Business and Finance

Financial markets pounded Italy on Wednesday as investors hoped that Premier Silvio Berlusconi would not linger in office and delay reforms. Italy’s president responded by declaring there was no doubt that Berlusconi would leave soon, appearing to soothe investors.

In another chaotic day driven by the European debt crisis, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 240 points in New York morning trading after Italy’s borrowing costs soared to a new record high. Traders were troubled by signs that Europe’s unending debt crisis was enveloping Italy _ the eurozone’s third-largest economy, a nation too big for Europe to bail out.

And across the Ionian Sea, Greek lawmakers labored for a third day but finally came up with a deal to create an interim government to pass the country’s new debt deal. Outgoing Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who was expected to formally resign with hours, wished the next prime minister well but gave no indication of who it would be.

Berlusconi has pledged to resign after the Italian parliament passes the financial reforms that European officials have been demanding for months. The process can take up to two weeks, but President Giorgio Napolitano said that would be accelerated to days, allowing him to quickly begin talks on forming a new government or calling new elections.

“Fears are totally unfounded that Italy may experience a long period of inactivity,” Napolitano said, adding that “emergency measures” could be adopted at any time.

Italy’s key borrowing rate spiked to a high of 7.40 percent on Wednesday, up 0.82 percentage points from the previous day, as markets expressed concern about how swift and complete Italy’s political transition would be. That’s over the level that eventually forced other eurozone countries like Greece and Portugal to seek bailouts.

They settled down to 7.26 percent after Napolitano’s remarks.

“Berlusconi is the supreme political maneuverer. And no one will believe he has resigned until, yes, he has done so. Simple as that,” said Jan Randolph, head of sovereign risk analysis at IHS Global Insight.

No one is suggesting that Italy is headed for an immediate bailout. Randolph said it will take a while for the higher borrowing rate to cause problems for Italy’s “mountain of debt.”

“With a catastrophic scenario _ and it seems we are facing now a catastrophic scenario _ maybe Berlusconi can be pushed to support a new government. Or maybe his party will crumble,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political analyst at Rome’s LUISS University.

Noted economist Nouriel Roubini, who has lived in Italy, expressed a similar view on Twitter: “Yields at 7%: markets are telling Berlusconi to leave NOW. They don’t buy his scheme of pretending to leave in 2 weeks after budget is passed.”

D’Alimonte said investors are hoping for a technocratic government, led by former EU competition commissioner Mario Monti, who now runs the prestigious Bocconi University. Berlusconi and his allies claim such a solution would be undemocratic, however, because the conservatives won the last election.

With debts of around euro1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion), Italy is considered too big for Europe to bail out. Higher borrowing rates will make it more difficult and expensive for Italy to roll over its debts. It has over euro300 billion ($412 billion) to raise in 2012 alone.

The European Central Bank has been buying up Italian bonds to keep yields at reasonable rates _ but Randolph said that is just throwing good money after bad.

“You can bring yields down, but they can’t keep them down unless the borrowing government takes concrete steps to improve creditworthiness,” Randolph said. “Seven percent is not sustainable over several years.”

Italy needs to pass the additional austerity measures and structural reforms pledged by Berlusconi to world leaders at an economic summit last week.

Any delays in the financial reforms or in establishing a new, stable Italian government spook the markets, which are already unnerved since some investors in Greece are going to lose 50 percent of their holdings. Investors fear a so-called “haircut” could also affect those owning Italian bonds if Italy doesn’t get its act together.

“Markets attack weak animals like lions,” said political analyst Franco Pavoncello, president of Rome’s John Cabot University. “Italy is perceived as being extremely weak politically, which is too bad because economically it is not too weak.”

In the meantime, Berlusconi is not yet out _ and there is considerable uncertainty of what kind of government will follow.

While Berlusconi is not running for office again, he told the La Stampa daily he would remain active as the founder of his political party and would help out in any political campaigns.

Berlusconi wants new elections soon with his hand-picked successor, former justice minister Angelino Alfano, as a candidate. The 75-year-old leader tapped Alfano to head his People of Liberties Party a few months ago. At 41, Alfano represents a new generation of center-right politicians after 17 years of Berlusconi leadership.

But D’Alimonte said Berlusconi would still be pulling the strings.

“He will be the major protagonist of the next election. He will push Mr. Alfano as the candidate, but he will direct the orchestra. Alfano will be the first violin,” D’Alimonte said.

