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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.
【R2】
选项
答案B
解析 第三段主要论述经济不平衡带来的负面影响。空格前指出21世纪经济出现过严重不平衡，及其不良影响；空格后指出这些问题仍可能在某些情况下出现。这两处的基调一致，由此推测空格处应该也是讲经济不平衡的负面影响。B分析经济不平衡对贸易顺差国和贸易逆差国产生的不良影响，填入此空与上下文语义相符，且B提到了一些具体的经济问题，如债务过高、过分倚重出口等，契合空格后的These sorts of problems，故本题选B。
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