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Leading up to the debt-ceiling deadline, everyone was talking about how the stock market would crater if Washington didn’t reach

admin2015-03-25  57
问题     Leading up to the debt-ceiling deadline, everyone was talking about how the stock market would crater if Washington didn’t reach a deal. In fact, the opposite has happened. Just when it became clear last week that Washington was moving closer to a deal is exactly when Wall Street started to stumble. And now that we have a deal, the falls have been getting worse. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 500 points Thursday. Overall, the market has fallen 9 out of the last 10 trading days, one of the worst stretches of down days in recent years.
    In the Aug. 15th issue of TIME,columnist Rana Foroohar argues that the debt deal will increase the level of inequality in the US. A cut in spending, be it from consumers or the government, during a recession is sure to cost the economy jobs. Still, the direct drag from the debt deal on the economy is unlikely to be that big, mostly because the $2.1 trillion in cuts over the next decade won’t really kick in for a few years. Thomas Lam, chief economist at Singapore-based financial firm OSK/DMG, calculates that the drag on the economy will lower economic growth by only 0.3 percentage points in each of the next two years, which is something but not disastrous. So why is Wall Street reacting so badly in the wake of the deal?
    Because the big impact of the deal may not be the direct drag of a decrease in spending. At times in the debt-deal negotiations, it looked like we might get either an increase in taxes for the wealthiest Americans, an increase in unemployment benefits or both. In the end, we didn’t get any of those things. Nor did we get a reduction in entitlement programs that benefit everyone. Instead, what was cut was largely discretionary funds, a large portion of which go to programs that help the poor.
    That’s why Foroohar says the deal will probably exacerbate income inequality in the US. And income inequality is one of the main factors that caused the financial crisis. But that’s not the only way that inequality is haunting this economy. Inequality is probably slowing the recovery as well. So far most of the gains of the recovery have gone to wealthy Americans. Luxury spending is up. So that helps.
    The debt deal seems to make clear that Washington, at least for now, has no plans to deal with the income gap. Our best hope to boost the economy is for some deal to lower taxes, either for corporations or for middle-class Americans. But because there was no deal on raising taxes on the wealthy, it is likely that Obama and the rest of the Democrats will hold the line on the Bush tax cuts and let them expire completely. So taxes for everyone are going up. And that could be another drag on the economy. So why was the stock market down on Thursday? Why wouldn’t it be?
The author seems disappointed to the debt-deal negotiations since they
选项 A、made the rich suffer from funds cutting.
B、caused an increase in unemployment rate.
C、led to a decrease in the funds for the poor.
D、benefited only those who need help most.
答案C
解析 事实细节题。根据题干关键词the debt-deal negotiations定位到第三段。由该段最后一句可知，债务协商的结果是大部分的自由资金被削减，其中相当一部分是用于帮助穷人的项目。[C]“导致用于穷人的资金减少”与原文意思相符，故为答案。而[D]“使最需要帮助的人受益”显然与原文不符；根据第二句可知，作者认为在债务问题协商期间，政府有若干次机会似乎能够向最富有的美国人征收更多的税，增加失业救济，或者两者兼有。可到头来，他们什么也没做成，显然，[A]“使富人遭受资金短缺”与原文不符；[B]“造成失业率上升”，也与原文不符，故排除。
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