试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

中国财政科学研究院

To be sure, that is not what many see. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and others have blamed the financial crisis of 2008 on a global savings glut, which fueled flows of money from high-savings emerging-market economies—especially in Asia—that run chronic balance-of-payments surpluses. According to this school of thought, excessive savings pushed long-term interest rates down to rock-bottom levels, leading to asset bubbles in the United States and elsewhere.The alternative theory—of a global credit glut—gained more ground with the release last week of the Financial Stability Board’s report on shadow banking. The FSB report contains startling revelations about the scale of global shadow banking, which it defines as “credit intermediation involving entities and activities outside the regular banking system”.The report, which was requested by G20 leaders at their summit in Seoul last November, found that between 2002 and 2007, the shadow banking system increased by $33 trillion, more than doubling in asset size from $27 trillion to $60 trillion. This is 8.5 times higher than the total US current—account deficit of $3.9 trillion during the same period.The shadow banking system is estimated at roughly 25%-30% of the global financial system ($250 trillion, excluding derivatives) and at half of total global banking assets. This represents a huge regulatory “black hole” at the center of the global financial system, hitherto not closely monitored for monetary and financial stability purposes. Its importance was exposed only by analysis of the key roles played by structured investment vehicles (SIVs) and money-market funds (MMFs) in the 2008 meltdown.The shadow banking system is complex, because it comprises a mix of institutions and vehicles. Investment funds other than MMFs account for 29% of total, and SIVs make up 9%, but the shadow system also includes public financial institutions (such as the government-backed mortgage lender Fannie Mae in the US). They are some of the largest counterparties with the regular banking system, and their combined credit creation and proprietary trading and hedging may account for much of the global liquidity flows that make monetary and financial stability so difficult to ensure.The trouble is that, by 2010, the shadow banking system was about the same size as it was just before the 2007 market crash, whereas the regulated global banking system was 18% larger than in 2007. That is why the FSB report pinpoints the shadow banking system, together with the large global banks, as sources of systemic risk. But the global problem is likely to be much larger than the sum of its parts. Specifically, global credit creation by the regular and shadow banking systems is likely to be significantly larger than the sum of the credit creation currently measured by national statistics.21. Which of the following might be the best title for the passage?22. The global liquidity flows include the following EXCEPT ________.23. According to the report requested by G20 leaders, how much money in total for the shadow banking system before 2008 meltdown?24. As the passage indicates, what is the rough figure for the total global banking assets just before the 2007 market crash?25. The words “proprietary trading” could best be replaced by which of the following?

One of the principal themes of Walzer’s critique of liberal capitalism is that it is insufficiently egalitarian. Walzer’s case against the economic inequality generated by capitalism and in favor of “a radical redistribution of wealth” is presented in a widely cited essay entitled “In Defense of Equality”.The most striking feature of Walzer’s critique is that, far from rejecting the principle of reward according to merit, Walzer insists on its validity. People who excel should receive the superior benefits appropriate to their excellence. But people exhibit a great variety of qualities—“intelligence, physical strength, agility and grace, artistic creativity, mechanical skill, leadership, endurance, memory, psychological insight, the capacity for hard work—even moral strength, sensitivity, the ability to express compassion”. Each deserves its proper recompense, and hence a proper distribution of material goods should reflect human differences as measured on all these different scales. Yet, under capitalism, the ability to make money (“the green thumb of bourgeois society”) enables its possessor to acquire almost “every other sort of social good”, such as the respect and esteem of others.The centerpiece of Walzer’s argument is the invocation of a quotation from Pascal’s Pensees, which concludes: “Tyranny is the wish to obtain by one means what can only be had by another.” Pascal believes that we owe different duties to different qualities. So we might say that infatuation is the proper response to charm, and awe the proper response to strength. In this light, Walzer characterizes capitalism as the tyranny of money (or of the ability to make it). And Walzer advocates as the means of eliminating this tyranny and of restoring genuine equality “the abolition of the power of money outside its sphere”. What Walzer envisions is a society in which wealth is no longer convertible into social goods with which it has no intrinsic connection.Walzer’s argument is a puzzling one. After all, why should those qualities unrelated to the production of material goods be rewarded with material goods? Is it not tyrannical, in Pascal’s sense, to insist that those who excel in “sensitivity” or “the ability to express compassion” merit equal wealth with those who excel in qualities (such as “the capacity for hard work”) essential in producing wealth? Yet Walzer’s argument, however deficient, does point to one of the most serious weaknesses of capitalism—namely, that it brings to predominant positions in a society people who, no matter how legitimately they have earned their material rewards, often lack those other qualities that evoke affection or admiration. Some even argue plausibly that this weakness may be irremediable: in any society that, like a capitalist society, seeks to become ever wealthier in material terms disproportionate rewards are bound to flow to the people who are instrumental in producing the increase in its wealth.16. The primary purpose of the passage is to________.17. The author mentions all of the following as issues addressed by Walzer EXCEPT ________.18. The passage provides sufficient information to answer which of the following questions?19. The author implies that Walzer’s interpretation of the principle of reward according to merit is distinctive for its ________.20. The author implies that sensitivity is not a quality that ________.

People tend to _______ how distinct their own lives are, so the commonality they enjoy with other people seem to them a series of small miracles.

Many innovative breakthroughs come about when people venture beyond their own areas of expertise, because often it takes an outsider to ask the naive question that may yield _______ solution.

Even the cleverest use of time management techniques is powerless to _______ the sum of minutes in a person’s life (over 52 million, optimistically assuming a life expectancy of 100 years), so people squeeze as much as they could into each one of them.

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