The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that Spanish banks have to return all the extra money they charged clients affected by the ‘floor clauses’ included in their mortgage contracts. The court has rejected the idea of a time-limited retroactive effect because it is “incomplete and insufficient”.
The appointment of Sebastián Abella and Ana Martínez-Pina as the chairman and deputy chairman of the CNMV has caused some controversy, revealing the confusion there is over what profile candidates for heading up any institution should have. You can choose people who are totally uncontaminated to lead any organisation, without having any link to its activities. But an increasingly more complex financial and stock market environment requires experienced professionals, not rookies.
A lot of matters need to be addressed in Spain’s banking sector in the next four years. Urgent matters are the full privatisation of Bankia and the irrelevant BMN; completing the transformation of the savings banks (La Caixa, Kutxabank, Ibercaja, Unicaja and Liberbank), the adjustment of Banco Popular and the retirement of the post-war bankers.
Irrespective of what kind it is, research generates numerous commercial applications which can be profitable for the companies who promote them, while making countries more powerful and turning them into global scientific references. And so what about Spain? There is an increasingly more intense brain drain amongst young Spanish researchers. They are snatched by foreign universities to develop an activity which here in Spain is limited, fundamentally for budget reasons.
The failure of Matteo Renzi, who wasn’t pursuing something which didn’t make sense, has almost immediate consequences for a tainted and confused Europe, but also for Spain. Because Spain needs a reform along the lines of Renzi’s proposal.
The idea of motorways which would help decongest access to Madrid began to take shape in the first half of the 1990s and the project was completed in 2000. At that time it was a win-win situation for both investors and citizens. Now these highways have gone bankrupt and will need to be rescued, which could cost the public coffers nearly 900 million euros.
OPEC’s first cut in production in eight years is not good news for the Spanish economy. Spain imports almost all the oil it consumes and has benefited enormously from the slump in the price of a barrel of this “black gold”. It’s estimated that every 10% drop in the price of oil allows for one-tenth of a percentage point improvement in Spanish GDP (1 billion euros). And the reverse is true when the price increases.
Households have improved their debt levels, but the state has compensated for this. So Spain remains the most indebted country in the world, with public and private debt representing 300% of GDP. Another reason which helps explain the fact that investment is still not taking off. But what are very popular are “stock market games”.
Spain’s GDP grew 3.2% year-on-year in the third quarter, easing from the 3.4% registered in the previous one. But consumption slowed on a year-on-year basis from 3.2% to 2.8%, while gross fixed capital formation also showed a significant deceleration from 3.6% to 3.1% in the third quarter from a year earlier.
Rajoy’s minority government will face the first big challenge of its new term in office with the presentation of the 2017 State Budget. This could be a good opportunity to start from scratch and implement much needed reforms.