Digital news website El Confidencial on Tuesday published an article about the effect the so-called Rubik Plan would have on the Spanish budget. This is a bilateral agreement to lift banking secrecy in Switzerland, which would allow hidden account holders in the country to pay taxes anonymously in Spain. The conclusion of experts is clear: the amount collected thanks to this measure would barely exceed €200 million, a somewhat tiny…
Rumours of a super-toxic bank have been building up in Spain ever since the conservative People’s Party won the country’s general election by landslide. According to last weekend’s Bloomberg reports, “Spanish Prime Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy has asked for at least two papers from academics on how to create a so-called bad bank, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. “Both proposals outline mechanisms for a state-backed agency to buy soured assets…
MADRID | On Wednesday, the markets gave some credence to the possibility of reviving the Eurobond, but once again this option ended up hitting what Barclays describes (our emphasis) as “the wall which Merkel and Germany have turned themselves into. It is clear that in order to launch a Eurobond, the governance system in the euro zone has to improve, and not only that, it will also need a reform…
NEW YORK | Debt market turmoil and Spain’s borrowing squeeze is now hot news in the US. Experts are talking about investors fears, record-high interest rates and credit freeze but some of them are also lining up for an idea: Berlin and others with big surpluses need to save less and spend more. For The Huffington Post Business editor, Peter S. Goodman, “Germany’s inflation fetish is a major global economic…
The Prime Minister of Luxembourg and chairman of the Eurogroup Jean Claude Juncker made stark remarks on the “disturbingly large amount of the German debt,” which the Bonn paper General Anzeiger published on Thursday. “‘Germany has a higher debt than Spain. But nobody here wants to acknowledge this,’ said Juncker, who expresses understanding regarding the fears of Germany caused by the current financial crisis. “‘Here (in Germany) they witnessed, twice,…