VALENCIA | Economist Ernest Sena reveals data of spending rates that tells a different tale about the Spanish regions: they aren’t as wild and rebels as it has been portrayed. But there is a common mistake to all public administrations, which have used budgets like propaganda tools.
How much does ‘different identity’ account in fiscal transfers between regions and their central government? Catalan president Artur Mas mixes tax data with sentimental issues and accusations of mistreatment, says Fernando G. Urbaneja, so a necessary dialogue becomes unnecessarily difficult.
Only when private sector hiring has showed some muscle, public jobs have fallen as a percentage of the total employees in Spain. The country’s public sector needs a downsize, and this should be easy to achieve: free the public administration from party politics interests.
MADRID | The weakness of Oliver Wyman’s Spanish banking test is similar to that of the national budget, economist JP Marín Arrese opines. Without growth, Spain could be rescued only to see risk premiums and credit costs decreasing. The threat of a depression would still loom.
Something happened Friday September 28. Catalonia sold €2 billion in bonds and Spain’s Treasury minister announced that the regions rescue fund is now open for business to provide capital aid to Barcelona. The central government has a strong case to deactivate the Catalan conflict while reassuring markets with a restructuring plan of the state’s administration.
Managing director at Re-Define, Sony Kapoor is a former investment banker and adviser to governments and international organizations. Kapoor argues that, unless Brussels change course, Spain will end up split between austerity and banking losses.
JP Morgan analysts used a wrong classification when accounting loans given by Banco Mare Nostrum to corporations and small and medium companies. Three days after its first report, the investment bank has now rectified.
MADRID | Fernando Barciela interviews Baron de Ley CEO Eduardo Santos-Ruiz, who joins the growing demand among Spanish entrepreneurs, too, for a rationalisation of the regional administrations. It’s time for the state to use its scissors on itself.
While national identity tensions belong to an ongoing debate, the fiscal irritation that Catalonia feels can be easily soothed. Madrid must offer a fairer treatment to a region whose economic output sets the best hopes for Spain to exit the crisis.
MADRID | This doesn’t work as a safety net for the Spanish banking sector to recover from its current weaknesses. It would amount to a neat, direct mechanism for entities to cash their toxic loans at the taxpayer’s expense. But Madrid is still in time to amend its bad bank, advises economist JP Marín Arrese.