jabhatta2
Hi
EducationAisle GMATNinja KarishmaB - Question on (D)
Quote:
(option D)
Many financial experts believe that policy makers at the Federal Reserve, who now view the economy to be balanced between that of moderate growth and low inflation, will be certain to leave interests rates unchanged for the foreseeable future.
- Is the tense and the tone of the sentence in the yellow highlight - simple future tense and passive voice ?
I believe it is.
If so, is the tense (future tense in the case of D) a genuine split ?
I notice in (A) - the tense is simple tense
Is that a split between (A) and (D) to eliminate (d) ?
Some people are saying it is -- but i dont think a test taker can figure that out as both make sense to me
Do you think its a genuine split or no ?
First of all, "will be certain" isn't a passive construction -- it's just the simple future form of the verb "to be," which links the subject (the policy makers) to an adjective describing those policy makers (certain).
And this is definitely an important difference between (A) and (D):
- If the policy makers "will be" almost certain to leave interests rates unchanged, does that mean that at present they are NOT almost certain to do so? At what point in time will they become almost certain?
- The simple present used in choice (A) makes a lot more sense, especially since the main clause is modified by something about how those policy makers view the economy NOW. If they currently view the economy as balanced, why aren't they currently almost certain to leave interest rates unchanged?
Is that enough to eliminate (D)? Maybe. But it's not a very concrete error, so you're better off, as always, looking for as many decision points as possible. (Remember, it's not about looking at one sentence in a bubble and labeling it right or wrong -- it's about comparing your options and choosing the best one.)
Luckily, (D) has another glaring issue:
- (D) says that policy makers "view the economy to be balanced between the economy of moderate growth and low inflation."
- So what exactly is the economy balanced between? It might make sense for an economy to be balanced between (1) an economy of moderate growth and (2) an economy of low inflation, but it doesn't make as much sense for an economy to be balanced between (1) the economy of moderate growth and (2) low inflation.
- You might be thinking, "Wait, you got the parallelism wrong! It's 'the economy of (1) moderate growth and (2) low inflation'!" But that would mean that the economy is balanced between a single economy, and that doesn't make any sense. How can anything be balanced between just one thing?
- (A) avoids this issue altogether: the policy makers view the economy as balanced between (1) moderate growth and (2) low inflation, and that makes perfect sense.
Lastly, the -ing modifier ("now viewing") in (A) seems a bit better than the noun modifier ("who now view") in (D). In (D), the modifier appears to be a miscellaneous fact about the policy makers -- something unrelated to the main verb of the sentence ("
are almost certain..."). The -ing in (A) makes it clearer that the modifier describes the main clause: it tells us WHY the policy makers are almost certain to leave interests rates unchanged.
With two (and a half) votes against (D), we can safely eliminate it.
I hope that helps!