The XXXI Olympic Games will be inaugurated on August 5 in Rio de Janeiro, amid uncertainty over what the impact will be for the Brazilian economy. It’s difficult to forget Athens and its influence on the Greek economy’s serious crisis. Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer is trying to avoid this situation at all costs.
Despite all the international support Erdogan has received since the failed coup on July 15, the situation in Turkey has become complicated because of the President’s reaction. It has fuelled a dangerous dynamic in the Euroasian country which could end up harming the Turkish economy and, therefore, the international companies operating there.
The IEA estimates that the drop in production in non-OPEC countries, mainly the US, coupled with the positive trend in demand, could foreseeably shut off the excess of supply in the second hald of 2016, returning stability to the oil market.
While Spain’s private shipyards are doing really well, the state-owned shipyards are not capable of recovering the levels of competitiveness which would pull them out of losses and allow them to compete in the international markets. One relevant example of this was their inability to take on the job of building the lock-gates for the Panal Canal extension.
Spain is one of the countries in the EU where its big businessmen remain in their posts the longest. Despite the fact that Emilio Botin is gone and Alierta and Villar Mir have left, the average age of Spain’s top businessmen is still higher than in France (56.6 years), the US (58.8 years) and the UK (55.8 years).
Today, the economic situation in Venezuela has greatly changed for the worse, but those who had money have held on to it and now Spain has become the destination for this private capital. The investments are usually focused on buying top quality housing, mainly in Madrid, or on acquiring stakes in a select group of businesses with reasonable returns.
Eight years after the real estate bubble officially burst, all the existing indicators point to the sector’s crisis being over, although there are still some loose ends and some kind of legacy, such as the banking sector’s non-performing loans. But the data shows we can definitively put behind us an enormous problem which was a threat for the economic system for too long.
If we accept that the evolution of debt is a relevant factor in the explanation of the economic cycle, with the usual affirmation that the increase in debt explains the evolution in GDP, with a certain lag, then the credit cycle in Spain has been particularly intense.
Spain uses subsidies, perhaps to excess, as a means of support for a whole range of activities which the public adminstrations delegate to third parties who, at times, are rather lax in terms of control. Spanish cinema as well as renewable energies are in included in this “help” box, and let’s not forget training courses and career updating training.
Since it opted for an unconventional expansive monetary policy, the different measures implemented by the ECB, and particularly its latest decisions, are changing the Eurozone’s financial structure. For example, the option of a very long term maturity offered on sovereign bond issues, as well as the increase in companies’ financing via the issue of corporate debt, with the consequent decline in their dependence on the banks.