2015年年北京外国语大学英语学院考研611英语基础测试(阅读)参考资料-阅读文章汇编【荐】.pdf

2014 年北京外国语大学英语学院考研611 英语基础测试（阅读）资料 汇编 阅读文章精选 The wrong tool for the job A global tax on financial transactions would make it harder to deal with troublesome banks “IT IS usually agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is 1 of stock exchanges.” John Maynard Keynes, writing in the 1930s, was in favour of making it costly to switch into and out of investments. With just a trace of English snobbery, he wrote approvingly of the high fees and taxes 2 on share transfers in the City of London, which he contrasted with the lower turnover costs on Wall Street. The smooth workings of New York’s stockmarket served only to promote “speculation” over “enterprise”, he wrote. The sins of London were less grave. Three generations on, public disgust with “casino capital ism” and the return of fat profits and bonuses in an industry so recently rescued from oblivion have led to new demands for a levy on securities trading. In the run-up to Germany’s general election, the Social Democratic Party has 3 for a global tax on fi nancial transactions to curb the excesses of finance and to help4 the fiscal costs incurred by the banking crisis. And Adair Turner, the head of Britain’s banking watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, has said that a turnover tax might be considered if capital rules to make banks bear the full costs of risky trading cannot be made to work. James Tobin, a Nobel-prize-winning economist and disciple of Keynes, first 5 the idea of a global transactions tax—on foreign exchange—in 1972. This newspaper has regularly criticised it on two counts: it would be unworkable unless all governments 6 up to it (and perhaps even if they did); and a levy would harm the liquidity of financial markets, making asset prices more volatile. Now there is a third, equally valid objection: that a Tobin