The rising bond yields underline the quandary European officials find themselves in as they try to come up with an effective backstop for indebted countries, one with enough financial muscle to support the eurozone’s No. 3 economy. European governments decided last month to increase the effective power of their euro440 billion ($600 billion) rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, which is considered too small to bail out Italy.

European finance ministers are still working on the complex details of how to increase the fund’s effective lending power to over euro1 trillion ($1.36 trillion) by having it partially insure government debt or by attracting outside investors. There are doubts among outside economists about whether either method will work.

The European Central Bank thus remains the only available outside firewall available against Italy’s rising yields. It has been buying government bonds in the secondary market, which drives down borrowing costs for Italy.

But the bank has warned the program is only temporary. New ECB president Mario Draghi _ himself an Italian _ said last week it was “pointless” for European governments to expect outside help to drive down interest rates and the only solution was for them to reform their own finances.

Some analysts have speculated the ECB may be deliberately limiting its bond purchases to keep the pressure on Italy’s reluctant government to push ahead with economic reforms

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It sounded like a can’t-miss proposition: Buy the winners, drop the losers.

Developing countries from Brazil to China are expanding much faster than aging economies in the U.S. and Europe, where borrowing during the boom years has been a drag on growth. So the smart money bought stocks in emerging markets, expecting that rapid economic expansion there would provide better rewards. This year, that bet hasn’t worked out.

The broadest measure of U.S. stocks, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, is down just 0.4 percent this year. Markets in Brazil, China and the like have lagged far behind, even though their economies are still growing faster than the U.S.

“If you were anywhere in the world other than in the S&P 500 this year, you got crushed,” said Greg Peterson, director of research at Ballentine Partners, an investment advisory firm.

The main reason emerging market stocks have suffered deeper losses isn’t because their economies are suddenly sluggish. Analysts say it’s because people have been worried about the European debt crisis and a possible recession in the U.S. It may seem unfair, but when fear of another financial crisis strikes money managers, they tend to flee emerging markets and stay closer to home.

This summer, panicked money managers dropped the most risky investments first. That meant bonds from deeply indebted countries like Italy and Portugal, small companies in the U.S and emerging market stocks got hit the hardest. Even gold, an asset normally considered safe, dropped as traders shifted money into dollars.

“There was a globalization of fear,” says Nathalie Wallace, a senior portfolio manager at Batterymarch Financial Management.

The same thing happened when the U.S. financial crisis hit in 2008. The S&P 500 fell 38.5 percent for the year. But the MSCI Emerging Market index, made up of countries where the banks didn’t peddle subprime mortgage bonds, plummeted 47.3 percent.

“Anytime you see risk and fear coming, you see emerging markets get hit a bit more,” Wallace says. “It doesn’t mean the underlying fundamentals of the economy have changed.”

Consider the collection of emerging-market rising stars known as the BRICs, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. All have economies whose growth exceeds the U.S.

_ Brazil: The economy has expanded 3.1 percent over the past year. The benchmark Bovespa has lost 15.3 percent.

_ Russia: Economic growth of 5.1 percent. The Micex has dropped 11.1 percent this year even after a 10 percent rebound in the past month.

_ India: Economic growth of 7.7 percent. The BSE Sensex index is down 14.4 percent.

_ China: Economic growth of 9.1 percent. The Shanghai Composite has slumped 10 percent this year.

By contrast, the U.S. economy has expanded 1.6 percent over the past 12 months. That’s sluggish compared to the developing world’s stars. And worries that the U.S. could slip into a recession, or that Europe’s debt crisis could tip it into one, have weighed on investors for months. Even after those fears dragged down stocks nearly 20 percent in a month, the S&P 500 outshines indexes in nearly all of the world’s fastest growing economies.

In fact, if you rank the U.S. against emerging markets this year, it places ahead of 20 countries and behind just one, Indonesia.

China and other emerging markets long relied on shipping toys, timber and other goods to consumers in the U.S. and Europe. Trade helped them grow. But that has a downside, says Tim Morris, a portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan’s asset management unit. When a small country hitches its fortunes to U.S. shoppers, it’s bound to suffer when the U.S. economy slows down.

A related problem for many emerging market countries is that they’re dominated by energy and material producers, the type of companies most vulnerable to a global slowdown. Todd Henry, an emerging markets equity specialist at T. Rowe Price, points to Brazil, a country that isn’t as dependent on exports for growth. “It’s a relatively closed economy,” Henry says. “But commodity and energy companies make up a large part of their stock market. So if the world is slowing down, that gets priced in.”

