货币银行学 复习材料.doc

. . An Introduction to Money and the Financial System This morning, a typical American college student bought coffee at the local café, paying for it with an ATM card. Then she jumped into her car, on which she carries accident insurance, and drove to the university, which she can afford to attend thanks to her student loan. She may have left her parents home, which is mortgaged, a few minutes early to avoid construction work on a new dormitory, paid for by bonds issued by the university. Or perhaps she needed to stop at the bookstore to purchase this book, using her credit card, before her first money and banking class began. Beneath the surface, each financial transaction mentioned in this story—even the seemingly simple ones—is quite complicated. If the café owner and the student use different banks, paying for the coffee will require an interbank funds transfer. The company that insures the students car has to invest the premiums she pays until they are needed to pay off claims. The students parents almost surely obtained their home mortgage through a mortgage broker, whose job was to find the mortgage that offered the best interest rate. And the bonds the university issued to finance construction of the new dormitory were created with the aid of an investment bank. This brief example hints at the complex web of interdependent institutions and markets that underlies the financial transactions we engage in every day. The system is so large, so efficient, and generally speaking so well run that most of us rarely take note of it. But a financial system is like air to an economy: If it disappeared suddenly, everything would grind to a halt. Lets take a closer look at this system. Glossary Central bank?? The financial institution that manages the governments finances, controls the availability of money and credit in the economy, and serves as the bank to commercial banks. European Central Bank (ECB)?? The central authority, located in Frankfurt, Germany, which ov