Bank of Spain governor Luis María Linde on Monday stated that if Catalonia secedes from Spain, there could be a risk of a corralito, the popular term for economic measures that include a freeze on clients’ accounts, with the aim of halting a potential bank run.
Foreign investors put more money into Spain in October than they took out, marking the second month running the country has benefited from an influx of capital. Spain registered capital inflow of 12.1 billion Euros in October, the Bank of Spain said on Friday. The figure, which excludes central bank operations, was lower than the 31 billion Euros of inflow in September.
Spain's jobless grew to a new record in November, official data showed Tuesday. The number of people registered as unemployed grew by 74.296 or 1.5% to 4.91 million in November from the previous month, the Labour Ministry said on Tuesday.
Bank of Spain figures show that net capital outflows—including bank withdrawals and sell-offs of Spanish stocks and bonds—equaled more than 50% of the country’s economic output over the year ended July 31.
Spain's banks had 155.84bn Euros of loans on their books in May that are at risk of not being repaid, the highest since 1994.
Spain's jobs-scarce economy plunged back into recession in the first quarter of 2012 as employment slumped even further, the Bank of Spain said on Monday. Barely two years after emerging from the last downturn Spain slid into recession again with two consecutive quarters of economic contraction the central bank said in a report.
Spain's Conservative government ruled out a bad bank to deal with toxic property assets, wary of adding more debt to a nation fighting to control its deficit and putting the onus on lenders to make their own provisions.
Eight banks have failed Europe's bank stress test designed to assess whether they can weather another economic crisis while 16 banks barely passed, bank regulators said on Friday.
The mix of high external indebtedness, the fragility of the financial sector and the probability of further declines in asset prices increase the probability of a funding squeeze at some point means that “Spain will be the next country to seek financial assistance from the EU and the International Monetary Fund”, argues one of the Financial Times respected columnists.
Spain’s economy emerged from an almost two-year recession in the first quarter, trailing the Euro area by six months. GDP expanded 0.1% in the first three months of 2010, the Madrid-based Bank of Spain estimated in its monthly report today.