Questões sobre Inglês

Questão 1
Matéria: Inglês
CNJ 2013 - CESPE - Analista Judiciário - Análise de Sistemas
1
As the largest city in southern China, with a population of
 
around 13 million, Guangzhou has traffic so bad it’s legendary. One
 
way to alleviate it would be to increase the intelligence of traffic
 
lights — converting them from dumb beasts that beat out the same
5
rhythm all day long into dynamic managers of vehicle flow.
 
And now two Chinese researchers have proved, at least
 
theoretically, that insights borrowed from the lowly bacterium
 
Escherichia coli could increase the throughput of a real-world
 
traffic light in Guangzhou. No one knows what effect this could
10
have if it were applied to an entire city, but it’s fitting that a solution
 
from a class of algorithms that seek to mimic the collective behavior
 
of organisms should be applied to the teeming masses of
 
Guangzhou’s trucks and automobiles.
 
Traffic lights around the world, from Guangzhou to
15
Geneva, are managed by computerized systems in a metal cabinet
 
at the side of the road, which regulate the cycle of changes from red
 
to green to red either through fixed time periods, or through sensors
 
in the road that can detect when a car is stationary. Both options
 
work well when traffic is low, less so during rush hour, as any
20
driver will tell you.
 
The solution proposed for improving flow during high
 
traffic periods is what’s known as a bacterial foraging Optimization
 
(BFO) algorithm. The algorithm varies when and for how long a
 
given light is red or green. So, for example, the algorithm has an
25
almost traffic cop-like sense for which road at an intersection has a
 
higher volume of traffic, and when to strategically deprioritize
 
traffic that may be waiting on a less-used road. Simulations of a
 
Guangzhou intersection showed that BFO-regulated lights reduce
 
the average delay of vehicles by over 28% compared with those
30
regulated by a fixed time cycle.
Internet: www.bbc.com (adapted).
Based on the text above, judge the items below.
It is common knowledge that traffic lights nowadays do not work very well when traffic is heavy.
Questão 2
Matéria: Inglês
CNJ 2013 - CESPE - Analista Judiciário - Análise de Sistemas
1
As the largest city in southern China, with a population of
 
around 13 million, Guangzhou has traffic so bad it’s legendary. One
 
way to alleviate it would be to increase the intelligence of traffic
 
lights — converting them from dumb beasts that beat out the same
5
rhythm all day long into dynamic managers of vehicle flow.
 
And now two Chinese researchers have proved, at least
 
theoretically, that insights borrowed from the lowly bacterium
 
Escherichia coli could increase the throughput of a real-world
 
traffic light in Guangzhou. No one knows what effect this could
10
have if it were applied to an entire city, but it’s fitting that a solution
 
from a class of algorithms that seek to mimic the collective behavior
 
of organisms should be applied to the teeming masses of
 
Guangzhou’s trucks and automobiles.
 
Traffic lights around the world, from Guangzhou to
15
Geneva, are managed by computerized systems in a metal cabinet
 
at the side of the road, which regulate the cycle of changes from red
 
to green to red either through fixed time periods, or through sensors
 
in the road that can detect when a car is stationary. Both options
 
work well when traffic is low, less so during rush hour, as any
20
driver will tell you.
 
The solution proposed for improving flow during high
 
traffic periods is what’s known as a bacterial foraging Optimization
 
(BFO) algorithm. The algorithm varies when and for how long a
 
given light is red or green. So, for example, the algorithm has an
25
almost traffic cop-like sense for which road at an intersection has a
 
higher volume of traffic, and when to strategically deprioritize
 
traffic that may be waiting on a less-used road. Simulations of a
 
Guangzhou intersection showed that BFO-regulated lights reduce
 
the average delay of vehicles by over 28% compared with those
30
regulated by a fixed time cycle.
Internet: www.bbc.com (adapted).
Based on the text above, judge the items below.
Even though Guangzhou is the largest city in southern China, its bad traffic is nothing but a legend.
Questão 3
Matéria: Inglês
CNJ 2013 - CESPE - Analista Judiciário - Análise de Sistemas
1
As the largest city in southern China, with a population of
 
around 13 million, Guangzhou has traffic so bad it’s legendary. One
 
way to alleviate it would be to increase the intelligence of traffic
 
lights — converting them from dumb beasts that beat out the same
5
rhythm all day long into dynamic managers of vehicle flow.
 
