Fill in the blanks using the proper derivative of the words in brackets.

Today, I would like to talk about the ______¹(perform) of the UK economy and explain why we think the UK now offers good opportunities for long-term ____² (invest). Perhaps I should start with some background to explain the main trends we've seen in the economy since 2000. Then, I can move on to describe the recent inflation data in more detail. At the start of the year 2000,____^{3 (}employ) stood at only 6%. Over the next two years it decreased steadily to 5% in 2002. Over the next years the unemployment has shown a _____⁴(grade) decline. But with the start of the _____⁵(finance) crisis, it rose dramatically to 6% in 2008 and then it hit a peak of 8% at the beginning of 2010. Since then it has begun to fall slightly. Moving on to interest rates. As you may remember in the year 2000, interest rates were at a high of 5.5%. Over the next three years, with the collapse of the Internet boom, rates fell ____⁶ (sharp) to only 3.5 % in 2003. Then, as the economy began to recover. But, following the financial crash, the Bank of England cut rates ______⁷(dramatic) to stimulate growth. They dropped sharply to 2% in 2008 and then they reached a new record low of 0.75% in early 2009. Fortunately, this helped the economy to recover from the crisis.

Finally, that brings me to the question of inflation. At the beginning of the year, inflation increased sharply from 1.8% in January to 2.4% in March. It then remained ____⁸ (change) at this level for one month. After that, inflation began to fall to reach 2% So overall, the recent data demonstrates that, with interest rates at record lows and unemployment ____⁹(fall), the UK economy now represents an ____¹⁰ (attract) place for long-term investment.

9. Look at the following sentences from the dialogue:

‘The world economy appears to have taken a turn for the worse this year’

‘Inflation has returned to haunt the major industrial economies…’

Now comlete the following sentences by putting the bracketed verb into the right tense.

Part A

1. Inflation ____ (increase) steadily this year.

2. Unemployment ____ (peak) last year and since then ____ (go down).

3. As the international debt crisis _____ (grow), the world economy _____(become) more unstable.

4. The IMF ____ (carry out) a study last year. In this study they ____

(project) a decline in GNP in most countries.

5. The world economy ____ (seem) to ____ (go) into a decline.

6. If Japan's current account surplus _____ (increase) further it will cause evenmore instability in the world economy.

7. The state of international trade ____ (remain) a worry. Projections for the rest of the nineties ____ (bring) very little hope.

8. We ____ (study) the effect of the fall in the dollar's value at the moment.

9. We would have preferred more stability if that ____ (be) possible.

10. For more than ten years the value of the currency _____ (fall). Before that, it ____ (be) one of the stronger currencies.

Part B

Government spending in the United States _____¹(increase) from seven percent of GDP in 1902 to 40 percent today. Government Spending ____²(start out) at the beginning of the 20th century at 6.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Spending _____³(get) a big kick in World War I and ____⁴(end up) at about 12 percent of GDP in the 1920s.

Then came the Great Depression, in which President Roosevelt and the New Deal ___⁵(crank up) federal spending, and total government spending ___⁶(rise up) to 20 percent of GDP. World War II really ____⁷(show) how the United States ____⁸(can) commandeer its national resources for all out war. Government spending ____⁹(peak) at just under 53 percent of GDP in 1945.

President Clinton ____¹⁰(say), in 1995, that the era of big government ____¹¹(be) over. But he ___¹²(be) wrong. The post World War II era ____¹³(be) a golden age of government spending, and it ____¹⁴(show) no sign of ending today. Although spending ___¹⁵(drop back) to 21 percent of GDP immediately after WWII, it steadily ____¹⁶(climb) thereafter until it ___¹⁷(hit) a peak of 36 percent of GDP in the bottom of the recession of 1980-82. Thereafter government spending ___¹⁸(chug along) in the mid 30s until the mortgage melt down of 2008. In the aftermath of bank and auto bailouts, government spending ____¹⁹(surge) to war time levels at 45 percent of GDP. The mortgage emergency ____²⁰(seem) to have ratcheted out-year spending up a notch. Near term government spending in the future ____²¹(peg) at 40 percent of GDP.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 1002