考研英语(阅读)-试卷73
(总分60,考试时间90分钟)
2. Reading Comprehension
Section II Reading Comprehension
Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
In the first years of the 21st century, no area of the American economy has excited more emotion than the property market. First came the excitement of soaring prices. Then spirits came crashing down with the subprime crisis, and now homeowners are agonizing over how far values could fall.An even bigger story, however, may be yet to come. America should be bracing itlf for the end of the "generational housing bubble", according to a new study by Dowell Myers and SungHo Ryu of the University of Southern California. As the country"s 78 million baby-boomers retire, the report argues, the housing market will cha
nge dramatically. For three decades baby-boomers have helped push prices up: they ttled down, and then bought bigger hous and cond homes. But as the first of them celebrate their 65th birthdays in 2011, this may change. The old ll more homes than they buy. The ratio of old to working-age people is expected to grow by 67% over the next two decades. Will the younger generation be able to buy all the homes on the market? Young adults make up the bulk of new demand, with most purchasing homes when they reach their early 30s. The flood of elderly people lling their homes, Mr. Myers suggests, may lead to adrawn-outbuyers" market. Prices may fall further as younger people, perceiving a downturn, delay purchasing. This phenomenon will unfold differently across the country. Some states will begin the ll-off later than others. In 15 southern and western states—including the retirement magnets of Florida and Arizon-a—the elderly do not become net llers until their 70s. Expensive states such as California and the cold states of the mid-west and northeast are likely to lo them more quickly. The mismatch between buyers and llers may be most acute in the rustbelt, where numbers of young people and immigrants are rising slowly, if at all, says William Frey of the Brooki
ngs Institution, a think-tank. Of cour, there may be other outcomes. Suburbs, which swelled with the baby-boomers, may begin to decline. If the building industry contracts, home prices may remain more stable. Or developers may switch to rving the old, building **pact housing near amenities. Towns may make new efforts to attract immigrants, who already accounted for 40% of the growth in homeownership between 2000 and 2006. Among the unknowns, one thing is more certain: the housing market is about to enter a long period of transition. The youngest baby-boomers will not turn 65 until 2029.
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1. "An even bigger story" in Paragraph 1 implies that American property market will
A. continue to be the most exciting field in the American economy.
B. experience more dramatic changes in the following years.
C. make spirits go up with the decread housing prices.
D. have greater impact on the feelings of homeowners.
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2. According to Dowell, the baby-boomers
A. have been more likely to buy bigger and more homes.
B. may celebrate their birthdays at the age of 65.
快乐的英文C. should welcome the future change by lling more hous.
D. have made housing bubbles in the past three decades.
3. The word "drawn-out"(Line 2, Paragraph 3)most probably means
A. prolonged. B. declined.
C. delayed. D. enlarged.
4. William Frey believes that
A. people in southern states would not lo their homes until 70s.
B. people in expensive states would lo their money more quickly.
C. young people and immigrants hardly increa in the rustbelt areas.
英文名字女孩D. elderly people would not like to retire in Florida and Arizona until 70s.