And now two Chinese researchers have proved, at least
 
theoretically, that insights borrowed from the lowly bacterium
 
Escherichia coli could increase the throughput of a real-world
 
traffic light in Guangzhou. No one knows what effect this could
10
have if it were applied to an entire city, but it’s fitting that a solution
 
from a class of algorithms that seek to mimic the collective behavior
 
of organisms should be applied to the teeming masses of
 
Guangzhou’s trucks and automobiles.
 
Traffic lights around the world, from Guangzhou to
15
Geneva, are managed by computerized systems in a metal cabinet
 
at the side of the road, which regulate the cycle of changes from red
 
to green to red either through fixed time periods, or through sensors
 
in the road that can detect when a car is stationary. Both options
 
work well when traffic is low, less so during rush hour, as any
20
driver will tell you.
 
The solution proposed for improving flow during high
 
traffic periods is what’s known as a bacterial foraging Optimization
 
(BFO) algorithm. The algorithm varies when and for how long a
 
given light is red or green. So, for example, the algorithm has an
25
almost traffic cop-like sense for which road at an intersection has a
 
higher volume of traffic, and when to strategically deprioritize
 
traffic that may be waiting on a less-used road. Simulations of a
 
Guangzhou intersection showed that BFO-regulated lights reduce
 
the average delay of vehicles by over 28% compared with those
30
regulated by a fixed time cycle.
Internet: www.bbc.com (adapted).
Based on the text above, judge the items below.
A controlled experiment indicated that the idea presented by two chinese researchers might be able to reduce the waiting time of cars on red lights.
Questão 4
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Sistemas de Informação/Ciência da Computação/Engenharia/Informática/Análise de Sistemas - ETEA-SEGIN
1
Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April
 
Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
 
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
 
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
5
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
 
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
 
much worse than that, as the bank's index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
 
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.
 
"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
10
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
 
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
 
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
 
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
 
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
15
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.
 
"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
 
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
 
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
 
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
20
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
 
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.
 
"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that's far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
 
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
 
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
25
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
 
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
 
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
 
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.
 
Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
30
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
 
Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, the scandal of Spain's "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
 
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
 
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.
 
The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
35
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
 
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
 
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who's going to compensate those who bought in good
 
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
 
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain's tourist areas.
40
Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
 
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
 
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.
 
Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren't a million miles
 
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
45
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
 
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe's property markets. Tax breaks have
 
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
 
measures.
 
And it's not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches. The
50
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
 
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
 
for those that can afford it".
 
The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain's houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
 
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
55
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
 
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."
 
Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world's most overvalued housing markets. A
 
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
 
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
60
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
 
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.
 
But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
 
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
 
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
65
know what's going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
 
down by 90% since 2006".
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)
Mark Stucklin points out a problem, which is best described as:

Questão 5
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Sistemas de Informação/Ciência da Computação/Engenharia/Informática/Análise de Sistemas - ETEA-SEGIN
1
Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April
 
Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
 
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
 
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
5
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
 
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
 
much worse than that, as the bank's index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
 
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.
 
"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
10
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
 
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
 
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
 
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
 
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
15
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.
 
"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
 
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
 
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
 
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
20
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
 
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.
 
"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that's far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
 
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
 
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
25
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
 
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
 
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
 
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.
 
Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
30
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
 
Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, the scandal of Spain's "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
 
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
 
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.
 