The largest company in Brazil’s stock index is the oil giant Petrobras. When the U.S. economy looks weak, the price of oil falls and the companies that sell oil fall, too. That pushes down Petrobras, which tugs on the Bovespa. In other words, when the U.S. has the sniffles, Brazil’s stock market still catches a cold.

“Americans tend to think our problems are limited to the U.S.,” says Richard Bernstein, chief executive officer of Richard Bernstein Advisors LLC. “But our problems are their problems, too.”

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Europe failed to get the leaders of the world’s wealthiest economies to help out with its debt troubles, but everyone left a G-20 summit Friday relieved that at least they forced the Greek prime minister not to hold the world hostage with a bailout vote.

It took a public berating of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, and Greece’s politics are in upheaval as a result, but the shaky bailout plan appears back on track for now.

Investors had been hoping the Group of 20 nations would lend the struggling eurozone a helping hand _ but the G-20 leaders said Europe needs to help itself first. They said the International Monetary Fund could be beefed up to help more, but not for at least three more months.

The debt crisis that rocked the 17-nation currency union for the past two years has reached a new high and now threatens to push the world economy into a second recession.

Despite the political firepower at the summit _ which included the leaders of Europe, China, Russia, Brazil, India and the United States, among others _ meeting was overshadowed by political turmoil in Greece and worries about Italy, which accepted IMF supervision of its reform efforts.

The IMF move was an highly unusual intervention into the affairs of one of the world’s leading economies.

Europe’s own rescue efforts, cobbled together at several crisis meetings last week, left open many important questions, making cash-rich countries like China, Russia or Brazil reluctant to commit more than just words.

“It’s important that the IMF sees its resources reinforced,” Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, told reporters. However, any decisions on how to reinforce the IMF were left until February.

The lack of detail disappointed markets, with stocks, bonds and the euro falling. Italy’s borrowing rates, in particular, hit worrying new highs.

With their own finances already stretched from bailing out Greece, Ireland and Portugal _ and traditional allies like the United States wrestling with their own problems _ eurozone countries were looking to the IMF to use its financial reserves and rescue experience to help prevent the debt crisis from spreading to its larger economies, such as Italy and Spain.

The most likely way the eurozone could still get additional financing is through a special account under the auspices of the IMF, into which individual countries could make payments. Those investments in turn could then be used to boost the currency union’s own bailout fund, the euro440 billion ($606 billion) European Financial Stability Facility.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF chief Christine Lagarde both said that at the two-day meeting not a single country made a firm commitment that it would participate payday loans with no fax.

The broader increase of the IMF’s resources, which also remained vague, is designed to help countries around the world, not just the eurozone.

Barroso said several countries had indicated they would provide bilateral loans to the IMF _ which would give it more funds without collecting money from reluctant members like the U.S.

The G-20 final statement also said the IMF should somehow issue more special drawing rights, or SDRs, the fund’s own reserve currency that can be exchanged for cash with central banks around the world. SDRs can just be created and do not require new commitments from IMF member states.

Finance ministers will now have to work out the details of these measures. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the G-20 would next deal with the topic in February.

The lack of progress on the debt crisis troubled some countries that would be hard hit by another recession in the eurozone.

“Every day that the eurozone crisis continues, every day it isn’t resolved, is a day that has a chilling effect on the rest of the world economy,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron. “We are ready to do our part to help stabilize the world economy. … But you can’t ask the IMF or other countries to substitute for the action that needs to be taken within the eurozone itself.”

The G-20 announcements show how dramatically the powers have shifted within the IMF.

Until two years ago, the IMF _ dominated by the traditional powers in Europe and the U.S. _ mostly applied its painful financial adjustment programs to poor and emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Now, it’s growing powers like China, Brazil and South Africa that have to decide whether helping Europe is a worthy investment.

In an effort to do just that, Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy with a debt load of 120 percent of gross domestic product, asked the IMF for help monitoring promised budgetary and structural reforms on a quarterly basis.

The country’s borrowing rates have risen sharply this week _ and jumped further on Friday _ on fears that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi does not have the political strength to implement the reforms.

Lagarde said the IMF hopes to start checking whether Italian measures promised to the eurozone are actually implemented by the end of November, to target “a lack of credibility.”

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Unemployment rates fell in about three-quarters of large U.S. cities in September, a sign that the nation’s modest job gains that month occurred across most of the country.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that unemployment rates fell in 280 large metro areas from August to September. They rose in 61 and were unchanged in 31. That’s the largest number of cities to see a decline since April.

