Английский язык в экономике, бухучете и банковско-финансовой деятельности

lend money to the government

interest rates are below the market rate

per capita

the depreciated Continental bills

purchasing power

were funded at less than face value

the debt stands at $2 bln

par (value)

borrower

use them as collateral for bank loans

lender

federal deficit

apply for a loan

transaction

interest payments

fiscal policy

principal repayments

tariff and land-sale revenues

debt/gnp ratio

to increase forty-two-fold

the issue of $2 million of bills of credit

budget surplus

indebtedness

revenue surpluses

arrears of smth

to retire all the callable federal bonds

foreign debt

at negotiated prices

domestic debt

Exercise 2. Answer the following questions.

1. What is the national debt and what can it include? 2. Why does a lender usually appraise a borrower’s income? 3. What is the ultimate source of interest and principal payments on the national debt? 4. What was the reason for inflation in the U.S. in 1780? 5. How can you describe indebtiness of the U.S. in 1789? 6. What did Alexander Hamilton called for as regards government debts? 7. Was Alexander Hamilton’s plan a success? Substantiate your answer. 8. How did wars and peace times influence U.S. debt before 1930? 9. What happened to the debt in 1930 when GNP collapsed. 10. What strategies of marketing the debt were used in the U.S? 11. What were Jay Cook’s techniques in settling debt issues? 12. How is marketing of national debt carried out nowadays?

Exercise 3. Translate into English.

1. В 1791 г. создавшийся в США национальный долг в сегодняшнем его понимании составил 75 млн долларов, или 18 долларов на душу населения при покупательной способности доллара в 1791 г. и 197 долларов на душу населения при покупательной способности доллара в 1982–1984 г.г. 2. Почти два века спустя национальный долг США составил 2600 млрд долларов. 3. Когда ссудополучатель обращается за кредитом, заемщик как правило производит оценку его доходов, которые обычно являются источником выплаты кредита и процентов по нему. 4. Большинство самых значительных колебаний в соотношении между национальным долгом и ВВП были вызваны колебаниями величины национального долга. 5. Государственный долг подтверждали государственные долговые обязательства, иностранные займы и облигации. 6. Чрезмерная эмиссия Континентальных долговых обязательств привела к крупнейшей в истории США инфляции, и к 1780 г. государственные долговые обязательства почти обесценились. 7. Задолженность США, включая задолженность по выплате процентов по кредитам, возросла, при этом внешний долг составил 13 млн долларов, внутренний долг – 40 млн долларов, а непогашенная задолженность правительств штатов – 18 млн долларов. 8. Он призывал консолидировать почти все правительственные обязательства, включая долги государства, в долгосрочные федеральные ценные бумаги, выплаты по которым производятся в твердой валюте. 9. Выплаты процентов по части внутренней задолженности были отсрочены. 10. В следующем году долг был погашен. 11. Резко возросли поступления в бюджет от продажи земельных участков. 12. Последующие поколения обслуживали национальный долг. 13. Правительство погасило федеральные облигации и начало выкупать правительственные долговые обязательства по ценам выше номинала.

Text 5. International investment

From the colonial era to 1914, the United States was a debtor nation in international accounts; that is, Americans owed more to foreigners than foreigners owed to Americans. From roughly 1917–1918 to the mid-1980s, this relationship was reversed: the United States became a creditor country. In the mid-1980s, another major transformation occurred as the nation moved from net creditor back to net debtor, at least as officially measured.

The American government had borrowed in Europe to help finance the Revolution, to assist Alexander Hamilton in his funding of national and state debts, and to purchase the Louisiana Territory. By year-end 1803, more than half of the U.S. public debt was held abroad, and 62 percent of the stock of America’s largest business, the Bank of the United States, was in the hands of nonresident foreigners.

Thereafter, foreign interests in America grew, following an uneven path; although the importance varied over the years, until 1875 the bulk of foreign holdings was in government securities (federal, state, city, county). In the 1830s and in the post-Civil War years, state government bonds were highly popular in Europe. In the early 1840s and the mid-1870s, major defaults on these securities soured European investors.

When Americans started to build railroads, it became necessary to raise added moneys abroad because U.S. savings were inadequate. New mines and cattle ranches also attracted European (especially British) moneys, as did mineral processing, meat packing, and flour making. In the early twentieth century, British, German, Dutch, French, and other foreign investors produced a variety of goods and services in America (including rayon, the first synthetic fabric, Mercedes cars, oil by Royal-Dutch Shell, and Michelin tires). With the large inflow of capital, America became the world’s greatest debtor nation.

