A plan led by Germany and France to bail out Greece with as much as €30 billion ($41 billion) in aid began to take shape amid intense and risky jockeying between Athens and Berlin over timing and terms, The Wall Street Journal reported. Greek officials said they expected to seal a deal by Friday, when Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou meets in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but senior German officials insisted a bailout wasn't imminent.

The bankruptcy of a European Union nation or an exit from the euro would be the end of the euro region, Carl Heinz Daube, head of Germany’s debt agency, told a conference organized by Euromoney in London, Bloomberg reported. German government bond yields are likely to stay within a range in 2010, he said. Germany has a “clear picture” of how to bring down the country’s deficit, he said. Read more.

A standoff between Greece and its euro-zone partners over the timing and terms of a potential rescue is nearing a crucial juncture as the cash-strapped country faces a key test of investor willingness to keep funding its ballooning deficit, The Wall Street Journal reported. The haggling over possible European aid for Greece has become a game of chicken between Athens and the core economies of the euro zone, led by Germany and France.

Germany and France have suggested in recent days that rescuing Greece may be necessary to safeguard the euro zone, but both countries may have a more pressing motivation in the move—protecting their own banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. German and French banks carry a combined $119 billion in exposure to Greek borrowers alone and more than $900 billion to Greece and other countries on the euro-zone's vulnerable periphery: Portugal, Ireland and Spain. Together, France and Germany's banking sectors account for roughly half of all European banks' exposure to those countries.

Germany officials reported no growth for the fourth quarter of 2009 on Friday. While some fear that the slowdown might signal the beginning of another slump, others just see it as a bump in the road to continued recovery, Spiegel Online reported. A number of experts attributed the unexpected drop to factors such as the end of Germany's cash-for-clunkers program in September and the harsh weather conditions that have gripped Germany for most of the winter. "Just look out your window and you know why," Andreas Rees, the chief German economist at UniCredit, told the Associated Press.

As Europe edges toward emergency guarantees to stem market panic over one of the most profligate members of the euro bloc, the country that the region turns to for leadership, Germany, is suffering from growing doubts about the European experiment it long championed, The New York Times reported. Reluctant German leaders now find themselves forced to help Greece remain solvent, or risk watching markets attack one weak member after the next, from Portugal to Spain to Italy, threatening the stability of the euro, the European currency Germany fought so hard to create.

Germany is considering a plan with its European Union partners to offer Greece and other troubled euro-zone members loan guarantees in an effort to calm fears of a government default and prevent a widening of the credit woes, people familiar with the matter said, The Wall Street Journal reported. EU leaders are expected to discuss the situation at summit in Brussels on Thursday.

General Motors Europe on Tuesday finally announced the details of its plan to restructure German car-maker Opel. In addition to thousands of job cuts, GM wants €2.7 billion from European governments. Opposition to the plan is building in Germany, Spiegel Online reported. GM is asking for €2.7 billion ($3.7 billion) in loans or loan guarantees from countries where Opel factories are located. Germany would be responsible for coming up with €1.5 billion of that amount, with half coming from the federal government in Berlin and the remaining amount being coughed up by the German states concerned.

Group of Seven financial leaders agreed on the need to continue supporting their economies until financial recovery takes a firmer hold, but they have yet to reach a consensus on how to overhaul regulation of their financial sectors, The Wall Street Journal reported. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said leaders were unable to make collective decisions on a U.S. proposal to limit proprietary trading at commercial banks, partly because financial institutions in countries including France, Germany and Japan aren't plagued by the same issues as U.S. banks.

German officials said they were weighing fresh offers from informants after deciding last week to pay €2.5 million ($3.4 million) for the names of suspected tax evaders in what is rapidly evolving into a broad attack on Switzerland's system of banking secrecy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Over the past week, German officials have launched a tactical and rhetorical assault on Swiss banking, a strategy that appears to be aimed at undermining both Switzerland's tradition of secrecy and its pre-eminence as a tax refuge.