Bailout | featured news

Under the bright lights of a high school football field in Defiance, Ohio, Mitt Romney's opposition to the 2009 auto bailout reared its head again as a campaign issue that could help decide the result of this critical swing state.

The Spanish government said Wednesday it will decide within the next few weeks whether to ask for outside financial help, noting it might opt for a precautionary line of credit instead of bailout cash.

Spain could ask for financial aid from the euro zone next month and if it does the request would likely be dealt with alongside a revised loan program for Greece and a bailout for Cyprus in one big package, euro zone officials said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel got a hostile reception from many ordinary Greeks Tuesday when she flew into Athens on her first visit to the country since its debt crisis erupted three years ago....

Spain’s conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, is not known as a gambling man. But as Europe’s debt crisis stretches on, he is playing a tense game of chicken with the financial markets, betting that Spain can balance its books with homegrown austerity while putting off — maybe forever — a humiliating bailout from the European Union.

Spain is ready to request a euro zone bailout for its public finances as early as next weekend but Germany has signaled that it should hold off, European officials said on Monday. The latest twist in the euro zone's three-year-old sovereign debt crisis comes as financial markets and some other European partners are pressuring Madrid to seek a rescue program that would trigger European Central Bank buying of its bonds.

Euro zone states are preparing to allow the bloc's permanent bailout fund to leverage its capital in the same way as its predecessor so it can reach a capacity of more than 2 trillion euros and rescue big countries if necessary, Der Spiegel said on Sunday.

The German chancellor says it's a "good day for Germany and a good day for Europe". Better than that, it's been a good week. First, the European Central Bank delivered on its pledge to do more - possibly quite a lot more - to hold the euro together. Now the German constitutional court has ruled in favour the new European bailout fund, the ESM.

The Spanish economy is falling deeper into recession and depositors are pulling their money out of the banks, figures published on Tuesday showed, while the country's most economically important region, Catalonia, said it needed a major rescue from Madrid.

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.