主题：Bluff your way in Economics--MONEY 侃侃货币

Money is a unit of measurement against which the relative value of various goods and services can be gauged.As a medium of exchange,it allowed people to trade with each other without having to break into a whole bison to buy a box of matches.It is so convenient that life without it,even if you haven''''t got any,is unthinkable.. At a very early stage traders sought to exchange goods for things that had an innate and recognised value to act as a store of wealth.Gold and other precious stones and metals have been used for centuries,though they are widely felt to have held back the development of the pay-phone.

Tokens 等价物 Some got around the problem of buying matches by rubbing two boy scout together.Other early civilisations developed the use of small tokens,which could be exchanged for matches.The tokens themselves were pretty worthless,but,within the community in which they were used,they had an understood value.For such a system to work,people using the tokens would have to be confident about three things: 1. That the tokens would be universally accepted. 2. That the supply of the tokens was relatively fixed. 3. That,in the case of chocolate money,some little toerag would not eat them. Confidence is what the entire monetary system is based on.Today,more than at any other time in history,money is an act of confidence.

good job

hehe~~~~ In this way,I can force myself to get into reading the hard things.

I'll continue! Bank Notes 银行票据 People accept payment for their labour in small bits of paper that have little or no intrinsic value.The only reason they are prepared to do this is because they know the paper can be used to buy things. Bank notes derive from 17th century goldsmiths issuing receipts for the gold that people deposited with them for safe keeping.It soon became more convenient,and safer,to use these 'notes' in payment for merchandise,rather than to stagger around with large sums in gold.Thus the ownership of the gold could change without the need for it to be moved from its vault.In the early days everyone was happy to use notes,backed by the promise of reputable bank to supply the gold they represented,as money.Even to this day British bank notes are inscribed with the lengend 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of one pound'.This sum was to be paid in gold.Nowadays,bank notes are no longer exchangeable for gold(in fact a $5 note is not exchangeable for very much at all).

Bank Loads 银行贷款 Soon banks,or the goldsmiths who acted as banks,discovered they could actually issue more notes than they had gold deposited in their vaults.Nobody really appeared to mind and it seemed like a 'nice little earner'.In this way the banks could literally create money.If someone wanted a loan,hey presto,your friendly goldsmith could whistle up one of those marvellous notes showing you had a deposit of gold in his safe.The fact that you didn't actually have any gold was academic:you got your loan and the bank got its interest. Now you do not have to be an Einstein to spot the potential difficulty with this little number.What happens if all the people holding these note from a certain bank wanted to swap them for gold all at once?Exactly. Of course,the chances of everyone coincidentally wanting their gold back at the same time are infinitesimally small-herhaps not even that big.However,if depositors should have some reason to lose confidence in the bank,that is another matter.If a bank's largest customer absconded,or fell off a yacht,this could prompt a run on the bank's deposits and,ultimately,bankruptcy.

我怎么早没有看到 很有用的 金融英语

The last term Bank Regulation 银行监管 In days of yore,banks collapsed all the time and depositors simply took pot luck.Nowadays such collapses are less common as there are many and varied rules and regulations to ensure the financial integrity of the banks.Even if a bank does go belly-up,deposit insurance means depositor get at least some of their money back. Money and banking have now virtually come full circle with 'cash' itself becoming an anachronism.The favoured method of payment is once more gold or platinum(banks are still keen to have their products associated with pricious metals)--but this time of the plastic variety.