经贸英语文章选读Unit 13 Economic Crisis

单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,Unit 13 Economic Crisis,CONTENTS,Text B,Supplement,ary Reading,Text,A,T,eaching Aims,TEACHING AIMS,After studying this,unit,you are,required to:,H,ave a general idea of the,Great Depression,and the Economic Crisis.,2.,Understand,the,causes,of,the Great,Depression.,3.,Discuss the reasons for the Economic Crisis,beginning in 2007.,4.,M,aster the difficult words and expressions,.,Text A,The Great Depression,Questions:,How much information do you know about the Great Depression?,Do you know the causes of the Great Depression?,Do you know the great people or events during the Great Depression?,Background of the Great Depression,When the US entered World War I in April 1917,labor and capital were quickly mobilized on an impressive scale by the federal government.,After World War I,the US economy moved into a long expansion.,The prevalent belief was that the economy had entered a new era of continuous growth and prosperity which would eventually eliminate poverty.,During the 50 years before the 20,th,century,the changes were the shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy,the increase of productivity,technological development,discovery of new energy sources,investments in human capital,and economies of scale.,Start of the Great Depression,The Great Depression(1929-1933)dashed all these hopes to pieces and turned the optimists into pessimists.,The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II.The*timing of the Great Depression varied across nations,but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s.,Economic historians usually attribute the start of the Great Depression to the sudden devastating collapse of US stock market prices on October 29,1929,known as Black Tuesday.However,some dispute this conclusion,and see the stock crash as a symptom,rather than a cause of the Great Depression.,Causes of the Great Depression,There were multiple causes for the first downturn in 1929.These include the structural weaknesses and specific events that turned it into a major depression and the manner in which the downturn spread from country to country.,Cause 1,there are demand-driven theories.,Keynesian British economist John Maynard Keynes argued in General Theory of Employment Interest and Money that lower aggregate expenditures in the economy contributed to a massive decline in income and to employment that was well below the average.In such a situation,the economy reached equilibrium at low levels of economic activity and high unemployment.,Breakdown of international trade(Many economists have argued that the sharp decline in international trade after 1930 helped to worsen the depression,especially for countries significantly dependent on foreign trade.Most historians and economists partly blame the American Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act(enacted June 17,1930)for worsening the depression by seriously reducing international trade and causing retaliatory tariffs in other countries.),Debt deflation:Irving Fisher argued that the predominant factor leading to the Great Depression was over-indebtedness and deflation.Fisher tied loose credit to over-indebtedness,which fueled speculation and asset bubbles.,Cause 2,there are the monetarists.,Monetarists,including Milton Friedman and current Federal Reserve System chairman Ben Bernanke,argue that the Great Depression was mainly caused by monetary contraction,the consequence of poor policymaking by the American Federal Reserve System and continued crisis in the banking system.In this view,the Federal Reserve,by not acting,allowed the money supply as measured by the M2 to shrink by one-third from 19291933,thereby transforming a normal recession into the Great Depression.,Cause 3,there are various heterodox theories.,Downplay or reject the explanations of the Keynesians and monetarists.For example,some new classical macroeconomists have argued that various labor market policies imposed at the start caused the length and severity of the Great Depression.The Austrian school of economics focuses on the macroeconomic effects of money supply,and how central banking decisions can lead to over-investment(economic bubble).The Marxist critique of political economy emphasizes the tendency of capitalism to create unbalanced accumulations of wealth,leading to over-accumulations of capital and a repeating cycle of devaluations through economic crises.,Knowledge Expansion:New Deal(,罗斯福新政,),When Franklin D.Roosevelt was elected to the White House in 1933,he proposed to remedy the situation with his New Deal,thus starting the most liberal reform policy in American history.,Agencies were set up to provide relief for destitute families,and employ millions of people in road building and flood-control projects;,To provide aupervision over the stock market;,To supervise“fair practice in industry;,4.,To raise farm prices by restricting the supply of farm commodities;,5.,T