Spain’s funding problems are over
Eurozone officialdom routinely sees the eurozone itself through a rose-tinted lens. Just listen to Francois Hollande, or any number of Spanish officials, such as Inigo Fernandez de Mesa, the country’s...
View Article‘Why should Germans support poorer Spanish regions if Catalans object?’
Most commentary on Catalonian nationalism dwells on whether this is something that's going to have implications outside of Spain. How worried should we really be if the Catalans get a bit more fiscal...
View ArticleSoy Sareb
It includes an almost 80 per cent haircut on buying foreclosed land assets from banks. (“The transfer price is not a reference for the valuation of nontransferred bank assets.” – OK then) Useful to...
View ArticleThis eurozone PMI record appears to be broken
Another day, and another confirmation that the eurozone economy is struggling to gain traction. And it’s not just the small peripheral economies that are seeing factory activity slowing. From Reuters:...
View ArticleIs the ECB sticking to its collateral rules?
The ECB may have granted loans to the Spanish bank sector on too low an interest rate given the quality of the collateral posted, according to an investigation by Die Welt. It potentially raises rather...
View ArticleSareb is ‘incrementally negative for Spain and its banking sector’
Some more details about Spain's bad bank are filtering through, mainly on how it might function in practice. And analysts are finding that the more they find out, the more concerns they have. On...
View ArticleSpain’s fantastical deficit forecasts
Spain’s fiscal management seems to increasingly be a case of plugging holes, watching new ones appear, ignoring them, then relenting and also plugging those… all while delaying a clearly inevitable...
View ArticleIntroducing the ‘youth sacrifice ratio’
Not the kind of youth sacrifice once practiced by the Aztecs, the Inca, and the Carthaginians in order please distant, fickle gods if course. We’ve moved on a bit since then. Then again, it’s still the...
View ArticleIs Rajoy considering an IMF-only bail-out?
A report in the Spanish paper El Confidencial says that the Spanish government is considering asking just the IMF for aid in an attempt to bypass Eurogroup conditionality. It seems quite an unlikely...
View ArticleRising tensions before Catalan vote
The Catalan elections are on Sunday, and perhaps unsurprisingly there’s been an escalation of tensions ahead of the vote. The question is how this might benefit the CiU, the main separatist...
View ArticleCatalans maybe like this independence idea
Catalonia’s regional election on Sunday delivered a big victory for the separatist movement — but a more fragmented one than had been expected. Four separatist parties won 87 of the regional...
View ArticleOn trying to read the coming Catalan coalition
Last weekend’s Catalan elections returned perhaps the most difficult-to-read result. Judging by the overall support for separatist parties, there was significant support for at least a referendum on...
View ArticleSpanish debt, quietly on the mend…
An unlikely beneficiary of the fiscal fudge, perhaps. Here’s Spanish 10 year paper, the yield on which was threatening to drop back below 5 per cent on Thursday.Continue reading: Spanish debt, quietly...
View ArticleSpanish deposit figures disclaimer: now updated through December ’12!
The measurement of Spanish deposits is whatever you want it to be! Or at least it sometimes seems that people regard it as such. FT Alphaville has previously discussed how hard it is to meaningfully...
View ArticleSpain finds €40bn hidden in sofa
In our last post, we covered up-to-date figures on some of the major components of the headline Spanish deposits number. Here we discuss a new component that will come into play over the next few...
View ArticleThe Barcenas files
El Pais has a nifty interactive whereby you can search the 14 sheets of manuscripts allegedly penned over 18 years by Luis Gutierrez Barcenas, the party manager and treasurer at the heart of the...
View ArticleThe Bárcenas scandal: “untrue — except for some things”
Just how bad could the Rajoy slush fund scandal get? What we have so far is a little confusing. From El Pais on Monday: Answering reporters’ questions for the first time since details emerged late last...
View ArticleMi casa es all you’re going to get
Mortgage markets come in many different flavours. Some American states, for example, like theirs to be non-recourse. In such locations, a homeowner can walk away from their mortgage, and send the house...
View ArticleDeposit guarantees and burden-sharing, quote du jour
Not the full-on collision of the two which initially popped up in Cyprus. Still, we missed this slapdown by the ECB… directed at Spanish plans for the deposit guarantee fund there to buy out retail...
View ArticleCrisis, what crisis etc
Bond yields in the eurozone are hitting new lows not seen since 2010… Continue reading: Crisis, what crisis etc
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