Imagine you have €50,000 in your account and you need to make a payment of exactly that amount to buy a car. You have two options: pay it all in cash or apply for financing for the same amount. The first option seems the safest, since it frees us from any future obligations, but at the same time it decapitalizes us and leaves us with no available savings. In contrast, the second option allows us to keep the €50,000 in the account and pay for the vehicle in installments. The secret lies in the return we can obtain from that money.

The liquidity trap, postulated by Keynes in the 1930s, is a situation in which, no matter how much money there is, activity doesn't take off. Neither consumption nor investment ever picks up. Liquidity isn't transformed into activity.

The big economic difference between the United States and Europe lies in the way savers prepare for their retirement. In the United States, they buy stocks on the stock market, while in Europe, they entrust everything to their governments.

The Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, has recalled there may be "exceptions" to temperature limits for air conditioning at work. In fact, this is what Ribera said on the day the Spanish government presented the plan to save energy: "You can incorporate flexibility depending on the working conditions workers need," Ribera said at a press conference after the council of ministers. In an interview with Onda Cero, Ribera gave as an example that bars and restaurants could set their air conditioning at "around 25 degrees", and not 27 degrees as the plan establishes.

The pandemic is affecting lower-income families in Spain more directly than in most of Europe. Spain is one of nine European Union countries where the percentage of working-age adults - aged 18 to 64 - at risk of poverty rose between 2019 and 2020.

Since the National Statistics Institute (INE) collects information on the Spanish households's saving rate every quarter, the indicator has never been so high. The impact of the pandemic, the limitations to mobility and the months of lockdown caused the savings rate to soar to 14.8% in 2020, the highest figure since records began in 1999. In 2020 it exceeded 2019 levels by 8.5 points, as reported Wednesday by the statistical agency.