核心词汇 (Target Vocabulary)

学习 6A 商业与货币金融核心词汇，点击语音按钮可听纯正美音发音，掌握核心释义与真题例句。

commodity [kəˈmɒdəti] n.
A substance or product that can be traded, bought, or sold.
商品；货物；大宗初级产品
"In early trade, valuable commodities like salt, barley, and cattle served directly as money."
convenience [kənˈviːniəns] n.
The state of being easy, useful, or suitable for a particular purpose.
方便；便利
"Paper money provided immense convenience compared to hauling heavy sacks of bronze coins."
essentially [ɪˈsenʃəli] adv.
Relating to the most important characteristics or basic nature of something.
本质上；根本上
"Modern fiat currency is essentially a system based on collective public trust."
judgement [ˈdʒʌdʒmənt] n.
The ability to form valuable opinions or make wise and sensible decisions.
判断；判断力；审判
"Bankers had to exercise sound financial judgement when granting loans to early maritime merchants."
payment [ˈpeɪmənt] n.
An amount of money paid, or the act of paying.
支付；付款
"Contactless mobile payments have rapidly overtaken physical cash transactions in urban hubs."
policy [ˈpɒləsi] n.
A set of ideas or plans that is used as a basis for making decisions, especially in politics or business.
政策；方针
"Central banks dictate monetary policy to control inflation and stabilize exchange rates."
signify [ˈsɪɡnɪfaɪ] v.
To be a sign of something; to mean or represent.
表示；象征；意味着
"The official government stamp on silver coins signified their guaranteed purity and weight."
stable [ˈsteɪbl] adj.
Firmly fixed; not likely to move, fail, or change suddenly.
稳定的；稳固的
"A stable currency encourages international merchants to engage in long-term commercial trade."
transaction [trænˈzækʃn] n.
An occasion when someone buys or sells something, or when money is exchanged.
交易；买卖；办理
"Every financial transaction is recorded chronologically across electronic banking ledgers."
trigger [ˈtrɪɡə] v.
To cause something to start, happen, or develop suddenly.
触发；引起
"A sudden loss of public confidence can trigger a dramatic currency depreciation crisis."
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How Money Made Us Modern

