Read the text Money

Robert FROST The dust of snow

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

Unit 10 Pre-text exercises

1. Find the transcription of new words in a dictionary:

bartering, swap, convenient, commodity, tasty, measure, guarantee, pound.

Try to read them fluently.
2. Word-building
Compile and translate:
taste n. + -y →

use n. + -ful →

obvious a. + -ly → important a. + -ly →

The cash we use every day is something we take for granted, but for thousands of years people traded without it. Before money was invented, people used a system called bartering. Bartering is simply swapping one good for another. Imagine that you have milk, for example, and you want eggs. You simply find someone who has eggs and wants milk — and you swap! However, you can see that this isn’t a very convenient way to trade.

First of all, you can’t be sure that anyone will want what you’ve got to offer. You have to hope that you’ll be lucky and find someone who has what you want and that he or she wants what you’ve got. The second problem with bartering is that many goods don’t hold their value. For example, you can’t keep your milk for a few months and then barter it. Nobody will want it!

After some time, people realized that some goods held their value and were easy to carry around and to trade with. Examples were metals like copper, bronze and gold and other useful goods like salt. These are examples of commodity money.

With commodity money, the thing used for buying goods has inherent value. For example, gold has inherent value because it is rare, beautiful and useful. Salt has inherent value because it makes food tasty. If you could buy things with a bag of salt, it meant you could keep a store of salt and buy things anytime you needed them. In other words, commodity money can store value.

Using commodity money was much more convenient than ordinary bartering, but it still had drawbacks. One of these drawbacks is that

commodity money often lacks liquidity. Liquidity refers to how easily money can circulate. There is obviously a limit to how much salt you can earn around! There’s another problem with commodity money: not everyone may agree on the value of the commodity which is used as money. If you live by the sea, salt may not be so valuable to you. Money needs to be a good unit of account. In other words, everyone should know and agree on the value of a unit. This way, money can be used to measure the value of other things.

The solution is to create a kind of money that does not have any real value, but that represents value. This is called flat money. The coins and notes that we use today are an example of flat money. Notes don’t have any inherent value – they are just paper. However, everyone agrees that they are worth something. More importantly, their value is guaranteed by the government. This is the reason why pounds and dollars and the world’s other currencies have value.

Words:

cash — наличные деньги commodity money — товарные

to take for granted — считать само деньги

собой разумеющимся inherent — свойственный

to invent — изобретать liquidity — ликвидность

bartering — бартер, товарообмен obvious — очевидный

to swap — менять unit of account — расчетная

convenient — удобный денежная единица

to offer — предлагать flat money — бумажные деньги

to hold — сохранять

Post-text exercises

Working on the text

I. Find answers in the text:

1. Did people use cash always for thousands of years? 2. What system did people use before money was invented? 3. Was this system convenient? 4. Can all goods hold their value for a long time? 5. What are goods that can hold their value? 6. What are they? 7. How are these goods called? 8. What are the examples of commodity money? 9. Why is gold commodity money? 10. What were drawbacks of commodity

money? 11. What is flat money? 12. What kind of money do we use? 13. By whom is value of money guaranteed?

II. Complete the sentences as in the text:

1. For thousands of years people traded without…

2. Before money was invented, people used…

3. Examples of commodity money are…

4. Using commodity money was much more…

5. The coins and notes that we use today are an example of…

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29