Do you tend to keep quiet when you are with foreigners?
Do you feel that you don't have any topics to talk, or you have someting in your mind, but you are afraid your expression is not native enough and people may laugh at you?
If your answer is YES, then you have a problem. AND WE HAVE A SOLUTION!
This series try to address above issues. It provides you an innovative approach to learn spoken english. It features:
1) Boost your confident in english conversation within minutes.
2) Cover the hot topics in current affairs.
3) Ready-to-use chatting material
4) Easy to recite or repeat
5) quote from english native speaker.
6) professional opinon makes you sound like an expert.
Today's topic: why australian dollar is 40% lower than it was 6 months ago?
(reply this if you think it's helpful. your comment will help the moderators to evaluate the significance of this series. If the feedbacks are postive enough, more topics could be covered in the future)
Ready? Please keep yourself focused in the next 5 mins and you will find you are different after going through the followings.
a) My guess is American investors are selling their Australian assets because they desperately need the cash to keep themselves afloat.
b) Also, the USD is second only to gold in security. In times like this, scared investors buy it up because they know it will never collapse. (investors are flocking to more stable currencies like the US dollar)
( You may have lost your interest by now. But please don't give up, this is your last chance to improve your spoken english.)
c) ours economy is a commodities based economy. you can correlate the rises and falls of our dollar with the rises and falls of the price of iron ore, copper and coal.
d) The basic line is that, prior to the collapse, US investors had nearly 5 trillion dollars invested outside the US. With the current turmoil, these investors are selling their investments, and taking the money home. This translates as sales of (some other currency) to US dollars. This drives US dollar higher (relative to everything).
Further, with the reduction in commodity prices in US dollar terms (like iron ore), the Aussie dollar drops as well (we're closely linked to commodity prices).
So a two fold effect - money going home to the US, and drop in commodity prices.
(congrats! if you can read so far, you certainly have felt something from these contents. Keep going, you are almost there)
e) Clearly the global markets have no faith in australian economy.
It's not beacause the Rudd govt. It's China and India tightening their belts. Our economy is very dependent on exporting raw materials (no fault of the Rudd govt) and according to predicions, the global demand for our stuff will slump. Therefore the Aust economy will suffer, no matter what Rudd & Swan do.
f) so why the US dollar is more favoured over the Aussie dollar when the US economy is such a train wreck at the moment ?
Its because the whole world economy runs on the US dollar. Oil and many many other commodities are traded in the US dollar, regardless of geographical location. It is the major currency for international trade. For this reason, there is always going to be a demand for it (although you may see the Euro taking more of a role in international trade). The Australian dollar on the other hand has been proped up by the commodities boom. Australia has been the beneficiary of very high minerals prices and unprecedented demand. During a world recession, demand drops dramatically as people stop investing in infrastructure and business growth, this directly effects the mining industry through lower demand and lower prices. A double whack. This means Australias growth slows, meaning the RBA lower interest rates, meaning there is less of a differential between the Aus and US rates, meaning the AUD doesn't give as higher return in comparison...making it less attractive considering the risk.
The AUD has followed the commodities prices trend basically since it was floated. It will always be like this cause they make up such a significant part of our GDP.
It has nothing to do with the US economy really cause the USD is always going to be needed to trade around the world, meaning you will always be able to sell it on to somone. People don't buy the USD cause they think it will increase in value due to the US economy growing.
------
The above opinons are excerpted from http://www.abc.net.au/news/stori ... tm?section=business
so how do you feel? overwhelming or suddenly you feel you have learnt a lot about australian economy?
If you can apply half of above material into your next conversation, you will see the difference: people start to acutally listen to you and your confidence starts to grow.
[ 本帖最后由 juncom 于 2008-10-28 19:50 编辑 ]
评论
实用贴
我谈这个话题的时候都是用很浅的英文，受教了
评论
欢迎lz结合下自己的工作情况参加征文 。
评论
好东西， 回来好好研究下
评论
thanks all. you comments keep me rolling.
这个贴子的开头被我整的跟搞传销似的 。只希望能够被更多的人认可。
评论
My guess is American investors are selling their Australian assets because they desperately need the cash to keep themselves afloat.
------- OM, OM, AND MAY BE CHINESE DO SAME, I PERSONALLY THINK.
哈哈，这个帖子很好，对于学习英语口语很有启发和帮助。多谢了。
评论
thanks, that is very helpful! I always dried myself when chat with my team memebers. Appreciate it if you could continue to give new topics!
评论
Thanks for your effort. This material really helped me to get more information and topics can talk with Auzi. please keep posting!!!:)
评论
thanks. let's see how this thread goes first.
评论
太好了，强烈建议继续整个系列，给加分
评论
评论
good post!
评论
这么好的贴，天气再热也要顶！
评论
thanks a lot! i am very interested in this topic.i can talk with my classmates tomorrow about it.
i look forward to reading the on-going materials.(is this sentence right?)
澳洲中文论坛热点
- 悉尼部份城铁将封闭一年，华人区受影响！只能乘巴士（组图）
- 据《逐日电讯报》报导，从明年年中开始，因为从Bankstown和Sydenham的城铁将因Metro South West革新名目而
- 联邦政客们具有多少房产？
- 据本月早些时分报导，绿党副首领、参议员Mehreen Faruqi已获准在Port Macquarie联系其房产并建造三栋投资联
