H
Why is there no risk to the customer when a bank prints the customer’s name to his cheques?
When anyone opens a current account at a bank, he is lending the bank money, repayment of which he may demand at any time, either in cash or by drawing a check in favor of another person. Primarily, the bank-customer’s account is in credit or overdrawn. But, in addition to that basically simple concept, the bank and its customer owe a large number of obligations(义务) to one another. Many of these obligations can give rise to problems but a bank customer, unlike, say, a buyer of goods, cannot complain that the law is loaded against him.
The bank must obey its customer’s instructions, and not those of anyone else. When, for example, a customer first opens an account, he instructs the bank to debit(把......记入借方) his account only in respect of checks drawn by himself. He gives the bank specimens(标本) of his signature, and there is a very firm rule that the bank has no right to pay out a customer’s money on a check on which its customer’s signature has been forged(伪造). It makes no difference that the forgery may have been a very skillful one: the bank must recognize its customer’s signature. For this reason there is no risk to the customer in the practice, adopted by banks, of printing the customer’s name on his checks. If this helps forgery, it is the bank which will lose, not the customer.
1. When you have a bank account, you ___
A. must always be in credit
B. can’t draw any money if you’re overdrawn
C. can draw money without notice
D. can’t pay money to anyone else
2. One of the obligations a bank has to a customer_____
A. is that it can’t take instructions from other people
B. is that it can avoid complications and problems
C. it must pay money to the customer even if he is seriously overdrawn
D. it must print the customer’s signature
3. The underlined part “the law is loaded against him” in the second paragraph is most likely to mean_____
A. the law is not of his interest
B. the law is unfavorable to him
C. the law is not in favor of him
D. the law is not in his honor
4. If someone forged your signature and drew money from your account___
A. the bank would always pay money to the forger
B. the bank wouldn’t lose any money
C. you wouldn’t lose any money
D. you wouldn’t lose your money