The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
35
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
 
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
 
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who's going to compensate those who bought in good
 
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
 
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain's tourist areas.
40
Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
 
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
 
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.
 
Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren't a million miles
 
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
45
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
 
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe's property markets. Tax breaks have
 
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
 
measures.
 
And it's not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches. The
50
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
 
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
 
for those that can afford it".
 
The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain's houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
 
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
55
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
 
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."
 
Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world's most overvalued housing markets. A
 
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
 
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
60
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
 
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.
 
But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
 
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
 
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
65
know what's going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
 
down by 90% since 2006".
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)
According to a report in The Economist, although property prices may have fallen, Spain still has one of the world’s:

Questão 6
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Ensino Médio - TAO-ADMINIS
1
Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April 2011
 
Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
 
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
 
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
5
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
 
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
 
much worse than that, as the bank's index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
 
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.
 
10
"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
 
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
 
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
 
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
 
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
15
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
 
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.
 
 
"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
 
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
20
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
 
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
 
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
 
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.
 
25
"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that's far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
 
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
 
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
 
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
 
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
30
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
 
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.
 
Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
 
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
 
Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, the scandal of Spain's "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
35
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
 
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.
 
 
The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
 
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
40
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
 
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who's going to compensate those who bought in good
 
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
 
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain's tourist areas.
 
45
Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
 
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
 
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.
 
 
Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren't a million miles
50
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
 
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
 
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe's property markets. Tax breaks have
 
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
 
measures.
55
 
And it's not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches. The
 
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
 
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
 
for those that can afford it".
60
 
The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain's houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
 
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
 
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
 
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."
65
 
Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world's most overvalued housing markets. A
 
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
 
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
 
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
70
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.
 
 
But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
 
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
 
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
75
know what's going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
 
down by 90% since 2006".
 
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)
When the author refers to the fiction in “Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact”, he is referring to:

Questão 7
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Ensino Médio - TAO-ADMINIS
1
Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April 2011
 
Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
 
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
 
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
5
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
 
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
 
much worse than that, as the bank's index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
 
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.
 
10
"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
 
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
 
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
 
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
 
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
15
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
 
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.
 
 
"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
 
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
20
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
 
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
 
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
 
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.
 
25
"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that's far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
 
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
 
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
 
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
 
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
30
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
 
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.
 
Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
 
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
 
Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, the scandal of Spain's "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
35
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
 
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.
 
 
The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
 
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
40
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
 
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who's going to compensate those who bought in good
 
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
 
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain's tourist areas.
 
45
Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
 
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
 
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.
 
 
Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren't a million miles
50
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
 
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
 
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe's property markets. Tax breaks have
 
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
 
measures.
55
 
And it's not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches. The
 
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
 
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
 
for those that can afford it".
60
 
The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain's houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
 
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
 
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
 
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."
65
 
Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world's most overvalued housing markets. A
 
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
 
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
 
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
70
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.
 
 
But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
 
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
 
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
75
know what's going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
 
down by 90% since 2006".
 
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)
The word disgruntled, as it appears in the text, could be replaced by any of the options below, without changing the meaning, except by:

Questão 8
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Advogado - AAO-ADVOGAD
1
Patrick Collinson, guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 April
 
Diana Choyleva is the bear in the China shop. The analyst from Lombard Street Research says last week's China GDP
 
figures – which revealed growth slowing to a three-year low – are an early warning signal of the hard landing to come.
 
Dig deep into the data, she says, and you'll find that Chinese exports are falling. All that is propping up the economy is
5
gargantuan investment in infrastructure financed by state- directed banks that look more and more like Western banks just
 
before the collapse of 2008. Except they are bigger and badder.
 
Choyleva radiates a pessimism that is almost unique among Hong Kong's investment professionals. Westerners, she says, are
 
so awed by the China dream they can't see the coming China-geddon. The excesses that drove the West into a financial crisis
 
and, in Europe, an economic depression, are gripping the Chinese economy, too. "It's just that they have become bigger," she
10
says. The country's vast pool of savings is being squandered on dead-end infrastructure projects that make Japan's roads to
 
nowhere look like prudent planning.
 
