澳洲新闻 (ABC新闻快递) 2011-12-21

 And it's been a good session on Wall Street. The Dow Jones has closed 336 points higher. The Nasdaq gained 81 points. The S&P500 was up 36 points on the close. And in London the FTSE closed 55 points higher. 

 

Checking commodity prices. West Texas Crude is trading at US$97.41 a barrel. Tapis crude’s at US$114.89 a barrel. And gold’s at US$1,614.05 five cents an ounce. The Australian dollar is just over one dollar US, 76 euro cents and 64 pence sterling¹.

 

For more on today's finance--David Bethany. He is a markets columnist² for the Australian Financial Review. He joins us now from Sydney. David, good morning.

 

Morning, Michael.

 

We had the release of those RBA minutes yesterday and the board members made very clear they had deep concern about the potential on-going impacts of the European situation.

 

Yeah, what really the, the vote to cut interest rates this month is really a vote of no confidence in Europe’s ability to deal with its own crisis. It’s a, no matter what Europe does now, I mean, the outlook is that they, that rage will be in recession next year. And that’s weighing heavily on the Reserve Bank and I mean obviously we have flown through a fix. We’ve already seen that in China. And so that was a main driver of the bank section.

1 sterling   

adj.英币的(纯粹的，货真价实的)；n.英国货币(英镑)

参考例句：

• Could you tell me the current rate for sterling, please?能否请您告诉我现行英国货币的兑换率？
• Sterling has recently been strong,which will help to abate inflationary pressures.英国货币最近非常坚挺，这有助于减轻通胀压力。

2 columnist   

n.专栏作家

参考例句：

• The host was interviewing a local columnist.节目主持人正在同一位当地的专栏作家交谈。
• She's a columnist for USA Today.她是《今日美国报》的专栏作家。