One very important institution in our economy is the bank. Banks_________ money for individual people, corporations, and the government. Banks provide a number of important services for you and your family. Most importantly, they’re a_________ place to store your money. They also provide an easy way for you to_________ money from one place to another. When you write a personal cheque, the cheque authorizes the bank to give your money to the person or business whose name is on the cheque.

Of course, banks also lend money. Ordinary people take out bank_________ for a number of reasons-to pay for college, to buy or remodel a home, to start or expand a business, and so forth. Banks provide these services to individuals; _________ , their main function is to lend large sums of money, for example, to corporations. When people or corporations borrow money from a bank, they must, of course, pay_________ —a percentage of the money they have borrowed.

Banks pay interest on the money they hold, and charge interest on the money they lend. For a bank to make a_________ , it has to collect more interest than it pays out.

Sometimes banks invest money as well as lend it. To invest money means to put it into a corporation or some other project—for example, building a housing complex or doing medical research— _________ a share of the profits. Most businesses need loans and investments at some time, and banks are an important source of_________

You might wonder what would happen if all the people with money in a bank wanted to take their money out at the same time. I mean, how would the bank be able to give everyone their money, if it had lent out or __________ most of it? In fact, this can be a serious problem for banks. They__________ the fact that most people won’t want their money for a long time once it’s deposited. That leaves the bank free to lend or invest the money. If every person—or even lots of people-tried to__________ their money at the same time, the bank might not be able to honour all of its__________ . This causes some banks to __________ , or go bankrupt.

Bank failures used to be __________ during times of recession or depression. They were especially common during the Great Depression of the 1930s. When Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, one of the first things he did was close all the banks, so depositors wouldn’t panic and try to take all their money out.

China has appointed over 1 million “chiefs” to look after its rivers and lakes.

Huo Yan, a Communist Party cadre of a small district in north-east Beijing, was recently ordered by her Party organization at a higher level to _________a second job. Now Ms Huo must find time in her busy _________to conduct weekly patrols along the Bahe river — an ancient canal that flows through her area. She is responsible for protecting the waterway, removing garbage(or hiring others to do so)and keeping an eye out for pollution-causing activities on its banks. The temporary job comes without extra pay.

The “river chief” system began in 2003 in the eastern province of Zhejiang. In 2016 the central government ordered that every lake and river, or section _________larger lakes or rivers, must have someone tasked with keeping them free of visible _________. By the end of June every river had at least one local official appointed as its supervisor.

There are now nearly 1.1 million river chiefs. The government says they will be _________ “for life” for any serious pollution that relate to a fault on their watch, but punishments have yet to be specified. Promotions in their regular jobs will _________their riverine duties. Liu Dengwei, a researcher at the Ministry of Water Resources, says chiefs will not be _________punished for garbage from upstream.

It is a(n) _________assignment. Earlier this year a government report said that surface water in nearly a third of “river sections” surveyed was too risky to touch, _________drink. Water in nearly 15% of them was rated too dirty even for __________use. Lakes are worse. The report says that out of 54 large ones surveyed, 29 contained water considered unsafe for human __________.

The chiefs’ appointment may be a sign that the government is worried about public dissatisfaction over its perceived failure to __________the problem. Surveys by the Pew Research Centre found that 37% of respondents in 2016 saw water pollution as a “very big problem”, up from 28% in 2008.

Ministries in charge of bodies of water have __________and sometimes overlapping responsibilities. The result has been buck-passing (推卸责任) and finger-pointing, says Mr Liu. This will be more difficult now that named individuals are accountable for water quality, the theory goes. Whether this is really so may become clearer years later, when the government is expected to __________data from the first nationwide water-quality survey since rivers got their chiefs. But evidence based on personal experiences is __________. A man fishing in the Bahe river recounts how the water was “opaque (浑浊) green” and smelly just two years ago. Today it is clear and has no smell. He credits the river-chief system.