[综合题]Reading Comprehension

Directions: Read the following passage. Choose the best answer from the four choices marked A, B, C and D for each question. 
     On the New York Mercantile Exchange, oil prices broke the record of $76.70 a barrel set just Thursday. The new price of oil for delivery in August shot to $77.95 before finishing the day at $77.03.

     While $80-a-barrel oil seemed like a skeptic’s worst-case outlook a few months ago, oil traders are increasingly saying that it is now just a matter of time before prices cross that threshold. Oil futures contracts for delivery beyond this summer passed $80 a barrel for the first time on Thursday.

     “The feeling is that we’re in a fairly bullish market right now,” said Antoine Halff, head of research at Fimat. “Gasoline demand over the last few weeks has been very robust. Perhaps the bigger issue on top of that is geopolitics. And clearly the market is very jittery about what’s going on in Israel.” Oil markets are typically sensitive to any political instability in the Middle East. Recently, they have been unsettled by Israeli military incursions into Gaza and then, this week, Lebanon. So, a market already worried about the potential for conflict with Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs is growing even more anxious. William Rhodes, chief investment strategist at Rhodes Analytics, said, “People are scared, that’s the bottom line.”

     The Commerce Department said that retail sales fell by 0.1 percent in June, seasonally adjusted, the first drop since February. A University of Michigan survey that showed falling consumer confidence was one of the reasons.

     How resilient consumer spending proves to be is something that will continue to factor heavily into stock performance. Most economists believe that consumers will curb their spending somewhat as the year goes on, and economic growth is expected to slow. But there is disagreement over how much spending will slow.

     “The persistence of high gasoline prices, coupled with lower equity prices and lower consumer sentiment, will restrain the growth of real consumer spending in the second half of 2006,” Brian Bethune, an analyst with Global Insight, wrote yesterday in a report about the retail sales numbers. But many analysts noted that the month’s decline in retail sales was exaggerated by poor car sales, and said that consumers were likely to keep shopping for other goods.

     Even though the market swooned this week, analysts said that there were no signs yet that the drop was part of a larger unraveling of the economy.