货币演进史：从古代实物以物易物到金银铸币、纸币发明与现代信用体系

Paragraph A
The rise of gold. Since ancient times, humans have used items to represent value, from stones to animal skins to wild teeth. In the ancient world, people often relied upon symbols that had tangible value in their own right. The ancient Chinese made payments with Cari shells, which were prized for their beauty as materials for jewelry. As Glen Davies notes in his book, a history of money from ancient times to the present day, Cari shells are durable, easily cleaned and counted, and defy imitation or counterfitting. But eventually there arose a new universal currency, gold. The gleaming metal could be combined with other metals at high temperatures to create alloys and was easy to melt and hammer into shapes. It became the raw material for the first coins created in Lydia, present day Turkey, around 2,700 years ago. Lydia and coins didn't look much like today's coinage. They were irregular in shape and size and didn't have values inscribed on them. Instead, they used a stamped image to indicate their weight and value.
Paragraph B
The result explains financial author Kabir Sego, was an economic system in which you knew the value of what you had and what you could buy with it. Unlike modern money, ancient coins were what economists call full-bodied or commodity money. Their value was fixed by the metal in them. The birth of trade, money's convenience made it easier for ancient merchants to develop large-scale trade networks in which spices and grain could be bought and sold across distances of thousands of kilometers. This led to the first foreign exchanges. In the ancient Greek city state of Corinth, banks were set up where foreign traders could exchange their own coins for Corinthian ones.
Paragraph C
In the centuries that followed, trade routes forged more cultural connections between nations and regions. Besides exchanging money and goods, traders also spread religious beliefs, knowledge and new inventions, creating connections among far-flung cultures. The dangers of moving money and goods over distances, whether from storms at sea or bandits and pirates, led humans to develop increasingly complex economic organisations.
Paragraph D
In the 1600s, investors gathering in London coffeehouses began to underwrite traders and colonists heading to the new world, financing their voyages in exchange for a share of the crops or goods they brought back. Investors tried to reduce their risk by buying shares of multiple ventures. It was the start of a global economy in which vast quantities of products and money began to flow across borders in search of profit. Notes and bills By the 1700s, the global economy had grown so much that it was inconvenient to transport and store large quantities of coins. Several societies therefore shifted toward paper currency. The earliest paper bills were literally receipts that gave the bearer ownership of gold or silver coins that could be collected upon demand. But as Lloyd Thomas explains in his book, money, banking and financial markets, bankers eventually realized that many people simply use their notes rather than redeeming them for gold. It meant that the bankers didn't actually need to have enough gold on hand to cover all the notes they issued. That revelation, Thomas says, eventually led to the concept of fiat money, which governments issued today. In contrast to commodity money, today's money has value essentially because a government says that it does.
Paragraph E
It's purchasing power remains relatively stable because the government controls the supply. That's why a $100 US dollar bill is worth $100, even though it only contains a few sense worth of raw materials. It's a system with an important advantage in that human judgment, rather than how much gold has been dug out of the ground, determines the amount of money in circulation. On the other hand, this can become a disadvantage. If a government decides to issue too much money, it can trigger an inflationary spiral that raises the price of goods and services.
Paragraph F
Toward virtual money. By the 20th century, new methods of payment had begun to emerge as alternatives to cash. In the 1920s, oil companies and hotel chains began to issue credit cards. These enabled customers to make purchases and pay what they owed later. In 1950, Dynas Club International issued the first universal credit card, which could be used to purchase things at a variety of places, using plastic to make purchases eventually proved more convenient than bills, coins, or even checks. In 2009, yet another high-tech successor to money emerged. Bitcoin. Bitcoins are a sort of unofficial virtual internet currency. They aren't issued or even controlled by governments, and they exist only in the cloud or in a person's computer. Paragana, a financial policy expert explains. The real future is technology as money. That's what Bitcoin is about. From the clay tokens of summa, to today's virtual currencies, the evolution of money has helped drive the development of civilization. Money makes it easier not only to buy and sell goods, but also to connect with the world, enabling traders to roam across continents and investors to a mass wealth. It is a type of language that we all speak, from the humblest shop clerk to the wealthiest Wall Street financier. Money exerts a powerful influence upon us all.

课文配套练习 (Reading Exercises)

严格对应教材 Page 98–103 官方练习：Before You Read、Reading Comprehension 及 Commodity vs Fiat Money 分类辨析。

1.
Definitions (p.98) a general, continuous increase in prices
2.
Definitions (p.98) the business of trading the money of one country for that of another
3.
Definitions (p.98) a plastic card used to buy goods and pay for them later
4.
Definitions (p.98) a piece of paper money
5.
Main Idea (p.102) What is the main topic of Reading 6A?
6.
Detail (Para A, p.102) What was a primary disadvantage of early barter and commodity money (e.g. cattle, grain)?
7.
Detail (Para H, p.102) Why did early Chinese merchants adopt paper bank notes during the Tang and Song dynasties?
8.
Definition (Para J, p.102) What is 'fiat money'?
9.
Main Idea (Para M, p.102) What is the author's perspective on the emergence of electronic and virtual money?
10.
Categorization (p.102) Categorization: Salt, barley, cowrie shells, and gold coins are examples of:
11.
Categorization (p.102) Categorization: Paper banknotes, government fiat currency, and digital debit balances are examples of:

Critical Thinking · Cashless Society
Many modern economies are rapidly moving toward a completely cashless future.
Pros: Traceable transactions, reduced street robberies, faster checkout.
Cons: Privacy surveillance, vulnerability to power/network failures, financial exclusion.
What is your opinion?