Práctica para el parcial 3 Lea el texto para realizar las actividades que se le indicaran: The Ascent of Money A Financial History of the World Chapter 5 Safe as Houses Safe as houses: the phrase tells you all you need to know about why people all over the world yearn to own their own homes. But that phrase means something more precise in the world of finance. It means that there is nothing safer than lending money to people with property. Why? Because, if they default on the loan, you can repossess the house. Even if they run away, the house cant. As the Germans say, land and buildings are immobile property. So it is no coincidence that the single most important source of funds for a new business in the United States is a mortgage on the entrepreneurs house. Correspondingly, financial institutions have become ever less inhibited about lending money to people who want to buy property. Since 1959, the total mortgage debt outstanding in the US has risen seventy-five fold. Altogether, American owner-occupiers owed a sum equivalent to 99 per cent of US gross domestic product by the end of 2006, compared with just 38 per cent fifty years before. This upsurge in borrowing helped to finance a boom in residential investment, which reached a fifty-year peak in 2005. For a time, the supply of new housing seemed unable to keep pace with accelerating demand. About half of all the growth in US GDP in the first half of 2005 was housing related. The English-speaking worlds passion for property has also been the foundation for a political experiment: the creation of the worlds first true property-owning democracies, with between 65 and 83 per cent of households owning the home they live in. Ireland leads the field with 83 per cent of households owning their own homes, followed by Australia and the United Kingdom (both 69 per cent), Canada (67 per cent) and the United States (65 per cent). The figure for Japan is 60 per cent, for France 54 per cent and for Germany 43 per cent. Note, however, that these figures are for 2000. Since then, the figure for the United States has risen to above 68 per cent. Note also the regional variation: Midwesterners and Southerners are significantly more likely to own their own homes (72 per cent do) than people living in the West and the Northeast. Housing is more affordable in the Midwest and South. 78 per cent of West Virginians own their own homes; just 46 per cent of New Yorkers do. But is property really as safe as houses? Or is the real estate game more like a house of cards? Home ownership is now the exception only in the poorest parts of Britain and the United States, like the East End of Glasgow or the East Side of Detroit. For most of history, however, it was the exclusive privilege of an aristocratic elite. Estates were passed down from father to son, along with honorific titles and political privileges. Everyone else was a mere tenant, paying rent to their landlord. Even the right to vote in elections was originally the function of property ownership. In rural England before 1832, according to statutes passed in the fifteenth century, only men who owned freehold property worth at least forty shillings a year in a particular county were entitled to vote there. From Ferguson, N. (2008). The ascent of money. A financial history of the world. New York : The Penguin Press. 1 ¿A qué se refieren las palabras resaltadas?(a qué palabras, frases, ideas)Subraye en el texto : they it their both these figures 2. Dé el equivalente de las siguientes frases: a. the creation of the worlds first true property-owning democracies,(19-20) b. The English-speaking worlds passion for property (18) c. a mere tenant, paying rent to their landlord (37-38) d. between 65 and 83 per cent of households owning the home they live in.(20-21) 4. En el renglón 4 está el conector if que indica --------------------------- Oracion 1: Oracion 2: En el renglon 6 está el conector so que indica………………………………. Oración 1: Oración 2: 5. incorpore el vocabulario técnico a su glosario dando el correspondiente significado: Mortgage: Households: Housing: Etc.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 05:22:45 +0000