The enormous gap that the Spanish public accounts show has been portrayed after the
European Central Bank
(
ECB
) had to take emergency measures this Wednesday to prevent countries as indebted as ours from losing the confidence of investors.
They fear not recovering the investment after the increase in the price of money.
In just five days, since the monetary authority of the euro zone deactivated its debt purchase program and announced a rise in
interest rates in July, the
Spanish risk premium
It went from trading at 118 points to reaching 140 -this Wednesday it reached 123-.
The premium that Spain has to pay when it goes to the markets to finance itself skyrocketed to levels similar to those at the start of the pandemic.
And the required return on the Spanish 10-year bond exceeded 3% for the first time since May 2014. A similar situation occurs in other countries such as Italy (225 points), Greece (261) or Portugal (119), leaving the strong fragmentation between
northern and southern European countries
and the urgent need to balance their economic balances.
After this grave scene of
sovereign risk
, which places Spain among one of the countries with the highest debt on its bill -our
public debt
amounts to 117% of GDP-, the ECB has had no choice but to apply discipline to force governments to adjust their balance sheets and "accelerate" -as it warned the governors of banking supervisors- the achievement of
new instruments
to avoid debt crises.
It is about preventing the financing costs of the most indebted countries from skyrocketing, widening the gap between North and South Europe.
The higher a country's risk, the more it will have to pay investors to buy its government debt.
In Spain, the confidence of these investors is in question, in the context of a rate hike that will have profound effects.
In the last 10 years, the Spanish debt has gone from representing 90% of the country's wealth -in December 2012- to reaching the current 117%, after reaching 120% in December 2020. It is clear that this coalition Executive disunited and radical is not prepared to adjust the public accounts of the State or contain spending.
In fact, he only knows how to fill the coffers more with
expansionist plans
with blatantly electoral purposes such as the revaluation of pensions and the rise in civil servants' salaries.
Spain will no longer be able to return to the ECB's open bar, and if the latter decides to reinvest the purchased debt, it will be in exchange for demanding conditionality.
The Government missed a precious opportunity to make reforms in times of credit boom, it did not do its homework and now it will have to face a scenario in which the monetary authority forces it to adjust the strong imbalance suffered by public accounts.
The solidarity that our economy benefited from is not unlimited and it is time to return it.
It's time for responsibility.
But it seems that in Moncloa they do not want to be aware.
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