国开《高级商务英语阅读》阶段学习测验（第5章，5%）

Read the following passage and then match the statements (1-7) to the letter (A, B or C).

A The international monetary system is broadly defined as the set of conventions,rules, procedures and institutions that govern the conduct of financial relations between nations. An understanding of the historical, institutional and economic developments that have occurred since the end of the Second World War is an essential background to the study of international finance. Many of the proposals for reform of the international monetary system have been based upon the desire to avoid the problems and mistakes of the past. There are many facets of the postwar system that merit attention. Among these are the Bretton Woods system and its eventual breakdown, the move to floating exchange rates, economic events of the 1970s including two oil shocks, and the economic policy divergences of the 1980s. The setting-up of the European Monetary System leading eventually to achievement on 1 January 1999 of Economic and Monetary Union in Europe is probably the most significant event to occur in the evolution of the international monetary system since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system.

B The 1990s witnessed considerable currency turmoil, firstly afflicting developed economies with speculative attacks launched against a number of EMS currencies including the British pound, the Italian lira and the Spanish peseta. The EMS crisis was followed by a series of currency and financial crises afflicting emerging market economies. In 1994–95 Mexico suffered what has become known as the “Tequila crisis”,but this proved to be merely a taster for the currency and financial turmoil that was to follow. In July 1997, a Thai baht devaluation marked an abrupt end to the “Asian miracle” and the start of the “Asian financial crisis” which involved roughly one and a half years of unprecedented urbulence in the region’s financial and currency markets.

C Barely had the Asian crisis started to subside, when a new crisis broke out following an effective Russian default on its domestic and foreign currency debts; the Russian crisis was accompanied by concerns for the global capital markets when Long- Term Capital Management (LTCM), a hedge fund with massive speculative positions in the financial markets, was effectively bankrupted. The Russian crisis had a direct impact on Brazil which had its own currency crisis in 1999. The new century started out with its own set of crises, starting with a devaluation of the Turkish lira in 2001. This was followed by the largest ever default on $100 billion of external debt by Argentina in January 2002, and the ending of its experiment with a currency board system that had since 1991 pegged its currency at a one peso-one US dollar parity. The Argentinian crisis eventually impacted upon Uruguay which was forced to float its currency later in the year.