Countries around the world envy Germany's economic success and look up to it as a role model. But a closer look reveals a much bleaker picture. Only a few are benefiting from the boom, while stagnant wages and precarious employment conditions are making it difficult for millions to make ends meet, Spiegel Online reported. "Prosperity for all" was once the credo of Ludwig Erhard, the first economics minister of postwar Germany. This promise shaped the country for decades and set it apart from many other economies. But how much is this promise still worth today?

Shares in Spain's fourth-biggest listed bank, Bankia, fell sharply Tuesday after the government said it would inject public money in the lender this week to clean up huge bad loans, Agence France-Presse reported. On Monday shares in Bankia, which has the industry's largest exposure to the property market at 37.5 billion euros ($49 billion), had lost 3.26 percent. An economy ministry official told AFP Monday that the government was "finalising a plan to clean up the bank", adding that the scheme would use public money and was likely to be announced by Friday.

The National Asset Management Agency has unveiled its deferred mortgage payment plan in an attempt to sell residential properties on its books and stimulate sales in the moribund property market, the Irish Times reported. The initiative is designed to encourage potential buyers who can secure mortgage approval but who postpone their purchase fearing that property prices will fall further. Nama listed 115 houses in 12 developments in Dublin, Meath and Cork where the scheme will be piloted before the possibility of being introduced on more properties.

MF Global's European administrator KPMG is teaming up with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lehman Brothers's administrator, to try to speed up the return of assets and cash to former clients of both failed brokers, Reuters reported. KPMG said on Tuesday it will work with PWC to establish whether unsecured funds can be "traced" and treated as if they were secured, following a ruling by Britain's Supreme Court.

Political tumult in Greece stoked new worries about the fragility of Europe's monetary union on Monday, as talks to form a new government among the winners of the weekend's elections quickly fell apart in Athens, The Wall Street Journal reported. The collapse revived fears that political turmoil will keep Greece from meeting the stiff terms of its European bailout, ultimately leading to its exit from the euro zone, a move that would threaten the euro's future and reverberate through other troubled economies, such as Spain and Italy.

Spain is planning a state bail-out of Bankia, the country’s third biggest bank by assets, in a move likely to involve the injection of billions of euros of public money into the troubled lender, the Financial Times reported. In an abrupt reversal of policy, the Spanish government, which had previously insisted that no additional state money would be needed to clean up the country’s banking sector, confirmed that an intervention was being prepared.

The National Asset Management Agency has intensified its legal efforts to seize international assets from bankrupt developer Ray Grehan by seeking to enter its judgment of €270 million last year from the Irish courts in the US, the Irish Times reported. Documents filed in the New York State Supreme Court show the State loans agency sought to enter the judgment for $351 million, the US dollar equivalent of the Irish court judgment, against the developer at the end of March.

French voters elected Socialist Party candidate François Hollande as president Sunday, choosing a national leader who has pledged to shift the burden of economic hardship onto the rich and to resolve the protracted euro sovereign-debt crisis by softening the current prescription of austerity, The Wall Street Journal reported. With his victory over conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the second and final round of voting, Mr.

The National Asset Management Agency’s efforts to sell off British properties outside London by the end of 2013 has been complicated by news that the UK’s commercial property market is in its worst downturn since records began, the Irish Times reported. The value of shops, offices and warehouses is 31 per cent below the September 2007 peak, according to a survey by Investment Property Databank (IPD), while prices fell by a further 0.7 per cent in the first three months of this year.

The U.K. government Monday said it is on track to pass legislation that will protect the retail operations of banks from the banks' more risky investment-bank activities by the end of this parliament in 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ring fencing, as such protection is known, is the central recommendation of the Independent Commission on Banking, a review set up in June 2010 in response to the financial crisis and bank bailouts, shortly after the government came to power. The ICB was charged with finding ways to ensure that the U.K.