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  3. Borrow, Speculate and Hope The National Association

Borrow, Speculate and Hope The National Association

游客2023-12-11  56
问题                         Borrow, Speculate and Hope
    The National Association of Securities Dealers is investigating whether some brokerage houses are inappropriately pushing individuals to borrow large sums on their houses to invest in the stock market. Can we persuade the association to investigate would-be privatizers of Social Security? For it is now apparent that the Bush administration’s privatization proposal will amount to the same thing borrow trillions, put the money in the stock market and hope.
    Privatization would begin by diverting payroll taxes, which pay for current Social Security benefits, into personal investment accounts. The government would have to borrow to make up the shortfall. This would sharply increase the government’s debt. "Nevermind", privatization advocates say, "in the long run, people would make so much on personal accounts that the government could save money by cutting retirees’ benefits."
    Even so, if personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all. However, privatizers claim that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits.
    We can argue at length about whether the high stock returns such schemes assume are realistic (they aren’t) , but let’s cut to the chase in essence, such schemes involve having the government borrow heavily and put the money in the stock market. That’s because the government would, in effect, rob workers’ gains in their personal accounts by cutting those workers’ benefits.
    Once you realize what privatization really means, it doesn’t sound too responsible, does it? But the details make it considerably worse. First, financial markets would, correctly, treat the reality of huge deficits today as a much more important indicator of the government’s financial health than the mere promise that government could save money by cutting benefits in the distant future. After all, a government bond is a legally binding promise to pay, while a benefits formula that supposedly cuts costs 40 years from now is nothing more than a suggestion to future Congresses. If a privatization plan passed in 2005 called for steep benefit cuts in 2045, what are the odds that those cuts would really happen? Second, a system of personal accounts would pay huge brokerage fees. Of course, from Wall Street’s point of view that’s a benefit, not a cost. [br] In the first paragraph, individual borrowing is cited because______.
选项 A、it shares similarities with the government’s Social Security policies
B、there is no guarantee that it will be profitable in the stock market
C、it is not proper for the brokerage houses to persuade people to borrow money
D、it is an indication of the Bush administration’s serious concern over the stock market
答案 A
解析 本题考查作者的写作意图。以一个事例开篇是文章常用的写作手法，这个事例往往是一个引子。常见的情况有两种：一是事例作为夹叙夹议的叙述部分，后面的议论围绕它展开；另外一种情况是一个事例引出另外一个事例。本文就属于第二种情况，因为全文论述的重点是布什政府有关社会福利的一些宏观经济的调控举措，而非个人贷款问题。两个事情为什么相提并论?第一段末句给出了原因：因为现在很明显，布什政府的私有化措施将产生同样的效果：大量借款、投资股市并期望从中获利。由此可以得出文章开始使用个人房贷作为引子是因为两件事情有相似性，[A]项正确。
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