经济类英语文章阅读

Before we start, let's talk a bit about collocations. Collocations are groups of words that are commonly used together. Native speakers are so used to using them, they know what sounds "right" and what sounds "wrong."在我们开始之前，我们来谈下搭配。搭配是指常用的词组搭配到一起。当地人很习惯于用这些，他们知道什么的搭配听起来是对的，什么是错的。For example, in English the phrase "go online" is a natural way to refer to using the internet. But it wouldn't be natural to say something like "proceed online" or "travel online", even though "proceed" and "travel" are other ways to express “go.” You’ll hear lots of collocations related to office life in today's dialog. Listen out for them and we'll explain what they mean and how to use them in the debrief. 比如，英语中的短语上网，就是使用网络的意思，甚至用前进和旅游来表达这个意思。在今天的播客中，你将听到很多和办公生活有关的搭配。仔细听，我们将会解释它们的意思以及如何在听取报告的时候使用它。Now, on to the role of an administrative assistant. The job title of "administrative assistant", or "admin assistant" for short, can cover quite a broad range of responsibilities. Admin assistants typically spend a lot of time handling data—whether it's timesheets recording the working hours of other employees, or rosters used for scheduling meeting rooms. Much of what they do involves making sure that other employees are working as efficiently as possible. 现在，来谈谈一个行政助理的职责。通常他们要花很长时间处理数据，不论是日程表记录，雇员的工作时间，还是会议地点安排的执勤人员表。这些很多都牵涉到确认是否有效地工作。In this episode we'll talk with Christina, who works as an admin assistant in the human resources department of an auto parts manufacturer. Christina's going to tell us about some of the responsibilities of her position. 在这节播客中，我们将和克里斯蒂娜交谈，她是汽车配件生产商的人事部的行政助理。克里斯蒂娜将会告诉我们有关她职责的细节。Collocations are a challenge for anyone learning English. There aren't any specific rules to follow. You just have to listen for what sounds right. Still, they're essential for English communication and important to keep in mind when you learn new vocabulary—don't just think about the new word, think about what other words it might be used with. We'll point out some useful collocations related to daily office work as we go through this lesson. 词语搭配对于英语学习者来说是一个挑战。没有严格的条款去依循。你必须去听听起来是对的。并且，当你学 学了新的词汇，不要只是觉得他们是新的词汇，要想到其他的一些可能会用到的其他词语，而搭配对于记住这些新的词至关重 要。Administrative assistants are important to any business organization. For example, they make sure data is handled responsibly and records are maintained properly. It might seem like they work in the background, but their jobs are critical to the smooth running of a company. 行政助理对于任何商业组织都很重要。比如，他们要确保 数据正确，记录好公司正常运行的数据。In the last episode we met Christina, the Head Administrative Assistant in the Human Resources department at LaFarge Automotive. In an interview, Christina told us about some of her usual job duties. Today, she'll talk about why her work is so important to the company. 上一集中，我们了解了克里斯蒂娜，在拉法基汽车公司人事部门的 总的行政助理。在这个访谈中，克里斯蒂娜告诉了我们她的日常工作。今天，她将要谈论她的工作对于整个公司的重要性。

Macroeconomics is a sub-field of economics that examines the behavior of the economy as a whole, once all of the individual economic decisions of companies and industries have been summed. Economy-wide phenomena considered by macroeconomics include Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and how it is affected by changes in unemployment, national income, rate of growth, and price levels. In contrast, microeconomics is the study of the economic behaviour and decision-making of individual consumers, firms, and industries. Macroeconomics can be used to analyze how to influence government policy goals such as economic growth, price stability, full employment and the attainment of a sustainable balance of payments. Macroeconomics is sometimes used to refer to a general approach to economic reasoning, which includes long term strategies and rational expectations in aggregate behavior. Until the 1930s most economic analysis did not separate out individual economics behavior from aggregate