【正文】 Unit Six The Return of Depression Economics — Paul Krugman Troubled Asian Economies have turned out to have many policy and institutional weaknesses. But if America or Europe should get into trouble next year or the year after, we can be sure that in retrospect analysts will find equally damning things to say about Western values and institutions. And it is very hard to make the case that Asian policies were any worse in the 1990s than they had been in previous decades, so why did so much go so wrong so recently? Unit Six The Return of Depression Economics — Paul Krugman The answer is that the world became vulnerable to its current travails not because economic policies had not been reformed, but because they had. Around the world countries responded to the very real flaws in postDepression policy regimes by moving back toward a regime with many of the virtues of preDepression freemarket capitalism. However, in bringing back the virtues of oldfashioned capitalism, we also brought back some of its vices, most notably a vulnerability both to instability and sustained economic slumps. Unit Six The Return of Depression Economics — Paul Krugman Exercise 2 Exercise 3 :c Narrowest:a :b Narrowest:a :b Narrowest:c ? Ⅳ . Answer key for Writing research papers 。世界各國對大蕭條后政策中真正存在的缺陷所作出的反應是退回去重新實行過去的一套制度，這種制度在大蕭條前自由市場的資本主義中具有許多優(yōu)點。但是，如果美國或歐洲明年或后年也陷入危機，我們可以斷定，一些分析家回過頭來同樣會挑出一些有關西方價值觀和制度方面的毛病來。(see...as。 (magnify) Although devaluation will magnify exports, it can also lead to the increasing foreigncurrencydenominated debt； it can even cause the collapse of people’s confidence in the government. Therefore, the government did not dare to adopt the devaluation policy without careful consideration. Unit Six The Return of Depression Economics — Paul Krugman 4. 外債的增加并非是經濟發(fā)展的必不可少的成本，因為外債的增加雖然會在短期內提高經濟增長速度，但從長期來看，它會加重國內企業(yè)負擔，導致國際收支不平衡。(dilemma) The government has now slipped into such a dilemma that if it wants to improve its balance of payments, it will need to lower the exchange rate, but to lower the exchange rate will lead to inflation. Unit Six The Return of Depression Economics — Paul Krugman 3. 雖然貶值能擴大出口，但它也能導致外債的增加，甚至導致政府信用的崩潰。 or capital controls, which can reconcile a relatively stable exchange rate with some moary independence but only at the cost of other problems. Since World War I broke up the classical gold standard, all of these regimes have been tried repeatedly. The conventional wisdom about which regime is most desirable has itself gone through cycles. But two years ago the majority opinion among economists—and less decisively in the international policy munity—was clearly in favor of floating rates. There had once been considerable sympathy for attempts to limit exchange rate variation: for example, the “adjustable pegs” of the Bretton Woods Unit Six The Return of Depression Economics — Paul Krugman era, under which rates were normally held within narrow bands but adjusted on occasion as circumstances warranted. But experience showed that the mere hint of a possible devaluation in the face of highly mobile capital provoked massive speculative attacks. So such promise systems broke down, with countries either giving up and floating their rates or averting speculation by ruling out any possibility of future changes in currency values. And that meant that adopting any sort of fixed exchange rate required in effect giving up pletely on moary adjustment. Hong Kong offers a classic example. Economic turmoil in the rest of Asia and the devaluation of many neighboring countries’ currencies have left Hong Kong clearly overpriced and led to record unemployment. No law would prevent the textbook solution—a onetime devaluation of the Hong Kong dollar. But the city’s economic authorities have concluded that the only way to prevent massive speculation against that currency every time there is an economic downturn is to mit themselves firmly to keeping its value in . dollars constant. A recession must therefore simply be endured. Unit Six The Return of Depression Economics — Paul Krugman A country could avoid locking its exchange rate by reinstituting capital controls of the kind that prevailed for the first two decades of Bretton Woods, which allowed the pegs of