Conhecimentos da

Língua Inglesa
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Unpicking the fiscal straitjacket (Questões 1 à 4)

Never has a straitjacket seemed so ill-fitting or so insecure. The euro area’s “stability
and growth pact” was supposed to stop irresponsible member states from running
excessive budget deficits, defined as 3% of GDP or more. Chief among the restraints
was the threat of large fines if member governments breached the limit for three years in
a row. For some time now, no one has seriously believed those restraints would hold. In
the early hours of Tuesday November 25th, the euro’s fiscal straitjacket finally came
apart at the seams. The pact’s fate was sealed over an extended dinner meeting of the
euro area’s 12 finance ministers. They chewed over the sorry fiscal record of the euro’s
two largest members, France and Germany. Both governments ran deficits of more than
3% of GDP last year and will do so again this year. Both expect to breach the limit for
the third time in 2004. Earlier this year, the European Commission, which policies the
pact, agreed to give both countries an extra year, until 2005, to bring their deficits back
into line. But it also instructed them to revisit their budget plans for 2004 and make
extra cuts. France was asked to cut its underlying, cyclically adjusted deficit by a full
1% of GDP, Germany by 0.8%. Both resisted. Nov 27th, 2003

The Economist Global Agenda

Brazil’s Central Bank Rate Vote Underscores Division (Questões de 5 à 8)

Two of the Brazilian central bank’s nine-member board called for a smaller interest rate
cut last week than policy makers approved, underscoring disagreement over the pace of
a recovery in Brazil and its effect on inflation. The vote, the first show of dissent since
Henrique Meirelles became the bank’s president, may signal that the bank may be less
inclined to lower the benchmark lending rate in coming months after cutting it six times
since June. The board said in minutes of the meeting distributed today that its vote to
lower the overnight target rate to 17.5 percent from 19 percent was aimed at giving a
boost to an economy that suffered its biggest back-to-back quarterly contractions in
seven years between April and September.

Internet : www.bloomberg.com Accessed in Nov/2003

Responsibility of Accountants and Auditors (Questões 9 e 10)

How can accountants and auditors help in this anticorruption drive? First of all,
accountants are the first set of gatekeepers to ensure that transactions are valid, at arm’s-
length, captured, and properly recorded according to established standards. Secondly,
“as professionals with a duty to protect the public interest, they are bound by rigorous
codes of professional and personal ethics calling for the highest levels of integrity and
objectivity”. Thirdly, “their key strategic positions within an enterprise or organization
– whether in an internal position or as an external auditor or adviser – mean that they
very often have access to highly privileged and confidential information.”(Frank
Harding: “Corruption: Rising to the Challenge”, IFAC – May/1999.)

Both accountants and auditors perform their respective functions on the bases of
national and international standards of practice which have clear guidelines in
identifying, for instance, indicators of fraud and other irregularities, and reporting these
to the highest levels of authority.

Internet: www.guyanajournal.com Accessed in Nov/2003

Read the text below, which is entitled “Specter of Rising Inflation Sends Shares to
New Lows for 2005”, in order to answer questions 11 to 13.
(Questões 11 à 13)

Specter of Rising Inflation Sends Shares to New Lows for 2005Source: The New York
Times April 21st 2005 (Adapted) Fears of rising inflation sent stocks to new lows for
the year yesterday after the government reported a sharp increase in consumer prices
that all but guaranteed that the Federal Reserve would continue to push interest rates
higher even as the economy may be slowing. Last week investors were worried about
the effect of slower economic growth on corporate earnings. The addition of inflation
fears to the mix put nerves on Wall Street even more on edge. A 0.6 percent increase in
the Consumer Price Index last month was the largest in five months, the government
reported. The 0.4 percent jump in the core rate, which excludes food and energy, was
twice the forecast from analysts and the biggest monthly increase in nearly four years.
While some economists predicted that inflation should moderate in coming months,
higher energy costs due to the international petroleum price hike have pushed consumer
prices steadily higher so that they have been running at an annual rate of 3 percent or
more for several months.
Read the text below, which is entitled “Not exactly major league”, in order to answer
questions 14 to 16.

