Внеаудиторное чтение по английскому языку. Учебное пособие

1.7 Finish the following sentences using the original text:

1 A new treaty to impose greater fiscal discipline on euro-zone members and eight others… .

2 Germany said it was reassured that Mr Samaras would stick with the programme… .

3 As the euro zone enters a double-dip recession… .

4 After all, Belgium was recently forced to make additional cuts to meet its target… 5 A final unsettling factor is the unresolved question of… .

6 The most obvious means of achieving the promoting growth at a time of austerity

is… .

1.8 Choose the correct variant.

1 The company will have to restructure its debts to avoid …. .

a)defeat;

b)default;

c)accident.

2 Oil companies were heavily criticized when they made large profits during the oil

…..of the 1970s.

a)crisis;

b)growth;

c)consumption.

3 Both sides have agreed to sign the …. .

a)threat;

b)treaty;

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c) treatment.

4 We need active policies to pull the country out of …. .

a)decision;

b)retention;

c)recession.

5 ….. for April show a slight improvement on previous months.

a)figures;

b)fractions;

c)funds.

6 Most analysts are forecasting a further downturn in the …. .

a)department store;

b)supermarket;

c)market.

7 ….. is the total value of all goods and services produced in a country, in one year, except for income received from abroad.

a)G-20;

b)GDP;

c)GNP.

8 In the current …… climate (=conditions), we must keep costs down.

a)economic;

b)economical;

c)economy.

9 This employee's should be fired because of his poor …. .

a)performance;

b)show;

c)play.

10 Euro-.... officially called the euro area, is an economic and monetary union of 17 European Union (EU) member states that have adopted the euro as their common currency.

a) region;

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b)territory;

c)zone.

1.9Write out key expressions. Make up a plan for retelling.

1.10Be ready to retell the text in class.

2 Unit 2 Lost economic time

Now almost five years old, the economic crisis rumbles on. In order to assess how much economic progress it has undone, The Economist has constructed a measure of lost time for hard-hit countries. It shows that Greece’s economic clock has been turned back furthest: it has been rewound by over 12 years. Elsewhere in the euro area, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain have lost seven years or more. Britain, the first country forced to rescue a credit-crunched bank, has lost eight years. America, where the trouble started, has lost ten (see left-hand chart).

Our clock uses seven indicators of economic health, which fall into three broad categories. Household wealth and its main components, financial-asset prices and property prices, are in the first group. Measures of annual output and private consumption are in the second category. Real wages and unemployment make up the third. A simple average of how much time has been lost in each of these categories produces our overall measure.

Stockmarkets give some of the starkest results. American equities lost a quarter of their value in the month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Shares are an important component of households’ pension-fund wealth, and in that month alone five years of gains were eradicated. The main indices have improved markedly since then: the S&P 500 is back to around 90 % of its peak value. But they were at these levels back in the late 1990s, too, so some investors will have made no capital gains in 13 years. Greek stocks were higher in 1992 than today: 20 years have been wiped away.

Recent performance is actually quite good from a historical perspective: five years on from both Wall Street’s 1929 crash and Japan’s 1989 asset bust, equities were at just 50 % of their peak values in real terms. But history also offers a warning: it took 25 years

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for American stocks to regain their 1929 highs and Japanese stocks have never made it back to their peak.

House prices have gone backwards, too. The average American homeowner is living in 2001, judging by inflation-adjusted property values. Britain has suffered less dramatic drops in house prices, but has still lost seven years. The costs of this lost time are huge: British households’ property wealth, in today’s prices, is around £500 billion ($785 billion) short of its peak; American households have lost a whopping $9,2 trillion.

How quickly economies make up lost time will depend on where they have ceded ground. Some indicators may bounce back quickly: share prices are forward-looking measures of expected returns that are constantly being reassessed. Just as they can crash down they can jump back up, boosting wealth (see figure 1).

Figure 1

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Other indicators are more sluggish. Measures of output tend to crawl, not jump. One such measure, nominal GDP, is a vital metric of governments’ debt sustainability. Since debts are set at past values, growth and inflation tend to make the burden of borrowing more manageable; a shrinking economy makes the problem worse. There are 14 countries that have gone back in time, according to the nominal GDP indicator. This group includes eight members of the European Union, all of which have to repay their debts from an eroded tax base. Portugal and Spain have been sucked back to 2008 on this measure; Ireland was richer in 2006 (see figure 2).

Figure 2

A different measure of GDP is needed to see how well consumers are doing. Inflation needs to be stripped out since it is higher output, not higher prices, that make people better off. Population growth also needs to be taken into account, since living standards are best measured on a per-person basis. Measured by real GDP per person a

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third of the 184 countries the IMF collects data for are poorer than they were in 2007. These 61 countries have each lost at least five years.

