新托福考试听力特训 CD1-Track08

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CD1-track8

Consumer Price Index

What is the lecture mainly about? (Click on 2 answers)

A How to forecast interest-rate out of the Consumer Price Index.

B The disadvantages of the Consumer Price Index.

C The function of the Consumer Price Index.

D How to measure the Consumer Price Index.

(C,D)

听力原文：

CD1-track8

Consumer Price Index

And now class, let's swith gears and discuss a different topic? Consumer Price Index,

CPI for short. If you switched on the TV and heard on the news that the CPI in

Canada was 2.1%, what does that mean? In a nutshell, it means that Canadian

consumers paid 2.1% more than in the previous year for the goods and services

included in the CPI basket. Although prices of goods and services rise and fall over

time, when prices change too dramatically, they can have negative effects on an

economy. In order to tell if an economy is experiencing inflation, deflation or

stagflation, we use the CPI as a gauge¹ of the price of goods and services. Believe it or

not, when the Department of Labor²'s Bureau of Labor Statistic³ releases the CPI date

monthy, you might ask? Well, the CPI play a role for many key financial decision

makers⁴, including individual investors⁵, the Bank of Canada in Canada and the

Federal Reserve in the U.S. The CPI helps the Bank of Canada forecast the interest

rate policy and other decisions of major banks and corporations. I mentioned the CPI

basket before and now I want to expand on what this basket is and how wer get the

information. The base-year market basket, which makes up the CPI, comes from

detailed⁶ expenditure⁷ information collected from surveys of thousands of families.The

information is not randomly⁸ collected, instead, the information is gathered through

interviews and diaries kept by participants who have agreed to disclose their buying

havits. The basket is divided into eight groups: food and beverages⁹, housing, apparel,

transportation, medical care, recreation, education and communication, and other

goods and services, and inclues more than 200 categories. Finally, the prices of 80

000 items in the market basket are collected nonthly from thousands of retail¹⁰ stores,

wervice establishments, rental¹¹ units, and doctors' offices.

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