第二篇： The Obama administration attacked the credibility of the analysis underlying Standard & Poor’s decisionto downgrade the United States’ top credit rating. S&P was forced to move the number from its analysis afterthe U.S. Treasury officials found that the rating agency’s  36  of the government’s discretionary spendingwas too high. The reason the Obama administration felt upset was that S&P decided to downgrade the U.S.credit rating  37  the errors found in the calculations. While S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating byone notch to AA-plus, a Treasury spokesman still said that a judgment by a US$2 trillion error speaks for itself.Such mistakes were  38  the rating agency’s unsophisticated understanding of the U.S. political system.Leaving alone what the U.S. officials claimed, the top S&P official told Reuters that any changes in thecalculations  39  into consideration. Also, the US$4 trillion sliced from future budgets was symbolic ofthe part of the hard-fought deal to lift the nation’s debt’s limit. Even though the error clearly pointed out is badfor the image of the U.S., the rating agency declined to  40  on its downgrade. Dealing with the threat, theU.S. Treasury officials had not only played down the potential impact but also said markets already wereaware it was under consideration.

36.
(A) criticisms
(B) targets
(C) estimates
(D) discussions