The monkey’s trap | Weekend Long Read
MADRID | By Raimundo Poveda | We should be be more careful with transfers of sovereignty. The next one will be the transfer of the banking supervision to the ECB.
In Europe
The lesson Spanish exports teach
MADRID | By Luis Alcaide | Having now the evidence of how Spain is successfully expanding its exports, the IMF should be able to tell what are competitive businesses from the onerous legacy of over-privileged labour practices that take place in some institutions.
The capricious European Commission
ROME | By Barbara Spinelli | While the living standards of Greeks keeps falling and the troika’s management of the crisis has been called into question, European institutions continue to look elsewhere. It is high time the European Commission was held accountable for this appalling tragedy.
From the City and beyond: why more austerity again, Chancellor?
LONDON | By Victor Jimenez | The strongest rejection against the Review came from within the City, from the £162.8-billion investment fund manager Fidelity, which said that “up front austerity has proved largely counter-productive.”
S&P assures peripheral countries’ debt is safe from the danger zone
MADRID | By Julia Pastor |Portugal and Slovenia’s debt comes back to the dangerous rate of 7%, while S&P’s responsible for EMEA defends that there is no immediate threat to peripheral countries’s debt since some of them have been able to pre-fund its needs.
All you need is growth
MADRID | By JP Marín Arrese | As we move into troubled waters following the FED intention to taper off its massive asset buying scheme, the ECB is bound to take bold steps to protect both the European economies and the common currency. Otherwise we may run into severe turbulences in the coming months.
Germany must challenge Eurozone’s institutional gaps
GLASGOW | By Lewis Miller | The Eurozone needs to correct the problems such as the lack of Eurobonds and plan an effective way to correct future asymmetric shocks.
UK banks: bad news, no comment
LONDON | By Victor Jimenez | The British Parliament seeks to reorganise management at UK banks so it’s possible to point at specific staff and board members and try them in court.
Banking union: advancing in fits and starts
BARCELONA | CaixaBank research | The German proposal for an alternative Banking Union are destined to fail: mere cooperation between national authorities would not guarantee that decisions are taken in the interest of Europe’s financial system as a whole.
Praising Germany’s economic model
VALENCIA | Spanish entrepreneur Miguel Pallardó praises Germany’s economic model in this op-ed for Valencia Plaza. He believes Berlin, with its free-market, easy hiring policies, betting on export and investment (and not public spending), reducing public debt and training workers is doing more for the common good than peripheral countries, which he finds too interventionist.