华北电力大学考博英语阅读真题及其解析.pdfVIP

中国考博辅导首选学校 华北电力大学考博英语阅读真题及其解析 Legendhas itthatthefirstcreditcardwasbor i 1950over lunch at aManhatta restaurantwhe Alfred Bloomingdale and his colleague FrancisMcNamaradreameduptheideaofcreatingathirdpartytocover checks at restaurants. They called it Diners Club. But the scheme faced a chicken-and-egg problem. Consumers didnt want card until storesaccepted it,andmerchants wouldnt accept ituntil consumers carried it. To solve the problem, and to work around federal laws that Geng duo yua xiao wa zheng kao bo ying yu zhe ti ji qi jie xi qing lia xi qua guo mia fei zi xu dia hua: si ling ling liu liuba liu jiu qi ba ,huo jia zi xu qq: qi qi er liuqi ba wu sa qi prevented banks from operating across state lines, banks joined together to form network joint ventures, such as Visa and MasterCard. Under these arrangements, some member banks recruited consumers, others recruited merchants. The banks o both ends earned fees, and they shared the costs of maintaining the networks. Because of a antitrust dispute twenty-five years ago, Visa allows its member banks to joi up with MasterCard as well. But it refuses to allow them to collaborate with any other network. The Justice Department is less appreciative. I October 1998—shortly beforePayingwithPlasticwent topress—thegovernmentchargedVisa and MasterCard with violating the Sherma Antitrust Act. (Wal-Mart and a group ofbig retailers have fileda related suit,charging that 中国考博辅导首选学校 Visa and MasterCard have colluded to keep fees o their debit cards unfairly high. ) The trouble is that today Visa and MasterCard have prettymuchthesamememberbanks.Dotwoventureswiththesameowners really have a incentive to compete? According to the governments complaint, i 1987MasterCard was prepared to introduce the first smart card — a card with a integrated circuit that could store personal data. But MasterC