behavior. With the Great Depression of the 1930s, suffered throughout the developed world at the time, and the development of the concept of national income and product statistics, the field of macroeconomics began to expand. Particularly influential were the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who formulated theories to try to explain the Great Depression. Before that time, comprehensive national accounts, as we know them today, did not exist . One of the challenges of economics has been a struggle to reconcile macroeconomic and microeconomic models. Starting in the 1950s, macroeconomists developed micro-based models of macroeconomic behavior (such as the consumption function). Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen developed the first comprehensive national macroeconomic model, which he first built for the Netherlands and later applied to the United States and the United Kingdom after World War II. The first global macroeconomic model, Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates LINK project, was initiated by Lawrence Klein and was mentioned in his citation for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1980. Theorists such as Robert Lucas Jr suggested (in the 1970s) that at least some traditional Keynesian (after British economist John Maynard Keynes) macroeconomic models were questionable as they were not derived from assumptions about individual behavior, although it was not clear whether the failures were in microeconomic assumptions or in macroeconomic models. However, New Keynesian macroeconomics has generally presented microeconomic models to shore up their macroeconomic theorizing, and some Keynesians have contested the idea that microeconomic foundations are essential, if the model is analytically useful. An analogy might be that the fact that quantum phisics is not fully consistent with relativity theory doesn´t mean that realtivity is false. Many important microeconomic assumptions have never been proved, and some have proved wrong. The various schools of thought are not always in direct competition with one another - even though they sometimes reach differing conclusions. Macroeconomics is an ever evolving area of research. The goal of economic research is not to be "right," but rather to be accurate. It is likely that none of the current schools of economic thought perfectly capture the workings of the economy. They do, however, each contribute a small piece of the overall puzzle. As one learns more about each school of thought, it is possible to combine aspects of each in order to reach an informed synthesis. The traditional distinction is between two different approaches to economics: Keynesian economics, focusing on demand; and supply-side (or neo-classical) economics, focusing on supply. Neither view is typically endorsed to the complete exclusion of the other, but most schools do tend clearly to emphasize one or the other as a theoretical foundation. • Keynesian economics focuses on aggregate demand to explain levels of unemployment and the business cycle. That is, business cycle fluctuations should be reduced through fiscal policy (the government spends more or less depending on the situation) and monetary policy. Early Keynesian macroeconomics was "activist," calling for regular use of policy to stabilize the capitalist economy, while some Keynesians called for the use of incomes policies. • Supply-side economics delineates quite clearly the roles of monetary policy and fiscal policy. The focus for monetary policy should be purely on the price of money as determined by the supply of money and the demand for money. It advocates a monetary policy that directly targets the value of money and does not target interest rates at all. Typically the value of money is measured by reference to gold or some other reference. The focus of