时间:2019-01-11 作者:英语课 分类:VOA慢速英语2008年(八)月


英语课

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.


Prices for many widely traded goods have fallen recently after big increases earlier in the year.


Oil, the world's most widely traded commodity by value, led the way. Oil prices fell in part because of a recently stronger dollar. Most oil is traded in dollars. When the dollar's exchange value increases, so do prices in foreign currencies.


Higher prices, in turn, reduce demand. For example, officials say Americans drove fifteen and a half billion fewer kilometers in May than a year before.
 
An oil drilling structure in Russia's Arctic area. Recent tensions between the United States and Russia, a big oil exporter, have influenced oil prices.


Lower prices are welcome news for buyers. But experts say the drop in demand for oil and other raw materials is also a sign of weakening economies in Europe and Japan. Recent economic reports suggest that they may be in a worse position than the United States.


The Economist 1 magazine's index of commodity prices excluding oil fell by more than twelve percent since early July.


But this week, commodities have been trading higher -- especially on Thursday as oil prices jumped. Market watchers blamed tensions between the United States and Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter, as well as a weaker dollar.


Investors 2 sold dollars and moved back into gold and other precious metals along with energy and agriculture futures 3. A Reuters news agency index showed commodities moving toward their biggest weekly gain in thirty-three years.


Oil hit an all-time high of one hundred forty-seven dollars and twenty-seven cents a barrel on July eleventh. Before Thursday's rise it was trading below one hundred twenty dollars a barrel.


Which way oil prices will go now is anyone's guess, but the recent drop has helped ease inflation fears. Consumer prices in the United States rose in July at their fastest level in seventeen years. Producer prices rose at their fastest rate in twenty-seven years.


Along with oil, prices for agricultural commodities have fallen recently. The effects, though, may be slow to bring down food prices.


Prices for most grains have fallen by twenty to thirty percent or more since the end of June.


One reason was good news from the Midwest, the agricultural heartland in the United States. Heavy rains in May and June caused the worst flooding there in fifteen years. But this month, the Department of Agriculture added about five percent to its latest estimate for this year's corn crop. The crop is expected to be the second largest ever.


And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. I'm Steve Ember.


 



n.经济学家,经济专家,节俭的人
  • He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
  • He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家,自以为什么都懂。
n.投资者,出资者( investor的名词复数 )
  • a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
  • a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会
n.期货,期货交易
  • He continued his operations in cotton futures.他继续进行棉花期货交易。
  • Cotton futures are selling at high prices.棉花期货交易的卖价是很高的。
学英语单词
aneroid-barometer
annual bulletin
antitypical
askewness
atonied
autogiros
automatic grid generation
automatically tuned shortwave transmitter
bargeese
barometric observation
belieffulness
Bernard-Soulier syndrome
bipolar bit-slice microcomputer
body tender bolster
bum fuck nowhere
bush-buck
cassava silkworm silk
castroviejo
catch-penny
cold-extrusion die
comparative analyses
constant pressure cycle
continuous hot-strip mill
continuous physical inventory
dead battery
dishpan experiments
division of peritoneal adhesions
dmd method
doctrine of descent
duesseldorf
dust cap
excitation ammeter
exocoeloma
farkled
fienden
fined tube exchanger
first-aid room
friction cone drive
Geissler's potash bulb
genus blastomycess
gibes
give witness on behalf of someone
given the circumstances
Gorbymania
Groupous inflammation
hammering chorea
have one's tongue in one's cheek
hella-
horizontal scanner
hybrid composite
hyphedonia
incidence cut-set
indigenous tradition
inverter power
irreversible deformation
lally column
lasting significance
lava lake
Levenshtein distances
lifts-on
lithium manganese oxide
lurago
Maghreb
mahout
management techniques
manams
microwave attenuative ceramics
mirages
Mumbaikar
my lips are sealed
nonadecamers
observation function
old stage
on-line monitor
opt out
optical data
overlapping concept description
paroxysmal
pebble-bed core
pennone
porina
profits realized
qualitative relation
representation formula
rolling cylinder gate
romanticizers
rubber-neckings
rug-cutter
rushwork
screw thread miller
simple linkage brake mechanism
stock-control system
Swertia mileensis
TCCF
television
the civil rights movement
the crossroads
unbalanced masses
undulatory current motor
unlessened
utopianization
woodshop