Not exactly major league Source: The Economist Mar 17th 2005 (Adapted)

(Questões 14 à 16)

By most measures, the president has quite an ambitious economic agenda for his second
term. George Bush’s goals include overhauling the tax code, reforming the Social
Security System, halving the budget deficit and pushing through more trade agreements.
But who exactly is meant to do all this stuff? In theory, Mr. Bush’s economic team is
headed by John Snow. The president was on the point of sacking his treasury secretary
at the end of last year; he then pulled back – but only apparently to keep Mr. Snow as a
traveling salesman for his pension-reform scheme. The former railroad boss has recently
visited such well known global financial centers as San Antonio, Albuquerque and New
Orleans. The Treasury itself seems short of both staff and clout with the administration.
That might be excusable if economic policy were being steered by a professional team
in the White House; but it is short of economists, particularly ones that are close to Mr.
Bush.
Read the text below, which is entitled “And on the election”, in order to answer
questions 17 to 20.

And on the election Source: The Economist 17th March 2005 (Adapted)

(Questões 17 à 20)

Before the budget which Gordon Brown presented on March 16th, many in the Labour
Party hoped that the chancellor would thunder to the rescue of their faltering election
campaign. But Mr. Brown, hemmed in by the deficit he has built up over the past three
years, did not have the freedom to make grand gestures. Instead, he had three, fairly
modest, aims. First, he wanted to put the economy at the center of the election battle and
to remind voters of its success while he has been in charge of the Treasury. Second, he
wished to target disaffected Labor voters with a few modest electoral sweeteners. Third,
he wanted to allay worries about a tax rise after the general election. He succeeded with
the first, was quite effective with the second but had a less convincing case to make on
the third. Mr. Brown does not do modesty, least of all about the economy. In his last
budget he claimed that Britain was enjoying its longest period of sustained economic
growth for more than 200 years.
For questions 21-23 below, choose the answer which best fits the ideas in the text.

How the world's poor changed dynamics of global politics

(Questões 21 à 23)

A new alliance of some of the world's poorest countries forged during the last week's
global trade talks has changed the entire dynamics of world politics, the foreign minister
of Brazil told The Independent yesterday. In an exclusive interview, Celso Amorim said
the formation of the Group of 21 nations (G21) had "reshuffled the cards" by creating a
powerful counterweight to Washington and Brussels. The creation of the G21 has been
one of the most significant developments of the World Trade Organization meetings
that have dominated the Mexican beach resort of Cancun since Wednesday. Thanks to
tough negotiating by the G21, analysts believe that the world's two most powerful
economic blocs have been prevented from riding roughshod over the 100-plus countries
that make up the developing world. It has also enhanced the reputation of Brazil - the
leading voice in the G21 and the country with the largest democratic support for any
left-wing government in the world - and the administration led by the uneducated
steelworker Lula da Silva. "We have gained the political initiative," said Mr. Amorim
on the fringes of the conference.(From: The Independent September 15th 2003 –
slightly adapted.)
For questions 24-26 below, choose the answer which best fits the ideas in the text.

Virtues of vice
(Questões 24 à 26)

Virtues of vice The rewards from investing in politically incorrect companies

REGRETTABLE though it may be, the wages of sin can be well worth having. Vice
Fund, a mutual fund started 14 months ago by Mutuals.com, a Dallas investment
company, is profiting nicely from what some would consider the wickedest corners of
the legitimate economy: alcohol, arms, gambling and tobacco. So far this year, Vice
Fund has returned 17.2% to investors, beating both the S&P 500 (15.2%) and the Dow
Jones industrial average (13.2%) by a few points. In fact, all four vice-ridden sectors
have outperformed the overall American market during the past five years. “No matter
what the economy's state or how interest rates move, people keep drinking, smoking and
gambling,” says Dan Ahrens, a portfolio manager at the self-described “socially
irresponsible” fund. With President George Bush pursuing a muscular foreign policy,
the outlook for defense spending is also bright.(From: The Economist October 30th
2003)
Read the text below in order to answer questions 27 and 28:

