MADRID | By Luis Alcaide | Álvaro Rengifo, board director at Bankia, said in a interview with The Corner that Spanish banks were ahead of their European counterparts in acknowledging the weaknesses in their balance sheets.
MADRID | By José Luis Marco, via capitalmadrid.com | The IMF in its latest paper about the banking industry in Spain admits some points could be excessive and damage the economic recovery of the country.
NEW YORK | By Ana Fuentes | An American bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced on Thursday a bill for the 21st century Glass-Steagall Act, a new version of 1933 banking act that put a wall between investment banking and insured deposits. Aimed to protect the American taxpayers, this aggressive piece of law would reduce the size of US bigger banks, minimizing the possibility of a government bailout like in 2008. Wall street has a new headache.
Iris Mir | By mid-June the National Audit Office of China released a report unexpectedly detailing the debts of 36 local governments. It unveiled the chilling figure of 3.3 trillion dollar in debt, by the end of 2012. A 13% higher than in 2010. Furthermore, the lack of stimulus investment plans is fuelling scepticism among those who expected the Asian dragon to keep the world economy afloat. Mostly because the priority for China now is to reorient its model of growth with ambitious programs like the new Co2 emissions exchange.
LONDON | By Victor Jimenez | The European Commission set a group of experts to study the possibility of partial, retroactive mutualisation of public debt refinanced by Eurobond issuance.
MADRID | By Carlos Díaz Guell | The days of over-protection and unflinching pride are a thing of the past. At this stage, the curtains have been lifted for good in Spain. Corporations with a good level of international exposure, sound cash generation, proven growth and sustainable sales cannot escape the net of foreign investors.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | “The past few days have made it overwhelmingly clear that the Fed is steering this recovery. That should be comforting; all it has to do is steer things in a more expansionary direction! But it isn’t.”
MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | Monetary policies are a by-product of politics, after all, and in Europe, politics are tightly controlled from Berlin, which will probably use the Fed’s reaction as example of what the ECB must do.
BARCELONA | By CaixaBank research | In spite of improvements, access to financing is still a problem for the periphery’s business sector. Specifically, 22% of SMEs in periphery countries state that access to financing is their main problem compared with just 11% in the core.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Maybe this time Bernanke is just trying to provoke a mini-crash to lay the foundations for a progressive withdrawal of the monetary stimulus in 2014 or, maybe, 2015.