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  3. Many people -- especially the baby-boomers born between 1946 and 1964, who

Many people -- especially the baby-boomers born between 1946 and 1964, who

游客2024-05-31  16
问题      Many people -- especially the baby-boomers born between 1946 and 1964, who will be retiring over the next 20 years or so -- will be asking themselves whether they will have enough to keep them comfortable in their old age, even if they save a lot. After all, it is generally accepted that they cannot rely on the state. The burden on the taxpayer would be too great.
     But, as already noted, financial wealth is just a claim on the assets produced by the economy. Making pensions a claim on the private sector rather than the public purse does not change the problem. Will businesses in 20 years’ time be producing enough income to pay the rewards and bond interest to pay baby-boomers their private-sector pensions? And what will happen to asset prices if the boomers try to cash what they hold?
     In demographic(人口统计学) terms, asset markets could be seen as a pyramid scheme, in which each generation aims to sell its accumulated savings to the next. Provided the next generation is larger than the one that preceded it, the savers can sell their assets at higher prices. That was the case for much of the 20th century.
     The baby-boomers will upset the pattern. If they retire at 65, they will start offloading their assets in 2011. And even in America, which has fewer demographic problems than Japan, there are not enough new savers coming along to replace them. Some hope that emerging markets will solve the problem, by acting as buyers of developed market assets and a source of higher returns for investors in rich countries, but: the theory is unproven.
    In a 136-page report, "The Business of Ageing", John Llewellyn and Camille Chaix-Viros of Nomura, a Japanese bank, examine the potential effect on financial markets of ageing Western populations.  As the baby-boomers run down their savings to fund their retirement, you would expect, other things being equal, real interest rates to rise (because the supply of savings will fall, relative to demand).  As a consequence of this, the valuation of assets such as bonds and equities should come under pressure. Evidence partly backs up this theory. For example, economists can plot a relationship between the proportion of the population aged between 35 and 59 (when people save most) and the level of real interest rates. The relationship has been negative, as theory would predict, since the 1980s (lots of savings kept interest rates low). The strong Western stockmarkets of the 1990s coincided with the boomers’ peak savings years.  [br] What can we learn about the asset markets from the passage?
选项 A、It is questionable whether American economy can produce enough assets.
B、If pensions are owned by private sector, baby-boomers don’t need to worry.
C、The pyramid-scheme pattern of asset markets is undeniablly fixed.
D、Savers can always sell assets at higher prices.
答案 A
解析 推理判断题。定位句指出了资产市场的特点。其实作者从第二段开始就对资产市场进行了描述。第二段第三句提出疑问will business in 20 years’ time be producing enough  income... to pay baby-boomers their private-sector pensions，可见对于美国经济能否有足够的资本来支付人们的养老金，作者仍持质疑的态度，A 符合题意。
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