Europe Debt Crisis, Eurozone | featured news

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.

U.S. stock futures are back up near Wednesday's opening price this morning as investors continue to focus firmly on Italy. Yesterday the Dow dropped almost 400 points as Italian bond yields surged past the 7% mark that is seen as the point of no return. At a time when the country has a lot of debt to refinance, borrowing costs are seen as unsustainable.

Stocks jumped more than 2 percent at the open on Thursday after European leaders agreed to boost the region's bailout fund and struck a deal with banks and insurers to accept 50 percent losses on Greek bonds.

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 country that seems to crop up more and more in the current eurozone discussions is Italy, but why should it be affected by the Greek crisis?

European Union leaders made some progress toward a strategy to fight the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis on Sunday, nearing agreement on bank recapitalization and on how to leverage their rescue fund to try to stop bond market contagion.

A top bank lobbyist insisted Saturday that banks and the eurozone are far from reaching a deal to cut Greece's debt, despite claims by eurozone finance ministers that they will ask banks to take steeper losses on their Greek bonds.

The world's leading economies pressed Europe on Saturday to act decisively within eight days to resolve the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis which is endangering the world economy.

Slovakian lawmakers on Thursday approved expanding the size and powers of the EU bailout fund, overcoming an earlier rejection and removing the last hurdle to the fund's use as the continent's main weapon against the debt crisis.

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