BRUSSELS: EU leaders are under increasing pressure to lend support to cash-strapped Greece when they meet in Brussels on Thursday, with attention
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On Wednesday, finance ministers from the European single currency area planned phone talks with European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet, a European Commission spokesman said, in an attempt to firm up a deal.
So sensitive are the markets that the news Trichet was leaving a central bankers' meeting in Sydney early to attend the EU summit on Thursday was enough to bolster speculation that a deal was in the works.
That in turn eased worries over Europe's debt troubles and brought most markets higher following a rally on Wall Street.
It's the kind of boost that the EU leaders are hoping to encourage.
"At the moment it's a vicious circle," one EU insider said. "You have the Greek crisis, then massive media coverage that then leads to market movements which makes the crisis worse, which leads to more media speculation."
The 27 heads of state and government will begin meeting at 10:15 (0915 GMT) Thursday for their emergency summit focussed on the economic crisis in Europe.
The meeting was called by new EU president Herman Van Rompuy, who is emerging from the self-imposed shadows where he has dwelt since his appointment to the post in December.
So far "there is no agreement" on a plan to help Greece, which is suffering under a massive budget deficit which is heightening fears that Athens will find borrowing increasingly difficult, one informed source said.
However the signs were multiplying that a support mechanism for Greece will emerge.
An official from the conservative party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated that preparations were underway in Berlin for a support plan.
Germany is looking to lead an EU "firewall" to contain the Greek debt crisis, possibly by guaranteeing loans to calm fears of a government default, press reports said on Wednesday.
The Financial Times Deutschland said Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was working on both a bilateral basis and at the European level on putting together a package to help Athens.
A "standing facility" to show that money is available, a kind of cheque guarantee, is being considered to provide market confidence for Greece.
"If this can be done by providing some extra standing facility that may or may not in due course have to be used that would in itself be very helpful," one EU official said.
Athens is pressing on with efforts to slash expenditure and raise revenue to narrow its 12.7 percent deficit -- more than four times the eurozone limit of three percent of gross domestic product that a host of European countries are also flouting.
The Greek crisis has driven up borrowing costs for governments across Europe, with pressure mounting on a number of other heavily-indebted eurozone members, and sent the euro sliding against the dollar.
Royal Bank of Scotland economist Jacques Cailloux said a facility of 50 or 100 billion euros available to Greece would act as a useful riot shield.
Other forms of aid could also be considered.
10 Feb 2010, 0233 hrs IST, | |||||||
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| SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Tuesday gave its free email service a "Buzz," adding Twitter and Facebook style social networking features. Google Buzz product manager Todd Jackson equated the enhanced offering to "an entirely new world in Gmail" during an unveiling presentation at the Internet giant's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Buzz began rolling out on Tuesday with Google Web-based email service getting updates about what friends are doing online and ways to share video, photos and other digitized snippets with others of one's choosing. As is the case with wildly popular microblogging service Twitter, Buzz lets users "follow" people that share updates with the world. Google also unveiled a handful of new products designed to make the new social networking features suited to mobile devices, like smartphones based on Google's Android operating system. Google's move comes as a direct challenge to social-networking stars Facebook and Twitter, which thrive on enabling people to share experiences, activities and thoughts as they go through their days. In addition to the Buzz features for Gmail, Google said it is launching a special mobile application for Buzz, as well as weaving Buzz technology into the mobile versions of its flagship Web site and its maps products. Google has tried to ride the social networking wave before, launching the Orkut social network in 2004. But while Orkut is big in certain overseas markets, like Brazil, it has failed to attract as many users as social giants like Facebook and MySpace in the United States. In building a social network on top of an email product, Google is following in the footsteps of Yahoo, which has taken a similar approach in efforts to keep up with Facebook. Yahoo! added a similar feature to its email program, Yahoo Mail, last year, allowing users to see whether friends have uploaded a photo to a photo-sharing site such as Flickr. In what could signal an escalating battle between Google and Facebook, the leading social-networking service celebrated its sixth birthday last week with changes that included a new message inbox that echoes the Gmail format. Gmail is the third most popular Web based email in the world, with 176.5 million unique visitors in December, according to comScore. Microsoft Corp's Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Inc's Mail were No 1 and No 2, with 369.2 million unique visitors and 303.7 million unique visitors respectively. | |||||||
Src: ET