VOA标准英语2009年-World Markets Upbeat Friday

（单词翻译）

Despite more grim international corporate¹ reports, global markets were generally upbeat Friday in anticipation² of the U.S. Senate heading toward a vote on a massive economic stimulus³ bill.
　
A man checking stock prices is reflected on electronic stock board of a securities firm in Tokyo, Japan, 6 Feb. 2009

Friday brought more bad economic news. Leading the list: worse than expected U.S. job losses in January that amounted to 598,000.

In Asia, more bad news as Japanese electronics maker⁴ Sharp says it will lay-off 1,500 domestic employees in an effort to save just over two billion dollars.

And the world's biggest car producer, Toyota, has revised its losses for 2008. It now expects those losses to be three times higher than previous estimates, with a total of around five billion dollars.

In Germany, manufacturing output contracted by 4.6 percent in December, the steepest decline in 20 years.

In Britain, company bankruptcies⁵ are up by more than 50 percent.

London insolvency⁶ expert Nick Hood⁷ says a lot of those bankruptcies were small business.

"These are family-owned businesses across all sectors⁹ in the U.K. economy. And the pressures they are facing are the fastest deteriorating¹⁰ markets any of them have ever seen, a complete uncertainty¹¹ about where they are going and of course great difficulty in accessing funding for their businesses," Hood says.

Even so, investors¹² seemed to shake off the torrent¹³ of bad news. Both European and Asian stock markets climbed Friday.

Japan's Nikkei index gained 1.6 percent and Britain's FTSE 100 swelled¹⁴ by 2.1 percent. Germany's DAX added 2.4 percent and France's CAC 40 surged 2.1 percent.

Investors were optimistic about the pending¹⁵ U.S. stimulus plan, expected to win approval from U.S. lawmakers.

Also helping¹⁶ were growing expectations governments would do more to help the world's struggling finance sector⁸.

In the United States, Treasury¹⁷ Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to deliver a speech Monday outlining an overhaul¹⁸ of the government's $700 billion financial rescue program. It is expected to include steps to extract the failed assets from bank balance sheets.

In Asia, better-than-expected manufacturing and bank lending reports this week helped boost confidence that Beijing's efforts to safeguard the economy were beginning to show results.