The Spanish economy grew at a rate of 3.2% in 2016, although signs of a slowdown are beginning to appear. Almost all the external factors which had boosted GDP growth latterly (the so-called tail winds) may disappear over this year.
Yiannis Mouzakis via Macropolis | Often, the decisions taken by the eurozone that shaped the Greek crisis at pivotal moments and sealed the country’s fate were defined by the limitations that the decision makers were facing and not the approach that would have produced the optimal result.
The January update of the IMF’s “World Economic Outlook”, published in October, confirms that Spain will recover this year all the GDP growth lost during the economic crisis, exceeding in 2017 for the first time the volume of growth in 2008.
Yiannis Mouzakis via Macropolis | What you are going to read could very well be extracts from a Yanis Varoufakis interview in the first half of 2015, when – in a clumsy manner that rubbed everyone up the wrong way – he was advocating that Greece and its lenders should change course.
Yiannis Mouzakis via Macropolis| From the beginning of the crisis, Greek debt has often been the elephant in the room. Over the last year it has taken on the form of an unsolvable equation as key decisions makers have taken positions that do not appear to overlap.
J.L. M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | Low growth, huge inequality and the slow progress with structural reforms: these are the three problems which cause the most concern for IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. And the issues which she would like tackled at a global level in a forum like last week’s G20 meeting.
*Foto: Steven Cutts
In an internal report, the IMF has confessed to errors linked to the bailouts in which it participated during the euro crisis, according to what Ambrose Evans-Prichard tells us. Just what the euro needed: explicit recognition, in black and white, that nothing could be done about the “infamy of competitive devaluation.”
Yiannis Mouzakis via Macropolis | | Understandably, when the International Monetary Fund published its Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) last week, its gloomy projections regarding the unsustainability of Greece’s debt drew all the attention. This meant that many overlooked the fact that the Fund was even gloomier about the Greek economy’s long-term growth prospects.
Yiannis Mouzakis via Macropolis | Following an 11-hour Eurogroup that brought back memories of other classic encounters between Greece and its lenders, an agreement was reached to disburse 10.3 billion euros from the programme’s financing in two tranches – next month and in September – as the much-contested debt issue was put on the table.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s spring forecasts – progressively less optimistic – have nurtured the tragic sense of life (the theory expounded by Spain’s Miguel de Unamuno) or the Spanish art of flagellation. Or at least that is what the media headlines reflected, despite the fact that international observers were incapable of detecting any particularly destructive tone in the Washington-based organisation’s predictions.