Angela Merkel | featured news

Angela Merkel tried to calm a growing storm over euro zone crisis strategy on Sunday after the Bundesbank likened ECB bond-buying plans to a dangerous drug and a conservative ally of the German leader said Greece should leave the currency bloc by next year.

Angela Merkel reassured Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Friday that she wanted his country to stay in the euro zone, but gave no sign of ceding to his pleas for more time to meet the tough terms of Athens' international bailout.

Faced with Facebook, Starbucks and Angela Merkel, the market chose to focus on Merkel. For a second day, the U.S. stock market powered higher after European leaders, including German chancellor Merkel, pledged to protect the union of 17 countries that use the euro. The Dow Jones industrial average blew past 13,000, a key psychological marker that it hadn't hit since early May.

A collapse of the euro could derail America’s fragile recovery and doom Mr. Obama’s re-election hopes. He may be running out of time to sway the German chancellor.

Calls for Europe to take drastic steps to quell its economic crisis grew earsplitting this week, but the pleas had an intended audience of one: German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Seven decades after a war sparked by Germany brought Europe to ruin, the country’s neighbors see it as their only hope. Germany alone has the deep pockets to help struggling countries escape a worsening economic crisis that threatens to tear the region apart.

The German parliament approved a second, euro130 billion ($173 billion) loan package for Greece on Monday after Chancellor Angela Merkel warned lawmakers that it would be irresponsible to abandon the country to bankruptcy.

Germany and France clashed on Wednesday over whether the ECB should take bolder steps to stem the euro zone debt crisis, with Chancellor Angela Merkel issuing one of her starkest warnings yet against fiddling with the central bank's strict inflation-fighting mandate.

European leaders “have risen to the challenge,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed their July 21 summit a “historic turning point” and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean- Claude Juncker called it the “final package, of course,” to extinguish the debt inferno. Then they went on vacation. Before they returned to work, the deal fizzled.

The leaders of Germany and France, the eurozone's two biggest economies, say they have reached agreement on strengthening Europe's shaky banking sector.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought Tuesday to calm market fears that Greece is heading for a chaotic default as Europe struggles to contain a crippling financial crisis. Merkel rejected the notion that a Greek bankruptcy — a possibility raised a day earlier by her deputy that spooked markets — would provide a quick solution to the eurozone debt crisis.