托福考试易错题（2019/5/15）

The GreatDepression
Economists agree that the Wall Street crash of October 1929 heralded the GreatDepression and by its dramatic effects on business, banking, and consumer confidence played a major role in worsening it.But many others agree that the crash was not the real cause of the economic turmoil. The severity of the GreatDepression can be traced, at least on theAmerican domestic front, to the impressive strength of the investment boom of the 1920s and to the vastly increased productivity of the agricultural sector in the aftermath of World War Ⅰ.
In the late 1920s there was a rapid rise in capital investment in the United States--both in productive industry and in the form of house building. The output of capital goods, that is, machinery and equipment used in the production process, rose by nearly a quarter between 1927 and 1929, and a great house-building explosion which had begun in 1921 continued steadily upwards throughout the decade. Fueled at first by profits and then by pure speculation, the stock market reached unsustainably-high levels. Worried by the speculative nature of the upward spiraling stock price, the Federal ReserveBank decided to cool the economy by raising interest rates, and this tight-money policy led to cutbacks in industrial production.
The downturn in investment occurred in the middle of 1929--several months before the stock market collapseD、At the same time there was reduced production of consumer products due to saturation of middle class demand, and this in turn caused the need for capital goods to fall even more precipitously due to what economists call the accelerator principle. This principle states that a small fall in the output of consumer goods results in a much larger fall in the output of capital goods. It was the capital goods industries which were worst hit, and by 1932 the output of capital goods was only about a quarter of what it had been in 1929. The fall in the output of consumer goods, though much less sharp than this, was still harsh, and the net result was that in 1932 total industrial production was no more than half what it had been three years before. This fall in production was accompanied by a steep rise in unemployment, which further reduced consumer spending power.By 1932 more than 12 millionAmericans were unemployeD、
The other main reason why the economic downturn was so severe lay in the agricultural sector.
The productivity ofAmerican farms had risen enormously under the stimulus of worldwide food :shortages brought on by World War Ⅰ; and it continued to rise during the 1920s after prewar sources of food and agricultural raw materials had been restoreD、
Surpluses lead to lower prices, and farmers faced with lower prices for their products tried to increase their output in the hope that greater sales could offset lower prices and help maintain income.But the consequence of millions of farmers trying to increase their output led to a further fall in prices and farm incomes.
So there was a vicious spiral, in which farm prices and farm incomes chased each other downwarD、 When the over-supply of farm products, which already existed in the late 1920s, was accentuated by the fall in demand for food and raw materials that followed the downturn in industrial investment in 1928 and 1929, the situation became even more severe.
The prices of farm products fell by more than half in the three years after 1929, andAmerican farm income suffered accordingly; and this fall in farm income itself led to a further decline in consumption and hence, in capital investment as well.
Once it t

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