script

Conversation 2

Janet    So what does the world of high finance [means financial activities involving very large amounts of money]  have to do with our website?

Joe    Well, I thought we could do something on the Bank of England Museum– it’s really quite interesting.

Janet    So who exactly is Tim Pearson?

Joe    He works there and he’s coming along today to plan an interview and a tour round the museum.

Janet    So we’re not actually doing any filming?

Andy    No, just asking him more about the Bank and the museum.

Tim    Hi.

Joe    Hi , Tim.

Andy    Hi, Tim.

Janet    Hi, I’m Janet.

Tim   Hi, Janet. Right, so where do you want to begin.

Joe    I’ve got a plan of the museum. Can we go though it with you?

Tim   Fine. Basically, the Bank of England Museum tells the story of the Bank of England. There’s also a collection of bank notes [a piece of paper money worth a particular amount of money] and gold bars.

Andy    Any free samples?

Tim   Sorry, no chance![used to emphasize that you are sure something could never happen] Now, you come in here or the left, past the museum shop. Then the first room you enter is a reconstruction of a late 18th century banking hall.

Janet    And moving through to this room, on the top right hand side?

Tim    That’s the story of the early years at the Bank from when it was founded in 1694.

Janet    What about this room on the left?

Tim    That’s the Bank’s collection of silver goods, a pile of gold bars[金条]. And this room here below contains a description of how the modern economy works.

Janet    So is our paper money always backed[支撑，支持] by its value in gold?

Tim    Yes, the notes they gave or received were originally receipts [a piece of paper that you are given which shows that you have paid for something收据] for the loans in gold. But gradually these paper receipts replace the gold and became bank notes.

Janet    So is the Bank was given its independence in 1997.

Janet    And why didn’t the Bank help the economy during in 2008?

Tim    Well, it’s a bit difficult to explain…

Andy    Take your time, Tim. We’d really like to know.

Tim    Well, uh…

script

Part1

Voiceover   So you want to win a million dollars. Who doesn’t, right? Everyone has fun thinking about how they would spend all that money.

Speaker 1   If I won a million dollars, I would take a vacation around the world.

Speaker 2   If I won a million dollars, I would feed the hungry children in Africa.

Speaker 3   I would buy a Learjet[here refers to a private, luxury jetmanufactured by Learjet company] and get out of here.

Speaker 4   If I won a million dollars, I would buy a cabin and live in the woods.

Speaker 5   If I won a million dollars, I would take a trip around the world, and the rest of it I would give to charities.

Voiceover  Winning a million dollars is a nice fantasy. But for many people, their fantasy can get them in trouble. Criminals called con artists, scam artists, or frauds, take advantage of people’s dreams of winning it big. 

Maria     My dad told my mom, “Don’t do that, because you don’t know if they’re going to trick you or not!”

Voiceover  Scam artists trick Maria Ellan’s mother out of thousands of dollars. These criminals told Maria’s mother that she had won part of a million-dollar jackpot[To hit/win the jackpot means that you win the most important prize in a competition.]. But, they said, since she was not a US citizen[从Maria说话口音判断，可能是来自Latin America（maybe Mexico）], she was not allowed to claim the prize. They promised to collect the prize for her if she gave them thousands of dollars.

Maria      $15,000, uh, at 5 o’clock in the Lottery Texas Department. That’s what they told her. And my mom said, “OK, I’ll be there at that time.”

Voiceover  Police at the Dallars Lotto Claims Office say that dozens of people have been tricked out of their money in this latest fraud. Fraud is a common crime. Hoping to win millions, people make poor decisions and lose their money. But people who really do win millions can make poor decisions too. Bob Kenny works for an organization called More Than Money. MoreThan Money helps who come into large amounts of money make good decisions about how to manage their unexpected wealth.

Bob       What’s really important to me? My family. The health of my family. The education of my family. The long-term care of my family. These are the things that are important to me. These are the things I’m going to use my money to get in the world.

Part2  

Voiceover  Albert Miller and Dorothy Adams who won a whopping [(informal,only before noun) meaning extremely large] $40 million had many choices to make on how to spend their new wealth.

Albert     I was finally able to afford some health insurance, so……          

Voiceover  And you didn’t have it before this?

Albert     No. I didn’t, and I worked every, every day of my adult life.

Bob       That’s a great decision, buying health insurance. He knows his health is important to him. His family’s health is important to him. He knows his family is important to him. He knows he’s important to his family. So it’s a really easy decision. I have the money. I need the health insurance. I’m going to buy it.

