Журавлева Сборник текстов для подготовки аспирантов-економистов 2011

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Журавлева В.И. Сборник текстов для подготовки аспирантов-экономистов к кандидатскому экзамену. М.: НИЯУ МИФИ, 2011. − 40 с.

Это пособие – подборка аутентичных текстов и заданий к ним. Тексты взяты из авторитетного британского журнала the Economist 2010 года и отражают весь спектр современной экономики; таким образом, по этому пособию могут заниматься аспиранты экономических специальностей, работающие в разных сферах современного бизнеса. Работа над заданиями пособия во время учебного процесса помогает развивать навыки чтения, письменного и устного перевода и говорения. Использование пособия для подготовки аспирантов к кандидатскому экзамену существенно облегчит работу как аспиранта, так и преподавателя, и обеспечит хороший результат. Пособие также может использоваться группами магистратуры и бакалавриата как во время учебного процесса, так и при подготовке к сдаче экзамена. Краткий поурочный словарь помогает понять тексты, дать адекватный перевод и точно передать мысль автора на русский язык. Supplementary Reading тематически и лексически связано с текстами пособия и дополняет их. В дополнительных текстах можно найти ответы на поставленные в пособие вопросы.

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Unit 1

Warm up activities

Think about banking system in our country. Do you remember any of the biggest banks in Russia? What are they? Do you know anything about banking system in other countries? Can you compare them? Remember as many banking terms as you can. See Supplementary Reading to get more information.

It was all his fault

Oct 5th 2010, 16:02 by The Economist online | BERLIN

A COUNTRY bumpkin from Brittany, seduced by a corrupt banking system and the avarice of his bosses, or “a crook, a fraudster and a terrorist”? These were the two competing descriptions that a French court was asked to weigh in regard to Jérôme Kerviel, a rogue trader who almost laid low, France’s second-biggest bank. On October 5th, the court ruled unequivocally that he was the second, sentencing Mr Kerviel to five years in jail, the maximum sentence it could hand down (although it suspended two years of the sentence).

As significant as the jail term was the court’s order that Mr Kerviel repay the bank the full €4.9 billion ($7 billion at the time) that he had lost. Although Mr Kerviel has no hope of repaying even a fraction of this sum, the damages award signals the court’s belief that he alone was responsible for his rogue trades. In this the damages award is more than symbolic, for it marks the court’s repudiation of his argument that the bank shared in the blame because it had looked the other way when his trades were profitable, and that it should have had the systems in place to stop him.

The finding that the bank’s weak supervision of Mr Kerviel provides no excuse for his crimes should not, however, overshadow the serious weaknesses in SocGen’s systems that he had found and exploited. Mr Kerviel, who had worked in the bank’s back office as an administrator,

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was able to use his knowledge of its financial plumbing to falsify trades and create fictitious clients who were ostensibly on the other sides of bets that he was taking with the bank’s money.

It's a fair cop, but is société still to blame?

SocGen says it has since spent €130 million tightening up its controls as part of a broader shift to reduce the risks it is willing to take in investment banking. That sounds like a lot of money, but what it has achieved so far is less than impressive. In August Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) fined SocGen for weaknesses in its record-keeping and reporting of financial transactions. Many may have been minor irregularities, but they suggest that as of February this year the bank was still having problems at the interface between its trading desks and its administrative offices. In this SocGen was not unique. Traders at a number of banks talk about mysterious trades appearing or disappearing and of the difficulty of reconciling positions at the end of the day. In benign markets and with honest traders these mistakes usually balance one another out, but SocGen’s experience sounds a loud warning to all investment banks and their regulators that they need to pay more attention to the boring old back office. A string of similar penalties levied by the FSA against other banks, including Barclays and Credit Suisse, suggest that regulators are on the case and that banks still have work to do.

Joining up all the pipes in a bank is the first step to preventing the emergence of future rogue traders. Yet traders are intelligent and inventive, and quickly find ways to evade many of the more irksome controls placed on them. Most, for example, make calls on their mobile phones rather than their office lines, which are generally recorded. Yet many banks are yet to ban mobiles. Furthermore, the case of Mr Kerviel—like that of Nick Leeson, whose bets almost two decades ago destroyed Barings Bank—ought to raise bigger questions than those relating to the mere plumbing of banks' transaction systems. Prime among them should be about how to remunerate traders and bankers who stand to earn very well indeed if they make successful bets yet whose losses are usually borne by the bank or, in extreme cases, society at large.

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Find out the answers in the text

1.What was happening in the second biggest French bank in October 2010?

2.Why was it happening?

3.What do the banks have to do avoid rogue traders?

4.Whose responsibility is that?

5.Who usually bears the losses?

What do you think

1.Why the emergence of the crooks in the banks happens so often?

2.Who helps shady dealers in their businesses?

3.Who is responsible for their activities: authorities or society?

4.How the frauds can be avoided?

