2. Translate the following words and word combinations:

Significant effect; to accomplish; goal; to remove; a pile of sand; raw materials; feedback; environment; to apply; workplace; to interpret patterns.

3. Answer the following questions:

1. What is a system?

2. Is a functioning car a system?

3. Does the feedback come from the larger environment of the organization?

4. Has systems theory brought a new perspective for managers? What are they?

5. What is the main idea of the text?

Text IX

1. Read the text

GOVERNMENT ACTIVITIES AND THE U. S. ECONOMY

1. While consumers and producers make most decisions that mold the economy, government activities have a powerful effect on the U. S. economy in at least four areas. Perhaps most importantly, the Federal Government guides the overall pace of economic activity, attempting to maintain steady growth, high levels of employment and price stability.

2. By adjusting spending and tax rates or managing the money supply and controlling the use of credit, it can slow down or speed up the economy's rate of growth, affecting the level of prices and employment.

3. After the Great Depression of the 1930s, recessions were viewed as the greatest of economic threats. When the danger of recession appeared most serious, government sought to strengthen the economy by spending heavily itself or cutting taxes so that consumers would spend more, and by fostering rapid growth in the money supply. In the 1970s, major price increases, particularly for energy, created a fear of inflation. As a result, government leaders came to concentrate more on controlling inflation than on combating recession by limiting spending, resisting tax cuts, and reining in growth in the money supply.

4. Ideas about the best tools for stabilizing the economy changed substantially between the 1960s and the 1990s. In the 1960s, government had great faith in fiscal policy – manipulation of government revenues. Since the president and the Congress control spending and taxes, these elected officials played a leading role in directing the economy. A period of high inflation, high unemployment and huge government deficits weakened confidence in fiscal policy as a tool for regulating economic activity. Instead, monetary policy – controlling the nation's money supply through such devices as interest rates – assumed growing prominence. Monetary policy is directed by the nation's central bank (the Federal Reserve Board) independent of the president and the Congress.

2. Translate the following words and word combinations:

To maintain steady growth; price stability; tax rates; employment; economic threats; a fear of inflation; faith; fiscal policy; a tool for regulating economic activity; growing prominence; interest rates; monetary policy.

3. Answer the following questions:

1. In what areas have government activities a powerful effect?

2. When was a fear of inflation created?

3. Did government leaders come to concentrate more on controlling inflation?

4. When did ideas about the best tools for stabilizing the economy changed?

5. Is monetary policy directed by the nation’s central bank?

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