阅读理解
"The world as we know is going down!" shouted a hysterical New York City broker over a Starbucks latte in Der Speigel's harrowing account of the September 2008. This was the nadir the financial panic that gripped the world. The Dow was collapsing by the hundreds each day, and banks with asset sheets worth more than the GDP of developed countries were teetering on bankruptcy. But 400 years ago, banking wasn't so big. In fact, bankers were practically outcasts. Since Christians could not legally charge interest to other Christians, money lending fell mostly to Jews, like William Shakespeare's Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Confined to ghettos, they conducted their business on benches, or banques(the root of the word bank). If you can imagine it today, the price of banking in the early 1600s was ostracism. How did we go from ghettos to Goldman? The great innovation in modern banking occurred in Florence, Niall Ferguson writes in his book The Ascent of Money. Giovanni di Medici, father of the great Cosimi di Medici, saw that while charging interest was a sin, nothing prevented a trader from making money on taking a commission for converting currencies. If converted currencies were advanced for longer periods of time, the commission would grow as well. By diversifying his investments across traders, depositors and different currencies, Giovanni created a truly booming, stable and legally acceptable bank. "Now for the first time," Ferguson explained, "money lending had evolved into banking." In the next four centuries, banking continued its radical evolution. In the 1600s, Amsterdam opened the world's first stock exchange. In the late 1700s, Dutch traders inspired King William I to create the world's first mutual funds. In the 1900s modern finance exploded, with the first hedge fund(1949), the first mortgage security(1968), the first collateralized debt obligation(1987), and the first credit default swap(1994). Money is getting smarter. Debt, credit and equity are as old as Hammurabi's Code. But with each round of history, they are extended with greater force and cunning to more people. European countries invented bonds to pay for wars. The Dutch invented stock to pay for ships. Credit cards invented points to pay for goods. From the national level, to the corporate level, to the individual level, finance finds new ways to get us spending more. The democratization of money meant the democratization of debt. In the past, only governments and large international companies had the chance to spend themselves into oblivion. Today, we're all so lucky! Easier money, in the form of credit cards smartphone apps, encourages us to buy, buy, buy. Maybe that's why household debt weighs more than half of GDP in eight countries. Maybe that's why the average American worker entered the recession with debt equal to 122 percent of her yearly salary. Brilliant ways to extend credit and financing have invigorated the global economy. But somewhere between the home equity loans and the credit default swaps, we tricked ourselves. Smart money in the hands of greedy bankers and wide-eyed breadwinners looks like dumb money, indeed.
单选题11.The purpose of the author in writing Paragraph 1 is______.
单选题13.According to the text, when did money lending evolve into banking?
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】属细节题。题意为：什么才是借钱演变为银行业的标志?我们可以根据题目定位到第四、五段。从第四段charging interest was a sin得知，应该没有提到收取利息，所以A不符。B项“在换钱时收取佣金来赚钱”还只是初期的状态，银行业还没有产生。C项对应第六段，证券交易是在银行业出现后产生的，所以不符。文中提到Giovanni的投资越来越多样化，直至成为兴隆的、稳定的和合法的银行，所以选D。
单选题14.On which of the following statements would the author LEAST probably agrees?
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】属观点题。A项说过去400年来银行业不断发展，钱变得越来越灵活，符合作者观点。B项与原文中的Debt，credit and equity are as old as Hammurabi’s Code相悖，所以为正确答案。C项在原文的最后一部分有所体现，虽然钱变得灵活了，但是风险也更大，smart money可能会变成dumb money，所以作者认为要小心对待smart money。D项与原文The democratization of moneymeant the democratization of debt相符。