Nationwide, employers added a net 103,000 jobs in September. And the unemployment rate was 9.1 percent for the third straight month. The job gains were only about enough to keep up with population growth. The economy needs to generate at least twice September’s total to reduce the unemployment rate.

Unlike national and state data, metro unemployment figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal changes. Many of the areas with the sharpest drops in unemployment were cities with large universities. They likely added jobs at the start of the academic year.

State College, Penn., home to Penn State University, reported the biggest drop in unemployment in September. Its rate fell to 5.1 percent from 6.5 percent in August. Grand Forks, N.D., site of the University of North Dakota, reported the next-largest drop, to 4.1 percent from 5 percent.

Meanwhile, many of the cities with the biggest increases in unemployment were coastal cities, where many summer employees likely lost jobs Business Card Holders.

Unemployment in Ocean City, N.J., rose to 9 percent in September, from 7.9 percent the previous month. The second-biggest rise was in Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss., on the Gulf of Mexico, where the rate jumped to 9.8 percent from 8.7 percent.

Other cities with big increases included Myrtle Beach, S.C., a popular beach resort, and Barnstable Town, Mass., part of the Cape Cod area.

Bismarck, N.D., registered the lowest unemployment rate at 2.5 percent. The next-lowest were Fargo, N.D., at 3.3 percent and Lincoln, Neb., at 3.5 percent.

Among cities with 1 million or more residents, Oklahoma City had the lowest rate, 5.5 percent. Oklahoma has benefited from its oil and gas production and high prices for grains and other agricultural communities.

El Centro, Calif., reported the highest rate, at 29.6 percent, followed by Yuma, Ariz., at 27 percent. They are adjacent counties with heavy farm economies and large contingents of migrant labor.

Las Vegas had the highest unemployment rate among cities with populations of 1 million or more: 13.6 percent.

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Two European Union leaders have called on the upcoming G-20 summit of wealthy and developing countries to build on EU plans to stabilize the debt-burdened eurozone and further boost the global recovery.

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso wrote in a letter to G-20 leaders that there was “continued need for joint action” to get the world economy back on track.

A three-pronged deal reached last Thursday by the EU appears to have met expectations for some kind of major action, and stock markets rallied in Europe and around the world in response. The EU plan retools the eurozone’s underpowered bailout fund, calls on banks to take 50 percent losses on Greek bonds, and orders them to raise euro106 billion ($150 billion) in new capital by June.

The buoyant mood could be shortlived if G-20 leaders do not use their summit in Cannes, France, on Thursday and Friday to build on those achievements, the two leaders said in their letter payday loans online.

“Whilst we in Europe will play our part, this cannot alone ensure global recovery and rebalanced growth. There is a continued need for joint action by all G20 partners,” the letter, sent out on Saturday, said.

“More needs to be done at the global level. Many of the distortions underlying the large pre-crisis imbalances are still to be addressed,” the two warned.

U.S. President Barack Obama has already said the European plan to tackle the its debt crisis would have an impact on the U.S. economy, but stopped short of saying whether it would be enough to prevent another global recession.

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WASHINGTON

World stock markets rose Friday, putting aside concerns that European leaders might not come up with a comprehensive plan to deal with the region’s chronic debt crisis in time for a weekend summit.

Oil prices hovered above $86 per barrel and the dollar was higher against the euro but dipped against the yen.

European shares were higher in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.5 percent to 5,411.82. Germany’s DAX was 0.6 percent higher at 5,802.16 and France’s CAC-40 added 1 percent to 3,115.71. Wall Street was set to open higher, with Dow Jones industrial futures up 0.1 percent at 11,482 and S&P 500 futures 0.1 percent higher at 1,211.50.

Asian gains were muted after a sluggish start of the trading day.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closed little changed at 8,678.89. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.2 percent to 18,025.72. South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.8 percent to 1,838.38 and benchmarks in Singapore and Taiwan also rose.

Thailand’s SET index was up 0.5 percent to 914.08, clawing back some of Thursday’s losses even as the country’s capital Bangkok braced for the possibility that floodwaters will defeat a network of barriers and inundate the city.

Mainland Chinese shares lost ground, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index falling 0.6 percent to 2,317.28, its lowest close in 31 months. The Shenzhen Composite Index lost 1.6 percent to 959.12. Shares in financials led gains while shares in glass and nonferrous metals weakened.

Worries that Europe’s troubles could get worse have kept markets on edge for weeks, and analysts said the volatility could continue for the near future.

