Revision Vocabulary Units 9 to 12

Match words from box A to words in box В to make expressions we use in economics. You can use words in box В more than once.

■ absolute	■ aggregate	■ disposable	■ fiscal
■ income	■ mixed	■ monetary	■ pension
■ poverty	■ public	■ relative

■demand	■ policy	■gap	■poverty
■goods	■income	■scheme	■trap

Now match the expressions to their meanings.

services that the government provides because no one else will......................

services and goods that the government provides because they are good for us......................

not having enough money to survive......................

to be much poorer than other people in the same country......................

the government's decisions about taxation and spending......................

the governments decisions about interest rates and money in the economy......................

the money you can spend after you have paid

tax......................

a situation in which it is impossible to escape from being poor......................

all the services and goods that are bought in the economy......................

a way to save money for old age......................

the difference between the highest earners and the lowest earners......................

Units 9 to 12

Economic hard times set to continue

The government released more gloomy economic figures today. Unemployment has risen again this month, and now ten per cent of the (1) krowforec are without a job. At the same time, the Bank of England has said that (2) vinnetmest by companies has decreased dramatically. Businesses simply don't want to be involved in (3) srki-agtkni when the economy is like this. commented John Cash, a senior director with the bank.

But the people worst affected are the unemployed and their families. Many are now spending their life (4) gisvans in order to survive. Government Minister. Alison Wellby said yesterday that. "The (5) frelwae of ordinary people is our most important concern". To prove this, the government has promised to increase spending on (6) frantres payments such as unemployment (2) fitsbeen. However, this could be a sign that the (8) cresseion will probably continue into next year. It seems that even in the (9) glon nur things are not looking good.

С Find ten words in the square connected with buying and selling.

6 The words in bold in this newspaper story have been wrongly printed. Put the letters in the correct order to make the right word.

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(67)

Before you read _

Discuss these questions with your partner.

What is money?

Can anything be used as money?

Could stones and leaves be used instead of coins and notes?

A Vocabulary

Choose the correct word or phrase.

1 One reason why people buy gold is because it

holds its value / is taken for granted.

2 When we buy things, we swap / represent money for goods.

3 Diamonds are valuable because they are so

intrinsic / rare.

4 The dollar is the cash / currency of the USA.

5 When people barter / guarantee goods, they simply exchange one good for another.

6 Banks will only lend to people who can guarantee / barter to pay back the loan.

7 Some shops won't accept credit cards. They will only take cash / currency.

8 When something holds its value / is taken for

people don't think it has great value.

9 Coins and notes are used to swap / represent value.

10 Metals have intrinsic / rare value because they can be U3ed to make things.

11 If money can easily be moved around and used we

say it has liquidity / currency.

12 Centuries ago people paid using commodity money / fiat money, such as gold and silver.

13 Commodity money / Fiat money, like

banknotes and coins, has no intrinsic value. It only represents value.

Reading 1

Money

The cash we use every day is something we take

for granted, but for thousands of years people trailed 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 я 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!

Alter some time, people realised 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.

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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 hag 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 moneу 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 carry around! There's another problem with commodity money not everyone may agree onthe 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 writ 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 haveany real intrinsic value, but that represents value. This is called ,fiat money. The coins and notes that we use today are an example of fiat money. Notes don't have any inherent value

they are just paper. However, everyone agrees that they are worth something. More imporiantly, their value is guaranteed by the government. This is the reason why pounds and dollars and the world's other currencies have value.

В Comprehension

Complete the table with information from the text.

	Examples	Advantages	Disadvantages
Bartering	swapping eggs for milk	simple to understand
Commodity Money	(3)......................and (4)......................	allows you to store (5)......................	not (6)......................agrees on its value lack of liquidity means money can't
Fiat Money	(8)......................and (9)......................	value Is (10)......................by the government

Before you listen

Discuss the following with your partner.

You're going to listen to someone talking about the history of money. Before you listen, read through the statements below. Do you think they are true or false?

С Listening )))

Now listen and check your answers.

