Английский язык. Практический курс для решения бизнес-задач - Нина Пусенкова

About two-thirds of the increase in US dollar……. from the BRICs should come from higher real growth, with the balance through currency…….. The BRICs’ real……… could appreciate by up to 300% over the next 50 years (an…… of 2.5% a year).

The……. in GDP relative to the G6 takes place steadily over the period, but is most dramatic in the first 30 years. Growth for the BRICs is likely to slow significantly toward the end of the period, with only India seeing…….. significantly above 3% by 2050. And…….. in the BRIC are still likely to be poorer on average than in the G6 economies, with the exception of Russia. China’s…….. income could be roughly what the developed economies are now (about US $30,000).

As early as 2009, the annual increase in US dollar…….. from the BRICs could be greater than that from the G6 and more than twice as much in dollar terms as it is now.

The key…… underlying our……… is that the BRICs maintain policies and develop institutions that are supportive of growth. Each of the BRICs faces significant……….. in keeping development on track. This means that there is a good chance that our………. are not met, either through bad policy or bad luck. But if the BRICs come anywhere close to meeting the predictions set out here, the…….. for the………. of growth and economic……… could be large.

The relative importance of the BRICs as an…….. of new……… growth and spending power may shift more dramatically and quickly than expected. Higher growth in these economies could……… the impact of……… populations and slower growth in the……… economies.

Higher growth may lead to higher……… and increased demand for capital. The………. of the BRICs in investment………. could rise sharply. Capital…….. might move further in their favor, prompting major………. realignments.

Rising……… may also see these economies move through the «sweet spot» of growth for different kinds of products, as local spending patterns change. This could be an important determinant of demand and……… patterns for a range of………

As today’s advanced economies become a shrinking part of the world economy, the accompanying shifts in spending could provide significant……… for……… companies. Being invested in and involved in the right markets – particularly the right emerging markets – may become an increasingly important………. choice.

The…….. of the world’s ten largest economies may look quite different in 2050. The largest economics in the world (by GDP) may no longer be the………. (by income per capita), making strategic choices for firms more complex.

Source: Goldman Sachs Research Report, 2003 (summary), www.gs.com.

Terms:

GDP, implications, per capita, list, richest, worth, global, economy, portfolios, commodities, assumption, pricing, currency, US dollar terms, activity, flows, account for, ageing, appreciation, exchange rates, opportunities, average, shift, growth rates, individuals, spending, projections, challenges, forecasts, pattern, engine, demand, offset, advanced, weight, incomes, strategic, returns

Exercise 5. Translate into English.

Цифра недели: $56 млрд. Нашествие

Разбогатевшие компании из развивающихся стран обосновываются на Западе. В 2005 г. они потратили на покупку европейских компаний $42 млрд, а американских – $14 млрд. В сумме это в 2,5 раза больше, чем в 2004 г.

Приход новичков стал оформляться в тенденцию в последние пару лет. Одна из причин – приток в развивающиеся страны больших денег. Многие из них экспортируют сильно подорожавшие сырьевые товары. Кроме того, быстрый рост экономики этих стран привлек на их рынки акции и облигации многих международных инвесторов, в результате чего сильно снизилась стоимость заемного капитала.

Но не только легкие деньги подпитывают зарубежную экспансию. И здесь особенно показателен пример азиатских технологических компаний. Годами они «не высовывались», производили себе электронику и бытовую технику по заказам западных компаний и между тем накопили капитал, ноу-хау, сформировали производственную культуру. И теперь с уверенностью начали скупать дорогие западные бренды: в сочетании с низкозатратной производственной и сборочной базой это позволит им потеснить лидеров рынка. IBM уже невыгодно выпускать персональные компьютеры, и она продала этот бизнес китайской Lenovo.

Тайваньская BenQ теперь производит телефоны под маркой Siemens, а китайская TCL – под маркой Alcatel. Китайская Haier построила в Северной Каролине завод по производству холодильников, и министр торговли штата Боб Фэйт назвал ее «китайской General Electric». В 2005 г. Haier пыталась купить американскую Maytag, производящую популярные пылесосы Hoovers, да не хватило денег противостоять Whirlpool. Индийская Wipro, в которую раньше лишь передавали на аутсорсинг производство программного обеспечения и ИТ-услуги, теперь работает в 35 странах, а в 2005 г. купила европейскую и американскую компании. И, имея резервы в $718 млн, не собирается останавливаться.

Чего может добиться на западном рынке Россия, утонувшая в нефтедолларах (petrodollars)? Гарантировать энергетическую безопасность стран «большой восьмерки»? Но при нынешней политике «Газпрома», не предполагающей масштабные инвестиции в разработку новых месторождений, уже к 2010—2012 гг. газа, по прогнозам экспертов, не хватит даже для внутреннего рынка. И зачем тогда «Газпрому» нужна будет британская Centrica, если он не сможет ей поставить голубое топливо? Хорошо хоть есть свои Кулибины: АФК «Система» и телекоммуникационные структуры «Альфа-групп», с нуля построившие свой технологический бизнес, активно внедряются на рынки ближнего и дальнего зарубежья.

Источник: Ведомости, 15.02.06

Lesson 22

Macroeconomic Theories

Read and translate the text and learn terms from the Essential Vocabulary.

