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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

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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?
According to the passage, deals to lower taxes for middle-class
选项 A、have already been considered by the previous President.
B、turn out to be a failure by the Obama government.
C、are criticized severely by the upper-class Americans.
D、benefit the recovery of a weak economy.
答案D
解析 事实细节题。根据题干中的middle-class定位到最后一段第二句，由该句可知，人们对刺激经济发展怀有的最美好的希望就是政府拿出一些降低税收的方案，以惠及企业或者美国中产阶级。故[D]“惠及疲软经济的恢复”与原文意思相符，故为答案。根据该段第三句可知，奥巴马和其他民主党派人士很可能会坚持实行布什的减少税收政策，而不会对富人增加税收，因此[A]“前任总统已经考虑过该问题”与原文不符，故排除。
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