We do not win for scares. Just now that the third anniversary of the state of alarm in our country due to the covid has been completed, the opinion of most analysts agrees that the Spanish economy has resisted the impact of the biggest recession ever recorded in times much better than expected. of peace and after a winter that seemed very harsh due to energy cuts. The figures for 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 its growth forecast for this year upwards .
However, the globalized world does not give any truce. The bankruptcy of the US bank Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), last Friday, has revived the nightmare of 2008 with the fall of Lehman Brothers and has triggered fears of a new financial crisis. The closure of SVB and the chain fall of two other smaller entities –Signature Bank and Silvergate Bank– immediately provoked 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 in the Frankfurt, Paris or London stock markets.
The sensations when writing this article (we are sorry that we cannot write about realities) is that the rapid intervention of the White House, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve (Fed) managed to stop the contagion effect on other banking entities. Having learned the lesson of 2008, it was decided to intervene in the entity and guarantee customer deposits. 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 the afternoon yesterday to recover from the strong falls it had suffered during the day.
It is possible that this crisis is temporary and today the European stock markets recover part 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 having such skyrocketing inflation, mean that we must be very prudent in diagnoses. It is what corresponds when living in such a fragile world.