5. It could be concluded from the passage that
A. suburbs would decline with incread baby-boomers.
B. housing prices would keep steady in the crisis.
C. the housing market will experience a period of transformation.
D. immigrants will be the majority of homeownership in towns.bmb
They are "financial weapons of mass destruction," to quote the famous investor Warren Buffett as he surveyed the morning-after destruction of the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis. The continuing destruction can now be called a credit crisis—a significant escalation becau credit has been the fuel powering the American economy for the past half dozen years. A whole galaxy of credit instruments has now been downgraded to th
哼唱搜歌e tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of paper loss. Another immediate effect has been a collap in cash-out borrowing from home equity from about $700 billion in 2005 to $100 billion to date. At the same time, tighter lending and mortgage standards have contributed to a dramatic decline in residential construction from a high of over 2 million units to about 800,000 predicted for next year, with a related decline in employment. A slowdown in consumer spending ems inescapable. What is now riously in question is the capacity of our financial system to provide enough credit to support the scale of investment that has maintained our long economic expansion. Coming at a time of soaring oil prices, we may have a simultaneous decline in consumer spending, residential investment, and business investment. The economy was strong in the third quarter but clearly dropping off by the end. We may be at the finish of not just the long-term borrowing bubble but the long-term spending bubble. The Federal Rerve must get ahead of the curve. Its priority must be to maintain the viability of the credit system and the flow of credit; our postmodern economy is dependent on an ongoing flow of credit. The problem for the Fed is that monetary policy may be no match for the deep structural
contradictions that plague the financial system. We are dealing here with a whole new t of credit instruments that are little understood and therefore extremely difficult to price. The economy is clearly transitioning to much slower growth, sharply tighter lending standards, a declining housing market, and pressure on consumer spending. People **panies are trying to cope with the debt accumulated during veral years of wasteful lending and spending. The real danger from a credit crisis is that everyone, from banks to corporations to houholds, may economize simultaneously. The collap of values and the risks of the credit squeeze are the worst since the Great Depression. We are going to put the economy"s resilience to a vere test.
6. According to the first paragraph, which of the following ems to be the most rious economic problem now?
A. The overall economic depression.
B. The on-going credit crisis.
C. The weapons of mass destruction.
D. The investment in housing.
7. The tighter lending and mortgage standards will probably result in
A. jump of employment rate.
B. more spending on necessities.
C. flexible cash-out borrowing.
D. a decrea of units to be built.
8. It is suggested in Paragraph 3 that
A. the financial system is able to provide enough credit to support the investment.
daretoB. the credit issue can be traced back to the economic expansion long ago.
C. the growing oil prices have influenced the business world.
blush是什么意思D. the borrowing bubble and the spending one will balance the economy.
9. We could learn from the last paragraph that the real danger from a credit crisis is
tle
A. the loss of hous built on mortgage tending.
B. the possibility of economy resilience.
C. the bankruptcy of large corporations.
D. the pressure on consumer expenditure.
10. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
A. The Credit Crisis Grows
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B. The Economy Transitions
C. The USA Declines
D. The Debt Soars
I came to feminism the way some **e to social movements in their early years: out of lf-interest. I got on the equality bandwagon becau I was a young woman with a streak of ambition a mile wide, and without a change in the atmosphere I thought I was going to wind up living a life that would make me crazy. As my father said not long ago, "Can you imagine what it would have been like if you had been born 50 years earlier? Your life would have been mirable." The great thing was that it was possible to do good for all while you were doing well for yourlf. Each of us ro on the shoulders of women who **e before us. Move up, reach down: that was the motto of tho who were worth knowing. But it was not just other women we elevated, but entire enterpris. More women on the staffs and the mastheads of the country"s largest publications changed them. It resulted in newspapers and magazines that covered women as more than a mixture of recipes and fashion collections. But there"s one question that always lurks around the margins of the battle for equal rights: how will we know when we"ve won? Sometimes it ems like a classic dance of two steps forward, one back. Indra Nooyi, an Indian-born number cruncher, was recently named CEO of Pepsi. But that makes her one
of only 11 women now running a Fortune 500 company, which works out to slightly more than 2 percent. And Forbes magazine just published an essay titled "Don"t Marry Career Women" by a male writer who couldn"t e the advantages of a wife who could pay the mortgage and support the children even if her husband lost his job or suffered a massive coronary. That kind of nonn takes you back in time, to the early days when women dumped babies on the desk of the mayor of Syracu to protest the lack of child care. Maybe it was the classic protest slogan "Don"t cook dinner—starve a rat today," but the perception was that the fight for equality was a war against men. But the battle was really against the waste of talent, the waste to society, the waste of women who had certain gifts and goals and had to suppress both. The point was not to take over male terrain but to change it becau it badly needed changing. The depth and breadth of that transformation is what reflects the success of the movement, and by that measure, women are doing well. And so is everyone el.