by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /Well that so called investor "risk appetite" took a surprise hit yesterday (and from an unexpected quarter). It wasn't the worries about US fiscal deficits that caused the panic, but problems in the European banking system. a href="http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/06/16/57171/investor-fears-cut-risk-appetite/"Gwen Robinson reports/a:br /br /blockquoteRisk appetite suffered a sharp deterioration on Monday as fresh uncertainty about the global economy prompted investors to shift from equities, commodities and emerging market assets into the perceived safety of government bonds and the dollar. Markets were further unnerved by warnings on the economic outlook from the head of the IMF and an ECB report saying eurozone banks face another $283bn in writedowns on bad loans and securities this year and next./blockquotebr /As Izabella Kaminska notes, a href="http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=117027956538h=wHY-pu=bc40uref=nf"it is Southern Europe that is now getting all the attention/a.br /br /blockquoteThis time it’s the turn of 25 Spanish banks, all of whose senior ratings ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /According to preliminary estimates from the Spanish National Statistics Office published today, GDP contracted by 1.8% in the first three months of 2009 when compared with the last quarter on 2008. This follows a 1.0% drop in Q4 2008. This is equivalent to a 7.2% annualised rate of contraction, which is, of course, sharp.br /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SgwM_W4NxhI/AAAAAAAAN5c/P1h2RPTzmDY/s1600-h/spain+gdp+one.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335653941139850770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 209px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SgwM_W4NxhI/AAAAAAAAN5c/P1h2RPTzmDY/s400/spain+gdp+one.png" border="0" //abr /br /Over the first quarter of 2008 (that is year on year) GDP decreased by 2.9%, the sharpest decline recorded in almost 40 years. In fact you would need to go back to 1945 to find a year in which the Spanish economy contracted as strongly as it is likely to this year.br /br /The contraction was mainly caused by a very large slump in private ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /The title to this post poses an interesting question I think, since the answer you give to it would seem to depend more on the meaning you attribute to the word "really" than on any consensually agreed objective fact. This is especially the case since Spain itself has at least two "official" unemployment numbers, so the backround to (and reason for my asking) the question is the apparent divergence between these two numbers (one from the national statistics office, and one from the employment office INEM), both of which were given extensive international press coverage recently, with the ensuing "spread" between one reading and the other causing general confusion and even leading some to question the very validity of the whole Spanish "headcount" process. br /br /As we shall see, what we have here is not necessarily a simple "fudging" of numbers, but rather ...

Enable IPC Corp. offers streamlined strategies for transforming technologies into products, and introducing them into the marketplace. The company today announced it has shipped its first batch of ultracapacitor electrodes to IMDEA Energia in Madrid, Spain.

The ultracapacitor is one of Enable IPC’s two break-through energy technologies, which launches the company into the multi-billion renewable energy market. Enable IPC’s ultracapacitor electrodes will be applied to a power conditioning unit by IMEDA and renewable energy manufacturer Green Power, as part of a demonstration in part of the SA2VE project, a program pushed and sponsored by the Spanish government to focus on green energy alternatives.

Dr. Mark Daugherty, CTO of Enable IPC and president of SolRayo, said the role of Enable IPC’s technology in the presentation may give the company exposure to more actors in the renewable energy market.

“This is a high profile demonstration that we expect will lead to

...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /blockquote"I would now expect several eurozone countries with weak banking sectors to get into serious difficulties as the crisis continues. There is a risk of cascading sovereign defaults. If this was limited to countries of the size of Ireland or Greece, one could solve this problem through a bail-out. But solvency risk is not a problem confined to small countries. The banking sectors in Italy, Spain and Germany are increasingly vulnerable."br /Wolfgang Munchau, a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c94ac804-fb62-11dd-bcad-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1"Financial Times/a, 15 February 2009./blockquoteblockquoteGerman Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN1631373320090216"said on Monday/a euro zone countries would have to pull together if one of them faced a "serious situation," adding that Ireland was in a "difficult situation."br //blockquoteblockquoteInvestors are increasingly concerned that Ireland may default on its national debt as the government pledges more money to help troubled banks, the Sunday Times said. Credit-default swaps on Ireland’s government bonds reached record ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /Maybe many people outside (or even inside for that matter) Spain didn’t especially notice the fact, but last Sunday’s Barça match with Racing de Santander did not go out on regional TV as planned. This caused a few eyebrows to be raised among football supporters and commentators, but little in the way of serious analysis or comment. But the reason the match wasn’t broadcast is perhaps rather more interesting than many imagine, since behind Saturday’s blackout lies a dispute between the Catalan regional TV station and Barcelona football club which goes well beyond that sport where 22 able bodied men run up and down a pitch for 90 minutes and the Germans always win. The details of the present dispute are obscure, and this is not the place to go into them, but the nitty gritty is that Barça are asking local channel TV3 …

