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| Business Words in the News
Friday 21 December 2001
Vocabulary from the business news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Argentina's economic troubles
Summary: The economic crisis in Argentina has forced President Fernando de La Rua to resign and leave his offices by helicopter. Argentina has had a varied economic history. This report from Greg Morsbach:
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| | The News | |
| | | Between the world wars, Argentina was a coming nation -- it was the world's leading beef exporter and the number one economy in Latin America. But after the second world war, Argentina became sucked into one economic and political crisis after another. And by the late nineteen-eighties, inflation had rocketted to two-hundred percent a year. Prices in the shops changed several times a day. It took a bold maverick to change Argentina's course.
In 1989, President Carlos Menem took the brave decision to peg the local currency, the Peso, to the US dollar. At first, the decision paid off but the glitter soon began to wear off at the end of the nineteen nineties. Pegging the peso to the dollar started to stifle Argentinian exports.
Worse still, interest rate decisions were effectively being made in Washington, and not in Buenos Aires. So when Argentina entered a recession four years ago, there was little room for manoeuvre. And the election of Fernando de La Rua as president two years ago only seemed to make matters worse. Thousands of people have been made homeless, countless businesses have had to close, and there are more unemployed people than ever before. It's clear that real action is now needed to kick-start the economy.
Greg Morsbach, BBC
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| | The Words
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| | | a coming nation
a country that is experiencing success for the first time
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| | | became sucked into
if you became sucked into a difficult situation, you were unable to avoid getting involved in it
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| | | rocketted to
rose extremely fast and suddenly
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| | | a bold maverick
an independent person who is not afraid to take risks
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| | | to peg the local currency, the Peso, to the US dollar
to fix the value of the peso to the value of the US dollar in order to prevent it from changing
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| | | paid off
achieved good results
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| | | the glitter
the feeling of glamour and excitement
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| | | to stifle
to severely limit
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| | | little room for manoeuvre
very little choice or flexibility in what you are able to do
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| | | to kick-start
if you kick-start something that has stopped, you do something to restart it
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