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  3. A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. Wh

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. Wh

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问题     A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world’s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.
    It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America’s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.
    All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.
    How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, D C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States."
The author seems to believe the revival of the U.S. economy in the 1990s can be attributed to________.
选项 A、the turning of the business cycle
B、the restructuring of industry
C、the improved business management
D、the success in education
答案A
解析 本题关键词是the revival和1990s，问题是：作者似乎认为美国经济在20世纪90年代的复苏的原因是什么?本题定位到最后一段。根据第四段第三句，几乎没有美国人将这个发展单纯地归因于美元贬值或商业周期循环 (a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle)这些显而易见的原因，即作者认为发展的主要原因是后来努力的结果，但“美元贬值或商业周期循环”也是其中的原因之一，因此，选项A与原文一致，是正确选项。选项B来自第四段第五句，但它是理查德.卡瓦纳的观点，不是作者的观点，所以，选项B答非所问。同理，选项C来自第七句，但它是威廉.萨尔曼的观点，也不是作者的观点，所以，选项C也是答非所问。选项D中的education(教育)是无中生有，文章没有提及美国经济在20世纪90年代的复苏和教育有关。
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