Globalization, work and changes

(Questões 27 e 28)

Globalization is among the most hotly debated issues on political agendas today. The
discussion, however, tends to be fragmented, with views often polarized along political
or geographic lines. Some blame globalization for exacerbating unemployment and
poverty; others see it as a way of solving such problems. Attention and research
concentrate on markets and perceived economic gains or losses rather than on the
impact of globalization on the life and work of people, their families and their societies.
This lack of consensus makes it harder to develop policies at national and international
levels. The inadequate focus on the human side of globalization creates a gap in
understanding the forces of change and how people react to them. Such knowledge is
necessary if appropriate policy responses are to be developed.
Read the text below in order to answer questions 29 to 31:

Brazil becomes the eight Lead Country of the Youth Employment Network

(Questões 29 à 31)

At the start of the new century, youth employment problems continue to pervade both
developed and developing countries, with a disproportionately large number of young
women and men exposed to long-term unemployment or else limited to precarious or
short-term work. To seek solutions, the International Labor Organization has set up the
Youth Employment Network (YEN).Against this background, at a seminar held in
Salvador in September 2003, the Brazilian Minister of Labor, Mr. Jaques Wagner,
announced Brazil’s decision to volunteer as a Lead Country of the YEN. Brazil now
joins Senegal, Namibia, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Hungary and Azerbaijan in
championing the preparation of National Action Plans on youth unemployment. This
policy was called for urgently by the United Nations (UN) in 2002, and endorsed by the
YEN’s High Level Panel at its meeting in July 2003. Brazil’s decision was
communicated through a letter from President Lula to Juan Somovia, Director General
of the International Labor Organization.
Read the text below in order to answer questions 32 to 34:

Analysis: Brazil’s Lula faces new phase

(Questões 32 à 34)

In a speech last week from the capital, Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
appeared to balloon with pride over his accomplishments and gloated over achieving in
months what his predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso could not do during his eight
years in office. “I am pleased and the Brazilian people are satisfied that we have done
something in seven months that has taken other countries years to do,” said Lula on the
pension reform amendment. “The last president of Brazil spent eight years trying to get
a social security reform bill through Congress.” While the president is riding high over
his win with pensions, analysts see a much tougher field to hoe in the coming months.
Next on the Lula administration agenda is taxes, a fight that will not only be waged in
the capital, but at the state and local levels as well. Governors, who backed Lula’s
pension proposal in Congress, want to see additional revenue tickle down to the local
levels. The president, however, insists on “tax reform designed to stimulate production,
not to boost revenue” for the states, as he put it on Monday.
Read the text below in order to answer questions 35 e 36:

Tax Strategies for 2003 and Beyond

(Questões 35 à 36)

Even the accountants are having a hard time keeping all the phase-ins and phase-outs
straight after the last tax law change (the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation
Act of 2003, which was signed by President Bush on May 28, 2003). Our Tax Act
Timeline can help you take maximum advantage of income, gift, and estate tax laws.
Almost everyone will see a decrease in overall tax paid in 2003. The ordinary income
tax brackets that were due to decrease gradually over time until 2006 have been
accelerated into 2003. The top tax bracket is now 35%.Watch out for how those income
tax brackets change over time, however. For example, in 20032004 the 10% bracket
applies to $0-$7,000 of income for single filers and $0-$14,000 for married filing
jointly. But in 2005, the brackets shrink and only $0-$6,000 (single) will quality for the
10% tax and $0-$12,000 for married filing jointly. The brackets change again (back to
the higher levels) in 2008.
Read the text below in order to answer questions 37 to 39:

