The new Housing Credit Law, better known as the Mortgage Law, came into effect in Spain this week. The new legislation has been delayed more than three years and stirred various controversies. Spain is thus the last European country to transpose Brussels’ directive.
Fernando G. Urbaneja | Throughout the trial of “separatism”, in concrete of the seditious activities carried out by the accused, the separatist strategy of discrediting Spanish democracy and its institutions (a form of the black legend) systematically using international fora and media, has, once again, remained clear.
José Luis M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | This week the Bank of Spain published an interesting analysis of household financial flows and balances at the end of 2018. Families have continued to reduce bank debt to 96% of gross disposable income (gross disposable household income – GDHI) and 59% of GDP.
The Spanish Public Treasury has captured 6 Bn € with a new syndicated 10 year bond, with a demand five times greater, after raising great interest among national and international investors. Spain’s risk premium remains stable around 80 base points.
Joan Tapia | The Bank of Spain, by raising its growth forecast for 2019 from 2.2% to 2.4%, has confirmed that the Spanish economy has begun the year better than expected. Thus are undone the catastrophic forecasts of some analysts and the political right.
Morgan Stanley | The European Commission announced the end of the EDP (excessive déficit procedure) for Spain. This is good news but already expected by the markets. With growing risks in the rest of Europe, our analysts believe that Spain will remain the macro outperformer over the next few quarters thanks to its good fundamentals, with a gradual relative improvement in public finances, reducing debt and the deficit below 3% (the main reason for ening the EDP).
Olga Cantó Sánchez via The Conversation | In many developed countries inequalities in income and economic poverty has increased over the last four decades. Studies of the issue link this progressive increase to the lack of improvements in social policy to correct the growing economic vulnerability of broad sections of the population, which suffer from precarious work linked to temporary and part-time employment and low wages.
Ángel de la Fuente (Fedea) | One of the most controversial aspects of the 2013 reform of the Spanish system of public pensions has been the introduction of a revaluation index (the so-called IRP) which linked the updating of pensions, once triggered, to the financial situation of Social Security, thus abandoning the traditional reference to inflation measured by the consumer price index (CPI). Given the measure´s unpopularity, once inflation recovered after the crisis, it did not take long for it to be provisionally suspended. Currently, there seems to be a broad consensus among the main politically parties to abolish it altogether, returning to the general indexing of pensions to the CPI.
BancaMarch | The amount of mortgages conceded in March rose +23.2% yoy, which implies a slowdown compared to the +31.2% registered in February.
Fernando G. Urbaneja | Spanish electors closed on Sunday an intense electoral cycle, opened 5 years ago, under the impact of the great recession and technological uncertainty, which sketches out a new political map for the fourth country in the European Union.