"China's miracle growth is over," she proclaims, saying that if Chinese policy makers get it right they might, just, see the
 
country's growth halve to 5% or below. Get it wrong, and the consequences could be devastating not just for China but for
 
the rest of the world, too. "Building those roads to nowhere can go on for a long time, but ultimately financing it will become
15
unbearable," warns Choyleva.
 
As long as US and European consumers were accumulating colossal amounts of debt, much of it to pay for goods made in
 
China, the merry-go-round worked just fine. But as western economies deleverage, the driver for growth has been
 
extinguished.
 
"The financial crisis has changed everything," she says. "It can no longer rely on abroad to buy its excess production. The US
20
will consume less, and produce more. The years of current account surpluses are over, rendering the growth model obsolete."
 
Meanwhile, the banks that have been the lynchpin of growth are insolvent, and their mountain of bad loans will eventually
 
lead to a liquidity crisis.
 
But Choyleva's is a lone voice. At brokerage CLSA, one of the region's biggest investment banks, China macro strategist
 
Andy Rothman, a former US diplomat, says the wall of worry comes from a fundamental misunderstanding.
25
The first myth to explode, he says, is that it is an export economy. It's not. It assembles the likes of iPads (they are all made
 
in China), but the value remains, mostly, in the US. Even Korean firms make more money from the iPad than China. Over
 
the last decade, while it has enjoyed GDP growth of 10% per annum, only 1% of that was from exports. What we haven't
 
woken up to is that China is a domestic growth story.
 
It's not an unbalanced export-only economy – instead, it's the world's best domestic consumption story, claims Rothman. It is
30
being driven by "phenomenal" increases in wages for average workers; incomes are up 173% over the past 11 years. That
 
also puts the so-called property bubble into perspective. The price per-square-foot of an apartment in a major Chinese city
 
has leaped by nearly 10% a year, for many years. But as incomes are rising even faster – by around 13% a year – it's not the
 
issue it became in the west.
 
Better still, it's not on the never-never. Mortgages are still in their infancy in China. One in five first-time buyers purchase
35
entirely with cash. The average downpayment is 30% – a long way from the 100% loans that became common in the US and
 
the UK.
 
"Even if prices fall by a third, almost no one will actually be underwater," says Rothman. Westerners are also obsessed with
 
startling property price rises in Shanghai and Beijing. But go into the interior and prices are "dramatically lower," he says.
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/apr/27/china-big-bubbles-about-to-burst)
According to Text II, mortgages are still:

Questão 9
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Advogado - AAO-ADVOGAD
1
Patrick Collinson, guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 April
 
Diana Choyleva is the bear in the China shop. The analyst from Lombard Street Research says last week's China GDP
 
figures – which revealed growth slowing to a three-year low – are an early warning signal of the hard landing to come.
 
Dig deep into the data, she says, and you'll find that Chinese exports are falling. All that is propping up the economy is
5
gargantuan investment in infrastructure financed by state- directed banks that look more and more like Western banks just
 
before the collapse of 2008. Except they are bigger and badder.
 
Choyleva radiates a pessimism that is almost unique among Hong Kong's investment professionals. Westerners, she says, are
 
so awed by the China dream they can't see the coming China-geddon. The excesses that drove the West into a financial crisis
 
and, in Europe, an economic depression, are gripping the Chinese economy, too. "It's just that they have become bigger," she
10
says. The country's vast pool of savings is being squandered on dead-end infrastructure projects that make Japan's roads to
 
nowhere look like prudent planning.
 
"China's miracle growth is over," she proclaims, saying that if Chinese policy makers get it right they might, just, see the
 
country's growth halve to 5% or below. Get it wrong, and the consequences could be devastating not just for China but for
 
the rest of the world, too. "Building those roads to nowhere can go on for a long time, but ultimately financing it will become
15
unbearable," warns Choyleva.
 