EU Law Taxes Overseas Net Firms

(Questões 37 à 39)

They’ve survived the bursting of the tech bubble, a global economic downturn and the
occasional virus, but now overseas Internet retailers may see their European profit push
derailed by one of the oldest drags on business: tax.On July 1, a new EU (European
Union) directive goes into effect requiring all Internet firms to account for value-added
tax, or VAT, on “digitalsales”.The law adds a 15 to 25 percent levy on select Internet
transactions such as software and music downloads, monthly subscriptions to an
Internet service provider and on any product purchased through an online auction
anywhere in the 15-member bloc of nations.The VAT tax is nothing new for some Net
firms. European dot-coms have been charging customers VAT since their inception.
Their overseas rivals though have been exempt, making foreign firms an obvious choice
for the bargainhunting consumer.
Read the text below in order to answer questions 40 to 42:
Brazilian government

(Questões 40 à 42)

The Brazilian budget for 2002The Brazilian government is expected to “make a

significant cut” in the 2002 budget because revenues are not expected to match all
Brazilian spending needs this year. The Brazilian Planning Ministry, which is due to
release a detailed spending program later today, could announce spending cuts of up to
R$10 billion ( $1 = R$2,39).The Brazilian budget shortfall is actually R$ 14,6 billion,
and stems mainly from a rise in personal income tax brackets, funding requests by
congressmen, and the minimum wage hike, among other factors.
Read the text below in order to answer questions 43 to 45:

Budget management

(Questões 43 à 45)

Budget management by structure in recent decades, results-oriented contracts, projects,

programs and other horizontal forms of management have become routine in public
administrations throughout the region, both because of the influence of new trends in
State reform that put forward results-oriented practices and because of strong
intervention by international cooperation agencies. However, public agencies are a long
way from having formed horizontal organizations that are completely integrated to daily
management and results-oriented accountability mechanisms. In this context, budget
management of organizational structures is not a new tool in respect of its basic element
(the budget and organizational structures). However, it is often set into motion in a
vacuum within the process of accountability: the relationship between institutional ends,
the allocation of resources and delegation of authority. Consequently, it should be
aimed at filling the void and facilitating the conditions for result-oriented management,
integrated within an institutional framework.
Crisis
(Questões 46 à 55)

(01) At the same time that President Bush is urging America to free itself from its
addiction to oil from unstable (3) parts of the world, European leaders are calling for a
more (4) self-sufficient energy policy that relies less on oil and natural gas.

"Europe is becoming ever more dependent on oil and gas imports from geopolitically
uncertain regions," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso alerted last
month in a speech. "We have to do something (10) about this, and we have to do it
now."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after a
meeting in Berlin that Europe must develop an energy policy for the next 15 years that
includes more renewable sources of energy.

The new emphasis on energy security is a result of soaring energy prices and signs that
supplies may not always be available. Oil prices tripled in the last three years, from
about $20 a barrel to $60. And Russia, which has become a major supplier of oil and
gas to Europe, (20) raised concerns when it cut off natural gas to Ukraine last (21)
month during a dispute over prices.

(22) These developments have motivated a new debate (23) on the continent about
nuclear energy and brought about (24) ambitious biofuels programs.

(25) Nuclear power, which with the exception of France, was disappearing in Western
Europe, has re-emerged as a clean and reliable source of energy. (28) Germany is
reconsidering its plan to phase out nuclear (29) power generation by 2020. So, too, is
Britain. With the (30) exception of France, which gets more than 70% of its power from
nuclear sources, Europe has rejected nuclear generation as too costly or unsafe since the
Chernobyl (33) accident in Ukraine nearly 20 years ago.

(34) Sweden has just announced that it wants to be (35) the first nation in the world to
eliminate oil as an energy source in the next 15 years. It would use ethanol for its cars,
and geothermal heat and burning everything from agricultural byproducts to trash would
replace heating oil. (39) "Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said (40)
Mona Sahlin, Sweden’s minister of Sustainable Development.

