By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | With half of 2012 already gone, three issues continue to be fundamental in order to strike some sort of balance in the situation for emerging Europe: the intensity of the financial contagion entailed by the debt crisis, Hungary’s situation and the extent of the slowdown in activity. Starting with the first of these issues, the trend in risk premia, measured by the value…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | Here you are, Spain’s updated accrued passive account with Target2 or intra-system operations pending compensation. Its sheer volume and the scale by which it increases clearly expose that we are in for our troubles. How can the euro zone authorities postpone solutions until September? The scenario does not look good. The chart registers data from the Bank of Spain until June. The debt goes…
The seemingly dead weight of the peripheral economies continues to mark a divide within the common currency region. The overall picture, unavoidably, registers the cut. GDP fell by 0.2% in both the euro area and the EU during the second quarter of 2012, compared with the previous quarter. Also according to flash estimates published by Eurostat Tuesday, in the first quarter of 2012, growth rates were zero in both zones. Compared with…
MADRID | In the dialectics of the confrontation about how much of a national rescue is the aid package being draft by Brussels for Madrid and Rome, politics has so far played the upper hand. Apparently, governments in Spain and Italy would attempt to depict any coming bailout under a different light than that of Greece, Ireland and Portugal so their parties can avoid the stigma of having failed their…
MADRID | Unmistakably, the reflection that the Italian economic indicators are mirroring should look very familiar to Spanish analysts. The slowdown wave is reaching core Europe too, by the way, as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reported this week: the European economies, whether using the ill-established common currency or one on their own, have been found to relate to each other in a more interconnected manner than previously…
That the peripheral economies of the euro zone show time and again evident scars of a struggling performance is bad news, but known bad news after all. The close scrutiny to which Spain and Italy are being subjected leaves little room for surprises. All the alarms get restless, though, when core Europe somehow stumbles. And Germany has for some quarters now been bitten here and there by the decay surrounding it…
LONDON | Kevin Burke, director at Visa Inc, believes that the Olympics work as a showcase for athletics, and the same goes for tourism. Burke released Wednesday data on Visa accounts spending levels of international travelers during the second week of the London 2012 Games, which reached $716.7 million. The figures mark a steady line, the total being $1.4 billion. Visitors from the US lead the top 10 list, some…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | Ireland has began to get out of the pit of its crisis and the usual suspects have wasted no time in coming back to tell Spain that it can be done, austerity only is the key. Ireland has gone through a fair amount of pain just to get its head above the water line. A bad bank with the wrong estimations and a bailout…
The Corner continues with its summer series of interviews about the future of Europe seen by international experts. Today, New York University Economics Professor Lawrence White gives his take. He has been with New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business for more than 30 years. His primary research areas of interest include financial regulation, antitrust, network industries, international banking and applied microeconomics. He is coauthor of Restoring Financial…
MADRID | European Commission vice-president Viviane Reding, who is also the EU’s Justice commissioner, highlighted Friday an announcement by the Spanish government that it intends to improve legal certainty for property owners along the country’s coast. Homes have been affected by the Coastal Law for several years now and buyers involved have repeatedly brought their case to Brussels, under the impression that Spanish authorities were not sufficiently active in tackling abuses. The…