fiscal policy is to raise revenue for worthy government investments with a clear recognition of the impact that taxation has on domestic trade. It places heavy emphasis on Say's law, which states that recessions do not occur because of failure in demand or lack of money. • Monetarism, led by Milton Friedman, which holds that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It rejects fiscal policy because it leads to "crowding out" of the private sector. Further, it does not wish to combat inflation or deflation by means of active demand management as in Keynesian economics, but by means of monetary policy rules, such as keeping the rate of growth of the money supply constant over time. • New Keynesian economics, which developed partly in response to new classical economics, strives to provide microeconomic foundations to Keynesian economics by showing how imperfect markets can justify demand management. • Austrian economics is a laissez-faire school of macroeconomics. It focuses on the business cycle that arises from government or central-bank interference that leads to deviations from the natural rate of interest. • Post-Keynesian economics represents a dissent from mainstream Keynesian economics, emphasizing the role of uncertainty and the historical process in macroeconomics. • New classical economics. The original theoretical impetus was the charge that Keynesian economics lacks microeconomic foundations -- i.e. its assertions are not founded in basic economic theory. This school emerged during the 1970s. This school asserts that it does not make sense to claim that the economy at any time might be "out-of-equilibrium". Fluctuations in aggregate variables follow from the individuals in the society continuously re-optimizing as new information on the state of the world is revealed. Later yielded an explicit school which argued that macro-economics does not have micro-economic foundations, but is instead the tool of studying economic systems at equilibrium. 宏观经济学是一种分场经济学的行为,研究是在整个经济中,一旦所有的个人的经济决策,为公司和产业被。宏观经济学认为经济现象包括国内生产总值(GDP)以及它是如何变化影响失业的国民收入的)经济成长率、价格水平。相反,微观经济学研究的就是经济行为和决策的个体消费者,公司和行业。宏观经济学可以用来分析如何影响政府的政策的目标,比如经济增长,价格稳定,充分就业和获取可持续国际收支差额。宏观经济学有时用来指一个经济理论的主要途径,包括长期战略的期望和理性综合行为。直到30年代为止,大部分的经济分析没有独立的个人经济综合行为举止。与1930年代的经济大萧条,遭受了在所有发达国家,发展国民收入的概念和产品的统计数据,但是研究领域的宏观经济学开始扩展。具有特殊影响力的想法是,约翰•梅纳德凯恩斯理论,努力向他们解释制定了经济大萧条。在那时候,综合国民经济核算,如同我们知道他们今天,是不存在的。经济学的一个挑战是一场斗争调和宏观经济政策和微观经济政策,模型。开始于20世纪50年代,macroeconomists发达micro-based模型的宏观经济行为(如消费函数)。1月Tinbergen荷兰经济学家第一个全面发展国家宏观经济模型,该模型他第一次建成为荷兰和后应用于美国和英国二战之后。第一个全球宏观经济模型,沃顿计量预测伙伴联系工程项目,发生在劳伦斯发起克莱恩和被提及他的嘉奖经济学诺贝尔经济学奖1980年。理论家如罗伯特·卢卡斯认为(是在上世纪70年代),认为至少有一些传统的凯恩斯(英国经济学家约翰梅纳德凯恩斯)宏观经济模型都是可疑的,因为他们不是来源于假设的个人行为,虽然现在还不清楚这些失败在微观经济的假定,或是对宏观经济模型。然而,最新凯恩斯主义的宏观微观模型提出了大致以支持他们的宏观经济理论有争议,一些凯恩斯主义者的想法,微观经济基础是必要的,如果模型是分析有用的。打个比方可能是,这样的事实,即量子phisics并不完全符合相对论´,并不代表没有realtivity是假的。许多重要的微观经济假设从来没有被证明,而有些人的证明是错误的。各种各样的思想学派并不总是在彼此的直接竞争,尽管他们有时会达到不同的结论。宏观经济学是一种前所未有的领域的研究。研究经济学的目标不是"正确",而是是精确的。很有可能是学校目前尚无一个经济思想完全捕捉运作方式的经济。不过,他们的贡献每一小块整体难题。当你学会更多关于每个思想学派,它能把方面的每一个为了达到一个通知的合成。传统的区别是留给经济学两种不同的方法,重点凯恩斯经济学和供方需求;(或古典)经济学、关注供应。也都是典型的观点完全排除其他,但大多数学校都往往清晰地强调一个或另一个是的理论基础。•凯恩斯经济学交融在总需求,以解释失业率和商业周期。商业周期波动,应减少通过财政政策(政府花费或多或少根据实际情况)和货币政策。早期凯恩斯主义的宏观经济学是“活动家,定期使用《召唤的政策稳定资本主义经济,虽然有些凯恩斯主义要求使用收入政策。•供给的经济学的作用很明显地在当前货币政策与财政政策。关注于货币政策应该是完全对价格的钱所确定的货币供应的需求的特点,为了金钱。它提倡货币政策,直接目标钱的价值,不目标利率。典型的钱的价值在于用参考金或其他参考。财政政策的重点是提高政府农业投资价值的收入为一个明确的认识税收的影响在国内贸易。它设置了过度强调了说的法律,它表明不会发生经济衰退需求下降、因为没有缺钱。•货币主义的带领下,由弗里德曼,认为始终通货膨胀是一种货币现象。财政政策拒绝,因为会导致“挤退”的私人生活。此外,它不希望对抗通货膨胀或通货紧缩采用主动需求管理在凯恩斯经济学,通过货币政策规则,即坚持的增长速度恒定的钱。凯恩斯•新经济发达的部分原因是为了适应新古典经济学、致力于提供凯恩斯现代经济学的微观经济基础显示出了市场的不完善就能名正言顺的需求管理等。•奥地利经济学是个自由放任主义的学校的宏观经济。它侧重于商业周期,而政府或中央银行的干扰导致偏离自然失业率的兴趣。•Post-Keynesian经济学所代表了凯恩斯经济学主流的作用,强调历史过程中不确定性和宏观经济。•新古典经济学。原理论动力的费用是凯恩斯经济学缺乏有效的微观经济基础——亦即其断言不成立于基本经济理论。这所学校出现在20世纪70年代。这所学校断言它是没有道理的主张经济会随时out-of-equilibrium”。波动的总变量遵从的在这个社会的个人不断re-optimizing新信息的状态的世界就会显现出来。后来取得了一个显式学校一样,认为宏观经济学没有微观经济基础,反而学习经济系统的工具在平衡。

