Euro zone agrees 800 billion euro firewall: Austria

Euro zone finance ministers have agreed to boost the currency bloc's debt crisis firewall to roughly 800 billion euros , Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter said on Friday. After what sources called ...

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Friday on a temporary increase in their financial rescue capacity to prevent a new flare-up of Europe's sovereign debt crisis, but markets may judge it too small to be convincing. Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter said the 17-nation currency area would combine two rescue funds for a year to make more money available in case of emergency. She put the total figure at some 800 billion euros, but that appeared to include money already spent to conjure up a more impressive headline number for investors. ...

Now that Merkel has caved in on virtually everything else, is it time for her to cave in on use of leverage for the ESM? Please consider German deputy minister says ESM leverage being discussed. German Deputy Finance Minister Steffen Kampeter said on Monday there is a discussion going on in Europe about leveraging the new permanent bailout scheme for the euro zone - and he promised that Germany's parliament would be consulted.

Eurozone bureaucrats keep upping the ante as to how big a "firewall" is needed. And at every critical juncture, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has proven she is nothing but a liar. With every demand for additional firepower, comes an inevitable cave-in from Merkel supporting the move, no matter what she says in advance. Meanwhile, the entire idea that firewalls can accomplish anything is ludicrous, given the key point that no currency unions in the absence of fiscal unions cannot and will not work.

Eurozone countries have agreed to boost their firewall against the debt crisis to about 800 billion euros ($1.07 trillion), Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter announced on Friday.Speaking to reporters as ministers held a meeting on the issue here, Fekter said the final figure agreed on was "in total, over 800 billion and that "this 800 billion is a trillion US dollars and that is roughly the defined firewall."

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is pushing to double the size of Europe's permanent bailout fund to one billion euros ($1.3 billion), a German media report to be published on Monday said.News weekly Der Spiegel said Monti wanted the planned 500-billion-euro European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which is scheduled to replace the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in July, to have twice the firepower to help stricken states.