By George Dorgan, financial consultant at SFC | Instead of complaining against the European Central Bank, peripheral countries of the eurozone should pay more attention at how Germany has succeed.
MADRID | By David Fernández | Foreign investors are showing a sudden interest in assets made in Spain due to, among others, central bank’s last data, Europe’s decision to delay the deficit commitment by two years and international factors such as second-round monetary helicopter launched by the Bank of Japan. Will this trend vanish?
WASHINGTON | This is one more crazy misrepresentation of the Spanish situation by international media.
LONDON | In 2011, 60 million new interbank cards were issued and 7.9 billion transactions recorded: one in every two payments happened in France and the UK, where banks would be the most affected by new interchange fees regulations.
LONDON | Egan-Jones also blamed Chancellor Angela Merkel for her resistance against “European Union bonds and money printing” while “pushing for fiscal controls and the seniority of bailout funding.”
MADRID | By J. M. Campuzano, analyst at Citigroup | During the crisis that began in 2007, capital markets’ weight has been cut to 350% from 450% of the world’s economic output. The past, in terms of depth and worldwide markets liquidity before the crisis, is long gone and will not come back.
BEIJING | By Wang Yuqian and Yang Lu (Caixin Magazine) | What caused the precipitous decline in the price of the precious metal? And how do analysts in China see it? Three experts come up with different explanations, from investor panic triggered by the European debt crisis to, more bizarrely, a conspiracy theory that the U.S. government orchestrated the collapse.
MADRID | By Santiago Carbó and Francisco Rodríguez (Funcas) | Spanish mortgage market being so highly securitized, any changes affecting its evolution is of vital importance for international investors.
Spain has been hit hard by the Eurozone crisis, with unemployment levels pushing towards 27 per cent. Vicente Navarro writes on the role that Germany, the most powerful EU state, has played in the Spanish crisis. He argues that German banks must also share some of the responsibility for perpetuating Spain’s housing bubble.
The Spanish Banking Association wants nationalised entities dismantled or sold, as the toxic legacy of the savings banks has become too poisonous for too long (with information from Ángel Laso, valenciaplaza.com correspondent in Madrid).