PrepTest 149, Section 3, Question 11
Gabriella: By raising interest rates, the government has(56 more words not shown)
Gabriella and Ivan disagree about(1 more words not shown)
- Athe economic slowdown(9 more words not shown)
- Bthe economy of(10 more words not shown)
- Craising interest rates(6 more words not shown)
- Draising interest rates(6 more words not shown)
- Ethe global economy(2 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Could both changes have slowed the economy?
Gabriella gives a chain: higher interest rates lead to less borrowing, which leads to less spending, which slows the economy. Making borrowing more expensive could plausibly affect how much people borrow and spend. Ivan points to a global slowdown instead, but that doesn't automatically rule out a contribution from interest rates. An economy could face both pressures at once.
What we’re looking for
Even if Ivan's reasoning doesn't settle the cause, his position is clear. He says the government's action did not cause the slowdown; Gabriella says it did. For the disagreement, keep that final causal claim separate from the earlier steps in Gabriella's explanation. Ivan can reject the overall account without denying every step along the way.
Working the answers
- A
This reverses the direction of Gabriella's explanation. She says reduced spending helped slow the economy, not that the slowdown caused reduced spending. Ivan doesn't address that reverse relationship either. We don't have opposing positions on the claim A actually makes.
- B
Ivan explicitly connects the national and global economies. Gabriella doesn't deny that connection. She could accept it and still think higher interest rates also slowed the country. A global connection and a domestic cause aren't automatically competing claims.
- C
Ivan doesn't deny that the higher rates reduced borrowing. He might accept that first step while denying that it caused the economic slowdown. We also shouldn't insert the word 'significant' into Gabriella's claim without care. Their explicit conflict is over the slowdown's cause, not the size of the borrowing change.
- DCorrect
Gabriella says raising interest rates caused the country's economy to slow. Ivan's final sentence directly denies that causal role and attributes the slowdown to the global economy. Whether he has successfully ruled out both causes operating together is a separate question. The speakers clearly take opposite positions on D.
- E
Ivan says the global economy has slowed. Gabriella says nothing about the global trend. Explaining the country's slowdown through interest rates doesn't commit her to thinking the rest of the world has remained unchanged.
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