“What you see now is one day of gains and one day of losses,” said Tom Kaan of Louis Capital Markets in Hong Kong. “With what has been happening in the world, there is still no confidence and I think this will continue to the end of the year.”

The Greek government is widely expected to go through some kind of default or restructuring of its debt, which could deliver a severe blow to an already weak European economy.

Signs of a modest economic uptick in the U.S. helped boost shares of Japanese exporters that count on American consumers for sales. Yamaha Motor Corp. rose 2.7 percent and Panasonic Corp. was 1.6 percent higher.

Heavy equipment shares also rose. Japan’s Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. gained 1.2 percent and South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. added 2.2 percent.

But shares of Japanese automotive giants Honda Motor Corp. and Toyoto Motor Corp. slipped after severe flooding forced a halt to their assembly lines in Thailand. Honda fell 0.4 percent and Toyota, 0.2 percent.

Samsung Electronics Co. rose 1.4 percent after the company announced it had surpassed Apple Inc. in smartphone sales in the July-September quarter. Yonhap news agency cited Shin Jong-kyun, president of Samsung’s mobile division, as estimating that the company had shipped more than 20 million smartphones in the third quarter.

Wall Street trading was choppy as talks in Europe appeared to falter because of differences between Germany and France over how to protect European banks from the consequences of a default.

A messy default by Greece could lead to deep losses for European banks that hold Greek debt. If that causes them to pull back on lending to each other, it could cause another freeze in global credit markets like the one in late 2008 after Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Wall Street rose slightly Thursday on news that a second summit meeting would take place next week after it became clear that France and Germany would not be able to bridge their difference in time for Sunday’s meeting.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended up 0.3 percent to close at 11,541.78. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.5 percent to 1,215.39. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.2 percent to 2,598.62.

But analysts cautioned investors to rein in expectations of a solution to Europe’s debt crisis.

“Whether this Sunday’s EU Summit can live up to investor expectations remains to be seen … the precedent set by previous summits already bodes ill for detailing of any new policy initiatives,” Credit Agricole CIB wrote in a research note.

Sunday’s summit was supposed to deliver a comprehensive plan to finally get a grip on the currency union’s debt troubles. But French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday they needed more time after it became clear that the two countries disagreed on some key points of the plan.

Benchmark crude for December delivery was up 16 cents at $86.23 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 22 cents to settle at $86.07 in New York on Thursday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.3721 from $1.3777 late Thursday in New York. The dollar fell to 76.70 yen from 76.85 yen.

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Regulators have closed small banks in Georgia, North Carolina and New Jersey, boosting to 79 the number of U.S. bank failures this year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday seized Piedmont Community Bank of Gray, Ga., with $201.7 million in assets and $181.4 million in deposits. It also shuttered Blue Ridge Savings Bank, based in Asheville, N.C., with $161 million in assets and $158.7 million in deposits. Also closed was First State Bank in Cranford, N.J., with $204.4 million in assets and $201.2 million in deposits.

The failure of Piedmont Community Bank is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $71.6 million. That of Blue Ridge Savings Bank is expected to cost $38 million, and that of First State Bank, $45.8 million.

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The leaders of Germany and France, the eurozone’s two biggest economies, said Sunday they have reached an agreement about how to strengthen Europe’s shaky banking sector amid the region’s debt crisis.

“We are determined to do the necessary to ensure the recapitalization of Europe’s banks,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel following talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin.

A “comprehensive response” to the eurozone’s debt crisis will be finalized by month’s end, including a detailed plan on recapitalizing the banks, Sarkozy said at Berlin’s chancellery.

“The economy needs secure financing to ensure growth. There is no prospering economy without stable banks,” he said. “That is what is at stake.”

However, both leaders declined to name a price tag for the new measures or elaborate further, saying the proposal must first be discussed with other European leaders.

Analysts have urged the eurozone to identify all the banks in the region that need to replenish their capital reserves, then decide whether to compel them to raise that money on the open markets and to provide government financing to the ones that can’t.

Many experts say the capital cushions of many European banks must be strengthened in order to withstand a possible government bond default by Greece. Some analysts fear that a Greek default could cause a severe credit squeeze that would even threaten banks not exposed directly to Greece’s debt because banks could be afraid to lend to each other.

The credit freeze following the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 choked off lending to the wider economy and caused a deep recession.

Merkel did not provide details Sunday about how the recapitalization would work, saying only that all banks across the eurozone would be measured by the same criteria in coordination with, among others, the European Banking Authority and the International Monetary Fund.

