NEW YORK TIMES: — Responding to increasingly urgent calls from across Europe and the United States, Spain on Saturday agreed to accept a bailout for its cash-starved banks as European finance ministers offered an aid package of up to $125 billion.
European leaders hope the promise of such a large package, made in an emergency conference call with Spain, will quell rising financial turmoil ahead of elections in Greece that they fear could further shake world markets.
The decision made Spain the fourth and largest European country to agree to accept emergency assistance as part of the continuing debt crisis. The aid offered by countries that use the euro was nearly three times the $46 billion in extra capital the International Monetary Fund said was the minimum that the wobbly Spanish banking sector needed to guard against a deepening of the country’s economic crisis… (more)
