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Ex1: Mrs Merckel

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by shekhar.kataria » Thu Jul 19, 2012 7:39 am
HI Egmat

Can you please clarify the below mentione point. I also got confused here.
bubbliiiiiiii wrote:Hi e-GMAT,

Firstly, thank you for posting such a nice article and sample questions.

Query:

Doesn't option C imply that Mrs. Merckel is the reason behind continuous downward spiral of euro?
At the heart of euro crisis is the lack of quick or bold reaction by Mrs. Merckel, the reason that the downward spiral of the euro has not halted.
Could you please help me understand what am I missing?
Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.--Thomas A. Edison

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by e-GMAT » Thu Jul 19, 2012 10:07 am
Hi @bubblii & shekhar,

At the heart of euro crisis is the lack of quick or bold reaction by Mrs. Merckel, the reason that the downward spiral on the euro has not halted.

Let us change the structure of the sentence here:

The lack of quick or bold reaction by Mrs. Merckel is at the heart of euro crisis, the reason that the downward spiral on the euro has not halted.

The subject of the sentence is "The lack of quick and bold decision by Mrs. Merckel". So the sentence correctly says that it's not Mrs. Merckel but her lack of quick decision that is at the heart of the euro crisis.

Phrase "the reason" does appear after "Mrs. Merckel. But it is not modifying the immediate preceding noun to mean that Mrs. Merckel is the reason. We have a noun + noun modifier structure here that can zoom into any portion of the sentence and modify that entity.

Here noun + noun modifier is zooming into the preceding noun phrase "the lack of quick or bold reaction" and modifying this entity.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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by henryjejo » Tue Jul 31, 2012 7:10 pm
Thanks...What a wonderful play with the words. Initially, I fell for "E" and after reading through the explanation, I realized the mistake. The key is to understand that the downward spiral of euro is happening and that the lack of quick reaction from Mrs. Merckel has not halted the downward spiral. Answer E, states that lack of action resulted in the downward spiral!

Thanks much e-Gmat...Rocking.
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by [email protected] » Thu Aug 09, 2012 4:50 am
Hi Payal
Just as bubliii posted on July 18th, I have the same doubt. According to the Touch Rule, doesnt option C mean that Mrs. Merkel is the cause?

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by e-GMAT » Thu Aug 09, 2012 5:40 am
Hi Cheree,

The question has already been answered. Please check our last post in the thread. It contains the detail why the touch rule is not applicable in Choice C.

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by keeping_my_promise » Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:30 am
e-GMAT wrote:
vk_vinayak wrote: Can you tell me how in the choice c, the usage of by is correct? Shouldn't it be 'of'?

the lack of quick or bold reaction BY Mrs. Merckel
Hi Vinayak,

The usage of "by" is correct in the sentence because it is saying that because Mrs. Merckel could not take a decision on time, this delay led to something. So who failed to take the bold decision? Mrs. Merckel did. The quick and bold decision was not taken by Mrs. Merckel.

Let's take a simple example here:

The company bore a huge loss because of the CEO's lack of improvisation.

We can rewrite this sentence as:

The lack of improvisation by the CEO is the reason why the company bore a huge a loss.

In this sentence, it is clear that showed lack of improvisation. It is the CEO. In the same way, the decision was delayed by Mrs. Merckel. Hence, use of "by" is correct in the sentence.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
This is quite an interesting conversation. One of the best I heard in a long time. Am glad am learning some pretty cool stuff. Thanks Shraddha... :)
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