As long as US and European consumers were accumulating colossal amounts of debt, much of it to pay for goods made in
 
China, the merry-go-round worked just fine. But as western economies deleverage, the driver for growth has been
 
extinguished.
 
"The financial crisis has changed everything," she says. "It can no longer rely on abroad to buy its excess production. The US
20
will consume less, and produce more. The years of current account surpluses are over, rendering the growth model obsolete."
 
Meanwhile, the banks that have been the lynchpin of growth are insolvent, and their mountain of bad loans will eventually
 
lead to a liquidity crisis.
 
But Choyleva's is a lone voice. At brokerage CLSA, one of the region's biggest investment banks, China macro strategist
 
Andy Rothman, a former US diplomat, says the wall of worry comes from a fundamental misunderstanding.
25
The first myth to explode, he says, is that it is an export economy. It's not. It assembles the likes of iPads (they are all made
 
in China), but the value remains, mostly, in the US. Even Korean firms make more money from the iPad than China. Over
 
the last decade, while it has enjoyed GDP growth of 10% per annum, only 1% of that was from exports. What we haven't
 
woken up to is that China is a domestic growth story.
 
It's not an unbalanced export-only economy – instead, it's the world's best domestic consumption story, claims Rothman. It is
30
being driven by "phenomenal" increases in wages for average workers; incomes are up 173% over the past 11 years. That
 
also puts the so-called property bubble into perspective. The price per-square-foot of an apartment in a major Chinese city
 
has leaped by nearly 10% a year, for many years. But as incomes are rising even faster – by around 13% a year – it's not the
 
issue it became in the west.
 
Better still, it's not on the never-never. Mortgages are still in their infancy in China. One in five first-time buyers purchase
35
entirely with cash. The average downpayment is 30% – a long way from the 100% loans that became common in the US and
 
the UK.
 
"Even if prices fall by a third, almost no one will actually be underwater," says Rothman. Westerners are also obsessed with
 
startling property price rises in Shanghai and Beijing. But go into the interior and prices are "dramatically lower," he says.
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/apr/27/china-big-bubbles-about-to-burst)
According to Text II, the idea conveyed by the expression “China-geddon” is:

Questão 10
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Advogado - AAO-ADVOGAD
1
Patrick Collinson, guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 April
 
Diana Choyleva is the bear in the China shop. The analyst from Lombard Street Research says last week's China GDP
 
figures – which revealed growth slowing to a three-year low – are an early warning signal of the hard landing to come.
 
Dig deep into the data, she says, and you'll find that Chinese exports are falling. All that is propping up the economy is
5
gargantuan investment in infrastructure financed by state- directed banks that look more and more like Western banks just
 
before the collapse of 2008. Except they are bigger and badder.
 
Choyleva radiates a pessimism that is almost unique among Hong Kong's investment professionals. Westerners, she says, are
 
so awed by the China dream they can't see the coming China-geddon. The excesses that drove the West into a financial crisis
 
and, in Europe, an economic depression, are gripping the Chinese economy, too. "It's just that they have become bigger," she
10
says. The country's vast pool of savings is being squandered on dead-end infrastructure projects that make Japan's roads to
 
nowhere look like prudent planning.
 
"China's miracle growth is over," she proclaims, saying that if Chinese policy makers get it right they might, just, see the
 
country's growth halve to 5% or below. Get it wrong, and the consequences could be devastating not just for China but for
 
the rest of the world, too. "Building those roads to nowhere can go on for a long time, but ultimately financing it will become
15
unbearable," warns Choyleva.
 
As long as US and European consumers were accumulating colossal amounts of debt, much of it to pay for goods made in
 
China, the merry-go-round worked just fine. But as western economies deleverage, the driver for growth has been
 
extinguished.
 
