Greece's unemployment rate rose to a record 23.1% in May, complicating Athens' efforts to complete deep cuts demanded by international creditors that may involve laying off thousands of public employees, The Wall Street Journal reported. The youngest workers were hardest hit, with more than one in two Greeks, or 54.9%, between 15 and 24 years old looking for work, national statistics agency Elstat said. The jobless rate climbed from 22.6% overall and 51.5% for youths in April. A year earlier, the national average stood at 16.8% overall and 41.7% for 15-24 year olds.

Five years into the great financial crisis, central banks are still pushing back the boundaries of monetary policy only to encounter constant reminders of the limits of their power to revive growth, Reuters reported. The Bank of England's provision of cheap loans to fund new bank lending and Denmark's adoption of a negative deposit rate are the most recent evidence that central banks are far from running out of firepower.

Britain’s exports fell sharply in the second quarter, highlighting the difficulty the UK economy faces as it tries to recover amid slowing global growth, the Financial Times reported. Goods exports fell 3.1 per cent in volume terms as the UK recorded its biggest trade deficit for at least 15 years. David Tinsley, economist at BNP Paribas. described the data a “spectacularly bad”. The rumbling crisis in the eurozone, the destination of about 40 per cent of the UK’s exports, has been compounded by slowing growth in the US and emerging markets such as China.

New research from the Central Bank has shown that the number of mortgage top-up loans for equity release has fallen by 97 per cent since the peak of the property boom, the Irish Times reported. The research showed that between 2005 and 2006, €5.5 billion of mortgage top-up loans were drawn-down annually, accounting for a third of all loans issued and 15 per cent of new loan balances.

The charge for bad loans at National Irish Bank will remain high for the remainder of the year before falling, the head of the Danish bank’s Republic of Ireland operations said, as the bank reported a pretax loss of €401 million for the first half of the year, the Irish Times reported. Loan impairments fell 7 per cent to €391 million for the first half, but NIB made a similar loss to the deficit posted for the first six months of 2011 as costs increased by 54 per cent to cover the closure of the bank’s 27 branches and laying off a further 100 staff.

Suggestions of a split in German policy over the way ahead in tackling the crisis in the eurozone, between the government in Berlin and the Bundesbank in Frankfurt, are exaggerated, according to officials in the German capital, the Financial Times reported. But battle lines are opening between the leading political parties in the country over the need for the largest economy in the eurozone to play a more generous role in supporting its debt-laden partners, as the main contenders seek to break a stalemate in the polls 13 months ahead of next year’s general election.

More corporate storm clouds gathered over Spain, as two major European companies on Wednesday joined those that have said they are taking steps to reduce exposure to the recession-hit country, The Wall Street Journal reported. Dutch financial services company ING Groep NV said it has taken aggressive steps to reduce its exposure to Spain, as it seeks to tackle a funding imbalance that could pose a serious threat should Spain eventually exit the euro zone.

Iceland was brought to the brink of bankruptcy when its biggest banks failed four years ago. Now, the site of the world’s most spectacular financial collapse is becoming a pioneer in banking reform, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. “We’ve been burned by this and that’s why we have to look very closely at what we need to do to prevent it happening again,” Economy MinisterSteingrimur J. Sigfusson said in an interview.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said the bank will "do all it can" to pull the economy out of recession, signaling further bond purchases using freshly created money, but ruling out a near-term cut in the key interest rate, The Wall Street Journal reported. Presenting the BOE's quarterly inflation report, in which the bank lowered its growth and inflation forecasts, Mr. King said the BOE will do its utmost to support the economy, and indicated that support will be channeled through a program known as quantitative easing that already totals 375 billion pounds ($585.79 billion).

A chill is wafting over France’s business class as Mr. Hollande, the country’s first Socialist president since François Mitterrand in the 1980s, presses a manifesto of patriotism to “pay extra tax to get the country back on its feet again.” The 75 percent tax proposal, which Parliament plans to take up in September, is ostensibly aimed at bolstering French finances as Europe’s long-running debt crisis intensifies, the International Herald Tribune reported.