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标题: 生活美语(1) - Lesson 7 [打印本页]

作者: Life_on_journey 时间: 2008-5-23 15:07 标题: 生活美语(1) - Lesson 7

听力原文连接 : http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/shenghuomeiyu1/15078.html
Below is my homework:
The election of Republic presidential candidate Herbert Hoover in 1928 made Americans more hopeful than ever about their future. In March 1929, Hoover wrote down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington in the rain to become the new president. "I have no fears for the future of our country", Herbert Hoover seemed to have just the right experience to lead the nation to new economic progress. He had training in engineering, business and national leadership. He understood economics and had faith in the future of private business. The clearest evidence of the public faith in the economy is the stock market and the New York Stock Exchange reacted to the new president with a wild increase in prices. During the months after Hoover's election, prices generally rose like a rocket. Stocks valued at 100 dollars climbed to 200 then 300, 400. Men and women made huge amounts of money overnight. Publications and economic experts advised Americans to buy stocks before prices went even higher. Time and again people heard how rich they could become if they found and bought stocks for companies growing into industrial giants. Never sell the united States stocks, said on publication. Another just said everybody ought to be rich. A number of economic experts worried about the sharp increase in stock prices that followed Hoover's election. The president himself urged the stock market officials to make trading more honest and safe. And he approved a move by the Federal Reserve Board to increase the interest charged to bankers. However, both efforts failed to stop the growing no. of Americans who were spending their money wildly on stocks. Some experts pointed to danger signs in the economy during the summer of 1929. The number of houses being built was dropping. Industry were reducing the amount of products that they held in their factories. The rate of growth in spending by average Americans was falling sharply and industrial productions, employment and prices were down. These experts worried that American economy was just not strong enough to support such rapid growth in stock prices. They said there was no real value behind many of the highly prices. They said a stock price could not increase 4 times while a company's sale stayed the same. They said the high prices were built on foolish dreams on wealth, not real value but the prices went still higher. Buyers fought with each other to pay more and more for companies' stocks. The average price of all stocks almost doubled in just one year. It has seemed everybody was buying stocks even people with little money or economic training.

A clothing salesman got advice from a stock trader visiting his store and made 200,000 dollars . A nurse learnt of a good company from someone in the hospital she made 30,000 dollars. There were thousands of such stories. By early september, the stock market reached its high points of the past 18 months, shares of the XXX House Company had climbed from 91 dollars to 313, The Elacondor Company had risen from 54 dollars to 162. Union Combide jumped from 145 to 413. Life was like a dream. But like any dream it could not last forever. In September 1929, stock prices stopped rising. During the next month and a half, stocks prices fell but only slowly. Then suddenly at the end of October, the market crashed. Prices dropped wildly, leading stocks fell 5, 10, 20 dollars in a single day. Everyone tried to sell their stocks but no one was buying. Fears washed across the stock market. People were losing money even faster than they had made it. The stock market collapsed on Thursday, October 24, 1929. People remember the day as Black Thursday. The day the dreams ended. The day begun with a wave of selling, people from across the country send messages to their stock traders in New York. All messages said the same thing "sell". Sell the stocks at any price possible but no one was buying and so down the prices came. The value of stocks for McGumbery store dropped from 80 dollars to 50 in a single day. The RCA Radio Corp. fell from 68 dollars to 44, 24 dollars in just a few hours. Down the stocks fell, lower and lower. Several of the country's leading bankders met to discuss ways to stop the disaster. They agreed to buy stocks in large amounts to stop the wave of selling. The bankers moved quickily and for 2 days prices held steady. But like the snow falling down the side of the mountain the stocks dropped again. Prices went to amazingly low levels. One business newspaper said simply the present week has witnessed the greatest stock market disaster of all time. The stock market crash ruined thousands of Americans. In a few short weeks, traders lost 30,000 million dollars, amount almost as great as all the money they United States has spent in World War I. Some businessmen could not accept what had happened. They jumped from the tops of buildings and killed themselves. In fact, the popular joke of the time said hotel owners had to ask people if they wanted rooms for sleeping or jumping(

great sense of humor). But the stock market crash was nothing to laugh about(

). It does employ (?)much of the money Americans have saved. Even worse, it caused millions of people to worry and lose faith in the economy. They were not sure what to expect tomorrow. Business owner wouldn't spend money for new factories or business operations. Instead, they decided to wait and see what would happen. This reduced production and caused more workers to loose their jobs. Fewer workers meant fewer people with money to buy goods. And fewer people buying goods meant less need for factories to produce. So it went in short economic disaster.
Why did the stock market crash? One reason people had been paying too much for stocks. Everyone believe that prices would go higher and higher forever. People paid more for stocks than stocks were worth. They hoped to sell the stocks at even higher prices. It was like a children's balloon that expands with air blowing bigger and bigger until it bursts. But there were other important reasons. Industrial profits were too high and wages too low. Five percent of the population owned the one third of all personal income. The average worker simply did not have enough money to buy enough of all the new goods that factories were producing. Another problem was that companies were not investing enough money in new factories and supplies. There were also problems with the rules of the stock market itself. People were allowed to buy stocks when they did not have the money to do so. Several government economic policies also helped cause the stock market crash in 1929. Government tax policies made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And the government did little to control the national money supply even when the economy faced disaster. The stock market crash marked the beginning of the Great depression a long, slow, painful fall to the worst economic crisis in American history. The depression would be suffering to millions of people. It would cause major political changes and it would be a major force in creating the conditions that led to World War II. We'll look at the beginning of the Great Depression in our next program.

So long, so tired tying.

Translation into Chinese will be followed soon.

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