Voiceover  Now Albert can afford almost anything he wants. He bought an everyday car, a top of the line Infinity [top of the linerefers to the best of several products of the same type or are produced by the same company; also “top of the range”顶级的].

Albert     It’s low-key…it’s a low-profile  [something not intended to attract a lot of attention. 低调的]car for me.

Voiceover  His other new one is not. It’s a special edition Rolls-Royce.There are fewer than two dozen like this in the world. With a cognac bar, a twelve-cylinder[（汽车）缸] engine, and one smooth ride.

Albert     You fly a Rolls, you don’t drive a Rolls. So, you know, you just fly along.

Bob       He decided to buy one car that was practical, that he could use every day. And then he decided to buy another car that he knows is not practical, that’s been a fantasy of his. It’s something that, in some ways, he’s always wanted. And having a little fun with money while he’s trying to make these decisions is a perfectly normal thing to do.

Voiceover  Last time we talked, you were talking diamonds.What happened?

Dorothy   Uh, well I got diamonds!

Voiceover  Big ones. Eleven carats[克拉] in all.

Bob         I think that was a very sweet thing to do. He had his fantasies, she had hers, and having diamonds is something she always wanted.

Voiceover    A few weeks after the big win, the couple closed their restaurant, called Bentley’s. Now they have more time to travel, golf and play on the boat Albert just bought. Still, a lot’s the same. They live in the same house, in the same neighborhood where they both grew up.

Albert’s son We try to keep everything pretty much the same as it was before. You know, we tried not to let money change us.

Part3

Bob     Our culture wants us to believe that if we’re not happy, if we had more money, we would be happy. And the research shows that that’s just not true. You’ll still wake up some mornings with a headache. You’ll still wake up sometimes in a bad mood. You’ll still have fights with your friends sometimes. It won’t make all of that better. Having more money will not necessarily improve the quality of your relationships or the happiness that you actually have in your life. What money does is allow us to make more choices. And making wise choices is what will make us happy.

Voiceover     Despite every man’s dream come true, Albert still thinks about money.

Albert     The money pressures not there, but other pressures of having the money come then, so, you know, I mean, you’re never totally free of something to worry about.

Bob     Albert’s a pretty wise guy. He understands that the money is going to create another set of issues for him.

Voiceover     I still think most of us would trade our money problems for Albert’s any day.

Bob     I think most of us think that the problems that we have in life would get solved if we had more money. But what I’m suggesting is that isn’t necessarily so that money gives us more choices, but it doesn’t give us the blissful answer.

script

Now, at this point in my lecture, I need to make a reference to Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In it he suggests that invested capital --that is, capital in the stock market or in real estate -- will grow faster than income from traditional sources, such as salaries. To have invested capital you need wealth, and in modern economies wealth is approaching levels not seen since before the First World War. Sixty per cent of the increase in US national income in the 30 years after 1977 went to the top one per cent of earners[财富集中]. And the only section of the US population which has done better than the top one percent is the top tenth of that one per cent.[而所有美国人中(财富积累速度)超越这前1%的，则只有这前1%中的前10%。]

This leads to extraordinary inequality in society. If you rely on income, as most people do, you'll never catch up with the wealth of people who are already rich. And the result...? Ever-increasing inequality between the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the not-so-rich.[Piketty提出inequality是资本发展的必然结果]

While faster economic growth diminishes the importance of wealth, and slower growth increases it, there are no forces acting against the steady accumulation of wealth. Piketty suggests governments need to adopt a global tax on wealth inorder to avoid the risk of economic and political problems in the future.[Piketty在书中提出必须通过分级赋税解决前文中的问题]

Of course, the theory has attracted criticism, firstly because today’s super rich allegedly achieve their wealth through work, not by inheritance, and secondly, the more wealth there is, the more difficult it is to earn a good return on it. In the UK, it’s true that owners of capital took a larger share of the national income from the mid-1990s. But the collapse of the economy of 2008 has decreased capital's share relative to labour, and labour’s share is now back to where it was in the 1970s. So the economy has not followed the long-term path predicted by Piketty. Also, the proportion of the top 400 wealthiest Americans who inherited their wealth is falling and not rising.

It's entirely true that many people are worried about inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor, as well as the whole issue of the distribution of incomeand wealth. However, Piketty’s conclusions are thought to be driven more by ideology than by economic insight.

