Wall Street wise guys used to mock Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as "Helicopter Ben" because he once spoke approvingly o

admin2015-03-25  31

问题     Wall Street wise guys used to mock Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as "Helicopter Ben" because he once spoke approvingly of a Milton Friedman money metaphor about how a "helicopter drop" of greenbacks could stop prices from collapsing. But lately the big-money types have fixed their eyes firmly on the skies, searching hopefully for a Bernanke air rescue from the spreading subprime mortgage crisis.
    In a now notorious(thanks to YouTube)rant on CNBC, money manager turned TV personality Jim Cramer urged Fed action as he blasted Bernanke for doing nothing to ease the pain: "Bernanke is being an academic! It is no time to be an academic. ... He has no idea how bad it is out there. He has no idea!…We have Armageddon!"
    And since that public financial freakout, the bad news has continued to flow about the mortgage credit crunch, and stocks have continued to fall. Not that the Fed has done nothing. Over the past week and a half, it has injected tens of billions of dollars into the banking system via short-term loans to help keep credit markets orderly.
    But Bernanke has a far bigger financial weapon in his arsenal: cutting short-term interest rates. The federal funds rate has been stuck at 5.25 percent since June 2006. Are Bernanke and company finally getting ready to cut rates to keep the mortgage meltdown from dragging the economy into recession?
    No flinching. Money manager Louis Navellier thinks so. As he sees it, the crisis is a potential $67 billion mess in a $14 trillion economy, so probably "the problem is getting more attention than it deserves." Indeed, the underlying economy still looks pretty robust. Many economists now think growth topped a 4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, not the 3.4 percent first estimated by the Commerce Department. But Navellier worries that the torrent of bad lending news is "creating a lot of fear... That’s why the Fed is likely to cut rates soon... Fear can lead to panic, and the Fed does not want to get anywhere near that." Many on Wall Street agree. Short-term-interest-rate futures contracts are now trading as if a quarter-point cut at the Fed’s September policy meeting is a deadlock cinch.
    And since one-and-done rate cuts are rare, explains Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, there might be several rate reductions over the coming year, bringing the fed funds rate down to 4. 5 percent by next summer. But Hoffman thinks the Fed won’t pull the trigger until October—after it sees back-to-school sales data—with perhaps a stronger hint of a rate cut in its September policy meeting statement. "Bernanke doesn’t want to appear to be flinching in the face of market turmoil," Hoffman says.
Ben Bernanke used to be mocked as "Helicopter Ben" because

选项 A、he was not as wise as the Wall Street guys.
B、he likes to go around America by air.
C、he once quoted Milton Friedman’s metaphor about money.
D、he has no idea in dealing with financial crisis.

答案C

解析 推理判断题。由题干关键词Ben Bernanke used to be mocked和“Helicopter Ben”定位至第一段。该段提到华尔街人士对Ben Bemanke的看法。由他曾经得意地引用了经济学家米尔顿.弗里德曼关于金钱的一个比喻可推知,这便是他被叫做“Helicopter Ben”的原因,[C]与此意思一致,故为答案。原文只是提及华尔街的聪明人士,并未将他们和Ben Bernanke进行对比,故排除[A];[B]是对原文Helicopter的误解,原文只是借用Helicopter的比喻,并非真正乘坐,故排除;由原文“最近这些金融大亨们都满怀希望地寻找伯南克式空中救援以便从正在扩散的次级房贷危机中得以解脱”可排除[D]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/lqFRFFFM
0

最新回复(0)