Part C
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (10 points)
Bill Clinton likes to boast that Americas economy is in its best shape for 30 years. In many ways he is right: the expansion has hummed along for more than six years, inflation is low, and unemployment has tumbled to 4.8%, a level not seen since the 1960s. 46)Yet there is one glaring difference between todays economy and the glory days of a generation ago: saving, or rather the lack of it.
47) Last year Americans put only 4.3% of their disposable income in the piggy bank, just about half as much as their parents salted away in 1967. Unless this trend towards profligacy is stemmed, and preferably reversed, Americas “miracle economy” will rest on shaky foundations. Less obvious, however, is how to do it.
Personal saving is only one factor in Americas overall rate of thrift. Firms make a contribution through corporate saving (in fact, many economists reckon the distinction between household and corporate saving is a rather arbitrary one), and the government, too, plays a big role. The bigger the deficit, the more it drags down overall savings rates. A decade ago, Americas abysmal savings rates could be explained to a large extent by government profligacy. But now that the big and deficit has been tamed, and which the prospect of a balanced budget by 2002, it is time to turn attention to Americans themselves.
48) The picture is not pretty. Since the mid1970s the longtrend in household saving has been downwards. Recently it appeared that this picture might be changing: personal saving rates in the mid1990s appeared flat, or even on a slightly upward trend. 49) But the latest big revision to the statistics, published by the Commerce Department at the end of July, told a different story. It showed that personal savings rates are still on a downward trend, and have fallen particularly sharply in the past 18 months. At one level, this revision cheared up a bit of a mystery. Economists had been surprised at the lack of a “wealth effect”: 50) people did not seem to be spending much more, despite huge appreciation in the value of their stock market assets. The new statistics show much higher consumption.［363 Words］