Lin Yutang (1895-1976), several times nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, was a Chinese writer, living in the United States, whose translations of his country’s classics have been the most widely distributed in the West, such as “The Wisdom of Confucius”, the most popular version of the work of the author of the Analects. Yutang attributes to Confucius (552 AC-479 AC) the idea that “a man who has made a mistake and does not correct it, makes a bigger mistake.” Somewhat later, Aristotle (384AC-322) would write in his “Politics” (book VIII, chapter III) that “as the beginning is half of the whole, a small error at the beginning influences everything else.”
Felipe Gonzalez, almost 2,500 years later, has outlined a colloquial adaptation of the Confucian advice. The former president, when commenting, albeit elliptically, on some decisions of the Government of Pedro Sanchez –for example, the law of “only yes is yes”–, explained that in politics it is inevitable to screw up, but the important thing is to get it out as soon as possible. Now, a series of errors, by the Government and the opposition, although the origin is in the Executive, has unleashed an absurd storm that could have been avoided on the Bank of Spain, which heads Pablo Hernandez de Cos, perhaps the best governor of the institution in many years. The Government had to appoint two people to renew the directors of the Bank of Spain Carmen Alonso y Fernando Eguidazu, who had exhausted their mandate and left their post automatically. The tradition and the unwritten rule, but applied on a regular basis, is that the two main parties, PSOE and PP, agreed on these replacements and each one presented its candidate that the other party accepted. For years everything was done in such a routine way that it hardly aroused much interest, beyond some small reference in the economic press.
Election years, like this one, complicate almost everything. The replacement of directors in the Bank of Spain should have gone almost unnoticed. The vice president, Nadia Calvino, who is ultimately the one who makes the appointments, wanted to break tradition and elect all the new directors. It was the first mistake, perhaps from arrogance. From there, the following. It meant breaking one of the last living “consensus”, but it also created a precedent that could endanger the reputation of the Bank of Spain. If the Government now chose the two vacant councilors – it meant that all those on the council would have been appointed by this executive – the pact that the Government chooses the governor and, in some way, the opposition, the deputy governor, would also be put at risk. now deputy governor. This has almost always been the case since the Banco de España became independent, except in the stage of Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez. Nadia Calviño, whether or not she followed Moncloa’s instructions, finally accepted that the Government proposed a candidate and the PP another. Everything seemed on track, but the errors continued.
The vice president chose her former chief of staff, Judith Arnal, commercial technician of the State, who in 2019 presented a brilliant doctoral thesis at the University of Navarra in which he analyzes and warns of the dangers of sovereign risks –public debt– for the banking sector and, of course, for countries. His choice was somewhat out of the ordinary, due to his age and because he came from Calviño’s team. The PP, for its part, suggested the name of the professor Antonio CabralesPhD from the University of California, an economist with a career and publications inside and outside of Spain. Núñez Feijóo I did not know him, but he was the choice of Pablo Vázquez, the new economic heavyweight of the PP, former president of Renfe and now at the head of the Concordia y Libertad foundation after the withdrawal of Adolfo Suárez Illana and to which the PP wants to give a new impetus. Something went wrong, another mistake, now one of the popular ones, because although Feijóo has ordered that all applicants for any position be investigated, nobody noticed some points – in practice minor, but striking – of Cabrales’ career, such as having signed a letter of support for the “indepe” Ponsati.
The position of director of the Bank of Spain lacks power in practice, but it is very sweet and gives prestige and there are always those who want to occupy it, and there was no lack of voices, in the popular environment -it is not friendly fire, but it looks like it-, in warning about the trajectory of Cabrales who, induced or not, resigned almost before being appointed, which unleashed – due to Calviño’s arrogant errors and the PP’s pardille – a storm, not perfect, unnecessary and absurd on the Banco de Spain. Some errors that should not be the origin of other major ones, as Aristotle and Confucius pointed out.
The endless soap opera of who and how rules in Unicaja
The resignations have continued in the Unicaja Foundation, which has a majority of Unicaja’s capital. On Wednesday Teresa Sáez resigned, the last of the directors related to the former president of the Foundation, Braulio Medel, relieved – after resisting for months – by José Manuel Domínguez. Now it remains pending who will command the bank, something disputed between the president Manuel Azuaga and the CEO Manuel Menéndez, who believed that he had him tied up, but now it is not so clear.
The price of natural gas could be around 32 euros/megawatt hour next summer
The price of natural gas came to accumulate a price increase of 328% in the summer of 2022. Now, they point to a drop that could reach up to 32 euros/megawatt hour next summer, from the current 55 and that no one would have imagined a year ago. It would, of course, make it necessary to end the policy of price caps now in force. Everything depends on the Chinese demand – imports – not increasing again and on the evolution of the war in Ukraine.