Iii основы реферирования и аннотирования. Практические рекомендации

Вид материалаМетодические рекомендации

Содержание


Fixed and floating voters.
Do you want to be in my band?
Подобный материал:
1   ...   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   ...   40

Text C.


1. Прочитайте следующий текст и найдите ключевые слова и предложения (фрагменты):

FIXED AND FLOATING VOTERS.



Every time one of the world’s curren­cies plunges, policy-makers start to wonder aloud whether anything can be done to prevent a repeat performance. The recent fall in the dollar has proved no exception. The president of the European Commission, and various French politicians are among those who have called for a revival of in­ternational exchange-rate agreements. Such calls have rekindled a long-running debate among economists about the rela­tive merits of fixed and floating exchange-rate systems.

The beauty of a floating-rate system is that it allows a country to adjust monetary policy without worrying about the ex­change rate. Provided that domestic wages and prices do not immediately ad­just to offset any exchange-rate move, it also allows them to respond to an external shock, such as an oil-price rise, through a change in the exchange rate rather than a more painful domestic adjustment.

There are two snags, however. Float­ing exchange rates can be highly volatile. This can cause price instability that harms prospects for trade and investment. Un­der a floating-rate system a government may also be tempted to pursue an exces­sively loose monetary policy, which re­sults in higher inflation. Fixed-exchange regimes avoid botn of these problems; but at the cost of making it harder for coun­tries to adjust to external shocks.

Ideally, governments would like the best of both worlds - currency stability, but also the ability to adjust exchange rates if absolutely necessary. Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the success of any managed exchange-rate regime that seeks to deliver this combination will depend on three tests. It must be flexible enough to cope with economic shocks. It must be robust enough to convince the markets that gov­ernments are committed to defending their pegged rates in all but the most ex­ceptional circumstances. And it must be able to see off speculators who decide to put this commitment to the test.

Some previous managed exchange-rate systems have more or less done all this. Under the classic gold standard, for instance, countries suspended convert­ibility if their economies ran into serious trouble. Under the Bretton Woods system of fixed-but-adjustable exchange rates, winch ended in 1971, the International Monetary Fund provided liquidity to help countries maintain their exchange-rate peg. In circumstances or “rundamental disequilibrium”, however, they were allowed to devalue. The early years of the Uropean exchange-rate mecha­nism (ERM) also passed the tests.

But in future similar regimes will find it harder. Political pressure to use the exchange rate to cope with economic shocks will undermine a pegged system’s credibility, tempting speculators to attack it. And he suggests that greater capital mo­bility will make it increasingly difficult for countries to defend target parities against speculators.

That may not stop politicians from trying. Among other things, they can raise interest rates, reimpose capital controls or call for foreign support to prop up their currencies. But this will not be enough. Financial in­novations such as derivatives and in­creased cross-border investment will make capital controls all but impossible to enforce. Raising interest rates to defend a currency is often politically unpopu­lar - and, in debt-laden countries, may be counter-productive because it increases debt-interest costs. Nor can any country count on unlimited intervention by oth­ers to support its currency.

Any sys­tem based on explicit exchange-rate tar­geting is doomed. The only options are a floating-rate system or mone­tary unification. This does not mean that countries cannot manage their floating rates by intervening in currency markets; but it does mean that they should not tar­get specific rates. There is evidence to sup­port this view: fewer countries now peg their exchange rates than a decade ago and the ERM, having shed both the pound sterling and the Italian lira, has had to broaden its target ranges.


Do you want to be in my band?

Other economists disagree. They think that exchange-rate systems can be designed to cope with market pressures, and still provide more stability than floating rates. One much-discussed proposal has been put forward by John Williamson of the Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. He suggests that countries could pre-­announce bands for their real exchange rates, specifying a central rate with a 10% margin on either side. Governments would try to keep their nominal exchange rates within this zone. If necessary, rates could be realigned before the limits were reached. Faced with an “unwarranted” speculative attack, a country could tem­porarily suspend its commitment.

Such a system would retain some flexibilily, white being more stable than man­aged floating. However if the bands were always moved before they were tested, target zones would be little different from man­aged floating. If they were not, the system would suffer from the same problems as fixed-rate regimes. At the margin, the practical difference between the two sys­tems may be small. But the success of ei­ther will depend, as any exchange-rate system must, on whether governments will allow the exchange rate to be a big fac­tor in setting domestic policies.


VOCABULARY


1. to plunge

резко снижаться (о курсе валют)

2. floating exchange-rate-system

система плавающих валютных курсов

3. to adjust exchange-rates

корректировать, изменять валютные курсы

4. flexible

гибкий, способный изменяться (о валютном курсе)

5. robust

зд. Устойчивый

6. pegged rates

«привязанные» курсы, т.е. привязка курса валюты к какому-либо ориентиру (например, другой валюте)

7. managed exchange-rate-system

система управляемых валютных курсов

8. «fundamental disequilibrium»

валютный курс при отсутствии «фунда-ментального равновесия»

9. target parities

намеченный паритет валют

10. derivatives

производные финансовые инструменты (фьючерсы, опционы и т.д.)

11. debt-interest costs

расходы, связанные с погашением и обслуживанием долга

12. targeting

таргетирование, т.е. установление ориенти-ров (роста)

13. band (s)

предел(ы) колебаний валютных курсов

14. margin

зд. разница между курсами валют

15. to realign (central rates)

пересмотреть (центральные курсы валют)

16. to be tested

зд. приближаться к предельному уровню (о валютном курсе)


2. Переведите отрывок «Do you want to be in my band ?».

3. Напишите реферат и аннотацию данного текста.


«Financial Markets».

Topics for discussion
  1. The world’s financial markets grow more integrated.
  2. Closer world integration may hurt profits of financial intermediaries.
  3. South-East Asian markets have always been like a warrant to the world stock market: they go up more and they go down more.
  4. International coordination over exchange rates may help to avoid the world’s currencies plunges.
  5. Financial innovations and increased cross-border investment make capital controls all but impossible to enforce.