Any solution must be “sustainable,” Merkel added.

Sarkozy said the French-German accord on the proposal “is total.”

Germany and France will now submit their proposal to shore up Europe’s shaky banking sector to other European Union governments ahead of an Oct. 17-18 summit of the bloc’s 27 leaders in Brussels, they said.

Both leaders expressed confidence that a comprehensive European response to the crisis will be finalized before a summit of the G-20 most developed nations in France Nov. 3-4.

“The global economy needs this summit to become a success, and the European Union will do its part” to ensure a positive outcome, Merkel said.

The IMF has said banks across the continent might need up to euro200 billion ($267 billion) in new capital. The EU disputes the IMF’s estimate, but has warned that lending between banks and from banks to businesses is threatening to freeze up.

Earlier this week, Merkel said that banks must first seek to raise new capital on the market before turning to their government, insisting that the eurozone’s newly strengthened euro440 billion ($590 billion) bailout fund would then only serve as a backstop if a member state can’t cope with shoring up its banks’ capital.

France, however, was reported to favor turning to the fund’s resources right away instead of relying on a national facility to re-capitalize its banks _ who are among the biggest holders of Greek bonds.

But Sarkozy sought on Sunday to dispel the notion of different approaches regarding the European Financial Stability Facility, saying “there are no disagreements.”

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and his French counterpart, Francois Baroin, also took part in the two leaders’ discussions.

Merkel and Sarkozy were set to have a working dinner following the news conference they gave at the chancellery.

Germany and France, which together represent about half of the 17-nation currency zone’s economic output, regularly hold talks before EU summits to chart out joint positions.

The implosion of Belgian lender Dexia following its sizable exposure to Greek and other eurozone sovereign debt, meanwhile, added a sense of urgency to the talks.

France, Belgium and Luxembourg announced Sunday they had approved a plan for the future of the embattled bank, but they offered no details. France and Belgium became part owners of the bank during a euro6 billion ($7.8 billion) 2008 bailout.

While an all-out Greek default appears unlikely, bondholders might still face severe losses, with some analysts maintaining that Greece’s debt must be cut by about 50 percent or more to attain a sustainable level.

Private bondholders agreed in July to take about a 20 percent cut on their holdings of Greek bonds as their participation in a second international euro109 billion bailout for the country.

But Finance Minister Schaeuble on Sunday joined Merkel and other eurozone officials in hinting that the agreement might have to be renegotiated.

“It is possible that we have so far assumed an insufficient percentage of debt reduction,” he told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Such a move will be discussed after the so-called troika of Greece’s international creditors _ European Central Bank, European Commission and IMF _ submits its next progress report later this month, Schaeuble was quoted as saying.

Greece is currently struggling to meet budget and reform targets, but it needs an over all positive progress assessment by the troika to qualify for the next euro8 billion ($11 billion) installment of its euro110 billion package of international bailout loans to avoid bankruptcy.

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Thursday that his government will expropriate homes on the Caribbean resort islands of Los Roques, saying the structures were built on plots bought in shadowy business deals.

Chavez has nationalized hundreds of privately owned companies since taking office in 1999, but this is the first time he has targeted private homes for expropriation.

Chavez offered no details regarding the planned seizures of private homes and quaint inns, known in Spanish as “posadas.”

“There are some houses that were illegally built. We’re going to take them over,” he said on television from the presidential palace.

The president said the government would build state-run inns on Los Roques, which is an archipelago of tiny islands offering snorkeling and scuba diving along numerous coral reefs and deserted white-sand beaches.

Lying 95 miles (150 kilometers) off the mainland, Los Roques is immensely popularly with foreign tourists seeking natural beauty and tranquility.

The archipelago is a paradise for nature lovers cheap business cards. More than 280 fish species, including rainbow-colored parrot fish and yellow striped angel fish, dance around divers in the crystalline waters. Brown boobies and scarlet ibises are among the dozens of bird species found on the islands.

Chavez’s government has nationalized hundreds of businesses including cement makers, retail stores and steel mills as part of his drive to establish a socialist economic model in Venezuela. Authorities have also seized large swaths of agricultural land deemed idle by officials, turning parcels over to poor peasants.

Chavez spoke before meeting with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin at the presidential palace. They discussed military cooperation and bilateral projects, including the creation of a $4 billion joint development bank that would be used to finance construction of housing and a natural gas pipeline in Venezuela.

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