您正在看的时事英语是:美高负债家庭面临升息之苦。
《纽约时报》：美高负债家庭面临升息之苦

(中文大意)

　　当美联储可能在四年多以来第一次升息，那些债务负担沉重的家庭已开始为如何应付债务加快增长而犯愁。

　　近年来，因美国利率较低，有上百万美国家庭在购买了房产的同时也积累起庞大的债务，他们现要对付利率的上升。他们多数相信本周三美联储将升息1/4个百分点，并在随后的18个月内稳步提息。 数据显示美国人的负债程度创历史新高水平。第一季度，房屋抵押贷款、汽车信贷、信用卡透支负债等个人借款增加了9万亿美元，是近4年来新增债务规模的40%。

　　但很多债务是固息的，只有1/5即价值1.8万亿美元的债务是浮息的，这部分债务受到联储调整基准利率的影响。如果联储本周升息1/4个百分点，那么美国家庭应付债务的支出将提高45亿美元，人均摊下来数字并不大，但是随着升息继续下去，中低收入家庭就要最先感受到升息的负担，因为研究表明这类家庭浮息债的规模最大。

With the Federal Reserve about to raise interest rates for the first time in four years, Joyce Diffenderfer is beginning to wonder how she and her husband, Curtis, will deflect the growing cost of their $16,000 in credit card debt.

Not that her concern is a pressing issue yet; it is more like a fire drill in anticipation of a fire that she is still not convinced will occur. The Diffenderfers figure that a modest rate increase would initially add only $35 to their monthly card payments, which now total more than $600. Still, they have run out of ways to sidestep the cost of borrowing, and if the rates keep rising, as the Fed's leaders suggest they will, then the only alternative, Mrs. Diffenderfer said, will be to seriously cut family spending.

The Diffenderfers are among the millions of American families who rode the recent wave of low interest rates to home ownership and the rapid accumulation of debt, and now they must cope as rates begin to swing upward. The process is almost certain to begin at a meeting of the Fed's policy makers on Tuesday and Wednesday. They are widely eXPected to raise rates a quarter of a percentage point and follow that with similar increases periodically over the next 18 months.

"Unless there is a sizable jump in rates, let's say two percentage points within a year, I'm not going to think much about it," said Mrs. Diffenderfer, 47, who earns $14 an hour fielding customer calls at Kunzler & Company, a manufacturer of sausages and frankfurters in this southern Pennsylvania industrial city on the fringe of Amish country.

"Less than two percentage points we can handle just by not eating out as much," she said, swiveling her chair away from her computer for an interview late in the day, after the phone calls died down. Her husband, 55, is a construction worker.

By several measures, Americans are more indebted than ever. Through the first quarter, they owed nearly $9 trillion in home mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, home equity loans and other forms of personal borrowing — accumulating nearly 40 percent of this total in just four years, according to published Federal Reserve dat