Money and humour

Ø 1) Do you know any anecdotes about money? Share one or two with the group.

Ø 2) Read the anecdotes and talk about the peculiarities of foreign humor.

· A woman proudly told her friend, “I’m responsible for making my husband a millionaire.” “Well what was he before he married you? ” the friend asked. “A billionaire.”

· The parents of a Northwestern student who just headed back from holiday received this letter: Dear Mom and Dad: Univer$ity life i$ $o wonderful! Cla$$e$ and $e$$ion$ are intere$ting, my cla$$mate$ are the be$t! But after $pending all my ca$h on Chri$tma$ pre$ent$, I am in a little need for $ome $pending money for book$ and $uch. But I don’t want to $end the wrong $ignal$ home. Love, Your $on

· You know you’re rich when during a cold winter night you can’t find any more firewood so you hack the leg off your Steinway grand piano and use it to keep the fire going until your butler shows back up with something more flammable, and your children play monopoly with real money.

· A successful man is the one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is the one who can find such a man.

· At 18 years old, Rockefeller had no money. He found an apple in the street. The fruit was dirty, he cleaned it and resold it for 50 cents to a man walking in the street... with his 50 cents he bought 2 apples 25 cents each, and resold them for 1$ to another man walking in the street... with his 1 dollar he bought 4 apples, and resold them of course for 2$.... at 19 years he inherited from his grandmother...

· A one dollar bill met a twenty dollar bill and said, “Hey, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around here much.” The twenty answered, “I’ve been hanging out at the casinos, went on a cruise and did the rounds of the ship, back to the United States for a while, went to a couple of baseball games, to the mall, that kind of stuff. How about you? ” The one dollar bill said, “You know, same old stuff... church, church, church.”

· A lawyer’s dog, running around town unleashed, heads for a butcher shop and steals a roast. The butcher goes to the lawyer’s office and asks, “If a dog running unleashed steals a piece of meat from my store, do I have a right to demand payment for the meat from the dog’s owner? ” The lawyer answers, “Absolutely.” “Then you owe me $8.50. Your dog was loose and stole a roast from me today.” The lawyer, without a word, writes the butcher a check for $8.50. The butcher, having a feeling of satisfaction, leaves. Three days later, the butcher finds a bill from the lawyer: “$100 due for a consultation.”

BANKS

Ø 1) Do you use the services of a bank? What services do you get from the bank? What bank do you deal with? Is it a bank or a branch of a bank? Why do you use the services of this particular bank (it the nearest to your home, the stuff is very friendly, the services are various)?

Ø 2) Read and translate the text into Russian.

The word “bank” comes from an Italian word “banco, ” meaning “a bench, ” since Italian merchants in the medieval times talked about borrowing and lending money beside a bank and money was placed on that bank.

A bank is a place where money can be saved or loaned out from. Someone’ money can be placed in the bank for safe keeping. Or the bank can give out loans to people for an agreement to pay the bank back at a later time, usually with interest. The people who run a bank are called bankers.

Banks can also use the money they have from deposits to invest in businesses in order to make more money.

In most of the modern world a bank settled by the government but independent of the state administrators controls how much money appears at a time. Such a kind of bank is called a national bank. A national bank ordinarily issues bills and/or coins. In some countries issuing money is the task of the government.

Banks’ activities can be divided into:

· retail banking which deals directly with individuals and small businesses;

· business banking which provides services to mid-market business;

· corporate banking which is directed at large business entities;

· private banking which provides wealth management services to High Net Worth Individuals and families, and

· investment banking which relates to activities on the financial markets.

Most banks are profit-making, private enterprises. However, some are owned by government, or are non-profits.

Ø 3) Find the English equivalents in the text for the following Russian words and word combinations: копить деньги, врать в долг, процент, руководить банком, вклад, вложить (инвестировать), выпускать банкноты и монеты, розничные банковские операции, коммерческие банковские операции, акционерные банковские операции, частные банковские операции, инвестиционные банковские операции.

6.15 WHAT ARE BANKS FOR?

Ø 1) Read the heading, the key words from the text and say what it is about: keep cash, banknotes and coins, a bank account, be in transit in a payment system, make loans, pay low/high interest, deposit, banking crisis, competition, be based on trust, the central bank.

Ø 2) Look through the text and say what two large parts it consists of. Identify them and give them subheadings. What information from the text doesn’t fit either of the two parts?

