpricesB、fattyfoodsC、sanitationproblemsD、poornutritionB
Learningforeignlanguages,bothatschooloraftergraduation,canberewardedinmanyways.Unfortunately,people【M1】______ju
Changesinthetechnologyofcommunicationareoccurringsorapidlythatwehumanbeingsnowmovethroughacloudofmessagesa
Americaneconomistsoncespoofeduniversityeducationastheonlyindustryinwhichthosewhoconsumeitsproductdonotpurchas
It’seasytoseewhythepriceofgasolineissoupsettingtosomanypeople.Gaspricesaretheoneeconomicindicatoryousee
随机试题
决定每分钟肺泡通气量的因素是()
五笔字型汉字输入法的编码属于____________。
Now______.
患者女性,28岁。发育正常,婚后夫妇同居,3年未孕。诊断为原发性不孕。原发性不孕是指
男性,35岁,上腹隐痛半年,无节律性,1个月前钡餐检查,见胃角部有2.5cm突出腔外的龛影,近3天来每天解成形黑便一次,量不多,血压正常,血红蛋白95g/L,最可能的诊断是()
项目经理在审计报告日后,将审计工作底稿准备归档,其做法违反规定的有()。
假如一个人,从他的少年时代开始,就时刻地守住________,用它来学习、劳动,________决不容忍无聊的玩乐来剥夺任何一个早晨,也决不允许让缥缈的幻想来骗取任何一个夜晚,每迎接一个黎明都有的斗志,每送走一个黄昏,都有前进一步的喜悦,那么,他的生命将成
时间变量的区域非均衡发展理论中具有代表性的有()。
已知输入序列为abcd,经过输出受限的双端队列后,能得到的输出序列是()。
Itcanbeinferredfromthepassagethatclassifyingapoetaseitherconservativeorexperimentalwouldbeof"littlesignifica
最新回复
(
0
)