The type and location of the economies still underwater on this measure are striking (see chart). The EU has done very badly: 22 of its 27 members have lost time. Of the G7 group of large economies, only Germany has not gone backwards. The Caribbean and eastern Europe also have their fair share of submerged countries. Asia has performed much more strongly.

Our labour-market indicators provide more estimates of lost time. The OECD, a think-tank, publishes wage data for 25 rich countries. In ten of them real wages were lower in 2010 than previously, with four years lost on average by those that went backwards. Workers in Greece and Hungary had lost six years, with pay below its 2004 level.

Unlike income and GDP, there is no reason why unemployment statistics should improve year on year. But many advanced countries had managed to reduce joblessness to new lows in the years before 2007. The crisis blew all those gains away. In America the unemployment rate stands at 8,3 % of the labour force, its 1983 level. In Britain it is at its worst for 17 years. In the euro area job prospects diverge hugely: unemployment is falling in Germany but Greece, Ireland and Portugal have joblessness rates not seen since the early 1990s (see bottom chart).

These measures are the most worrying of all. Growth will reset the economic clock, providing new jobs and the resources to pay down debts. The IMF predicts that in three years Italy will be the only G7 country with real GDP lower than in 2007. Within this group, America, which is already growing again, is in a better position than Britain, which is not. But periods of unemployment scar workers even after economies have crawled back to health. For some, the time lost to the crisis will never be recovered.

(The Economist)

2.1 Read the text thoroughly and be ready to arrange the following statements into the logical order of the text:

1 How quickly economies make up lost time will depend on where they have ceded ground.

2 Now almost five years old, the economic crisis rumbles on.

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3 The IMF predicts that in three years Italy will be the only G7 country with real GDP lower than in 2007.

4 Recent performance is actually quite good from a historical perspective. 5 The OECD, a think-tank, publishes wage data for 25 rich countries.

6 Stockmarkets give some of the starkest results.

7 Inflation needs to be stripped out since it is higher output, not higher prices, that make people better off.

8 The given clock uses seven indicators of economic health, which fall into three broad categories.

2.2 Match the words with their definitions and make up sentences with them:

2.3 Insert the correct preposition.

1 The row about pay is still rumbling …. .

2 These figures do not take ….. account changes in the rate of inflation.

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3 Many illnesses fall ….. the category of stress-related illnesses.

4 The company will be forced to pay $6 million to make ….. the difference. 5 The novel is written ….. a child's perspective.

6 It would cost $1 million ….. the very least.

7 The new bridge should reduce travelling time from 50 minutes ….. 15 minutes.

2.4Say whether the statement is true or false. If the statement is false, give the correct variant:

1 The Economist’s clock uses seven indicators of economic health, which fall into three broad categories.

2 American equities lost a quarter of their value in the month after the collapse of Soviet Union.

3 There are 7 countries that have gone back in time, according to the nominal GDP indicator.

4 Many advanced countries had managed to reduce joblessness to new lows in the years before 2007.

5 The IMF predicts that in three years Italy will be the only G7 country with real GDP higher than in 2007.

2.5Answer the following questions.

1 What has the Economist done to assess how much economic progress it has undone?

2 How many indicators does the clock use? What are they? 3 When did American equities lose a quarter of their value?

4 Have American and Japanese equities reached their initial levels? 5 What does how quickly economies make up lost time depend on? 6 What is a vital metric of governments’ debt sustainability?

7 When is the average American homeowner living, judging by inflation-adjusted property values?

8 What the OECD wage data for 25 rich countries show?

9 Had many advanced countries managed to reduce joblessness to new lows in the years before 2007?

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10 What will happen to Italy in three years according to the IMF predictions?

2.7 Finish the following sentences using the original text:

1In order to assess how much economic progress it has undone…

2The main indices have improved markedly since then:…

3How quickly economies make up lost time will depend on…

4A different measure of GDP is needed to see…

5Population growth also needs to be taken into account,…

6The IMF predicts that in three years…

2.9Write out key expressions. Make up a plan for retelling.

2.10Be ready to retell the text in class.

3 Unit 3 Global poverty

The past four years have seen the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and the biggest food-price increases since the 1970s. That must surely have swollen the ranks of the poor.

Wrong. The best estimates for global poverty come from the World Bank’s Development Research Group, which has just updated from 2005 its figures for those living in absolute poverty (not be confused with the relative measure commonly used in rich countries). The new estimates show that in 2008, the first year of the finance-and-food crisis, both the number and share of the population living on less than $1.25 a day (at 2005 prices, the most commonly accepted poverty line) was falling in every part of the world. This was the first instance of declines across the board since the bank started collecting the figures in 1981 (see chart).

The estimates for 2010 are partial but, says the bank, they show global poverty that year was half its 1990 level. The world reached the UN’s “millennium development goal”

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