(Wall Street Journal) Spain’s new two-year plan to clean up its banks will require them to set aside €50 billion ($65.8 billion) to cover losses from souring loans as part of an effort to improve the flow of credit to the economy, Finance Minister Luis de Guindos said Thursday. “At the moment, as you know, credit [...]
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Spain’s Budget Cuts Trigger Downturn
The Spanish economy shrank in the last three months of 2011, providing new evidence of the high cost of the country’s budget deficit-reduction efforts. Spanish gross domestic product fell 0.3% in the fourth quarter from the third, the first decline in GDP since the country clawed its way out of recession two years ago. Fourth-quarter [...]
READ MORE »Spain Halts Plan to Privatize Main Airports
(WSJ) Spain suspended plans to privatize its two main airports on Monday, presenting a fresh challenge to the government’s efforts to improve its stretched finances. The previous Socialist government had hoped to raise at least €5 billion ($6.46 billion) from the privatization of the Madrid and Barcelona airports, part of its efforts to ease the country’s [...]
READ MORE »Spain’s crusading judge to go on trial for Franco probe
(AFP) A top Spanish human rights judge goes on trial Tuesday for abusing his power by trying to prosecute atrocities of the regime of General Francisco Franco in the 1930s. Baltasar Garzon will appear before Madrid’s Supreme Court for ordering an investigation into the disappearance of 114,000 people during Spain’s 1936-39 civil war and Franco’s subsequent [...]
READ MORE »Spain’s Two Finance Ministers Clash on Budget as Economy Shrinks
(Business Week) Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said Spain is sticking to its deficit goal even as the economy shrinks, underlining a rift in the month-old Cabinet over whether the nation can halve its shortfall during a recession. De Guindos said Spain’s government has an “absolutely inescapable commitment” to austerity, when asked whether he agreed with [...]
READ MORE »Spain’s Central Government to Rush Aid to Financially Ailing Regions
(NY Times) The central government of Spain has moved to shore up the finances of the country’s 17 regional governments — some of which are having trouble paying their bills — while taking steps to tighten control over their spending. Budget Minister Cristóbal Montoro said Tuesday that the government would create a credit line and advance [...]
READ MORE »Spain’s Garzon, champion of justice or egomaniac?
(Reuters) A vain attention-seeker who thought himself above the laws he upheld? Or a valiant maverick brought down by crony politicians, business and a legal establishment threatened by his crusade for human rights? Whichever Baltasar Garzon finally emerges from a Madrid courtroom after he went on trial this week, the Spanish magistrate who won global fame [...]
READ MORE »Our Plan for Reviving Spain
(Luis de Guindos / WSJ) The current financial crisis has hit some countries more deeply than others—Spain among them due to our domestic imbalances. We perfectly understand the reasons our country has been brought to the outrageous situation of having the highest unemployment rate among developed economies: 22.9% as of November. Consequently, we also know which [...]
READ MORE »Spain: Claims Garzón Trial Threatens Human Rights
(Eurasia review) The upcoming trial of the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón for investigating abuses from Spain’s past threatens the concept of accountability in Spain and beyond, Human Rights Watch said. Garzón’s prosecution in a second case, for issuing a judicial instruction to intercept lawyer-client communications in a corruption scandal, raised questions as to whether the judge [...]
READ MORE »Spain Bottoming Out, or More to Come?
(WSJ) Thursday’s impressive Spanish bond auction has many wondering whether the worst might be over for a country that has been harshly dealt with by the euro crisis. But a look at some of a few charts on Spain’s economic numbers do not paint a pretty picture and–unlike, say, the moderately improving data in the [...]
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