By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | Use of emergency doors being forbidden by Germany, except in cases of force majeure, trouble-ridden Southern Europe is to expect a painful and slow real adjustment. This process will allow its current competitive gap to phase out little by little. In other words, less pay for the same job. Refusal by workers to grasp the inner benefits derived from lower wages tackling imbalances inevitably…
MADRID | As reported by the daily newspaper Expansión in Tuesday’s edition, the reactivation of the property tax will be added to the increase of the personal income tax in Catalonia and in the autonomous region of Asturias creating a joint effect of more than 60%. Experts warn that these regions are susceptible to relocation and capital flight. The increase in personal income tax has placed Spain among the countries…
Julia Pastor, in Madrid | One of the fundamental structural reforms Spain needs to undertake within the next few years –and of the same importance and magnitude as the educational reform, the labour reform or the pension system–, is the one to solve the electrical tariff deficit. This is the deficit resulting from the difference between the existing elevated tariffs of the wholesale market that generates the electricity and what…
WASHINGTON | What a coincidence. In an election year with a Democratic incumbent, Republican think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) releases (on January 6) an analysis headlined “Why the real U.S. unemployment is 15.6%.” The number is right… although if we count the unemployed plus the discouraged workers, those who have abandoned the job search because they know there are no jobs to search for, plus the part-time workers who…
By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | It is only fair that banks being nationalised to save them from sheer collapse should follow a much restrictive pay policy on top executives and members of the board. After all, a huge amount of taxpayer money has been spent to fill the gaps derived from irresponsible management. The odd thing is that most culprits have already left the entities with their pockets…
By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | The outline of the financial reform, announced yesterday on Thursday by the Spanish minister of Economy, fails to provide the clue of what the government is aiming at. To begin with, the picture we were presented was one of sheer disarray: big holes in the balance sheets covered with meagre provisions and not a single tender word for the financial system. One…
MADRID | Since December, the Spanish Treasury has had a series of successive successes in its debt offers, even exceeding their expectations in many of them. On Thursday, it happened again. The agency under the ministry of Economy and Competitiveness placed €4,560 million in bonds, the maximum planned, at more moderate rates than on the previous occasion according to data released by the Bank of Spain. Specifically, the Treasury placed…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | The president of the bank Santander Emilio Botín knows very well what he is talking about, and from where he is talking. He has a privileged position. He leads the most powerful and respected bank, not only in Spain but also in Europe. That is why on Tuesday, during the conference press to render and explain the banks’ last year results, he could afford…
By Cotizalia.com | The second biggest event of the year for Spanish listed companies will be taking place on February 1. After the Spain Investors’ Day, that was held on January 11,12, next month will see a classic: the eighteenth edition of Santander’s Iberian Conference. After a 2011 marked by heavy stock market falls that have reduced again the average market capitalisation of the Spanish listed companies, the big news…
By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | The Spanish Government has just approved a bill enshrining the budget golden rule by 2020. It aims to balance income and expenditure over the cycle, departing from that principle only in exceptional circumstances like a full-fledged recession. Such far away objective seems less than ambitious. Especially taking into account the loose path established to ensure that goal. Reducing debt by 2% only if…