By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | What I would like to do here is bringing a magnifying glass on to a recent lapse of time and see if the fourth euro crisis (yes, I said fourth) has somehow cooled the US economy down. It’s possible, you know. In the US, the authorities are beginning to see signs of how the economic activity is loosing steam, such as in weekly claims for unemployment…
International Financial Analysts Afi brought to our attention this chart from 2011 financial accounts in Spain, which confirm that ratio of gross debt (loans and different security prices) of households and businesses in Spain has dropped by 13.5 percentage points of GDP. The figure is now 216pc, down from the maximum levels reached during the second quarter in 2010. It also reflects the downturn in indebtedness operations during last year,…
LONDON | The US 2012 election result can do little to change the fate of Wall Street under the extreme pressures of a global credit crunch and a relentless economic crisis. In a paper issued Monday by JP Morgan Asset Management, the investing company said that the financial sector will likely shrink after having become quite large a share of the country’s economy. “One side effect of that process, lower secondary…
MADRID | Although nine candidates attempted on Sunday to pass through to the second round of the French presidential elections, only two mattered in the dispute for the trophy: Nicolas Sarkozy, current president of the republic, and the socialist Francois Hollande. Two days after the first round of elections, the polls are very clear and give a significant advantage to Hollande, with an intention to vote of 54% against 45% for Sarkozy….
LONDON | Consumers’ discretionary spending in the UK continued to deteriorate in March, and after inflation fell 1.1% from a year earlier, reaching its lowest level since February 2011. This equates to £113 less a year to spend on non-essential items. In its latest Spending Power Report released Monday, Lloyds TSB said hopes for a pick-up in economic activity in 2012 will go unanswered as consumers feel biggest squeeze in…
By Carlos Díaz Guell, in Madrid | No one in Spain is going to make it easy for the Rajoy government. Policy reforms and budget cuts undertaken by the cabinet, although considered timid and inadequate by many, will inevitably leave a number of victims in the ditches and they don’t seem willing to let this occur without doing anything against it. The business sectors (most of them) affected by constrictions in public spending…
LONDON | In its global macro outlook report, investment company Schroders said on Friday that its eyes were on France amidst ongoing euro zone concerns and despite the uncertainty surrounding Spain. The upcoming elections could thwart France’s plans to implement State budget cuts, the Schroders paper highlighted, while the European Central Bank refinancing lines would have ring-fenced the Spanish banking sector from liquidity scarcity, unlike Italy’s. “France is the euro zone member currently…
By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | Fernando Luque is editor and analyst at Morningstar. In a conversation with The Corner, Luque remarked that it is difficult to know whether the Spanish Ibex has already reached bottom, and added that long-term investments at current market prices seem more interesting. Wolfang Münchau wrote in the pages of the Financial Times that if Spain can’t reach the deficit target, it will be bad and if it…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | At FTAlphaville there recently was talk about the Spanish banking system. Sí, that particular banking system that, according to the Bank of Spain governor Fernández Ordóñez, has fixed itself without the nation’s Treasury putting any euro at all. The answers to questions like who ordered him to say this, and what for, when everybody knows and complains about public capital injections in our banks are…
MADRID | Ferrovial Agroman, a construction subsidiary of Ferrovial, was awarded a contract to build the Padornelo Tunnel-Lubián section of the Madrid-Galicia high-speed railway line, for €108.8 million. The section of line, which is 7.6 kilometers long and will have a single-track 8.5-meter wide bed, crosses the Requejo and Lubián municipalities, in Zamora province. The project includes the construction of the right gallery of the Pardonelo Tunnel (6,407 meters long) and galleries…