Passage 2

Starting from the mid-1990s, the international financial crisis has hit almost the whole world. The global financial system is breaking apart and it is hurtling ever more national economies in the abyss( 深渊) with it. In order to earn foreign exchange, the economies are forced to dump the rest of their production onto the shrinking world market at bargain-basement prices. That is why the average prices of raw materials are currently at their lowest level since the mid-1970s. But it was not only the prices for raw materials that collapsed; collapsing prices and reduced demand has also hit trade in automobiles, ships, chemical products, and computer chips. Now it is hitting the core of the Western industrial countries, which are heavily export-dependent. Looking at world economic developments from the west European point of view, the gale warnings are up. East Asia, which had accounted for more than half of the additional worldwide demand for industrial goods of all kinds since the beginning of 1990s, has largely dropped away as an importer. The supposed land of economic miracles of the past year, the United States, which increased its imports from Germany in 1997 by 30%, is finally showing the traces of the global economic collapse. On Nov.8，1998, representatives of the US government threaten the European Union with trade war. They warned that a “protectionist fire” would take hold in the United States if the European were not willing to massively reduce their trade surplus. US representatives had made similar threats against Japan one year before. The backdrop of these threats is, of course, the explosive growth of the US balance of payments deficit.

“Bargain-basement prices” means high prices.