Meanwhile, American businesses began to move abroad. In the colonial era, merchants had set up overseas units. During the nineteenth century, the number of enterprises abroad mounted slowly. Then, from the 1870s onward, as American companies grew at home, they also expanded over national borders. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern American multinational enterprises had emerged. Standard Oil of New Jersey, Singer, International Harvester, Western Electric, and by 1914, Ford Motor Company had major producing facilities outside the United States. Although foreign investment in the United States was of both a portfolio nature (investment in bonds and shares and bank lending that did not carry control) and of a direct investment nature (investment that carried management and control), the former was predominant; U.S. stakes abroad also consisted of both types, but foreign direct investment was supreme. The reason was that surplus capital in America was used at home. Thus, even while America was the great recipient of capital from abroad, its businesses were entering and growing in foreign lands, seeking new markets and sources of supply.

World War I was the watershed. The British sold American assets to finance the war, and German investments in America ended when the United States entered the war. The demand for capital abroad rose, and now Americans supplied it. American banks, once intermediaries in bringing capital to the United States, had developed the skills and contacts to play the opposite role – to dispatch U.S. moneys worldwide. Europe looked to America for loans to buy weapons. In 1917–1918 U.S. government lending became very important. Latin America attracted new U.S. business investments. Overnight, as it were, America was transformed into a creditor nation.

Businesses continued to expand in the 1920s and so did American lending. Excluding the U.S. intergovernmental credits, and with 1929 possibly an exception, American direct investment abroad always exceeded portfolio investment until the 1970s. During the 1930s, American lenders abroad faced major defaults and multinationals encountered difficulties. In 1934 the Johnson Act made it unlawful for U.S. bankers to lend to countries in default on U.S. government loans. World War II posed added hazards for international investors. In its aftermath, America emerged as economically strong and as the great creditor nation, the only economic giant in the world. Marshall Plan aid was vital to European recovery. Soon, American multinationals were spreading worldwide on a scale that dwarfed their past history. During the 1960s the American challenge – American investment accompanied by American technology – seemed unmatched.

While America was a creditor nation, foreign stakes in the United States were overshadowed. Yet they never entirely disappeared. Some foreign companies that had investments in the United States before 1914 remained and grew in size, and there were new entries. Certain portfolio holdings persisted and others were newly made. Indeed by the time of World War II, foreign investment had attained its 1914 level, even though the amounts were exceeded by U.S. investment abroad. After the Second World War, foreign investment in the United States was very much in the background.

In the 1970s, as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) pushed oil prices up, its government members had capital surpluses that could not be absorbed into their domestic economies; these moneys were placed with U.S. banks and recycled into third world debt. With the new sources of funds, the character of American investment abroad changed. From being overwhelmingly investment by multinationals, it became increasingly made up of bank loans.

Americans, for balance of payments reasons, had sought to encourage foreign investment in the United States in the 1960s; by the 1970s and early 1980s, an awareness emerged of rising inward investment. America was both politically stable and provided a formidable market. While much of the new investment came from European (especially British, Dutch, and German) sources – often stimulated by the decline in the dollar after 1971–1973, which made American assets cheaper to foreign buyers – what attracted special concern was the newly conspicuous holdings of Arab investors and later of the Japanese.

Suddenly, in the mid-1980s, seemingly overnight, the United States had switched from net creditor to net debtor status in international accounts. And once again, by the end of the decade, America had become the world’s greatest debtor nation. The transitions of 1914–1918 and the mid-1980s had been rapid, yet in each case the foundations had been laid in prior years. Despite much unhappy talk about «foreign multinationals in America» – especially the Japanese «invasion» – foreign investors still had their holdings mainly in liquid assets, portfolio investments. And, as during most of American history, it was still the British who had the largest investments. Moreover, as foreign investment in America grew, U.S. investment abroad persisted and direct investments expanded.

Historically, Americans were always ambivalent about foreign investment. This was true before 1914 when, on the one hand, there was the wish for foreign capital to finance the railroads and, on the other, a deep resentment against British investors. So, too, in many parts of the world, American investment over the years provoked a «can’t live with it and can’t live without it» state of mind – hated for its symbolic «alien» implications and yet desired for its positive contributions. As sizable foreign investment in the United States took place in the 1970s and 1980s, it was both courted by state governments that wanted more employment within their jurisdictions and lambasted by critics who saw «America for Sale.» Despite economic integration worldwide, nations, the United States included, retained – as in times past – a mixed response toward outsiders’ investments.

Mira Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 (1970); Mira Wilkins, The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914 (1989); Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970 (1974).

Mira Wilkins

EXERCISES

Exercise 1. Words and expressions. Provide Russian equivalents.