"The financial crisis has changed everything," she says. "It can no longer rely on abroad to buy its excess production. The US
20
will consume less, and produce more. The years of current account surpluses are over, rendering the growth model obsolete."
 
Meanwhile, the banks that have been the lynchpin of growth are insolvent, and their mountain of bad loans will eventually
 
lead to a liquidity crisis.
 
But Choyleva's is a lone voice. At brokerage CLSA, one of the region's biggest investment banks, China macro strategist
 
Andy Rothman, a former US diplomat, says the wall of worry comes from a fundamental misunderstanding.
25
The first myth to explode, he says, is that it is an export economy. It's not. It assembles the likes of iPads (they are all made
 
in China), but the value remains, mostly, in the US. Even Korean firms make more money from the iPad than China. Over
 
the last decade, while it has enjoyed GDP growth of 10% per annum, only 1% of that was from exports. What we haven't
 
woken up to is that China is a domestic growth story.
 
It's not an unbalanced export-only economy – instead, it's the world's best domestic consumption story, claims Rothman. It is
30
being driven by "phenomenal" increases in wages for average workers; incomes are up 173% over the past 11 years. That
 
also puts the so-called property bubble into perspective. The price per-square-foot of an apartment in a major Chinese city
 
has leaped by nearly 10% a year, for many years. But as incomes are rising even faster – by around 13% a year – it's not the
 
issue it became in the west.
 
Better still, it's not on the never-never. Mortgages are still in their infancy in China. One in five first-time buyers purchase
35
entirely with cash. The average downpayment is 30% – a long way from the 100% loans that became common in the US and
 
the UK.
 
"Even if prices fall by a third, almost no one will actually be underwater," says Rothman. Westerners are also obsessed with
 
startling property price rises in Shanghai and Beijing. But go into the interior and prices are "dramatically lower," he says.
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/apr/27/china-big-bubbles-about-to-burst)
According to Text II, in the last ten years, China’s GDP annual growth has been of:

Questão 11
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Advogado - AAO-ADVOGAD
1
Patrick Collinson, guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 August
 
One of Britain's most successful fund managers has warned about an emerging market bubble and told small investors, who
 
have poured billions of pounds into emerging market funds, that returns could be sorely disappointing over the next few
 
years.
5
British investors now hold more than £40bn in emerging market funds – typically invested in China, Brazil and India – and
 
those who jumped in early have done well. The average fund invested in China has made a 112% gain since 2006 while the
 
very best fund, run by First State, has notched up a breathtaking 159% gain for its investors. Meanwhile, the average fund
 
invested in UK shares has limped in with a rise of 18% over the same period.
 
But last week the head of global emerging market equities at First State, Jonathan Asante, told investors that the good times
10
may be over. Asante wrote to investors saying that most stocks in emerging markets are "fully valued", which in fund
 
manager speak means he believes that they are not worth investing in and could be headed for a fall. A formal warning to
 
investors from their fund manager is extremely rare, as it could prompt investors to bolt for the exit – and shrink the funds
 
from which they are paid.
 
Asante takes a longer view than most of his rivals. Profit sharing and bonuses at First State are only paid out on the basis of
15
three-year numbers rather than quarterly or half-yearly figures. Managers are also required to put most of their personal
 
wealth into their funds. "It means that managers have to eat their own cooking," he says.
 
Asante, who used to teach at the London School of Economics before becoming a fund manager, is not forecasting an abrupt
 
halt to the Chinese economic miracle, or an end to India's growth. But he says that so much money has flooded into the
 
shares of emerging market companies that even the best of them may now be overvalued. Many companies command share
20
price ratings which are a multiple of their equivalents in the west, he says, yet are trading in areas where corruption is rife,
 
inflation rising, where legal systems are immature and where back-door state control is common.
 
