As the age-old saying, which is so topical in light of the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, puts it: «hope for the best, prepare for the worst».
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The start of 2025 has brought a change in the focus of the financial markets, which was consolidated in February. Investors have shifted their attention away from the central banks, which were the main driver of the markets in 2024, towards an environment of high geopolitical risk, with the «Trump effect» as a key catalyst.
The global economy demonstrated notable resilience during 2025, providing a good starting point for 2026, such that the global economy could continue to grow at a rate of around 3%, with globally stable inflation. However, the risks to the baseline global scenarios have increased significantly following the joint US and Israeli attack on Iran, which has triggered a surge in oil and gas prices and turmoil in the financial markets.
Although it is nothing new, it is still important to emphasise it: the latest available indicators for the Spanish economy have once again beaten expectations. Despite the continued weakness of Europe and the high global uncertainty, Spain’s economy continues to stand out on the international stage.
GDP growth once again beat expectations in Q3 and the labour market and the PMIs kick off Q4 on a good footing.
The energy crisis has served as an incentive within the EU to accelerate the transition to energy sources that are more environmentally friendly and less dependent on fossil fuels, but this is seen as more of a medium-term goal.
The European Commission has published the results of its quarterly survey on the industrial sector. This survey covers a wide range of questions, but in this article we will focus on the messages emanating from the question on the main factors that are limiting manufacturing companies’ production capacity.
Markets kicked off 2024 with risk appetite, supported by rhetoric of a soft landing in the major advanced economies and a positive assessment of the macroeconomic data.
Spain’s foreign sector has registered a surplus for the last 12 consecutive years. The strength of this success was proven last year, when the current account balance survived the energy crisis, which caused a sharp rise in the price of imported energy products and a marked deterioration in the trade balance.
The surge in uncertainty and the tariff hikes introduce downside risks to global growth, as well as upside risks to US inflation, while the impact on prices for the rest of the world is much more uncertain.
We thus find ourselves in a period of extreme fragility in which, more than ever, it seems essential to avoid any misalignment between fiscal policy and monetary policy in order to minimise the risk of financial panic. The fact that the latest incident of this kind took place in the United Kingdom – a country with deeply liquid markets and whose currency still serves as an international benchmark – serves as a stark warning to seafarers that the seas are rough and the skies are clouded.
The war triggered significant risk aversion, leading to stock market declines, spikes in volatility, a flight to safe-haven assets, and a sharp tightening in energy and other commodity prices. This increase in energy prices, in turn, led to a rise in short-term inflation expectations, resulting in a significant adjustment of monetary policy expectations and an increase in sovereign interest rates. In a context of high uncertainty regarding the duration and intensity of the conflict, markets reacted very sensitively to a constant flow of news such as political statements, episodes of military escalation and fluctuations in the rhetoric of international leaders.
This year’s return to fiscal rules – as safeguards of the sustainability of public debt – and the persistent shortfall in investment needed to address the EU’s priorities in the current geopolitical context create a scenario marked by frictions that requires a coordinated fiscal strategy that far exceeds the horizon of national and EU political mandates, both in duration and ambition. Therefore, it is essential that the differences that exist, as well as some taboos that have characterised the EU’s economic history on other occasions, are overcome.
While economists have been incorporating big data into their analyses for a number of years now, the COVID-19 pandemic has produced a veritable revolution in real-time economics. The latest contribution from the CaixaBank Research team to this revolution is the Real-time economics portal, launched on 8 November 2022.
Three and a half years later, Spain’s GDP has finally recovered to the pre-pandemic level. However, the recovery of the Spanish economy has not occurred in unison: some aspects have improved more quickly, while others are lagging further behind.