大学六级-798及答案解析.doc
《大学六级-798及答案解析.doc》由会员分享,可在线阅读,更多相关《大学六级-798及答案解析.doc(39页珍藏版)》请在麦多课文档分享上搜索。
1、大学六级-798 及答案解析(总分:614.00,做题时间:90 分钟)一、Part Writing(总题数:1,分数:53.00)1.1. 目前低碳生活成为一种流行2. 低碳生活指的是3. 作为大学生的我应该怎么做Low-Carbon Lifestyle(分数:53.00)_二、Part Reading Compr(总题数:1,分数:70.00)The End of the Cash EraIn the spring Adam Smith will replace Sir Edward Elgar as the face on Britains 20 note. The first econ
2、omic thinker to be so honored could well be the last. Not because economists are especially undeserving, but because cash, after millennia as one of mankinds most versatile and enduring technologies, looks set over the next 15 years or so finally to melt away into an electronic stream of ones and ze
3、ros. If an era is represented by its money, the information age is at hand.Notes and coins are already a small fraction of the money in most rich countries. But going by the number of transactions rather than their value, we still live firmly in a cash society. The European Payments Council estimate
4、s that the European Unions 360 billion cash transactions cost at least 50 billion a year; others put the bill at 200 a head. Visa, a huge credit-card alliance, reckons cash accounts for most of the $1.3 trillion spent a year across the world on small-ticket items. Whether queuing to get money out an
5、d queuing again to spend it, or breaking a $100 bill with an irate (发怒的) cab driver one minute and having your pockets and purses fat with coins the next, cash is plainly still king.Yet signs of the new order are everywhere. On February 12th, 19 telephone operators with networks in over 100 countrie
6、s said that people would be able to use their handsets to send money abroad. MasterCard will operate the system in which remittances (汇款) will be sent as text messages. For people without bank accounts, the credit can be converted into pre-paid cards which can then be used to buy things. “It will re
7、volutionize the money-transfer business,“ said Sunil Bharti Mittal, boss of Bharti Airtel, one of Indias biggest mobile operators. The idea is to tap into the more than $250 billion a year that immigrants and migrant workers send to relatives and friends back home.Britains Vodafone and Americas Citi
8、group are also launching an international money-transfer service developed from the M-PESA remittance service which is already operating successfully within Kenya. Sir John Bond, formerly chairman of the HSBC banking group and now chairman of Vodafone, has long been convinced that payments and mobil
9、es would somehow converge. “Mobile phones have the ability to make a dramatic change to village life in Africa,“ he says. He also thinks phones loaded with credit will make many of the payments people use cash for in rich economies. For banks with high infrastructure costs, says Sir John, it has alw
10、ays “been hard to make money out of small payments“. But lower-cost business models, some of them from developing countries, are opening up new opportunities. The big attraction of the mobile phone as a purse is that so many people have them - even children.Both MasterCard and Visa have recently int
11、roduced plastic cards in America that do not have to be swiped for purchases under $25. Later this year a “dual interface“ system will be tested in London. It will involve a single plastic card which combines an Oyster for travel, a standard Visa card issued by Britains Barclays Bank for “chip and P
12、IN“ payments and a new “wave and pay“ Visa for instant transactions up to 10.Nobody can be sure how fast bits and bytes will drive out metal and paper. A hundred years ago you could still pay your taxes in Uganda in cowrie shells. Perhaps hard cash will always find a niche, tucked away in childrens
13、birthday cards and as money for the unbanked and phoneless. But most of the time a phone or a smart card that can be waved over an electronic reader will beat notes and coins hands-down. The doubt - and the remaining obstacle to digital money - concerns a third property of cash: its anonymity.Gresha
14、ms law vs Moores lawRendering cash as pure information is the final denial of the notion that money has intrinsic value: what was once a carefully weighed piece of gold, silver or bronze has become simply a token. That is a hard-won truth. As John Maynard Keynes once lamented, when it appears govern
15、ments are able to deceive their citizens by depreciating the currency.Yet when money is minted (铸造) from silicon something remarkable happens. The economics of handling cash - which today involves thick-necked men in crash-helmets - is suddenly embodied by Moores law, which has seen the cost of comp
16、uter-processing power fall by half every 18 months or so. Electronic information is instantaneous, weightless and exact. No longer the miserable fumbling through coat pockets while a line of waiting customers quietly fumes. Shopkeepers can do away with expensive cash floats and elaborate ruses to st
17、op cash fraud - such as charging $4.99 so that the $5 bill most people hand over has to pass through the till (现金出纳机 的抽屉) for one cent change rather than being trousered by a shop assistant.Information-money can be handled by any information-processing device. That includes the mobile phone, which c
18、an add to moneys utility in that its screen can display information clearly and it can link to your bank as a mobile ATM at any time. Visa thinks a contactless digital transaction takes less than half the time of a cash one and that people liberated from what happens to be in their wallets spend a f
19、ifth more.Which is why digital cash is now solving its chicken-and-egg problem. In the past shopkeepers would not install systems unless shoppers had electronic cash. And shoppers would not use electronic cash unless they had something to buy. But smart cards and readers have become cheap and consum
20、ers now possess mobile phones in droves. The trillions of payments that are too small to bear the fees of paying by credit card have come within reach and almost everyone stands to gain. Some Japanese merchants have already begun to offer discounts to people using electronic cash. Others will follow
21、.The buck stops hereExcept there is that nagging question of anonymity. It is well known that privacy has a lot going for it. The firms running payment systems might sell information about what you buy and when. Prepare yourself for a barrage of e-coupons and offers designed to fit your profile and
22、uploaded to your phone. And there are more serious concerns. In the cash world, anonymity can be a cloak for wrong doing. The suspicion clings that where you find anonymity you find drugs, fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing and a huge amount of tax evasion.No wonder governments have long s
23、ought to control anonymous financial instruments. The state is certain to limit the amount that can pass through an anonymous card, phone, or other means of business. Eager to collect taxes from builders and nannies, it will also be tempted to monitor electronic-cash payments.Whether it does so is a
24、 political question, not a technological one. You can design payment systems that protect against fraud and yet preserve anonymity, just as you can design open systems or those that keep your identity secret unless the authorities demand that it be revealed.When it comes to trading convenience again
- 1.请仔细阅读文档,确保文档完整性,对于不预览、不比对内容而直接下载带来的问题本站不予受理。
- 2.下载的文档,不会出现我们的网址水印。
- 3、该文档所得收入(下载+内容+预览)归上传者、原创作者;如果您是本文档原作者,请点此认领!既往收益都归您。
下载文档到电脑,查找使用更方便
2000 积分 0人已下载
下载 | 加入VIP,交流精品资源 |
- 配套讲稿:
如PPT文件的首页显示word图标,表示该PPT已包含配套word讲稿。双击word图标可打开word文档。
- 特殊限制:
部分文档作品中含有的国旗、国徽等图片,仅作为作品整体效果示例展示,禁止商用。设计者仅对作品中独创性部分享有著作权。
- 关 键 词:
- 大学 798 答案 解析 DOC
