Glossary

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – the highest ranking executive in a corporation, organisation, also known as Managing Director (MG)

Director – a person who sits on the Board under the authority of the Chairperson or President

Executive director – a person concerned with the day-to-day running of the firm

General Manager – an individual who has overall responsibility for a business or major unit of business

Management – 1) the organization and coordination of an enterprise, the process of managing or being managed

2) the people engaged in this

Manager – a person controlling or administering a business or part of a business

Middle (line) manager – a person responsible for running sections or departments within a firm

Finance

11. Money and banking

Money is a good servant but a bad master.

If you owe your bank £ 1 000, you have a problem, but if you owe it £ 1 million than it has.

John Maynard Keyness

Discovering connections

A)

1. What is the meaning of money to you?

2. Have you ever borrowed money from anyone? Who from?

3. Have you ever lent money to anyone? Who to?

4. Do you spend more than you earn, or less than you earn?

5. Do you have a budget for your money?

6. Do you keep a record of your expenses?

B)

1. What different kinds of services do banks offer to the public?

2. What do you know of the activities of the Central Bank of the Republic of Belarus?

3. Comment on the following: “A banker is a man who lends you umbrella when the weather is fair, and takes it away from you when it rains.”

READING

T e x t 1

Money in the Modern World

Read the text and do the tasks that follow.

Money has various uses in the modern world: it is a measure of the value of goods and services, a means of exchanging such goods and services and a way to store up buying (purchasing) power so that one can use it later. As a measure of value, it is of the very greatest use. If I work in an office, how can my employer know what to pay me for my services if there is no generally recognized measure of value? He may decide to pay me a certain number of loaves of bread each week, but then I shall have to exchange some of these loaves for other things that I need: and how am I to know how many loaves of bread I should give for a pair of shoes or for the rent of my house, for example? Money gives us a very useful means of measuring such relative values.

Money is also of very great use as a means of exchanging goods and services. If, for example, I am a shoemaker, it will not be at all convenient to me always to have to exchange the shoes I make for other goods or services. A doctor may want to buy a pair of shoes from me, for example, but I may not need medical care, so he will then have to find something else that I want, or look for another shoemaker who needs him. Without money the tax-collector would come back to his office with an extraordinary collection of objects.

Considered as a means of storing up buying (purchasing) power, money has good and bad points. It can more easily be kept a long time than such things as food, which rots, or buildings, which slowly fall to pieces, or machines, which rust. It takes up very little space, and if you put it in a bank, it is as safe as anything in this world can be.

But modern money has some very serious disadvantages as means of storing up buying power. In the old days, when money was in the form of gold and silver coins, the metal in each was really worth the amount stamped on the coin. But the paper in modern paper money and even the metal in most modern coins are worth very much less than the amount written on them. As a result, the buying power of modern money can change very greatly in a short time.

… It is not surprising, that some people are doubtful about the wisdom of saving money.