The price are rising __ they expected.

A.rising

B.going

C.getting

D.setting

A．The rising price of gas.

B．People's concern for air pollution.

C．The growth of bicycle production.

D．The high quality of bicycles.

What's the major cause of the higher price according to the passage？

A．Higher taxes on carbon emissions.

B．Changes of the lifestyle.

C．The rising living standards.

D．Rising energy costs.

What is the author's forecast about the future oil price or economy？

A．The economy will stay unaffected by the high oil price.

B．The economy will be hit if the oil price keeps high.

C．The oil price will surely drop by the end of the year.

D．The oil price will keep on rising in the rest of the year.

It can be inferred from the passage that a bear is going to gain money if ______.

A．the stock price is rising

B．the stock price is dropping

C．the bulls are withdrawing

D．other bears are losing money

l indicator. Inflation is a period of increased 【C1】______ that causes rapid rises in prices.【C2】______ your money buys fewer goods so that you get【C3】______ for the same amount of money as before, inflation is the problem. There is a general rise【C4】______ the price of goods and services. Your money buys less. Sometimes people describe inflation as a(n)【C5】______ when "a dollar is not worth a dollar anymore".

Inflation is a problem for all consumers. People who live on a fixed income are hurt the【C6】______ Retired people, for instance, cannot【C7】______ on an increase in income as prices rise. Elderly people who do not work face serious problems in stretching their incomes to【C8】______ their needs in time of inflation. Retirement income【C9】______ any fixed income usually does not rise as fast as prices. Many retired people must cut their spending to【C10】______ rising prices. In many cases they must stop【C11】______ some necessary items, such as food and clothing. Even 【C12】______ working people whose incomes are going up, inflation can be a problem. The【C13】______ of living goes up, too. People who work must have even more money to keep up their standard of living. Just buying the things they need costs more. When incomes do not keep【C14】______ with rising prices, the standard of living goes down. People may be earning the same amount of money, but they are not living【C15】______ because they are not able to buy as many goods and services.

Government units gather information about prices in our economy and publish it as price indexes

【C16】______ the rate of change can be determined. A price index measures changes in prices using the price for a 【C17】______ year as the base. The base price is set【C18】______ 100, and the other prices are reported as a 【C19】______ of the base price. A price index makes【C20】______ possible to compare current prices of typical consumer goods, for example, with prices of the same goods in previous years.

【C1】

A．spending

B．demanding

C．consuming

D．saving

hich consumers will spend their money must study consumer behavior. He must obtain data both on resources of consumers and on the motives that tend to encourage or discourage money spending.

If an economist were asked which of three groups borrow most-- people with rising incomes, stable incomes, or declining incomes-- he would probably answer: those With declining incomes. Actually, in the years 1947 - 1950, the answer was: people with rising incomes. People with declining incomes were next and people with stable incomes borrowed the least. This shows us that traditional assumptions about earning and spending are not always reliable. Another traditional assumption is that if people who have money expect prices to go up, they will postpone buying. But research surveys have shown that this is not always true. The expectations of price increases may not stimulate buying. One typical attitude was expressed by the wife of a mechanic in an interview at a time of rising prices. "In a few months," she said, "we'll have to pay more for meat and milky we'll have less to spend on other things." Her family had been planning to buy a new car but they postponed this purchase. Furthermore, the rise in prices that has already taken place may be resented and buyer's resistance may be evoked. This is shown by the following typical comment: "I just don't pay these prices; they are too high."

The investigations mentioned above were carried on in America. Investigations conducted at the same time in Great Britain, however, yielded results that were more in agreement with traditional assumptions about saving and spending patterns. The condition most conducive to spending appears to be price stability. If prices have been stable and people consider that they are reasonable, they are likely to buy. Thus, it appears that the common business policy of maintaining stable prices is based on a correct understanding of consumer psychology.

According to the passage, if the economists want to predict the way consumers will spend their money, they should ______.

A．encourage and discourage the money spending

B．ask the media for help

C．study the data and motive of consumes

D．make close research on the traditional assumption

听力原文：M: Hello. Would you please tell me something about the stock？

W: Sure. What do you want me to start with？

M: Please start with the explanation of some terms like "a bull" and "a bear".

W: OK. A bull is a situation in which share prices are rising.

M: What about a bear then？

W: A bear is the situation in which share prices keep falling.

M: Oh, I see. But why the prices get rising or falling？

W: If there are more buyers, the price will rise. Otherwise, the price will be lower and lower.

M: How can we make money in the stock market？

W: If you believe the market will go up, you can buy in or hang on. If it turns out to be true, you can make your profit.

M: I heard that some people can earn money out of a bear market. How do they win in such a situation？

W: lf you believe the market will fall down, you can sell your shares and buy back at a lower price. The price difference is your profit.

M: It sounds easy to make money from stock investment.

W: Not at all. When you really invest in stock market, you'll get involved into the whole world.

M: What do you mean by that？

W: To decide which share you'll buy in is quite hard sometimes. You have to consider the market tendency, the growth of the company and you'd better know something about technical analysis.