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /Spain’s unemployment, already the highest in the European Union, shot up again in January, rising by the most in at least 13 years, marking the 10th consecutive monthly increase as Spain’s recession continues to deepen.br /br /br /pa href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SYgPhhx8SqI/AAAAAAAAMi8/uWyGkQMQKrA/s1600-h/spain+number+unem.png”img id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298502030279330466″ style=”DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 219px; TEXT-ALIGN: center” alt=”" src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SYgPhhx8SqI/AAAAAAAAMi8/uWyGkQMQKrA/s400/spain+number+unem.png” border=”0″ //abr /br /The number of people registering as unemployed was up by 6.4 percent, or 198,838, from December, and the total reached 3.33 million, according to the latest INEM data release. That was the biggest month on month jump since at least 1996. From January 2008, the number of claimants jumped 47.12 per cent (just marginally above last months year-on-year increase of 46.93 per cent) or by more than a million.br /br /a href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SYgNgxNeIwI/AAAAAAAAMi0/TkGNSgtBlDQ/s1600-h/spain+unem+yoy.png”img id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298499818218201858″ style=”DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 220px; TEXT-ALIGN: …

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SUEsR712NQI/AAAAAAAALuU/VGFiqyCyzBw/s1600-h/bond+spreads+2.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278548924887872770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 170px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SUEsR712NQI/AAAAAAAALuU/VGFiqyCyzBw/s320/bond+spreads+2.png" border="0" //abr /br /br /Spain yesterday became the third euro zone country within a week to be warned by rating agency Standard amp; Poor's that its credit rating (currently the highest - AAA) is under threat from the deterioration in public finances which is being produced by the government's attempt to support the banking system and put a brake on the dramatic decline in the domestic economy. As in the case of Ireland and Greece last Friday, Samp;P said Spain faces a painful process of rebalancing of its economy and a consequent marked deterioration in its public finances.br /br /The gap in bond yields between the benchmark German bunds and the sovereign debt of Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal has risen fourfold since July (see charts above ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /strong/stronga href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SWJCBADk-EI/AAAAAAAAMBE/lRuGq1QvY5c/s1600-h/cafe+fiorino.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287861497448691778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 241px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SWJCBADk-EI/AAAAAAAAMBE/lRuGq1QvY5c/s320/cafe+fiorino.png" border="0" //abr /br /Spain's inflation (as measured by the EU HICP methodology) was around 1.5% (year on year) in December 2008, according to the flash estimate issued by the stats office (INE) earlier this week. This number only offers us an initial glimpse of the final HICP reading, but, if confirmed, it will mean Spain's annual rate of inflation has dropped 0.9% (nearly one full percentage point) in the space 0f just one month - since in November the annual rate was 2.4%.br /br /It will also mean that Spain's inflation for 2007 dropped its the lowest rate in a decade, down sharply from the 2007 rate of 4.2 percent. This is remarkable since Spanish inflation has generally been over the EU average for more ...

strong/stronga href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SWJCBADk-EI/AAAAAAAAMBE/lRuGq1QvY5c/s1600-h/cafe+fiorino.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287861497448691778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 241px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SWJCBADk-EI/AAAAAAAAMBE/lRuGq1QvY5c/s320/cafe+fiorino.png" border="0" //abr /br /by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /Spain's inflation (as measured by the EU HICP methodology) was around 1.5% (year on year) in December 2008, according to the flash estimate issued by the stats office (INE) earlier this week. This number only offers us an initial glimpse of the final HICP reading, but, if confirmed, it will mean Spain's annual rate of inflation has dropped 0.9% (nearly one full percentage point) in the space 0f just one month - since in November the annual rate was 2.4%.br /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SWHrDP6v8KI/AAAAAAAAL_M/-UWmp9lHkN8/s1600-h/spain+CPI.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287765878554751138" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 187px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SWHrDP6v8KI/AAAAAAAAL_M/-UWmp9lHkN8/s320/spain+CPI.png" border="0" //abr /br /It will also mean that Spain's inflation for 2007 dropped its the lowest rate in a decade, down sharply ...