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高口閱讀選擇題第四篇解析
Question 16-20
第四篇文章不論是結構上還是出題角度方面都與第一篇文章頗為類似。不同的是，這一篇文章內容比較簡單，論述層次也比較清晰。本文選自《商業周刊》，全文778字。
The month of January offered those who track the ups and downs of the U.S. economy 92 significant data releases and announcements to digest. That's according to a calendar compiled by the investment bank UBS. The number doesn't include corporate earnings, data from abroad or informal indicators like, say, cardboard prices (a favorite of Alan Greenspan's back in the day).It was not always thus. "One reads with dismay of Presidents Hoover and then Roosevelt designing policies to combat the Great Depression of the 1930s on the basis of such sketchy data as stock price indices, freight car loadings, and incomplete indices of industrial production," writes the University of North Carolina's Richard Froyen in his macroeconomics textbook.
首段仍然以例證入手，同樣在結尾處出現考點，并需要將重點放在下文。本段講述今天的經濟危機與1930年大蕭條時期的差異之一就是，人們創造出了更多的經濟數據，并逐一加以分析。題中問道這個例子說明的道理是什么？答案就在例子結尾的下文。
But that was then. The Depression inspired the creation of new measures like gross domestic product. (It was gross national product back in those days, but the basic idea is the same.) Wartime planning needs and advances in statistical techniques led to another big round of data improvements in the 1940s. And in recent decades, private firms and associations aiming to serve the investment community have added lots of reports and indexes of their own. Taken as a whole, this profusion of data surely has increased our understanding of the economy and its ebb and flow. It doesn't seem to have made us any better at predicting the future, though; perhaps that would be too much to ask.
But what is troubling at a time like this, with the economy on everyone's mind, is how misleading many economic indicators can be about the present.
第二段開頭用時間狀語進行了對比： that was then… in recent decades…but what is troubling at a time like this…到這里，文章的鋪墊部分才最終結束，主題清楚的展開：本文論述的是how misleading many economic indicators can be about the PRESENT.即經濟指標對經濟現狀有多大的誤導作用？在這里，作者明確指出，指標的確有誤導性。