Nevertheless, it has been well received as a formidable piece of research. You might like to read it as part of the background to this course on macroeconomics[宏观经济学].

script

Passage 1

Presenter     With me today is Tara Black, author of the History of Money. Tara, before we had money, we exchanged things, didn’t we?

Tara     Yes, that’s right. In the Stone Age, people exchanged things like salt or cattle. But of course the problem is that the things you exchange don’t last. And so money was introduced as a more permanent way of paying for things. And of course, money’s also a lot easier to use. You can carry it around with you very easily.

Presenter     So when did people start changing from exchanging goods to paying for things with money?

Tara     Well, as far back as 5000 BC, people in China and the Middle East were exchanging metals for goods.

Presenter     As long ago as that?

Tara     Yes. The first silver ingots…[a block of silver, gold or other metal]

Presenter   Silver bars?

Tara     Yes--they appeared around 2200 BC in Europe and were used as currency. Coins then appeared in Lydia around 700 BC.

Presenter      Lydia?

Tara     Lydia was a country in what’s now known as Turkey. Then other countries followed their example and started producing them. A Greek coin, the drachma [an ancient Greek silver coin], became standard form of money in large of Asia and Europe.

Presenter     And the first paper money?

Tara     Paper money was first used in China around 960 AD.

Presenter     It’s always China, isn’t it?

Tara     Quite often, yes.

Presenter     So as well as being long-lasting and convenient, a big advantage of coins and paper money is that they have a standard value.

Tara     Yes. They’ve what’s known as  representative money [any medium of exchange, often printed on paper, that represents something of value, but has little or no value of its own代用货币]. Every coin or paper note has a certain value that doesn’t depend on the actual value of the paper or metal.

Presenter     And how did banks start?

Tara     Both the early Persians and the Ancient Egyptians had storehouses where they kept their country’s grain- we're talking about 3000 BC. They exchanged the grain for promissory notes.This meant a written promise to pay back a sum of money to someone. Really, these storehouses can be seen as the first banks.

Presenter     I see.

Tara       So over a great many centuries banks became places where money was deposited and lent. And they guaranteed that a note of a certain value could be exchanged for a certain amount of silver.

Presenter   And then there was the gold standard, wasn’t there?

Tara       Yes, the gold standard was applied all over the world from 1870 to 1915, but it was slowly abandoned.

Presenter  When did it become easier…

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Passage 2

Speaker 1  As a student, you are probably living on a very limited amount of money, so here are our top useful tips to help you make your money go further[to make better use of your money so that you can buy more items.让钱花得更久，更耐花].

Speaker 2  One. Say no to credit cards! Banks may encourage you to use their cheap credit card facilities where you buy now and pay later. It looks great but it’s so easy to get into debt. If you do have a credit card, hide it and get it out only when you absolutely have to.

Speaker 1  Two. Look for bargains! You can look great in second-hand clothes and you can find real bargins in second-hand shops and charity shops. Learn to love eBay and look there first rather than in shop windows. It could make all the difference.

Speaker 2  Three. Stick to a budget! Work out exactly how much you have coming in each month and your necessary expenditure – what you absolutely must spend, like rent, bills and food before you look at your disposable income [the amount of income you have left after youhave paid income tax and social security charges.可用收入] – this means what you’ve got left for any extras and treats. Think first – do you really need that pair of shoes and can you afford to go to a restaurant this month?

Speaker 1   Four. Give up your bad habits (or at least keep them under control!) If you smoke, drink, buy expensive coffee or regularly eat out, giving it up or at least reducing the amount you spend on these things will save you more money than you’d think.

Speaker 2   Five. Find ways to save money! If you go to the supermarket at the end of the day you may find some fresh produce like meat and vegetables marked down in price. If you go to afternoon shows at the cinema or theatre you will save money while still going out and enjoying yourself.

Speaker 1  Six. Beg and borrow before you buy! If you need a book for an essay, has anyone else got it? Try and borrow it rather than buy it.

Speaker 2   Seven. Plan ahead! A lot of unnecessary spending occurs because people fail to plan ahead and have to spend a lot of money at the last moment. Check your diary. When will you need those books for the essay you have to write in June? Can you borrow them now? Or you need to make a trip. Can you buy the ticket in advance rather than at the last moment at a higher price?

Speaker 1   The economical habits you develop now while you’re at college will help you in later life. Don’t think “I’m poor and miserable” but instead tell yourself, “I’m developing a highly important life skill.” And it’s absolutely true.