Barter had been so humiliated that he felt himself to be()to every educated man he met.
A.inferior
B.passive
C.reasonable
D.self-fulfilling
A.inferior
B.passive
C.reasonable
D.self-fulfilling
第1题
Susan Torres had been put on life support so
A.she could live comfortably.
B.she could see her baby.
C.she could die without pain.
D.she could deliver her baby.
第2题
In fact, the development of currency has shaped human civilization. Currency has' stopped wars, and it has started many more. Cities and nations as we know them would not exist without it. It is difficult to overstate the importance of currency in modem life.
Currency as Substitute
Currency, or money, can be defined as a unit of purchasing power. It is a medium of exchange, a substitute for goods or services. It doesn't have to be the coins or bills with which you're probably most familiar. In fact, through the ages, everything from large stone wheels, knives, slabs of salt, and even human beings have been used as money. Anything that people agree represents value is currency.
For example, if you have one barrel of wheat, and you want a cow, without currency you have to find someone who not only has a cow, but also wants a barrel of wheat and will agree to the trade.
Now, if you live in a place where round, stamped coins are widely considered to have a certain value and can be exchanged for other things, then you just have to find someone who needs wheat. That person will take the wheat in exchange for an agreed-upon amount of coins which you can later use to buy a cow from someone else.
Currency as Wealth
Besides serving as a substitute in trades, money's other important use is as a store of wealth. In a straight barter system, the commodities being traded are generally perishable. You can gather tons and tons of wheat by making shrewd trade deals, but if you try to save the wheat, it will eventually go bad. Money allows people to accumulate wealth.
This had an enormous impact on civilization, because it meant that power wouldn't always be passed through families. People who had been excluded from any possibility of holding political power could amass wealth through trade or by providing a service. That wealth could then be used to purchase political or even military power. So money made civilization more democratic by taking some power out of the hands of noble families that had monopolized it for hundreds of years.
Forms of Currency: Commodity
The forms and functions of currency have changed over the last 3,000 years or so, generally falling into four categories:
Commodity currency
Coins
Paper money
Electronic currency
Commodity Currency
The development of commodity-based currency systems represents more of a blurring between barter systems and later currency systems than a revolutionary change. In a commodity system, the money used is not only a "place-holder" for purchasing power, but it is something that has an inherent value by itself.
A good example of a commodity system is the one used by the Aztecs. They placed great value on cacao beans, which could be used to make chocolate. The beans were small and easy to carry, so they were often used to balance out or make change in barter agreements.
Forms of Currency: Coins
The first coins were minted in Lydia, an ancient empire in the area of modem Turkey. The Lydian king Croesus started making small metal ingots stamped with an imperial emblem around 640 B. C.
This Lydian custom spread to the Greeks and eventually to the Romans. Coins were usually made of silver or gold, and their value was enforced by the authority of the government that issued them. If the Athenian officials declared that all coins minted in Athens,
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
第3题
Origins of Money and of Banking
What Is Money?
It is almost impossible to define money in terms of its physical form. or properties since these are so diverse. Therefore any definition must be based on its functions.
Money is anything that is widely used for making payments and accounting for debts and credits.
Causes of the Development of Money
One of the most important improvements over the simplest forms of early barter was the tendency to select one or two items in preference to others so that the preferred items became partly accepted because of their qualities in acting as media of exchange. Commodities were chosen as preferred barter items for a number of reasons--some because they were conveniently and easily stored, some because they had high value densities and were easily portable, and some because they were durable. These commodities, being widely desired, would be easy to exchange for others and therefore they came to be accepted as money.
Many societies had laws requiring compensation in some form. for crimes of violence, instead of the old Testament approach of "an eye for an eye". A similarly widespread custom was payment for brides in order to compensate the head of the family for the loss of a daughter's services. Rulers have since very ancient times imposed taxes on or exacted (强求)tribute(贡物) from their subjects. Religious obligations might also entail payment of tribute or sacrifices of some kind. Thus in many societies there was a requirement for a means of payment for blood-money, bride-money, tax or tribute and this gave a great impetus(促进)to the spread of money.
Objects originally accepted for one purpose were often found to be useful for other non-economic purposes and, because of their growing acceptability began to be used for general trading also, supplementing or replacing barter.
Primitive Forms of Money
The use of primitive forms of money in the Third World and North America is more recent and better documented than in Europe and its study sheds light on the probable origins of modern money. Among the topics treated are the use of wampum(贝壳)and the custom of the potlatch or competitive gift exchange in North America, disc-shaped stones in Yap, cowrie shells over much of Africa and Asia, cattle, manillas and whales teeth.
