All of us are going to pay out of our own pockets. That is the decision taken unilaterally by the government. Without consultation, without objections, without light or stenographers, without shame. And the fact is that, as the accounting trap that converted the banks' tax credits into assets has gone wrong because the imminent Basel III regulations prohibit such a martingale, now the Government has decided to convert these future tax benefits of the banks directly into assets guaranteed by the State.
50 billion euros - that's nothing - will remain on the balance sheets of Spanish banks as assets, since otherwise Basel III would oblige the tax credits to be counted for what they are, i.e. a potential future and uncertain saving, and only if the bank is still standing after a few years and also makes profits that can amortise these tax credits.
The move is ugly, very ugly. Because it obliges all Spaniards to insure or guarantee 50,000 million so that the banks' creditors can be paid with total security (the State's guarantee, or the taxes that our children and grandchildren will have to pay). It doesn't matter whether the banks in question have already gone bankrupt, or are still agonising with results that are far from being able to benefit from these accumulated tax credits. These accounting entries, which would only become money -assets- for the banks if they were still standing and with healthy results, are from now on guaranteed with the hard cash of all Spaniards, whatever happens to these financial institutions on the verge of bankruptcy (some more than others) in the future.
In other words, this guarantee of public money will only NOT cost all of us Spaniards money if in the next few years the banks recover their solvency and capacity to generate profits, and if these in turn are sufficient to benefit from the tax credits they are currently accumulating. In other words, this story will only end well for the pockets of all taxpayers if, and only if, Spanish banks have a happy ending, a very happy ending. In any other scenario, the manifest and deserved insolvency of Spanish banks will be paid for by all of us (€50 billion more). If this is not scandalously unfair and criminal, may God come down and see.
And who are the main beneficiary banks? Don't think we're talking about the banks of the middle class. Public money will end up in the form of guarantees directly in the veins of the balance sheets of Santander, BBVA, Sabadell, among others. These big banks, which walk around the financial sector and public opinion with such a haughty attitude, should bow their heads a little, be ashamed, and thank all of us Spaniards, who are injecting them with even more money from our pockets to cover up their miseries. Miseries that they thought they had covered up with accounting martingales blessed by the Government, and that now the Basel III regulations have once again exposed. Today we are all 50 billion more indebted, and therefore 50 billion poorer. And it's not over yet, unfortunately.