(42) The European Commission adopted in February (43) 2006 an ambitious biofuels
program to set off the (44) production of ethanol and gas from crops and organic waste.
The goal: to more than double production — from a 1.4% share of the European fuel
supply in 2005 to 5.75% in 2010.

(48) Although Europe relies less on oil than the USA, (49) the tripling of oil prices over
the last three years has been felt. Oil provides 40% of the USA’s energy supply and
about 36% of Europe’s.
Europe is the largest producer of wind and solar power. Also, biofuels can help give this
continent a more (54) diverse supply of energy. But it is unlikely that Europe (55) can
replace fossil fuel entirely, as Sweden plans.

"It’s not a crisis," says Claude Mandil, executive director of the International Energy
Agency in Paris, of Europe and the USA’s energy situation. But, he remarks,
"Everybody is understanding that capacities are limited (60) ... and the problem will not
be solved overnight."
Electronic
This text refers to items from 56 e 57.

(Questões 56 à 57)

1 An important advance in electronic test equipment

was the incorporation of circuits that directly converted the
analog signal to be measured into a digital reading. The most
4 significant impact of these converters was to enable a
computer interface to the equipment to be set up allowing
direct computer monitoring and control of the instrument.
7 Other equipments were designed with embedded computers,
which provided very sophisticated analysis of the data within
the instrument itself.
10 The complexity and sophistication of electronic
components and subassemblies became more complicated.
Multiple test instruments were integrated to form rack-and13
stack automatic test equipment, where the individual
instruments were connected to a control computer by a
common bus. These computer-controlled testers were very
16 efficient at providing the input stimulus to the unit under test
and monitoring the output response.
The ability of automatic test equipment to sort out
19 good from bad units is only the first requirement of modern
production test equipment. Since the repair of defective units
can be costly, the design and program development of test
22 equipment frequently must include special provisions to
provide failure-mode analysis. Information such as the
probable defective component on a printed circuit board or
25 the probable defective board in a system is of great value in
efficient repair. Some test systems include fault dictionaries,
supplemental tests after first failure, or even artificial28
intelligence features to assist in repair.
Internet: <www.answers.com/topic/electronic-test-equipment> (adapted).
Control systems

(Questão 58)

1 Sensors are critical components in all measurement and

control systems. The need for sensors that generate an electronic
signal closely followed the advent of the microprocessor and
4 computers. Together with the ever-present need for sensors in
science and medicine, the demand for sensors in automated
manufacturing and environmental monitoring is rapidly growing.
7 In addition, small, inexpensive sensors are finding their way into
all sorts of consumer products, from children’s toys to dishwashers
to automobiles. Because of the vast variety of useful things to be
10 sensed and sensor applications, sensor engineering is a
multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of endeavor. This
chapter introduces some basic definitions, concepts, and features
13 of sensors, and illustrates them with several examples. The reader
is directed to the references and the sources listed under Further
Information for more details and examples.
16 There are many terms which are often used synonymously
for sensor, including transducer, meter, detector, and gage.
Defining the term sensor is not an easy task; however, the most
19 widely used definition is that which has applied to electrical
transducers by the Instrument Society of America (ANSI MC6.1,
1975): “Transducer – A device which provides a usable output in
22 response to a specified measurand.” A transducer is more
generally defined as a device which converts energy from one
form to another. Usable output can be an optical, electrical,
25 chemical, or mechanical signal. In the context of electrical
engineering, however, a usable output is usually an electrical
signal. The measurand is a physical, chemical or biological
28 property or condition to be measured.
Most but not all sensors are transducers, employing one
or more transduction mechanisms to produce an electrical output
31 signal. Sometimes sensors are classified as direct or indirect
sensors, according to how many transduction mechanisms are used.
Rosemary L. Smith. In: The electrical energy
handbook – Sensors –- introduction (adapted).