M: So boring it is. I'd better invest in some fixed interest fields.

W: Certainly you can. You won't suffer from the risks. But your wallet will suffer.

M: What should I do？

W: If you really invest in stock, perhaps you should find a broker.

(20)

A．He is a stranger to the stock.

B．He likes the stock very much.

C．He is confident of his investment.

D．He is the student of the woman.

t rates. An unusually mild winter across much of the country is part of the story, but the lack of worry by consumers and business about oil prices is an even bigger part. The question remains, will we continue to glide down the economic highway or slip on oil？

Oil prices have raised overall consumer prices and cut into household purchasing power. So far the higher costs haven't deterred(阻止) buying, even buying of cars and other energy-sensitive items. The major reason for the lack of reaction is that oil is less important to the economy than it once was. Oil, which produced 45% of world energy in 1971, accounted for only 35% in 2003, with increases in nuclear and natural gas use making up the difference.

GM, Ford, and Chrysler suffered as buyers shifted to more fuel-efficient vehicles from Toyota and Honda, but the shift was hot pronounced. Admittedly, light truck sales are holding up in part because manufacturers are offering large discounts to "move the metal", but the fact that buyers are responding to those incentives shows they aren't too scared of gas prices.

Americans continue to spend more than they earn, but gasoline prices will have an effect. Although the April chain store results suggest gasoline prices aren't hurting much yet, eventually Americans will be forced to realize that they have to slow down. We expect the economy to slow in the second half of the year as the impact of higher oil prices sinks in. How much the economy slows will depend on how high oil prices remain. We expect some drop in oil prices by yearend, but I have been saying that for so long even I am starting not to believe it.

The anger against the oil companies is clearly misplaced. Exxon and friends control only a small share of world oil reserves. Most are now in the hands of state-owned oil companies. The recent move by Bolivia to nationalize its industry is only the latest in a long line of similar actions. The history of these enterprises is one of severe underinvestment and mismanagement, which tends to reduce supply and keep prices high. The risk on oil prices is primarily on the high side of our forecast.

Although I think oil prices will drop back in the medium term, to address my serious worries, I'm buying my wife a bike for Mothers' Day.

The economy at the beginning of 2006 is not affected by the high oil price mainly because ______.

A．the warm winter requires less oil to run the heaters

B．the warm winter promotes consumption, across the country

C．people believe that the oil price will drop in near future

D．people don't think the high price will make much of a difference

Recessions

On November 26, 2001, the news media announced the United States was officially in a recession, and had been since March. To most Americans, this wasn't all that surprising: Rising unemployment and a weak stock market had been in the news for months.

Money Makes the World Go Round

A recession is a prolonged period of time when a nation's economy is slowing down, or contracting; Such a slowdown is characterized by a number of different trends, including:

- People buying less stuff

- Decrease in factory production

- Growing unemployment

- Slump in personal income

- An unhealthy stock market

- By the conventional definition, this slow-down has to continue for at least six months to be considered a recession.

This definition really raises more questions than it answers. What does it mean for the economy to slow down？ Why does this happen？ And what exactly is "the economy"？

People talk about the U.S. economy as an independent entity, but it is actually the result of millions of people's actions. You can understand the basic idea of the connection between people's actions and the overall economy by looking at only a few basic concepts: producers, consumers, markets, supply and demand.

Producers and Consumers

Broadly speaking, a nation's economy is the production and consumption of goods and services in that nation. Anybody producing or consuming things in a country plays some role in the economy.

Production and consumption are intertwined. In order for people to consume things, someone has to produce those things. And in order to produce things, you need to consume things(you need to consume natural resources and people's labor, for example).

Markets

In a market economy, or a modified market economy such as the U.S. economy, production and consumption are connected in various "markets." A market is simply a place where consumers can go to buy things from producers and producers can go to sell things to consumers.

A grocery store is an example of a physical market. People who want to consume food go to the grocery store and buy it from producers through a series of middlemen. The store itself is one of the middlemen, and there are usually others along the way(distribution companies, for example). The labor market is a more abstract sort of market. In this market, businesses who want to consume work pay people to produce labor. In the stock market, consumers and producers buy and sell percentages of ownership of companies.

As you can see, almost everybody is both a producer and a consumer acting in more than one market. If you have a job, you are a producer of labor. Whenever you go shopping, you are a consumer of goods.

Supply and Demand

The ultimate goal of producers is to make money—to bring in more money than they spent producing the product. Consumers may want to satisfy their wants and needs by buying products, or they may buy products in order to make money(by reselling the products or by using the products to produce other products). In any case, consumers generally want to pay as little for goods and services as they can.

In a market, the actions of producers and consumers determine the value of goods and services. Producers are the ones who actually set prices, but they do so based on the behavior. of consumers. If nobody buys a product at a particular price, the producer knows the price is too high. If some consumers buy it, but not enough to buy everything produced, producers must either decrease the price or decrease the supply. The willingness of consumers to pay for products is known as demand. Even if there is constant high demand for a product(toilet paper, for example), individual producers need to keep the price down or consumers will just buy

A．Y

B．N

C．NG