1 The earliest kind of money was used about 3.000 years ago.

2 Shells were used as a kind of fiat money.

3 The first metal coins appeared in Greece.

4 The first coins were round.

5 Paper money first appeared in China.

6 The idea of paper money travelled quickly to Europe.

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Before you read

Discuss the following with your partner.

■ accessible	■АТМ	■compensate
■ deposit	■ make a living	■ reliable
■ security	■ sensible	■ transfer
■withdrawal

l As......................against possible burglarios. they

installed alarms.

2 Some people aren't very......................with their

money and they waste it on useless things.

3 If you are injured at work, you may get money to

......................for losing your salary.

4 If something is.......................you can trust it to

work properly.

5......................things are easy to reach or to get.

6 When you......................things you move them

from one place to another.

7 An......................is a machine that gives

customers money when the bank is closed.

8 Most people have to work m order to

9 When you make a.......................you put money

into your account.

10 When you make a.......................you take money

out of your account.

Reading 2

Banks

If you work, you've probably got a hank account. You could keep the money you earn each month in a boxunder your bed. but it wouldn't he very sensible. One reason is that it's not very safe. If your house gets burgled, you'll lose everything you've saved. Another reason is that your money will lose value.

As prices rise, the money in a box under your bed will be able to buy fewer and fewer things. Money in a bank savings account, however, will earn interest. The interest will help compensate for the effectof inflation. But banks are more than just safe places for your money What other services do they offer?

The other main service is lending money.Individuals and businesses often need to borrow money, and they need a lender that they can trust. This is exactly what banks are - reliable lenders. In fact, most of the money that people deposit in their bank accounts is immediately lent out to someone else.

Apart from storing and lending money, banks offer other financial services. Most of these are ways of making monеу more accessible to customers. For example, banks help people transfer money securely. They give customers chequebooks and credit cards to use instead of cash They provide ATM machines so that people can get cash any time of the day or night.

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But how do banks make a living?Basically, they make a living by charging interest on loans. Of course, when you make a deposit into a hank savings account, the bank pays you interest on that money. However, the rate they pay savers is less than the rate they charge borrowers. The extra money they make by charging interest on loansis where hanks earn most of their money.

For hanks, interest is also a kind of security. Sometimes people do not pay back money they borrow. This is called defaultingon loan. When someone defaults on a loan, the bank uses money earned from interest to cover the loss.

All of this means that most of the money people havesaved in the hank is not there at all! A small amount of the total savings is kept by the bank so that customers can make withdrawals. The rest, however, is made available for loans. The amount that is kept is called the reserve. The reserve must be a certain percentageof all the savings received from customers- for example 20 percent. This figure is set by the central bank, and this is one of the ways that governments can control the amount of money circulating in the economy.

E Comprehension

Now read the text again and answer these questions in your own words in the space provided below.

1 What two reasons are given for saving your money in a bank account?

2 Why do people prefer to borrow money from banks?

3 Do banks do anything else for their customers other than store and lend money?

4 How do banks earn money?

5 Who decides how much money the bank keeps in reserve?

Notes:

Before you listen_

Discuss these questions with your partner.

If a bank note is not real, we call it a lake or counterfeit note.

How do you know if a banknote is real or not?

What can banks do to make people trust their notes and coins?

F Listening )))

Look at these notes about whether a ten-pound note is genuine or not and see if you can guess what goes in the gaps.

Paper is very (1).......................

The words (2)......................are raised from the

paper.

There should be a strip of (3)......................in the

middle of thenote.

There is a watermark of the (4).......................

There is a hologram which shows a picture of

Britannia, who was a (5).......................and the

(6).......................

With a magnifying glass you can see the word (7)......................written in tiny microlettering.

If you put the note under fluorescent light, a bright

(8)......................number ten will appear.

Now listen and check your answers.

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G Speaking

Discuss these questions with your partner.

Can you imagine life without money?

What are the dangers of using a credit card to pay with instead of money?

What do you know about digital money?

Task

Give a two-minute presentation on the history of money. First, read through text 1 again and make notes below on the following.

bartering

commodity money

fiat money

You can also include recent developments not mentioned in the text, such as credit cards and digital money.