In Fijian(斐济) society gifts of whales teeth were (and in certain cases still are) a significant feature of certain ceremonies. One of their uses was as bride-money, with a symbolic meaning similar to that of the engagement ring in Western society. Whales teeth were "tambua" (from which our word "taboo" comes) meaning that they had religious significance, as did the fei stones of Yap which were still being used as money as recently as the mid 1960s.
The Invention of Banking and Coinage
The invention of banking preceded (先于)that of coinage. Banking originated in Ancient Mesopotamia where the royal palaces and temples provided secure places for the safe-keeping of grain and other commodities. Receipts came to be used for transfers not only to the original depositors but also to third parties. Eventually private houses in Mesopotamia also got involved in these banking operations and laws regulating them were included in the code of Hammurabi.
In Egypt too the centralization of harvests in state warehouses also led to the development of a system of banking. Written orders for the withdrawal of separate lots of grain by owners whose crops had been deposited there for safety and convenience, or which had been compulsorily deposited to the credit of the king, soon became used as a more general method of payment of debts to other persons including tax gatherers, ]priests and traders. Even after the introduction of coinage these Egyptian grain banks served to reduce the need for precious metals which tended to
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
第4题
____ for Mr.William, who dared to publish it.
A) if had it not been B) had it not been
C) is it not being D) its only having been
第5题
Three such functions are usually specified, corresponding to the three basic needs served by money—the need for a medium of exchange, the need for a unit of account, and the need for a store of value. Most familiar is the first, the function of a medium of exchange, whereby goods and services are paid for and contractual obligations discharged. In performing this role the key attribute of money is general acceptability in the settlement of debt. The second function of money, that of a unit of account, is to provide a medium of information—a common denominator or numeraire in which goods and services may be valued and debts expressed. In performing this role money is said to be a "standard of value" or "measure of value" in valuing goods and services and a "standard of deferred payment" in expressing debts. The third function of money, that of a store of value, is to provide a means of holding wealth.
The development of money was one of the most important steps in the evolution of human society, comparable in the words of one writer "with the domestication of animals, the cultivation of the land, and the harnessing of power". Before money there was only barter, the archetypical economic transaction, which required an inverse double coincidence of wants in order for exchange to occur. The two parties to any transaction each had to desire what the other was prepared to offer. This was an obviously inefficient system of exchange since large amounts of time had to be devoted to the necessary process of search and bargaining. Under even the most elemental circumstances barter was unlikely to exhaust all opportunities for advantageous trade.
Bartering is costly in ways too numerous to discuss. Among others, bartering requires an expenditure of time and the use of specialized skills necessary for judging the commodities that are being exchanged. The more advanced the specialization in production and the more complex the economy, the costlier it will be to undertake all the transactions necessary to make any given good reach its ultimate user by using barter.
The introduction of generalized exchange intermediaries cut the Gordian knot of barter by decomposing the single transaction of sale and purchase, thereby obviating the need for a double coincidence of wants. This served to facilitate multilateral exchange; the costs of transactions reduced, exchange ratios could be more efficiently equated with the demand and supply of goods and services. Consequently, specialization in production was promoted and the advantages of economic division of labor became attainable all because of the development of money.
The usefulness of money is inversely proportional to the number of currencies in circulation. The greater the number of currencies, the less is any single money able to perform. efficiently as a lubricant to improve resource allocation and reduce transaction costs. Diseconomies remain because of the need for multiple price quotations (diminishing the information savings derived from money's role as unit of account) and for frequent currency conversions (diminishing the stability and predictability of purchasing power derived from money's roles as medium of exchange and store of value). In all national societies there has been a clear historical tendency to limit the number of currencies, and eventually to standardize the domestic money on just a single cur
A.is common knowledge among informed people
B.is a section of a controversial economic theory
C.breaks new ground in economic thinking
D.is a comprehensive analysis of monetary policy
第6题
Nick had an unusually clever mind, so his success had been ______ and never in doubt.
A.hoped
B.asked
C.promised
D.expected
第7题
A.comprehensive
B.integrated
C.redundant
D.productive
第8题
His unkindness hurt me______because I had been previously so kind to him.
A.much
B.all the much
C.all the more
D.the more
第9题
第10题
A.would not be
B.would not have been
C.had not been
D.will not