Despite the European Central Bank's massive injections of cash since December to help the euro-zone's banking sector avoid a liquidity crisis, there are scant indications that the money has started trickling down to companies and households on the periphery of the monetary union, analysts and economists say. The result is a lending squeeze in countries such as Portugal and Spain that could lead to a number of bankruptcies, even-higher unemployment and a deeper economic contraction that will make any recovery difficult, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Spanish house prices tumbled at their fastest pace on record in the fourth quarter, a sign that a long-running property bust will continue to weigh on Spanish households and banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. House prices fell on average by 11.2% in the fourth quarter from the same period a year earlier, well below the 7.4% decline in the third quarter, while prices of used homes was down 13.7% in the period, the country's statistics agency INE said Thursday.

The chairman of NAMA says it can avoid making a loss over its lifetime, but admits there is little chance of recovering the face value of loans held by the agency, Independent.ie reported. Frank Daly yesterday said he was confident NAMA would recover the €31bn it paid banks for property loans, plus the cost of running the agency, over its 10-year lifetime. Mr Daly and NAMA chief executive Brendan McDonagh were addressing a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform.

The euro-zone countries Wednesday signed off on Greece's second bailout program, ending a protracted and dramatic negotiating process that started last July. Their hope is that the €130 billion (roughly $169 billion) package—funded mostly by euro-zone countries and the International Monetary Fund—will be enough to keep Greece funded until 2014-15. But talk of a third Greek bailout has already begun, even as the ink is still drying on the second package.

A group of officials and bankers who helped prevent Eastern Europe from being thrown into the financial crisis in 2009 has reconvened, seeking to avoid a credit squeeze and economic downturn caused by problems at parent banks in Western Europe, the International Herald Tribune reported. The International Monetary Fund, European Commission, World Bank and other institutions this week formally revived an effort known as the Vienna Initiative, which three years ago succeeded in preventing panicked West European banks from draining capital from their subsidiaries in Eastern Europe.

Britain's unemployment rate held at a 16-year high in the three months to January and the youth unemployment rate rose to a record high, piling pressure on the government to introduce policies to boost growth and jobs in next week's budget, Reuters reported. Unemployment on the broader ILO measure inched down to 2.666 million for the November-January period from 2.671 million in the three months to December, but the overall rate held at 8.4 percent, a rate that prior to recent months was last equalled in the three months to January 1996.

Italy's successful government bond sale Wednesday added new evidence that investors have begun to give Italy better chances of avoiding a fiscal crisis than Spain, another big euro-zone economy that has been seen at risk of needing a Greek-style bailout, The Wall Street Journal reported. Italy comfortably sold the maximum targeted €6 billion ($7.8 billion) in government bonds with maturities of three and seven years. It also did so at lower cost, with the yields on both bonds falling significantly from previous auctions of similar maturities.

With no room to spend its way back to growth in next week's budget, Britain's government is straining to find creative ways to boost the economy and betting on new schemes aimed at helping the private sector spark recovery, Reuters reported. But chancellor George Osborne's much-vaunted plans to boost bank lending to small businesses and encourage pension funds to invest in Britain's creaking infrastructure look set to be tarred with disappointment before they are even launched.

European finance ministers agreed to suspend European Union funds destined for Hungary because of its failure to hit budget targets while, under pressure from other euro-zone governments, Spain agreed to deeper budget cuts than it had planned for this year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The two developments on Tuesday are signs of how the tougher policing of government budgets introduced since the onset of the sovereign-debt crisis is likely to generate tensions within the EU.

Greece will have to slash a further 5.5 percent of GDP in government spending in 2013 and 2014 to meet agreed fiscal targets underpinning the second international bailout for Athens, a European Commission report said. The Compliance Report by the European Union's executive describes the progress of Greek reforms necessary for the release of new euro zone money to Athens and recommends the first disbursement be made as soon as possible.