Notes:

Pronunciation guide:

Liquidity

Copper

Accessible

Deposit

Withdrawal

Borrower

Default

Bartering

Fiat

H Writing

Write a promotional leaflet for a bank. The aim of the leaflet is to attract new customers and to inform existing customers about the services the bank offers.

Use an informal, friendly style like you see in advertisements. Organise the leaflet using the plan shown here.

Promotional leaflet

PARAGRAPH 1

Give a brief history of the bank and say how big it is today (to give confidence to customers).

PARAGRAPH 2

Explain what your main services are. and what advantages you offer compared to other banks (for example, interest rates).

PARAGRAPH 3

Say what other services you offer and how they can be useful to your customers: for example, special savings schemes for certain people (students / pension schemes for workers) and Internet banking.

PARAGRAPH 4

Say how customers (or potential customers) can contact the bank (e-mail, web page, phone number, local branches, etc).

Write 200-250 words

(72)

Before you read

Discuss these questions with your partner.

What taxes do people pay in your country? Are the taxes fair? Why / Why not?

A Vocabulary

Choose the correct answer А. В or С from the list opposite.

1 The......................department of the government

looks after roads, railways and airports.

2 The government hopes its......................will help

reduce unemployment.

3 The parts that something is made of are sometimes called.......................

4......................employment is when everyone who

can work has a job.

5 The money that you have after you've paid taxes is called your......................income.

6 The part of a person's salary that is not taxed is called their personal.......................

7 The government plans many new......................

projects, such as building new hospitals and schools.

8 Another word for extra goods that are not needed

is.......................

9 When the economy is working at full

.......................it is using all its resources

for production.

10 A......................is a large, fast road which

connects cities.

11 A......................is a plan for achieving something.

12 In a......................tax system, people who earn

more pay more tax than people who earn less.

1A transport	1B education	1С defence
2A components	2В allowance	2С policy
3 A income	3В components	3С capacity
4A absolute	4В complete	4C full
5A full	5B disposable	5C spending
6 A allowance	6B surplus	5С capacity
7A personal	7B public	7C disposable
8A surplus	8B shortage	8С allowance
9A employment	9В income	9C capacity
10 A path	10B motorway	10C railway
11A component	11В project	11С scheme
12A surplus	12B progressive	12С public

Reading 1

Fiscal policy

As we saw in unit 12, fiscal policy is one ofthe tools that governments haveto Keep the economy on a steadypath. The two main components of fiscal policy are chanties to the tax system and changes in government spending Hut what changes can governments make in thesetwo areas,and how do changes affect the growth ofthe economy?

Let's look first at the tax system, and in particular at income tax Income tax is one of the biggest

sourcesof income for a governmentMany

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governments operate a system called progressive taxation. This means that the more you earn, the more tax you pay. People are usually allowed to keep some of their income without paying any tax. This is called the perconal allowance. The rest of their income is then taxed using the progressive system. For example:

income Personal Tax to pay

before tax allowance after allowance

0-1,999 10%

2,000-29,999 5,000 22%

30,000 and over 40%

Governments can decide to change the size of the personal ,allowance, or change the percentage that each income group has to pay. If the economy is growing too fast, and demand for goods and services is more than the economy can supply, the government will want to slow down ,spending.

To do this, they can decrease the personal allowance, or they can increase the percentage to pay in tax. This will mean people have less disposable income, and spending will slow down. If the economy is slowing down loo much. governments can do the opposite.

What about government spending? How does that affect economic growth? The key to this is something called the multiplier effect. To understand how this works, let's look at an example. Imagine that the economy is not growing. This will make aggregate demand tall. In turn, productivity falls. This situation means that the nation's resources are not all being used. In other words, there are surplus raw materials, machines are not being used and workers are unemployed. What the economy needs is a pull in demand for goods and services.

The government can provide this pull by spending a large amount of money on public projects. For example, imagine that the transport department decides to spend £200 million on building a new motorway. This will give work to building. companies and jobs to unemployed workers. In other words, more resources are being used and the nation's productivity is increased.

