How to determine which command line options gcc passes to ld by default?

For oneline lovers:

echo "int main(void) {}" | gcc -o /dev/null -v -x c - &> /dev/stdout| grep collect | tr -s " " "\012"

Replace -x c with -x c++ to get c++ flags.

Can be used also with clang, but in such case you should grep for /usr/bin/ld

Yes, you can use gcc -v hello.o -o hello to get the link line. For your example on my ubuntu machine, I get this link line (edited to be multiline for readability):

/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5/collect2
--build-id
--eh-frame-hdr
-m elf_x86_64
--hash-style=gnu
-dynamic-linker
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
-o hello
-z relro
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5/../../../../lib/crt1.o
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5/../../../../lib/crti.o
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5/crtbegin.o
-L/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5
-L/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5
-L/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5/../../../../lib
-L/lib/../lib
-L/usr/lib/../lib
-L/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5/../../.. -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
hello.o
-lgcc
--as-needed -lgcc_s --no-as-needed 
-lc
-lgcc
--as-needed -lgcc_s --no-as-needed
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5/crtend.o
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.5/../../../../lib/crtn.o

Note that collect2 is just an alias for ld.