The Greatest Economist of the 20th Century: John Maynard Keynes

John M. Keynes is the world-famous author of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936.

In Keynes’s theory, macro-level trends can overwhelm the micro-level behavior of individuals. Instead of the economic process being based on continuous improvements in potential output, Keynes asserted the importance of the aggregate demand for goods as the driving factor. He argued that government policies could be used to promote demand at a macro level, and to fight unemployment and deflation.

Keynes stated that there was no strong automatic tendency for output and employment to move toward full employment levels. This conflicts with the principles of classical economics, and the supply-side economics, which assume a general tendency towards equilibrium in a restrained money creation economy.

Keynes questioned two of the dominant pillars of economic theory: the need for a gold standard, and the Say’s Law which stated that decreases in demand would only cause price declines, rather than affecting real output and employment.

It was his experience with the Treaty of Versailles that pushed him to break with previous theory. His book The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920) recounted the general economics of the Treaty and the individuals involved in making it. The book established him as an economist who had the practical skills to influence policymakers. Keynes developed the idea of monetary policy as something separate from maintaining currency against a fixed peg. He believed that economic systems would not automatically right themselves to attain «the optimal level of production». He used to say «In the long run, we are all dead,» implying that it doesn’t matter that optimal production levels are attained in the long run, because it’ll be a very long run indeed.

In the late 1920s, the world economic system began to break down, after the shaky recovery that followed World War I. Critics of the gold standard, market self-correction, and production-driven paradigms of economics moved to the fore. Dozens of different schools contended for influence. Some pointed to the USSR as a successful centrally-planned economy; others pointed to the alleged success of fascism in Italy.

Keynes stepped into this chaos and promised not to institute revolution but to save capitalism. He circulated a simple thesis: there were more factories and transportation networks than could be used at the current ability of individuals to pay and the problem was on the demand side.

Keynes and the Classics

Keynes explained the level of output and employment in the economy as being determined by effective demand. In a reversal of Say’s Law, Keynes in essence argued that «man creates his own supply,» up to the limit set by full employment.

In «classical» economic theory, adjustments in prices would automatically make demand tend to the full employment level. Keynes, pointing to the sharp fall in employment and output in the early 1930s, argued that whatever the theory, this self-correcting process had not happened.

Wages and Spending

Even in the worst years of the Depression, the classical theory defined economic collapse as simply a lost incentive to produce. Mass unemployment was caused only by high and rigid real wages. The proper solution was to cut wages.

To Keynes, the determination of wages is more complicated. He argued that it is not realbut nominal wages that are set in negotiations between employers and workers. It is not a barter relationship. First, nominal wage cuts would be difficult to put into effect because of laws and wage contracts. Even classical economists admitted that these exist; unlike Keynes, they advocated abolishing minimum wages, trade unions, and long-term contracts, increasing labor-market flexibility. However, to Keynes, people will resist nominal wage reductions, even without unions, until they see other wages falling and a general drop of prices.

He also argued that to boost employment, real wages had to go down: nominal wages would have to fall more than prices. However, it would reduce consumer demand, so that the aggregate demand for goods would drop. This would in turn reduce business sales revenues and expected profits. Investment in new plant and equipment would then become more risky. Instead of raising business expectations, wages cuts could make matters much worse. If wages and prices were falling, people would start to expect them to fall. This could make the economy spiral downward as those who had money would wait as falling prices made it more valuable – rather than spending.

Excessive Saving

To Keynes, excessive saving, i.e. saving beyond planned investment, was a serious problem encouraging recession, even depression. Excessive saving results if investment falls due to falling consumer demand, over-investment in earlier years, or pessimistic business expectations, and if saving does not immediately fall in step.

The classical economists argued that interest rates would fall due to the excess supply of «loanable funds». The first diagram from The General Theory shows this process. Assume that fixed investment in plant and equipment falls from «old I» to «new I» (step a). Step b: the resulting excess of saving causes interest-rate cuts, abolishing the excess supply: so again we have saving (S) equal to investment. The interest-rate fall prevents that of production and employment.

Keynes argued against this laissez faire response. The graph shows his argument, assuming again that fixed investment falls (step A). First, saving does not fall much as interest rates fall, since the income and substitution effects of falling rates go in conflicting directions. Second, since planned investment in plant and equipment is mostly based on long-term expectations of future profitability, that spending does not rise much as interest rates fall. So S and I are drawn as inelastic in the graph.

Given the inelasticity of both demand and supply, a large interest-rate fall is needed to close the saving/investment gap. As drawn, this requires a negative interest rate at equilibrium (where the new I line would intersect the old S line). However, this negative interest rate is not necessary to Keynes’s argument.

Third, Keynes argued that saving and investment are not the main determinants of interest rates. Instead, the supply of and the demand for money determine interest rates in the short run. Neither change quickly in response to excessive saving to allow fast interest-rate adjustment.

Finally, because of fear of capital losses on assets besides money, Keynes suggested that there might be a «liquidity trap» setting a floor under which interest rates cannot fall. (In this trap, bond holders, fearing rises in interest rates (because rates are so low), fear capital losses on their bonds and thus try to sell them to attain money (liquidity).) Even economists who reject this liquidity trap now realize that nominal interest rates cannot fall below zero. The equilibrium suggested by the new I line and the old S line cannot be reached, so that excess saving persists.