Overvaluations are perhaps most severe in Latin America, particularly Brazil, he says. Indeed, he was so concerned that last
 
December he wrote a separate warning note to clients in his Latin American portfolios. It was a good call – the São Paulo
 
Bovespa index was then around 70,000, and is now around 56,000. He continues to believe that the Brazilian currency, the
25
real, is the "most ridiculously over-valued currency in the world".
 
It is telling what First State managers are doing with their own cash tied up in First State funds. They now only have around
 
60% in equity funds, with 40% in cash (sterling, Hong Kong dollar and Singapore dollar) and gold.
 
"The world is a very risky place right now. I would have to be sceptical of the China story. The central planners have in some
 
senses been wonderful at balancing growth, inflation, banking and environmental concerns. I applaud them but wonder if
30
they can keep this going forever."
 
However, Asante's views are not shared by the majority of emerging market fund managers. In contrast, the manager of
 
another giant emerging markets fund, Michael Konstantinov, of the £870m Allianz RCM Bric Stars fund, this week told
 
potential investors that valuations are currently "very cheap" (his italics) and that they offer an "outstanding entry point".
 
"I think it is important to remind ourselves that the Bric [Brazil, Russia, India, China] countries came through the global
35
economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 quite well. Brazil did not even go into recession in 2009 while India and China continued
 
to grow very strongly in the range of 8%-9%. Only Russia had a short-term setback, but has recovered well and is, again,
 
leading the global growth dynamic.
 
"As the demand side of these economies is mainly driven by domestic demand, not by exports, they are more resilient to a
 
global crisis."
40
Fidelity, which took more than £500m from UK investors into a China fund launched by its most high-profile manager,
 
Anthony Bolton, has struggled to make money for them yet. The trust is currently trading at 96p compared to its launch price
 
of 100p in April 2010, although Fidelity remains bullish on the region.
 
Nick Price, manager of Fidelity Emerging Markets fund and the Fidelity EMEA fund, says: "As an emerging market fund
 
manager you'd expect me to be bullish wouldn't you? Clearly, many of the markets are facing headwinds right now and these
45
may last for some months. But having just come back from China where I spent a week visiting 30 companies, I remain
 
convinced that the China consumer story is as strong as ever.
 
"On a longer-term basis, emerging market stocks represent a fraction of their potential worth. It's a strong statement I know,
 
but look at the facts. Emerging markets represent 90% of the world's oil reserves, over 80% of the world's population, over
 
60% of the world's forex reserves, 30% of global GDP, but yet are only 13% of global stock market capitalisation. I am
50
convinced that the longer you look out, the more sure you can be that emerging markets offer great opportunities."
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/aug/05/emerging-markets-bubble-burst)
In Michael Konstantinov’s view, it is right to understand that:

Questão 12
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Administração/Ciências Contábeis/Direito/Pregoeiro Público AAO-COMNACI
1
Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April
 
Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
 
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
 
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
5
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
 
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
 
much worse than that, as the bank's index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
 
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.
 
"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
10
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
 
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
 
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
 
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
 
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
15
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.
 
"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
 
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
 
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
 
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
20
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
 
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.
 
"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that's far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
 
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
 
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
25
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
 
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
 
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
 
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.
 
Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
30
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
 
Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, the scandal of Spain's "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
 
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
 
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.
 
The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
35
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
 
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
 
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who's going to compensate those who bought in good
 
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
 
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain's tourist areas.
40
Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
 
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
 
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.
 
Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren't a million miles
 
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
45
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
 
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe's property markets. Tax breaks have
 
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
 
measures.
 
And it's not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches. The
50
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
 
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
 
for those that can afford it".
 
The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain's houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
 
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
55
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
 
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."
 
Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world's most overvalued housing markets. A
 
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
 
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
60
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
 
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.
 
