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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  30
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?
What do experts anticipate the direct impact of the debt deal on economy?
选项 A、The debt deal affects a bit the economic growth in recent years.
B、The debt deal is fatal on the recovery of the economy recession.
C、The debt deal factually has no effect on the growth of economy.
D、The debt deal may stimulate the recovery of economic recession.
答案A
解析 推理判断题。根据题干关键词the debt deal和economy定位到第二段。由该段第四句可知，新加坡金融公司OSK／DMG首席经济师Thomas Lam计算得出，经济衰退对经济的影响表现为在未来两年里，每年经济增长率仅下降0．3％，这会产生某些影响，但却不是灾难性的。由此可推断，债务处理会对经济产生影响，但这个影响短时间内比较小。[A]“债务处理在近些年里对经济增长影响很小”与原文意思相符，故为答案。而[B]中fatal“致命的”与原文意思相反；[C]“债务处理事实上对经济增长没有作用”和[D]“债务处理可能会刺激经济萧条，从而使之得到恢复”均与原文意思不符，故排除。
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