We don't win for scares. Just now that the third anniversary of the state of alarm in our country due to covid is being celebrated, the opinion of most analysts agrees that the Spanish economy has resisted much better than expected the impact of the worst recession ever recorded in peacetime and after a winter that seemed very harsh due to energy cuts. The figures of the Spanish economy, in general, except for the phenomenon of inflation that also occurs in neighboring countries, are more optimistic than expected and even the Bank of Spain is revising upwards the forecast of growth for this year.
However, the globalized world does not grant any truce. The bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the United States, last Friday, has revived the nightmare of 2008 with the fall of Lehman Brothers and has sparked fears of a new financial crisis. The closure of SVB and the chain fall of two smaller entities – Signature Bank and Silvergate Bank – immediately caused reactions on the European stock markets. The Ibex suffered losses of 3.5% yesterday, in its worst day in nine months, and the same happened on the stock exchanges in Frankfurt, Paris and London.
The sensations writing this article (we feel unable to write about realities) is that the rapid intervention of the White House, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve (Fed) was able to slow down the contagion effect to other banking entities. Having learned the lesson of 2008, it was decided to intervene in the institution and guarantee the customers' deposit. Joe Biden reacted quickly and appeared yesterday to announce to his compatriots that they have confidence "that the banking system is safe". Wall Street began in the middle of yesterday afternoon to recover from the sharp falls it had had throughout the day.
It is possible that this crisis will be temporary and today the European stock markets will recover some of what they lost, but the lesson of yesterday is that the volatility of the system is very great. The continuation of the war in Ukraine and its possible derivatives, as well as the consequences of the skyrocketing inflation we are suffering, means that we have to be very cautious in our diagnoses. It's what happens when you live in such a fragile world.
