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1 Pundits who want to sound judicious are fond of warning against generalizing. Each country is different, they say, and no one story fits all of Asia. This is, of course, silly: all of these economies plunged into economic crisis within a few months of each other, so they must have had so mething in common.
2 In fact, the logic of catastrophe was pretty much the same in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea. (Japan is a very different story. ) In each case investors -- mainly, but not entirely, foreign banks who had made short-term loans -- all tried to pull their money out at the same time. The result was a combined banking and currency crisis: a banking crisis because no bank can convert all its assets into cash on short notice; a currency crisis because panicked investors were trying not only to convert long-term assets into cash, but to convert baht or rupiah into dollars. In the face of the stampede, governments had no good options. If they let their currencies plunge, inflation would soar and companies that had borrowed in dollars would go bankrupt; if they tried to support their currencies by pushing up interest rates, the same firms would probably go bust from the combination of debt burden and recession. In practice, countries split the difference and paid a heavy price regardless.
3 Was the crisis a punishment for bad economic management？ Like most cliches, the catchphrase "crony capitalism"has prospered because it gets at something real excessively cozy relationships between government and business really did lead to a lot of bad investments. The still primitive financial structure of Asian business also made the economies peculiarly vulnerable to loss of confidence. But the punishment was surely disproportionate to the crime, and many investments that look foolish in retrospect seemed sensible at the time.
4 Given that there were no good policy options, was the policy response mainly on the right track？ There was frantic blame-shifting when everything in Asia seemed to be going wrong; now there is a race to claim credit when some things have started to go right. The International Monetary Fund points to Korea's recovery -- and more generally to the fact that the sky didn't fall after all -- as proof that its policy recommendations were right. Never mind that other IMF clients have done far worse, and that the economy of Malaysia -- which refused IMF help, and horrified respectable opinion by imposing capital controls -- also seems to be on the mend: Malaysia's Prime Minister, by contrast, claims full credit for any good news -- even though neighboring economies also seem to have bottomed out.
5 The truth is that an observer without any ax to grind would probably conclude that none of the policies adopted either on or in defiance of the IMF's advice made much difference either way. Budget policies, interest rate policies, banking reform. -- whatever countries tried, just about all the capital that could flee, did. And when there was no more money to run, the natural recuperative powers of the economies finally began to prevail. At best, the money doctors who purported to offer cures provided a helpful bedside manner; at worst, they were like medieval physicians who prescribed bleeding as a remedy for all ills.
6 Will the patients stage a full recovery？ It depends on exactly what you mean by "full". South Korea's industrial production is already above its pre-crisis level; but in the spring of 1997 anyone who had predicted zero growth in Korean industry over the next two years would have been regarded as a reckless doomsayer. So if by recovery you mean not just a return to growth, but one that brings the region's performance back to something like what people used to regard as the Asian norm, they have a long way to go.
According to the passage, which of the following is NOT the writer's opin
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听力原文： Hong Kong's unemployment rate has remained stable at 6.3% in the past three months, as business conditions have improved in the last month. Figures indicated that from March to May this year the size of the labor force was provisionally at 3,462,000 while the number of unemployed people stood at 216,000. The number of cases of insolvency, sensational business and retrenchment and the number of workers affected by these cases as recorded by the Labor Department have shown a climbing trend in recent months. From March to May 1999, 78 such cases involving 3,882 workers were recorded as compared to 93 cases affecting 5,220 workers for the three months from December 1998 to February 1999. Figures for the period from March to May 1999 when compared with those from February to April 1999 show an increase in the unemployment rate mainly in the renovation maintenance, whole-sale and retail and transport sectors, which have offset the decrease seen in the construction, import and export and financing sectors.
In the recent three months, Hong Kong's unemployment rate has
2 As one environmentalist put it to me: "You had the ludicrous situation in which Luxembourg had more listed public bathing beaches than the whole of the United Kingdom. It was preposterous."
3 Meanwhile, Blackpool continued to discharge raw sewage straight into the sea. Finally, after much pressure from both environmental groups and the European Union, the local water authority built a new waste-treatment facility for the whole of Blackpool and neighboring communities. The facility came online in June 1996. For the first time since the industrial revolution Blackpool's waters are safe to swim in.
4 That done, the town is now turning its attention to making the seafront more visually attractive. The promenade, once a rather elegant place to stroll, had become increasingly tatty and neglected. "It was built in Victorian times and needed a thorough overhaul anyway," says Wood, "so we decided to make aesthetic improvements at the same time, to try to draw people back to it. ' Blackpool recently spent about $1.4 million building new kiosks for vendors and improving seating around the Central Pier and plans to spend a further $15 million on various amenity projects.
