Questões de Inglês

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Patience is needed for Brazil to come good again

^{Michael Hasenstab}

 

Dr. Michael Hasenstab is executive vice-president, portfolio manager and chief investment officer of Templeton Global Macro

 

    The Olympic Games in Rio drew global interest to Brazil, but the country and the rest of South America has been in sharp focus for investors all year. They have flocked to the region as part of a broader migration into emerging market debt, following record low valuations and the hunt for yield in a low interest rate environment. While investors have been presented with a rarely seen buying opportunity in emerging markets like South America, it is a mistake to regard these countries as a homogenous group.

    That leaves the challenge of working out which are the most attractive opportunities – some of our best known investments were not obvious choices.

    We have devised a formula to help us evaluate the fundamental strength of different emerging market countries. It scores a country’s current and projected strength on five factors: how well it has learnt the lessons from past crises; the quality of its policy mix; the structural reform being undertaken to boost productivity; the level of domestic demand; and its ability to resist external shocks. The aim is to pick nations that are fundamentally strong but, for one reason or another, are out of favour with investors. It can take time for the market to catch up to reality. But if you are a long-term investor – and we are certainly in that camp – you have the luxury of being able to wait.

    Brazil, for example, is known as a vulnerable market due to the commodities downturn, the ongoing corruption crisis and ensuing political turmoil, but our work suggests to us that it is poised for a potentially significant rebound in the long term. Its current score is low, but its projected future score tells a different story.

    We believe the country has learnt the lessons from the most recent crisis, which brought home the importance of having a sustainable fiscal policy. It has already adopted a flexible exchange rate, has strong foreign exchange reserves and has limited short-term debt. This is also reflected in the country’s improving resilience to external shocks, with a reliance on commodities, at 60 per cent of exports, being the largest remaining negative.

    It is perhaps no surprise, given Brazil’s deep recession and political instability, that there is much work required in terms of improving policy mix, making structural reforms and boosting domestic demand. However, there are signs things are being turned around, with monetary policy already being tightened aggressively to bring inflation expectations back under control, and the previously excessive levels of governmentsubsidised lending being cut. Once political stability returns, the government will be empowered to do even more.

    Work on structural reform should accelerate too, as Brazil’s middle class has made it clear it wants greater transparency and an economic policy

framework that can both boost living standards and improve the environment for businesses.

(www.ft.com. 01.09.2016. Adaptado)

The formula mentioned in the third paragraph

Leia o texto para responder à questão

 

Patience is needed for Brazil to come good again

^{Michael Hasenstab}

 

Dr. Michael Hasenstab is executive vice-president, portfolio manager and chief investment officer of Templeton Global Macro

 

    The Olympic Games in Rio drew global interest to Brazil, but the country and the rest of South America has been in sharp focus for investors all year. They have flocked to the region as part of a broader migration into emerging market debt, following record low valuations and the hunt for yield in a low interest rate environment. While investors have been presented with a rarely seen buying opportunity in emerging markets like South America, it is a mistake to regard these countries as a homogenous group.

    That leaves the challenge of working out which are the most attractive opportunities – some of our best known investments were not obvious choices.

    We have devised a formula to help us evaluate the fundamental strength of different emerging market countries. It scores a country’s current and projected strength on five factors: how well it has learnt the lessons from past crises; the quality of its policy mix; the structural reform being undertaken to boost productivity; the level of domestic demand; and its ability to resist external shocks. The aim is to pick nations that are fundamentally strong but, for one reason or another, are out of favour with investors. It can take time for the market to catch up to reality. But if you are a long-term investor – and we are certainly in that camp – you have the luxury of being able to wait.

    Brazil, for example, is known as a vulnerable market due to the commodities downturn, the ongoing corruption crisis and ensuing political turmoil, but our work suggests to us that it is poised for a potentially significant rebound in the long term. Its current score is low, but its projected future score tells a different story.

    We believe the country has learnt the lessons from the most recent crisis, which brought home the importance of having a sustainable fiscal policy. It has already adopted a flexible exchange rate, has strong foreign exchange reserves and has limited short-term debt. This is also reflected in the country’s improving resilience to external shocks, with a reliance on commodities, at 60 per cent of exports, being the largest remaining negative.

