Land of the Giants

Ignore the politicians. Big business is now the most powerful force on Earth. Countries don’t matter any more. Companies do. Don’t worry about who wins the next general election. Worry about who is running General Electric. Company presidents, not White House presidents, are finally in charge.

Nearly as many people work for General Motors as live in Wales. Fewer than four hundred billionaires control as much capital as half the global population. Bill Gates alone is worth more than a hundred and thirty-five countries. If we compare the biggest companies’ annual turnover with national GDP, Philip Morris makes more money than New Zealand, Ford makes more than Thailand, and Exxon Mobil as much as South Africa and Nigeria put together.

Just three hundred corporations control 25% of all the productive assets on earth. Within the next ten years, many multinationals could open their own embassies and even start issuing their own currency! Impossible? Not according to futurists, Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker. They argue that as cross-border trade increases, national frontiers become increasingly unimportant and global business begins to take over from government. Goodbye United Nations. Hello, United Corporations.

In the late 1990s it was fashionable to disregard the ‘Old Economy’, as we welcomed in the digital age. Small entrepreneurial companies were going to kill off ‘corporate dinosaurs’ like Ford and Levi’s. It never happened. Billions were wasted on dotcom disasters run by kids with no business brains, while the big companies, slow at first, simply took the technology and used it more intelligently.

Size alone may not guarantee competitiveness, but to go from innovation to mass production quickly and efficiently takes a big company with substantial resources and an aggressive marketing strategy. In the words of Andrew Grove, head of Intel: ‘We don’t beat the competition, we crush it.’ Now, more than ever, big is beautiful.

(By Mark Powell, In Company. Macmillan, 2005.)

b) Sum up the text in three sentences.

c) Scan the text for details.

d) Answer the teacher’s questions.

3. A) Open the brackets using the correct forms of the verbs.

to browse [brauz] – (зд.) ходить по магазину, рассматривая товар

cadge - попрошайничать

diaper ['daIpR] – пеленка, подгузник

The Shy Sorceress

Joanne Rowling is an English fiction writer most famous as author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, which _________________ (1 – to gain) international attention and ____________ (2 – to win) multiple awards. In the early 1990s she was unknown and poor, a single mom on welfare who sometimes pretended to browse in maternity stores so she could cadge a free diaper in the changing room. Now, after her Harry Potter books and the movies and an armada of related merchandise, Rowling _________________ (3 – to believe / to be) the wealthiest woman in the United Kingdom, well ahead of even Queen Elizabeth II. The rise distinguishes Rowling as Britain’s wealthiest self-made woman, the richest person in British show business and the world’s wealthiest female author. In February 2004, Forbes magazine estimated her fortune as £576 million (just over US$1 billion), making her the first person to become a US dollar billionaire by ____________ (4 – to write) books.

J. K. Rowling was born in 1965. After ___________ (5 – to study) French and Classics at Exeter University she ___________ (6 – to move) to London __________ (7 – to work) as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. During this period she had the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry while she was on a four-hour, delayed train trip between Manchester and London. When she ______________ (8 – to reach) her destination, she already ____________ (9 – to have) the characters and a good part of the plot for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in her head, which she began _____________ (10 – to work) on during her lunch hours.

In December, 1994, Rowling and her daughter from her brief first marriage moved to Edinburgh. Unemployed and living on state benefits, she _____________ (11 – to complete) her first novel. She ______________________________ (12 – to rumour / to do) some of the work in an Edinburgh cafe in order to escape from her unheated flat. The first book was an unexpectedly huge success. Combined with her earnings for the next three books, she became a billionaire.

Her personal life ________________ (13 – to pick up) too. In 2001, she ______________ (14 – to purchase) a luxurious 19^th-century mansion in Scotland, where she ____________ (15 – to marry) her second husband, Dr. Neil Murray, a steady, brainy anesthetist, in December 2001. In March 2003 they had a son, David. Admitting that Harry is her favourite boy’s name, Rowling wisely __________________ (16 – to avoid / to saddle) her son with that lifelong invitation to teasing. On 23 January 2005, Rowling's second child with Dr. Murray was born, fulfilling Rowling’s lifelong wish to have three children.

Rowling appreciates that she can use her name and money to support worthy charities, including those for one-parent families and victims of multiple sclerosis. ‘One of the few upsides of ______________ (17 – to be) famous is _________________ (18 – to be able) to do something meaningful for causes in which you believe,’ she says.

b) Answer the teacher’s questions.

c) Comment on the following statements:

• The happiness gained from money does not last and the pleasure wears off as you get used to it.

• Money is not the only source of content, and other factors, such as a strong marriage, play an important role.

• Sometimes money creates more problems than it solves.

VOCABULARY EXTENSION