Now that the damage inflicted by the Asian financial crisis looks like it was caused by an economic neutron bomb. The crisis has hurt great numbers of people, but has left the main structures of the world economy standing. The worst of the direct impact may be over. Many of the hardest-hit countries are on the road to recovery, financial "contagion" has been contained and world economic growth seems set to pick up soon.

The most important development, however, is a non-event: the collapse of global capitalism has not occurred. Instead, the post-crisis world is likely to be even more market-oriented than the one that preceded it, with a proliferation of new rules and practices that will help markets to operate more smoothly. The countries recovering best, such as Thailand and South Korea, are doing so by moving further in a free-market direction. None of the affected nations has tried to isolate itself from the global economy, and the widely feared worldwide wave of protectionism has not yet materialized. Nor has there been the great rethinking of economic globalization that some feared and others advocated. The critics of global capitalism pounced on the crisis as proof of globalization's fatal flaws. Their analyses often concluded that "there must be something better." On the contrary, economists have taken free-market principles as the starting point for new ideas, not called them into question. There has been much criticism of the so-called Washington consensus—the traditional free-market orthodoxy that uniformly prescribes fiscal discipline, deregulation, and financial liberalization. Partly as a result of the crisis, a new consensus simply adds extra prescriptions—such as better financial supervision, labor market, etc.—to the list. It is an elaboration of the original consensus, not a new departure. Numerous studies also show that engagement in the global economy leads to higher growth and helps to reduce poverty in developing countries. Today's economic arguments are not over fundamental free-market policies, but what must be done to supplement them. Likewise, the efforts to devise a new "international financial architecture" in the wake of the crisis, due to continue during the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, will not involve rebuilding the system from scratch. The aim is to make incremental improvements in financial rules and practices that will oil the wheels of the market system, not to trade it in for a non-existent new model. What is the main idea of the first paragraph? A.After the severe Asian Financial Crisis, the world economy began to recover. B.Asian Financial Crisis is as devastating as a neutron bomb and causes great damage. C.There are still direct and indirect impacts so that the economy cannot recover. D.The direct impact of Asian Financial Crisis has gone.

时间:2023-09-25 15:01:51

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