    It is perhaps no surprise, given Brazil’s deep recession and political instability, that there is much work required in terms of improving policy mix, making structural reforms and boosting domestic demand. However, there are signs things are being turned around, with monetary policy already being tightened aggressively to bring inflation expectations back under control, and the previously excessive levels of governmentsubsidised lending being cut. Once political stability returns, the government will be empowered to do even more.

    Work on structural reform should accelerate too, as Brazil’s middle class has made it clear it wants greater transparency and an economic policy

framework that can both boost living standards and improve the environment for businesses.

(www.ft.com. 01.09.2016. Adaptado)

In the excerpt of the second paragraph “That leaves the challenge of working out which are the most attractive opportunities”, the word in bold refers to the idea that

Leia o texto para responder à questão

 

Patience is needed for Brazil to come good again

^{Michael Hasenstab}

 

Dr. Michael Hasenstab is executive vice-president, portfolio manager and chief investment officer of Templeton Global Macro

 

    The Olympic Games in Rio drew global interest to Brazil, but the country and the rest of South America has been in sharp focus for investors all year. They have flocked to the region as part of a broader migration into emerging market debt, following record low valuations and the hunt for yield in a low interest rate environment. While investors have been presented with a rarely seen buying opportunity in emerging markets like South America, it is a mistake to regard these countries as a homogenous group.

    That leaves the challenge of working out which are the most attractive opportunities – some of our best known investments were not obvious choices.

    We have devised a formula to help us evaluate the fundamental strength of different emerging market countries. It scores a country’s current and projected strength on five factors: how well it has learnt the lessons from past crises; the quality of its policy mix; the structural reform being undertaken to boost productivity; the level of domestic demand; and its ability to resist external shocks. The aim is to pick nations that are fundamentally strong but, for one reason or another, are out of favour with investors. It can take time for the market to catch up to reality. But if you are a long-term investor – and we are certainly in that camp – you have the luxury of being able to wait.

    Brazil, for example, is known as a vulnerable market due to the commodities downturn, the ongoing corruption crisis and ensuing political turmoil, but our work suggests to us that it is poised for a potentially significant rebound in the long term. Its current score is low, but its projected future score tells a different story.

    We believe the country has learnt the lessons from the most recent crisis, which brought home the importance of having a sustainable fiscal policy. It has already adopted a flexible exchange rate, has strong foreign exchange reserves and has limited short-term debt. This is also reflected in the country’s improving resilience to external shocks, with a reliance on commodities, at 60 per cent of exports, being the largest remaining negative.

    It is perhaps no surprise, given Brazil’s deep recession and political instability, that there is much work required in terms of improving policy mix, making structural reforms and boosting domestic demand. However, there are signs things are being turned around, with monetary policy already being tightened aggressively to bring inflation expectations back under control, and the previously excessive levels of governmentsubsidised lending being cut. Once political stability returns, the government will be empowered to do even more.

    Work on structural reform should accelerate too, as Brazil’s middle class has made it clear it wants greater transparency and an economic policy

framework that can both boost living standards and improve the environment for businesses.

(www.ft.com. 01.09.2016. Adaptado)

In the excerpt of the first paragraph “While investors have been presented with a rarely seen buying opportunity in emerging markets like South America, it is a mistake to regard these countries as a homogenous group”, the word in bold can be correctly replaced by

ROBOTIC SURGERY FOR PROSTATE CANCER MAY OFFER NO BENEFITS OVER REGULAR SURGERY

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

 

JULY 28, 2016, PM July 28, 2016 Comment

 

    Robotic prostate surgery may be no more beneficial than a conventional operation, a randomized trial has found.

    In robotic surgery, the doctor operates through quarter-inch incisions using tiny instruments and cameras guided by robot, giving the surgeon a clear view of the operating site and precise control of the tools. In conventional surgery, the doctor makes a larger incision and uses standard surgical equipment.

    Several earlier observational studies had reached the same conclusion. For the current study, in The Lancet, researchers randomly assigned 163 men with localized prostate cancer to robotic surgery and 163 to conventional operations.

    Three months after the operations, there was no difference between the two groups in urinary or sexual function, or in complications of surgery. The operations were equally effective in removing cancerous tissue.

