2023-09-24 02:00:00
We live immersed in the hubbub and the more time passes, the more we get mired in it. Whoever had the most votes in the last elections cannot form a government because he does not find the necessary support. Whoever was left behind in them is going to get them, in exchange for putting the State on the hook after going back on all its previous statements and breaking all its promises and agreeing with a band that plays Free Jazz. He will give in everything to be president, without caring about confusing and putting his personal ambitions before the common interests. And he will do so supported by an extravagant amalgamation of communist parties, populists, independentists of various stripes and fugitives from Justice.
Is there any possibility that among so many diverse characters they will find a common project for Spain? It will be, sure, ‘progressive’ or whatever that means, but can it be ‘common’? No. In his party, no one raises his voice and anyone who dares to do so is branded old-fashioned or expelled. But, given the background, how many of the 7,760,970 citizens who chose their candidacy in the last general elections will now be able to claim ignorance or be surprised by this crazy drift?
The best definition of the current PSOE was given this week by the former socialist deputy who was a member of the Basque General Council, Ángel Garcia Ronda, when he said that “the current PSOE is ideologically disoriented, organically dictatorial, ethically unscrupulous, politically erratic, constitutionally disrespectful and nationally divisive’. Amen.
«No one knows how the economy is doing, whether it is like a motorcycle, as the Government says, or on the verge of a recession»
But there is not only noise in politics. If you look at the economy, the picture is not much different. Nobody knows where we are. Nobody knows if we are going like a motorcycle, as the Sánchez-Calviño tandem claim, or on the verge of a recession as many indicators show. The Bank of Spain itself tells us that this year things are going well, but that dark clouds are darkening the horizon of 2024. And, if we bring the focus closer and go to monetary policy, we will see that in a few days, the European Central Bank has raised rates or that the American Federal Reserve has kept them as they were, as has the Bank of England.
In this very important matter of interest rates we have entered the phase of precision surgery. Regulatory bodies raise rates precisely to cool the economy and reduce the enthusiasm of demand. They do so fully aware that this will stunt growth. But, at the levels of rates in which we operate, they run the risk of turning the cold of a necessary slowdown into a lethal ‘rigor mortis’.
When should the increases be stopped? When prices have returned to the path of normality, because inflation is a cancer that we cannot ignore. How are the prices? Well, unfortunately they are still moving at levels that are too high, so we cannot trust that the upward movement has stopped definitively. In fact, Jerome Powell, chairman of the FED, made it clear enough the other day when he announced that suffering still remains.
Well, that’s where we are, in the middle of a disconcerting hubbub and the worst thing is that there are not many reasons to hope that things will improve in the near future. On the political level, we will soon have a government, or whatever, but it will not be a peaceful or stable government. With those wickers it is impossible for it to be. Will it last? You go to know. It sure is fun. And in the economy we can expect a easing of monetary policy, but not a return to laxity.
I’m sorry. I assure you that I would like nothing more than to tell you the opposite. But don’t kill the messenger, like Tigranes the Great did, who, by the way, was much less nice than you.
#Ignacio #MarcoGardoqui #Analysis #Barullo #Basque #Journal