III. Agree or disagree with the statements:

1. A person may be unconditionally discharged if it is someone's first offence and the crime is a small one.

2. A conditional discharge means that the guilty person is set free even after committing another crime within a stated time.

3. To be put on probation means to have regular meetings with a social worker.

4. A very common form of punishment for serious offences is a fine.

5. A convicted person may be sentenced to some hours of community service.

6. Magistrates and judges try always to imprison people.

7. The country's prisons have a reputation for being “schools for life”.

8. The prisoners “remission” of their sentence for “good behavior”.

9. There is still a death penalty in Britain.

10. For murderers there is an obligatory life sen­tence in Britain.

IV. Answer the questions:

1. What are the most common types of punishment in Britain?

2. Should fine be imposed for minor offences?

3. What does a conditional discharge of a person mean?

4. Do magistrates and judges have the power to imprison people?

5. For what crimes are the people punished by life sentence?

V. Match the first part of the sentence (1-5) with the second one (a-e).

1	There is no death penalty in Britain,	a	even a guilty person is often unconditionally discharged.
2	The convicted person may be sentenced	b	that the guilty person has to pay a sum of money.
3	A fine as a form of punishment for minor offences means	c	except for treason.
4	A conditional discharge means that the guilty person is set free	d	to a certain number of hours of community service.
5	If it is someone's first offence and the crime is a small one,	e	but if he commits another crime, the first crime will be taken into account.

3. Make up a plan of the text.

Unit 13

Financial law

Finances and financial law

1. Read and memorize the following words

Provision, relation, formation, insurance, to comprise, encouragement, priority, expenditure, autonomous, recurrent.

II. Read and translate the text.

Finance is the provision of money at the time when it is needed. It is a system of monetary relations leading to formation, distribution and use of money in the process of its turnover between economic entities.-

The financial system is the network of institutions through which firms, households and units of government get the funds they need and put surplus funds to work.

Savers and borrowers are connected by financial intermediaries including banks, thrift institutions, insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds, and finance companies.

Finance in an economic system comprises two parts: public finance and finance of economic entities.

Public finance is the provision of money (by the community through taxes) to be spent by national and local government authorities on projects of national and local benefit. It is a collective term for the financial flows and also the financial institutions of the public sector.

Public finance has the following four functions:

a) the provision of essential services;

b) the encouragement or control of particular sectors of the economy;

c) the implementation of social policy in respect of social ser­vices;

d) the encouragement of the growth of the economy as a whole. The major instrument of any financial system is the budget. In a market-oriented economy, the budget is the most important tool for achieving national priority and goals through the allocation and distribution of resources, and the maintenance of stable macroeconomic environment.

The budget is an estimate of national revenue and expenditure for the ensuing fiscal year. When expenditure exceeds the revenue the budget has a deficit.

Financial law deals with the broad range of savings and investments products in which individuals, businesses and institutions hold trillions dollars, and the services related to those products. The products and services play a vital role in the word economy and directly employ millions of individuals in the United States. They include:

1. Banking (whether at banks, trust companies, savings bank, savings and loans or credit unions)

2. Brokerage services (covered under Broker Disputes)

3. Commodities

4. Consumer lenders (including credit card issuers)

5. Insurance including annuities (which is covered in a Practice Area of its own)

6. Investment advisors

7. Mortgages (which are covered as a tonic in Real Estate)

8. Mutual funds (a type of security)

9. Stocks and bonds (covered under Securities)