{"id":15147,"date":"2015-12-10T07:04:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T12:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15147"},"modified":"2015-12-10T07:04:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T12:04:08","slug":"rumors-of-new-bank-bailouts-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15147","title":{"rendered":"Rumors of New Bank Bailouts in Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/12\/09\/rumors-of-new-bank-bailouts-in-spain-just-dont-tell-voters\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rumors of New Bank Bailouts in Spain<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>Just when the government touts its miracle economy!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Spain will hold do-or-die general elections on December 20. The Rajoy government hopes that recent improvements in economic performance will be enough to cast its gargantuan political scandals to the back of voters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n<p>The economy is firing\u00a0on all cylinders, it claims. To paraphrase Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro, Spain\u2019s economy should serve as a shining example to the world. It is expected to grow by 3% this year,\u00a0no mean feat in a region plagued by sub-par growth.<\/p>\n<p>However, not everybody\u2019s buying the government\u2019s version of reality: poverty is growing at a startling rate, unemployment continues to hover on the wrong side of the 20% mark, and public debt is\u00a0almost three times what it was at the beginning of the crisis [read:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/10\/13\/six-inconvenient-truths-about-spains-recovery\/\">Six Nagging Facts About Spain\u2019s Recovery]<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To make matters worse, the European Commission has just\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.expansion.com\/empresas\/banca\/2015\/12\/08\/5667172bca4741e0668b45e3.html\">pointed out<\/a>, albeit as quietly as possible, that despite all the untold billions spent over the last four years trying to save Spain\u2019s rickety financial system, the risk exposure of Spanish banks remains inordinately high. Many banks have been caught engaging in \u201cabusive\u201d mortgage lending practices and could end up having to pay back customers billions of euros.<\/p>\n<p>But not until after the elections!<\/p>\n<p>For years now, Spanish banks have been featuring so-called \u201cfloor clauses\u201d in their variable-rate home mortgages, often without informing homebuyers. The variable rate is usually based on Euribor plus a differential. But\u00a0these clauses set a \u201cfloor\u201d or minimum interest rate that clients have to pay the bank, even if Euribor\u00a0drops far\u00a0below that figure. And in today\u2019s zero-interest-rate environment, with Euribor\u00a0at\u00a00.05%, that can make a big difference.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rumors of New Bank Bailouts in Spain Just when the government touts its miracle economy! Spain will hold do-or-die general elections on December 20. The Rajoy government hopes that recent improvements in economic performance will be enough to cast its gargantuan political scandals to the back of voters\u2019 minds. The economy is firing\u00a0on all cylinders, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2015,63,5660,642,743,824,4255],"class_list":["post-15147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bailout","tag-banks","tag-don-quijones","tag-poverty","tag-spain","tag-unemployment","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15148,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15147\/revisions\/15148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}