“Who you gonna call?” wasn’t just a catchphrase in the 1984 film “Ghostbusters.” If the worst happens in Greece, Spain or Portugal, we’re going to hear it all over again, and Europe’s taxpayers will want to know the answer.
The European Union? The European Central Bank? Or the International Monetary Fund?
Senior officials, including ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, [...]

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Greece’s pledge to ramp up planned budget-deficit cuts by half failed to yield commitments of financial assistance from Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to help solve its financial crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a meeting tomorrow with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won’t be “about aid commitments.” Her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the deficit-reduction measures announced in Athens [...]

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BRUSSELS: Unemployment in the 16-nation eurozone remained at 9.9 percent in January, providing more evidence that Europe’s recovery from the worst recession in decades is a largely jobless one.
The crumb of comfort, for European statisticians if not for the unemployed, was that December’s first estimate of a double-digit unemployment rate was revised back to 9.9 [...]

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NEW YORK – Wall Street stocks rallied Thursday as sentiment was lifted by an EU pledge to help Greece stave off a debt crisis and better-than-expected US labour market data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average overcame a weak start and climbed 105.81 points (1.05 percent) to close at 10,144.19, rebounding from modest losses Wednesday.
The Nasdaq composite [...]

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BRUSSELS: EU heads of state and government will meet in Brussels Thursday for a summit focussed on supporting debt-laden Greece and preventing the crisis there from spreading to rest of the eurozone.
The Spanish EU presidency announced Wednesday that European nations would offer support to help Greece tackle its unprecedented deficit crisis, which poses a threat [...]

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Germany is considering loan guarantees for Greece and other troubled European countries, the Wall Street Journal reported, fueling hopes that the EU will work out some kind of rescue plan for debt-strapped Greece.
Germany’s Finance Ministry has reportedly been in discussions on such a plan with the head of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, and [...]

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Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said he can’t call for outside aid as his government struggles to cut the European Union’s largest budget deficit.
“The worst possible signal which we could send out is one calling for outside help,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Athens yesterday. “We will tackle [...]

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BRUSSELS: The European Union, shaken by Greece’s fiscal crisis and struggling to get its new institutions into gear, hopes to relaunch itself this week as leaders mull improved, coordinated economic governance.
Europe’s post-recession economic woes, highlighted by the swelling deficits of Greece and others, will be the focus of a European Union summit on Thursday.
The meeting [...]

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NEW YORK: Wall Street shares plunged on Thursday as weak US data combined with heightened fears of debt problems in European Union countries sent shockwaves through the markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 268.37 points (2.61 percent) to end at 10,002.18, its lowest level since November, after a brief dip below 10,000 points.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq [...]

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FRANKFURT: A European Central Bank meeting on Thursday will be dominated by concerns over debt-ridden Greece and other countries with high public deficits that have pushed the eurozone into its worst-ever crisis.
Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires expect the ECB’s main interest rate to stay at a record low of one per cent for most [...]

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