“It’s A Mystery Why So Much Innovation Is Not Reflected In Productivity”
“Competition is especially important for innovation and some of the big (US) companies also have a lot of power in the market…but it’s difficult to keep innovating.”
Interviews
“The Alternative Stock Market -MAB- Doesn’t Work; And If It Doesn’t We Will Be Left Behind”
“The MAB doesn’t function in Spain at the moment and it needs to. If not, Spain will be left behind. I don’t know whether we should join forces with other markets, or if the ICO should distribute part of its investment to venture capital funds specialised in these kind of companies, or whether the adminstrative procedures should be cheaper and simpler.”
“There Is A Need For Board Members Accustomed To Questioning Strategic Plans”
“Having board members who have experience of different environments, geographical or business, help the board to function better. On the boards in Spain where I am a member there is this international presence and there are members of different nationalities. But on a board of directors more importance shoud be placed on expertise than on nationality.”
“There Needs To Be A Clear Consensus On The Energy Issue So That Long-Term Plans Can Be Made”
“Very few people really know what REE does, expect that, erroneously, it “belongs to the State”(…) Our foreign investors now account for 75% of the total (…) The system works very well. The price of our electricity may be a little higher than in Europe but we have some determining factors such as very complicated physical conditions.” Who speaks is Socorro Fernández Larrea, Red Eléctrica de España Board member.
“Brussels Does Not Decide On European Finances’ Competitiveness”
European centralism fuels suspicion when Brussels and the poorer States join forces against the wealthier countries to demand more resources. And this is what has happened in Spain, according to many Catalans.
“The World Has Changed So Much That Now It Doesn’t Matter Where You Are”
Probably the fact they came from Euskadi and were based there is what saved the former Basque cajas (savings banks) from the worst vices which destroyed hundreds of lenders throughout Spain, according to Xabier Sagredo, executive chairman of BBK.
“We Need To Protect Workers, Not Jobs”
Emmanuelle Auriol, member of the board of the European Economic Association at the University of Toulouse, is well-known in France for her polemic proposals. She believes, and this is very important for France, for its identity and the social consensus we have established, “that we need to protect the workers, not the jobs. Because if we try to protect the jobs, prohibit lay-offs, what happens is that there is more unemployment in the end.”
“There Is Some Problem With The Productivity Statistics”
Mohamed El-Erian, currently chief economist with German insurance group Allianz, and touted as a possible sucessor to Stanley Fischer, believes that monetary policy cannot do any more. And that the governments of the democratic countries have not been capable of coordinating economic policies which solve the problems created by the last crisis.
“Spain Tackled Its Problems Energetically; It’s Not Been The Same In Other Eurozone Countries”
Claudio Borio, chief economist at the Bank of International Payments (BIS) in Basel, believes that the question that differentiates what has been happening in continental Europe from what has been happening to some extent in the US, the UK and other economies, including Spain, is the extent to which the banking problems and the asset quality problems have been adressed head-on.
“Spain Is Being Very Active With Respect To How The Juncker Plan Is Developing”
Spain is the second country after Italy to benefit from the Juncker Plan, which ends in 2018. There are already 53 operations ongoing, with 4.5 billion euros financing from the EIB, which will facilitate the mobilisation of over 28 billion euros of total investment.