Euro Leaders working on plans to save the Euro

Some 157 billion euros ($203 billion) in debt will mature in the 17-member euro area in the first three months of 2012, according to UBS AG. By the end of March, 2012, european leaders have pledged to draft a stricter rulebook for controlling government spending. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will meet in Berlin Jan. 9 to work out details.

On Dec. 30, when Spain’s new government said 2011’s budget deficit would reach 8 percent of output, 2 percent more than the previous government had projected and more than the 6.9 percent expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy responded by unveiling a new package of spending cuts and tax increases.

The key to the euro’s survival may lie with Italy, the group’s third-largest economy and the second most-indebted after Greece. The government in Rome must repay 53 billion euros in debt in the first quarter, about a third of the euro area’s total amount for the period, after Prime Minister Mario Monti passed an emergency budget package aimed at curtailing borrowing costs.

Italy’s 10-year yield ended 2011 near the 7 percent mark that led Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailouts. Spain’s equivalent yield finished the year just above 5 percent.

“If the Italian yields start to rise, you could quickly turn a manageable situation into an insolvent one,” Michael Spence, a professor of economics at New York University and a Nobel laureate, said on Bloomberg Television Dec. 28. “Italy needs time and Europe needs to help buy them some of the time.”

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