经济学人：加拿大的住宅市场Finance and Economics; 财经；Canada's housing market; 加拿大的住宅市场；Time for a bigger needle; 该出手时就出手；The latest attempt to prick a bubble;戳破泡沫的最新举措；经济学人：Canada's reputation for financial regulation is starry. Its banksgot through the crisis unscathed. According to Moody's, a ratings agency, Royal Bank of Canadasits alongside HSBC and JPMorgan Chase in the top tier of global banks. And Canadianpolicymakers are old hands at pulling “macroprudential” levers of the sort now in vogue amongrich-world central banks.加拿大的金融监管一向广受赞誉。它的银行业在这场危机中做到了独善其身。根据评级机构穆迪的报告，加拿大皇家银行与汇丰银行以及摩根大通同列，跻身全球银行界的第一梯队。同时，加拿大的政策制定者也是运用宏观审慎政策的老手，这一政策如今也常被其他富国的央行使用。But questions still nag. Some say that Canada's banks are flattered by a huge indemnity offeredby Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp (CMHC), a public institution that insures mortgages witha loan-to-value ratio of more than 80%. CHMC's book grew to 567 billion Canadian Dollar(557 billion Dollar) in 2011, up from 345 billion Canadian Dollar four years earlier. And Canada'shousing market looks very frothy on some measures: The Economist's analysis of price-to-rentratios suggests that Canadian properties were about 75% above their long-run “fair value” in thefirst quarter of 2012 (see chart). Although less than 0.5% of CHMC's mortgages are in arrears, such exuberance is a worry. The central bank recently labelled housing as “the most importantdomestic risk to financial stability in Canada”.但是，仍有问题缠身。部分人士认为，加拿大的银行被加拿大抵押和住房公司（CMHC）提供的巨额补偿金美化了，CMHC是一家为贷款估值比率超过80%的抵押贷款提供保险的公共机构。在2011年，CHMC的抵押贷款额从四年前的3450亿增长到了5670亿加元（合5570亿美元）。并且，从一些指标来看，加拿大的房地产充斥着泡沫：《经济学人》以房价租金比所做的分析显示，在2012年第一季度，加拿大的物业价格高出它们的长期公允价值75%。纵然仅有低于0.5%的CHMC抵押贷款存在拖欠的情况，但这样的繁荣仍让人忧虑。最近，央行也冠以楼市 “危及加拿大金融稳定性的最大国内隐患”。Repeated efforts by policymakers to take the heat out of housing have not had a noticeableeffect. So on June 21st Jim Flaherty, the finance minister, had another go, his fourth in fouryears. Some of the new measures were cosmetic. Buyers of homes worth more than 1m Dollarhave been able to get mortgage-default insurance from CMHC with a downpayment of only 5%. In practice, it is hard to find buyers in this bracket who do not have lots of equity in their homes. But after July 9th mortgages for homes of this value will not be eligible for CMHC coverage.政策制定者们给楼市降温的不断尝试并无明显成效。于是，在6月21日，加拿大财长吉姆·费拉逖，在四年来第四次出台了一些新举措。新措施中的一些不过是表面功夫。价值过百万美元住宅的买主能得到由CMHC担保的债务违约保险以及首付仅付5%的优惠待遇。而事实上，很少有这类购房者在购房时不以大量自有资金支付价款的。不过，在6月9日之后，这类住宅将不再适用于CMHC的保险范围。Other measures have more teeth. The maximum amortisation period for a mortgage will now be25 years, down from 30. That should hurt demand: last year about 40% of new mortgages werefor terms longer than that. Refinancing a home will be allowed only up to 80% of its value, downfrom 85%. Homebuyers will have to demonstrate their housing costs are no more than 39% oftheir gross household income. On top of Mr Flaherty's measures, the Office of theSuperintendent of Financial Institutions, Canada's banking regulator, slapped a loan-to-value limitof 65% on borrowing against home equity.其他那些则更为有力。抵押贷款最长还贷期限如今将从30年降低至25年。这势必将减少需求：去年约有40%的新贷款的期限是超过25年的。允许的房屋再融资的上限从房屋价值的85%降至只有80%。购房者还须证明他们的住房支出不超过家庭总收入的39%。费拉逖的举措中，紧随其后的是，加拿大的银行监管部门，联邦金融机构监督办公室，将贷款和自有资金间的贷款估值比率的限制猛降至65%。Craig Alexander, the chief economist for TD Financial Group, estimates all this will be theequivalent of about a 1% rise in mortgage rates for most homebuyers. He believes that willproduce a slow unwinding of the housing market. If he is right, and Mr Flaherty's variousinterventions avoid the collateral damage that would be caused by an actual interest-rate rise, Canada's admirers will have another thing to swoon over.多伦多道明银行金融集团首席经济学家，克雷格·亚历山大估计，所有这些措施对于购房者而言将等同于抵押贷款利率上升1%。他认为这将促使房产市场缓慢回归。如果他的观点正确，并且费拉逖的各种干预手段能够避免可能引发实际利率上升的附带伤害，那么如此一来，加拿大的崇拜者们又将有一个可以津津乐道的话题了。