    Longer-term follow up is needed, but for now, “we recommend that patients choose a urologist with whom they have rapport and who is experienced with either open or robotic prostatectomy,” said the senior author, Dr. Robert A. Gardiner, a urologist at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in Australia. “At this stage, we advise that the choice should be based on the person and not on the operative approach. A surgeon may have good clinical reasons for advocating one or the other approach, and the patient should be open to consider his or her advice.”

From : Internet, NY TIMES – july 28.

 

According to the article is correct to say

    From brain and heart pacemakers to prosthetic limbs, artificial parts have revolutionized medicine. Pacemakers are implanted to aid control of a particular body part. The artificial pacemaker controls the heartbeats while the brain pacemaker includes deep brain stimulators, which send electrical impulses to the brain in order relieve depression, epilepsy, and tremors. As of May 2008 more than 40,000 patients worldwide had received the brain pacemaker. (Reuters/ AP)

From: www.news.com.au/tecnology/gallery

 

The best title to the caption above is

CULTURE WAR

By James Cuno

 

[1]   In December 2007, the Italian government opened an exhibition in Rome of 69 artifacts that four major U.S. museums had agreed to return to Italy on
the grounds [base legal] that they had been illegally excavated and exported from the country. Leading nearly 200 journalists through the exhibition,
Francesco Rutelli, Italy’s then cultural minister, proclaimed, “The odyssey of these objects, which started with their brutal removal from the bowels
[entranhas] of the earth, didn’t end on the shelf of some American museum. With nostalgia, they have returned. These beautiful pieces have reconquered
their souls.” Rutelli was not just anthropomorphizing ancient artifacts by giving them souls. By insisting that they were the property of Italy and important
to its national identity, he was also giving them citizenship.
[2]   Rutelli has hardly been the only government official to insist that artifacts belong to the places from which they originally came. In 2011, the German
government agreed to return to Turkey a 3,000-year-old sphinx that German archaeologists had excavated from central Anatolia in the early twentieth
century. Afterward, the Turkish minister of culture, Ertugrul Gunay, declared that “each and every antiquity in any part of the world should eventually go
back to its homeland.”
[3]   Such claims on the national identity of antiquities are at the root of many states’ cultural property laws, which in the last few decades have been used
by governments to reclaim objects from museums and other collections abroad. Despite UNESCO’s declaration that “no culture is a hermetically sealed
entity,” governments are increasingly making claims of ownership of cultural property on the basis of self-proclaimed and fixed state-based identities.
Many use ancient cultural objects to affirm continuity with a glorious and powerful past as a way of burnishing [lustrar, polir] their modern political image
– Egypt with the Pharaonic era, Iran with ancient Persia, Italy with the Roman Empire. These arguments amount to protectionist claims on culture. Rather
than acknowledge that culture is in a state of constant flux, modern governments present it as standing still, in order to use cultural objects to promote
their own states’ national identities.
[4]   In the battle over cultural heritage, repatriation claims based strictly on national origin are more than just denials of cultural exchange: they are also
arguments against the promise of encyclopedic museums – a category that includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; the British Museum, in
London; and the Louvre, in Paris. By presenting the artifacts of one time and one culture next to those of other times and cultures, encyclopedic museums
encourage curiosity about the world and its many peoples. They also promote a cosmopolitan worldview, as opposed to a nationalist concept of cultural
identity. In an era of globalization that is nonetheless marked by resurgent nationalism and sectarianism, antiquities and their history should not be used
to stoke [fortalecer] such narrow identities. Instead, they should express the guiding principles of the world’s great museums: pluralism, diversity, and the
idea that culture shouldn’t stop at borders – and nor, for that matter, should the cosmopolitan ideals represented by encyclopedic museums. Rather than
acquiesce to frivolous, if stubborn, calls for repatriation, often accompanied by threats of cultural embargoes, encyclopedic museums should encourage
the development of mutually beneficial relationships with museums everywhere in the world that share their cosmopolitan vision. Cultural property should
be recognized for what it is: the legacy of humankind and not of the modern nation-state, subject to the political agenda of its current ruling elite.

Adapted from Foreign Affairs November/December 2014.

With respect to certain governments that demand the repatriation of ancient artifacts, the information in the article supports all of the following except