Companies and workers on the motorway project will save some of the money they earn, but also Spend some. The money they spend will be

income for others in the economy. If half of the 200 million is spent. then the total national income has grown by this much:

200 million + (0.5 x 200 million)

Each time a proportion of the income is passed on. the economy grows again:

S200 million + (0.5 x 2O0 million) + (0.5 x 100 million), etc

In theory, the multiplier effect will continue until there is full employment and the nation's resources are being used to their fullest extent.

В Comprehension

Now read the text again and answer these questions in your own words.

1 What are the two tools of fiscal policy?

2 What is someone's personal allowance?

3 What will the government do to taxes if the economy is slowing down?

4 How can the government create more demand in the economy?

5 When does the multiplier effect stop working?

Before you listen

Discuss these questions with your partner.

What do you think makes a good tax?

Which four things listed below do you think are the most important?

1 It's easy to collect.

2 It's paid often.

3 It's easy to understand.

4 It's not paid too often.

5 It's a low percentage of income.

6 It's easy to pay. 1 It's fair.

8 It's large enough for the government to use.

С Listening

Now listen to someone talking about Adam Smith's four rules for good taxation. Which four ideas from the list above are mentioned?

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Before you read

Discuss the following with your partner.

Sometimes people feel like spending money. Other times they prefer to save their money. Why is this?

Complete each sentence with a word or phrase from the box.

■ central bank	■ commercial banks	■confident
■credit	■Exchange rate	■ expand
■ frequently	■impact	■proportion
■ mortgage	■ repayments

1 We have to pay our bills too......................in

my opinion!

2 A country's......................is the government bank.

3 The......................are the high street banks that

everyone uses.

4 When a loan is taken out, usually each month

......................have to be made.

5 A......................is a special loan for people who

want to buy a house.

6 When you feel.......................you feel sure that

what you are doing is safe.

7 Many people these days buy things on

......................instead of paying in cash.

8 A large......................of people use banks to

deposit their savings.

9 The......................compares the values of

different currencies.

10 If a company wants to.......................to move

into new markets for example, it will need to borrow money.

11 High interest rates have an......................on the

consumer's ability to buy a new home.

Reading 2

Monetary policy

Monetary policy is another tool that governments use to control the есоnomу. Monetary policy mainly involves making changes to the interest rate. It can also involve changing the amount of money that circulates round the economy However, this second kind of monetary policy isn't used very often because it can lead to inflation. Changing interest rates, on the other hand, is a method that is used quite frequently for slowing down or speeding up the economy. So how does it work?

Basically, commercial banks the ones that you and 1 use to keep our savings in and to borrow from - borrow their money from the country's central bank. This is the national or government bank, and it has the power to set interest rates. The interest rate of the central bank will influence the rates commercial banks set for then customers When interest rates go up. borrowing

moneу becomes more expensive. When they go down, it becomes cheaper.

People get loans from banks for all sorts of reasons, but the biggest loan most people take out is to buy a house. This kind of loan is called a mortgage. When Interest rates increase, mortgages become more expensive People who already have a mortgage will need to pay more ontheir repayments, and will have less money to spend on other things. Fewer people will want to buy new houses and house prices will fall

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In turn. home owners will feel less confident about their own wealth and will spend less. As a result, the economy slows down. A fall in Interest rales will have the opposite effect on (he house buying chain.

Consumers also buy other things using borrowed money. This is called buying on creadit and interest rates will also affect how much people spend on credit. Purchases made using credit cards are now a huge proportion of total spending in many countries. This means that interest rale changes have a big impact on consumer spending and the economy as a whole.

Companies, too, arc affected by interest rate changes. When interest rates arc low. they feel more confident about investing in order (to expand their business. Low interest rates will encourage them to take out loans in order to build factories, buy machines and increase production. All of this increases the size of national output Again, higher interest rates will have the opposite effect.

Finally, interest rates can have an effect on the amount of exports a country sells. This is because the value of a currency (the exchange rate) often falls when the interest rate falls. When the value of a currency falls, a nation's products and services become cheaper for customers from other countries. This increases export sales, and more money comes into the economy And. of course, a rise in interest rates will mean a rise in the exchange rate. This will reduce export sales, and reduce the total output of the economy.

E Comprehension