5 The most striking thing about Blackpool these days compared with 20 years ago is how empty its beaches are. When the tide is out, Blackpool's beaches are a vast plain of beckoning sand. They look spacious enough to accommodate comfortably the entire populace of northern England. Ken Welsby remembers days when, as he puts it, "you couldn't lay down a handkerchief on this beach, it was that crowded."
6 Welsby comes from Preston, 20 miles down the road, and has been visiting Blackpool all his life. Now retired, he had come for the day with his wife, Kitty, and their three young grandchildren, who were gravely absorbed in building a sandcastle. "Two hundred thousand people they'd have on this beach sometimes,"Welsby said. "You can't imagine it now, can you？"
7 Indeed I could not. Though it was a bright sunny day in the middle of summer, I counted just 13 people scattered along a half mile or so of open sand. Except for those rare times when hot weather and a public holiday coincide, it is like this nearly always now.
8 "You can't imagine how exciting it was to come here for the day when we were young." Kitty said, "Even from Preston, it was a big treat. Now children don't want the beach. They want arcade games and rides in helicopters and goodness knows what else." She stared out over the glittery water. "We'll never see those days again. It's sad really."
9 "But your grandchildren seem to be enjoying it," I pointed out.
10 "For the moment , "Ken said. "For the moment."
11 Afterward I went for a long walk along the empty beach, then went back to the town center and treated myself to a large portion of fish-and-chips wrapped in
1 How is communication actually achieved？ It depends, of course, either on a common language or on known conventions, or at least on the beginnings of these. If the common language and the conventions exist, the contributor, for example, the creative artist, the performer, or the reporter, tries to use them as well as he can. But often, especially with original artists and thinkers, the problem is in one way that of creating a language, or creating a convention, or at least of developing the language and conventions to the point where they are capable of bearing his precise meaning. In literature, in music, in the visual arts, in the sciences, in social thinking, in philosophy, this kind of development has occurred again and again. It often takes a long time to get through, and for many people it will remain difficult. But we need never think that it is impossible; creative energy is much more powerful than we sometimes suppose. While a man is engaged in this struggle to say new things in new ways, he is usually more than ever concentrated on the actual work, and not on its possible audience. Many artists and scientists share this fundamental unconcern about the ways in which their work will be received. They may be glad if it is understood and appreciated, hurt if it is not, but while the work is being done there can be no argument. The thing has to come out as the man himself sees it.
2 In this sense it is true that it is the duty of society to create conditions in which such men can live. For whatever the value of any individual contribution, the general body of work is of immense value to everyone. But of course things are not so formal, in reality. There is not society on the one hand and these individuals on the other. In ordinary living, and in his work, the contributor shares in the life of his society, which often affects him both in minor ways and in ways sometimes so deep that he is not even aware of them. His ability to make his work public depends on the actual communication system the language itself, or certain visual or musical or scientific conventions and the institutions through which the communication will be passed. The effect of these on his actual work can be almost infinitely variable. For it is not only a communication system outside him. it is also, however original he may he, a communication system which is in fact part of himself. Many contributors make active use of this kind of internal communication system. It is to themselves, in a way, that they first show their conceptions, play their music, present their arguments. Not only as a way of getting these clear, in the process of almost endless testing that active composition involves. But also, whether consciously or not, as a way of putting the experience into a communicable form. If one mind has grasped it, then it may be open to other minds.
3 In this deep sense, the society is in some ways already present in the act of composition. This is always very difficult to understand, but often, when we have the advantage of looking back at a period, we can see, even if we cannot explain, how this was so. We can see how much even highly original individuals had in common, in their actual work, and in what is called their "structure of feeling", with other individual workers of the time, and with the society of that time to which they belonged. The historian is also continually struck by the fact that men of this kind felt isolated at the very time when in reality they were beginning to get through. This can also be noticed in our own time, when some of the most deeply influential men feel isolated and even rejected. The society and the communication are there, but it is difficult to recognize them, difficult to be sure.
Creative artists and thinkers achieve communication by
听力原文： The United States has begun to review Russian documents about the life and death of former President John F. Kennedy and expected to release them once the review is complete, the White House said on Monday. The documents which Russia gave the United States on Sunday could be a particular interest because Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald lived in the former Soviet Union for several years before he returned to the United States and was arrested for killing the former President on November 22nd, 1963. Russian President Boris Yeltsin surprised US president Bill Clinton on Sunday when he turned over what was described as the results of an exhausted search of Russian government, military and private archives for papers about Kennedy and his assassination.
The Russian documents are expected to draw great attention because
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