In developed economies, nearly everyone has a bank account, because keeping cash under a mattress is neither safe nor convenient. Banks are an essential feature of national life, like buses, post offices and hospitals. Any money that is not floating around as cash, in the form of notes or coins, is either sitting in a bank account, or is in transit in a payment system between banks.

Banks operate by taking deposits from private people, on which they pay low interest or none at all, and using the money to make longer-term loans to other customers, charging them higher interest rates. Banking is based on trust, but banks sometimes misuse depositors’ money or make losses on their loans, and depositors do not usually have the time, the inclination or the capacity to monitor their banks. They are happy to leave that task to governments.

Governments seem to feel that banking systems are too important to be left to themselves. Different countries have different views on the use of the banking system as an instrument of government policy, and the lengths to which regulators should go to ensure the strength of their banking system.

Over the past twenty years, the role of governments in banking systems has tended to diminish, leaving room for doubt over whether banks might be allowed to fail.

But over the same period, some banks have gone so complex, and so active globally, that their failure would inflict severe damage on one or more national economies. These global banks are deemed to have become “too big to fail.”

Governments also help banks cope with temporary cash shortages by providing access to the “discount window” so they can borrow money from the central bank. The bank deposits are often insured in a pool arrangement or by the government itself, in case the bank goes bust.

Banks are also needed to make payments, sending money from one bank account to another, whether in the same bank or in any other one the world over. Even a payment by credit or debit card, or a mobile-phone billing account, ends up as part of a transaction with a bank.

These days most banks do a lot more besides offering a wide range of financial services. For example, they give financial advice, exchange foreign currency, deal in securities and derivatives, and manage investments on behalf of clients. Regulators have an interest in making sure that these businesses are run properly; but their chief concern remains that banks are sound, that those deposits are safe and that the payment system runs smoothly.

Regulating banking systems is an uncertain business. Banks have to be discouraged from forming protectionist cartels and encouraged to compete with each other, but not so fiercely that they cut each other’s throats. It is a delicate balance for regulates to strike.

The Bank of England has estimated that a full-blown banking crisis costs the country concerned an average of 16% of GDP. Plenty of countries have experienced such crises, including Sweden, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Argentina, South Korea, Indonesia and Japan. Most of them would probably agree that this is something worth avoiding, even at the cost of banks being over-regulated and over-protected at a time when most other sectors are being opened up to global competition. Sovereignty over a banking system, even when the national currency has gone, appears to be one of the last things a country wants to give up.

Some other countries have taken quite a different route, curbing competition among their own banks and limiting foreign access or ownership. India, for instance, nationalized its banks between 1969 and 1991, but has slowly liberalized since, creating nine private banks to compete with the publicly or mutually owed ones. Yet foreign ownership has been severely restricted and looks likely to remain so. The Reserve Bank of India (the central bank) says that those restrictions saved India from contagion in the banking crisis that swept Asia in 1997 – 98. Others argue that the restrictions have in fact put India at a disadvantage. Indonesia, which despite a banking crisis in 1997, is now growing slightly faster than India.

India’s banking system was developed in the 1970s and 1980s as an instrument of government policy to finance public spending and investment by big companies. Only recently did the government recognize that this system is entirely un-suited to the millions of small informal businesses that make up the bulk of the Indian economy. The transition to a banking system more closely aligned with the country’s needs has proved painfully slow, and hasn’t been helped by the Resave Bank’s abiding risk-aversion.

But Italy’s not the only European banking system to resist foreign buyers. Most German banks are still publicly or mutually owned and therefore cannot be sold. The same goes for half of the French banking system, and those in the know say that the big French banks that are listed on the stock exchange are simply not for sale to foreigners. A foreign purchase of one of the dominant clearing banks would probably be self-defeating: foreign-owned companies cannot be part of the French top 100 enterprises index, so investors would either oppose the bid or dump the shares after a deal.

The banks themselves want to ensure that their subsidiaries in other countries get consistent treatment. Whether this happens will depend on the competence of supervisors just as much as on the rules themselves.

Banks usually compete with each other, but on mutually accepted terms. Bank regulators are becoming more concerned to ensure transparency in the way that banks operate and compete, and have realized that the real engines of an economy are the users of banking services, be they savers, consumers or businesses.

Ø 3) Is the text information up-to-date or out-of-date? Prove your point of view.

Ø 4) Write the annotation of the text.