رضا: So I guess now you know why that adverb, loosely, has been used. I think the speaker on that T.V. means that being and informant i snot really a job and a person who does that, doesn't actually live a normal life, but a low-level life. So he calls it a loose life. Of course that's what I get from that sentence.

Interesting. My interpretation (a portuguese speaker, not an english native speaker) was not that it was a loose life but that it could hardly be called a "life". So, to call it a "life" the speaker has to give a very loose interpretation to the word so it could be used in the sentence. It's a figure of speach, a way for the speaker to say that the character's way of life is not worthy of being called so.

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I think that what applies to your sentence is the <h ref="http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/past-pa
rticiple.html">Contional Perfect. But I'm no english schollar so I wouldn't know how to evolve from that page :P