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  3. Barack Obama declared war on Wall Street last night as he unveiled a series of measures aimed at checking the behaviour of banks

Barack Obama declared war on Wall Street last night as he unveiled a series of measures aimed at checking the behaviour of banks

admin2010-11-29  30
问题     Barack Obama declared war on Wall Street last night as he unveiled a series of measures aimed at checking the behaviour of banks. The proposals, regarded as the biggest regulatory crackdown on banks since the 1930s, would limit the size of institutions and bar them from the most cavalier trading practices. Mr Obama hopes that the move will reset his flagging presidency.
    "We should no longer allow banks to stray too far from their central mission of serving their customers," he said. "My resolve to reform the system is only strengthened when I see record profits at some of the very firms claiming that they cannot lend more to small business, cannot keep credit card rates low and cannot refund taxpayers for the bailout. If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have. Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail."
    Flanked by his economic advisers, he said that Wall Street banks must: halt "proprietary trading", where banks risk huge sums predicting the outcome of future moves in the price of commodities such as oil; operate more cautiously and have more available funds; not become too large by limiting the amount of ordinary banking business they can undertake.
    In Britain, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats pounced on the President’s words, claiming that they had been calling for similar measures for some time. The Treasury said that it would study his moves carefully.
    Mr. Obama’s comments prompted heavy falls in stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic. The FTSE100 fell 85.70 points to 5335.1 — a fall of 1.6 per cent — while on Wall Street share prices fell by more than 2 per cent at one stage.
    Among those with the biggest share price falls on Wall Street were the banks seen as being most wounded by Mr Obama’s proposals. Shares of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America each fell by more than 6 per cent, while Citigroup shares fell by more than 5 per cent and Goldman Sachs shares by more than 3 per cent.
    George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, hailed Mr. Obama’s intervention as a welcome move. "I have said consistently that we should look at separating retail banking from activities like large-scale proprietary trading — and that this was best done internationally," he said. "Coming on top of growing agreement on a bank levy, it shows that Conservatives are part of an emerging international consensus on these issues."
    Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, said: "Barack Obama understands that the bonus culture in the banking system has got entirely out of hand and must be curbed. The days of excessive risk-taking on the back of taxpayers’ money must stop now. While Obama’s proposals to prevent the worst elements of proprietary trading are welcome, this is merely a halfway house.
    Analysts said that the proposals, if enacted unilaterally by the US, could damage Wall Street’s standing as a global financial centre. Ralph Fogel, investment strategist at Fogel Neale Partners in New York, said: "This is going to have a tremendous impact on big-name brokerage firms. If they stop prop trading it will not only dry up liquidity in the market but it will change the whole structure of Wall Street."
According to the passage, the following statements are correct EXCEPT______.
选项 A、The proposal requires that banks should stop spending money on prop-rietary trading.
B、Falls in stock markets are effected after Obama revealed measures to regulate bank behaviors in both America and Britain.
C、George Osborne believed that retail banking should be separated from large-scale proprietary trading.
D、Big banks will survive the proposal more easily than smaller ones.
答案D
解析 细节题。题于中没有出现任何可以用来定位的关键词，所以必须从选项中确定信息的来源，一一比较排除。选项A中的“proprietary trading”可用作定位，发现文中第三段专门提到这一点，且前面使用的是halt(停止)一词，即使不认识这个词，也可以从后面的risk一词中判断出否定的含义。选项B可以从文中“Mr．Obama’s comments prompted heavy falls in stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic．”一句得到佐证。选项C中的人名“George Osborne”可以定位到信息“I have said consistently that we should look at separating retail banking from activities like large—scale proprietary trading”，确定C的陈述符合原文。故只剩选项D。
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