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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?
If Washington hadn’t reached a deal, people might expect the stock market should have
选项 A、risen 500 point on Tuesday.
B、fallen in a few days.
C、no change in a short term.
D、collapsed immediately.
答案B
解析 推理判断题。根据题干关键词the stock market定位到第一段前三句：决定是否提高债务上限的最后期限即将来临，人人都在议论如果华盛顿无法达成一致意见，股市该作何反应。事实上，相反的情况出现了。就在情况日趋明朗，华盛顿一步步接近达成一致意见时，华尔街却开始动荡起来。由此可推断，人们推测若华盛顿未达成一致意见，股市应该下跌。因此[B]“股市短期内应该下跌”符合这一推断，故为答案。而[A]“股市在周二应上升500点”与原文意思相反，故排除；[C]“股市短期内应无改变”和[D]“股市应立即崩溃”原文均未提及，故排除。
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