But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
 
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
 
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
65
know what's going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
 
down by 90% since 2006".
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)
The three words in bold in the following sentences – “There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks”; “They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what they bought them for” – make an explicit reference to:

Questão 13
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Administração/Ciências Contábeis/Direito/Pregoeiro Público AAO-COMNACI
1
Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April
 
Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
 
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
 
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
5
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
 
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
 
much worse than that, as the bank's index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
 
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.
 
"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
10
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
 
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
 
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
 
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
 
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
15
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.
 
"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
 
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
 
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
 
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
20
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
 
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.
 
"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that's far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
 
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
 
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
25
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
 
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
 
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
 
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.
 
Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
30
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
 
Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, the scandal of Spain's "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
 
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
 
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.
 
The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
35
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
 
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
 
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who's going to compensate those who bought in good
 
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
 
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain's tourist areas.
40
Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
 
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
 
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.
 
Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren't a million miles
 
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
45
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
 
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe's property markets. Tax breaks have
 
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
 
measures.
 
And it's not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches. The
50
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
 
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
 
for those that can afford it".
 
The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain's houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
 
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
55
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
 
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."
 
Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world's most overvalued housing markets. A
 
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
 
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
60
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
 
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.
 
But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
 
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
 
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
65
know what's going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
 
down by 90% since 2006".
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)
In the following excerpts taken from the text – “many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets”; “who have been jailed for accepting bungs”; “who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches” –, the relative pronouns refer, respectively, to:

Questão 14
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Administração/Ciências Contábeis/Direito/Pregoeiro Público AAO-COMNACI
1
Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April
 
Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
 
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
 
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
5
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
 
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
 
much worse than that, as the bank's index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
 
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.
 
"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
10
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
 
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
 
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
 
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
 
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
15
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.
 
"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
 
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
 
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
 
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
20
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
 
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.
 
"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that's far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
 
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
 
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
25
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
 
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
 
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
 
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.
 
Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
30
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
 
Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, the scandal of Spain's "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
 
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
 
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.
 
The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
35
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
 
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
 
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who's going to compensate those who bought in good
 
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
 
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain's tourist areas.
40
Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
 
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
 
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.
 
Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren't a million miles
 
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
45
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
 
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe's property markets. Tax breaks have
 
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
 
measures.
 
And it's not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches. The
50
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
 
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
 
for those that can afford it".
 
The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain's houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
 
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
55
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
 
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."
 
Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world's most overvalued housing markets. A
 
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
 
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
60
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
 
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.
 
But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
 
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
 
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
65
know what's going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
 
down by 90% since 2006".
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)
In the sentence “There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market”, the idea brought by the expression in bold is:

Questão 15
Matéria: Inglês
CEITEC 2012 - FUNRIO - Administração/Ciências Contábeis/Direito/Pregoeiro Público AAO-COMNACI
1
Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April
 
Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
 
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
 
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
5
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
 
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
 
much worse than that, as the bank's index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
 
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.
 
"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
10
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
 
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
 
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
 
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
 
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
15
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.
 
"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
 
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
 
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
 
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
20
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
 
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.
 
"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that's far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
 
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
 
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
25
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
 
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
 
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
 
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.
 
Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
30
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
 
Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, the scandal of Spain's "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
 
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
 
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.
 
The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
35
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
 
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
 
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who's going to compensate those who bought in good
 
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
 
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain's tourist areas.
40
Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
 
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
 
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.
 
Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren't a million miles
 
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
45
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
 
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe's property markets. Tax breaks have
 
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
 
measures.
 
And it's not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain's sun-kissed beaches. The
50
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
 
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
 
for those that can afford it".
 
The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain's houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
 
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
55
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
 
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."
 
Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world's most overvalued housing markets. A
 
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
 
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
60
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
 
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.
 
But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
 
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
 
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
65
know what's going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
 
down by 90% since 2006".
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)
The connective meanwhile in the sentence “Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums.” could be replaced, without changing meaning, by:

 
×
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×
Assuntos de Questões sobre Inglês:
Compreensão de textos Elementos gramaticais