What is the main idea in each paragraph? Reproduce the text using your ideas

Vocabulary

a rogue trader – мошенник, человек, ведущий дела незаконными способами

a country bumpkin – деревенщина a сrook – жулик, мошенник

lay low − порушить, свалить (разг.)

damages award – незначительное возмещение убытков ostensibly – якобы, для видимости

fine – штрафовать

record keeping 1) учет, ведение учета [бухгалтерских книг] Syn: accounting , bookkeeping , recordkeeping 2) = paperwork

financial transactions – финансовая операция (сделка) minor irregularities – небольшие погрешности interface – взаимодействие, согласование

desk − отделение, подразделение (учреждения); отдел ( в редакции газеты)

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reconcile - а) мирить, помирить, Syn: adjust , settle

б) улаживать (ссору, спор и т. п.); урегулировать (конфликт и т. п.) levy - сбор, взимание (пошлин, налогов) ; обложение (налогом), сумма обложения

emergence - появление, выход

inventive изобретательный; находчивый Syn: resourceful evade - обходить (закон) ; уклоняться

irksome - утомительный, скучный; надоедливый, докучливый, раздражающий, досаждающий

bet - пари, ставка (в пари), объект пари, выбор mere - простой, не более чем, всего лишь prime - важнейший, главный, основной

remunerate - вознаграждать; компенсировать, оплачивать

to stand - держаться; быть устойчивым, прочным, крепким; устоять to earn - зарабатывать, получать доход, получать прибыль , приносить прибыль, дивиденды, проценты, заслуживать

bear; bore ; born ,(borne) - носить, нести; переносить

Supplementary Reading

Central bank

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is a banking institution granted the exclusive privilege to lend a government its currency. Like a normal commercial bank, a central bank charges interest on the loans made to borrowers, primarily the government of whichever country the bank exists for, and to other commercial banks, typically as a 'lender of last resort'. However, a central bank is distinguished from a normal commercial bank because it has a monopoly on creating the currency of that nation, which is loaned to the government in the form of legal tender. It is a bank that can lend money to other banks in times of need Its primary function is to provide the nation's money supply, but more active duties include controlling subsidized-loan interest rates, and acting as a lender of the last resort to the banking sector during times of

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financial crisis (private banks often being integral to the national financial system). It may also have supervisory powers, to ensure that banks and other financial institutions do not behave recklessly or fraudulently.

Most richer countries today have an "independent" central bank, that is, one which operates under rules designed to prevent political interference. Examples include the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve System in the United States. Some central banks are publicly owned, and others are privately owned. For example, the United States Federal Reserve is a quasi-public corporation.

History

In Europe prior to the 17th century most money was commodity money, typically gold or silver. However, promises to pay were widely circulated and accepted as value at least five hundred years earlier in both Europe and Asia. The medieval European Knights Templar ran probably the best known early prototype of a central banking system, as their promises to pay were widely regarded, and many regard their activities as having laid the basis for the modern banking system. At about the same time, Kublai Khan of the Mongols introduced fiat currency to China, which was imposed by force by the confiscation of specie.

As the first public bank to "offer accounts not directly convertible to coin", the Bank of Amsterdam established in 1609 is considered to be the "first true central bank". This was followed in 1694 by the Bank of England, created by Scottish businessman William Paterson in the City of London at the request of the England government to help pay for a war.

Although central banks are generally associated with fiat money, under the international gold standard of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries central banks developed in most of Europe and in Japan, though elsewhere Free banking or currency boards were more usual at this time. Problems with collapses of banks during downturns, however, was leading to wider support for central banks in those nations which did not as yet possess them, most notably in Australia.

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With the collapse of the gold standard after World War ІІ, central banks became much more widespread. The US Federal Reserve was created by the U.S. Congress through the passing of the Glass Owen Bill, signed by President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913, whilst Australia established its first central bank in 1920, Colombia in 1923, Mexico and Chile in 1925 and Canada and New Zealand in the aftermath of the Great Depression in 1934. By 1935, the only significant independent nation that did not possess a central bank was Brazil, which developed a precursor thereto in 1945 and created its present central bank twenty years later. When African and Asian countries gained independence, all of them rapidly established central banks or monetary unions.

The People Bank of China evolved its role as a central bank starting in about 1979 with the introduction of market reforms in that country, and this accelerated in 1989 when the country took a generally capitalist approach to developing at least its export economy. By 2000 the People's Bank of China was in all senses a modern central bank, and emerged as such partly in response to the European Central Bank. This is the most modern bank model and was introduced with the euro to coordinate the European national banks, which continue to separately manage their respective economies other than currency exchange and base interest rates.

Activities and responsibilities

Functions of a central bank (not all functions are carried out by all banks):

•implementing monetary policy

•determining Interest rates

•controlling the nation's entire money supply

•the Government's banker and the bankers' bank ("lender of last resort")

•managing the country's foreign exchange and gold reserves and the Government's stock register

•regulating and supervising the banking industry

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•setting the official interest rate – used to manage both inflation and the country's exchange rate – and ensuring that this rate takes effect via a variety of policy mechanisms

Monetary policy

Central banks implement a country's chosen monetary policy. At the most basic level, this involves establishing what form of currency the country may have, whether a fiat currency, gold-backed currency (disallowed for countries with membership of the IMF), currency board or a currency union. When a country has its own national currency, this involves the issue of some form of standardized currency, which is essentially a form of promissory note: a promise to exchange the note for "money" under certain circumstances. Historically, this was often a promise to exchange the money for precious metals in some fixed amount. Now, when many currencies are fiat money, the "promise to pay" consists of nothing more than a promise to pay the same sum in the same currency.

In many countries, the central bank may use another country's currency either directly (in a currency union), or indirectly, by using a currency board. In the latter case, local currency is directly backed by the central bank's holdings of a foreign currency in a fixed-ratio; this mechanism is used, notably, in Bulgaria, Hong Kong and Estonia.

In countries with fiat money, monetary policy may be used as a shorthand form for the interest rate targets and other active measures undertaken by the monetary authority.

Goals of Monetary Policy

Price Stability

Unanticipated inflation leads to lender losses. Nominal contracts attempt to account for inflation. Effort successful if monetary policy able to maintain steady rate of inflation.

High Employment

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