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European debt markets were edgy in early trading Thursday, poised for short-term gains if the European Union summit produces the expected bailout for Greece but still showing signs of nerves, The Wall Street Journal reported. The cost of insuring European government bonds against default was volatile, sinking at the outset of trading before rising back up to the levels it held Wednesday. The iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which lets investors buy or sell default insurance on a basket of 15 European sovereign borrowers, traded at 0.97 percentage point.

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.

Greece has one apparently simple option for reining in a budget deficit that has roiled financial markets: Clamp down on widespread tax evasion, which costs the country an estimated €15 billion ($20.5 billion) a year, an amount that would pay off a big chunk of the budget deficit. The trouble is, tax evasion in this Mediterranean country is extremely difficult to eradicate, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Any deal by European officials to guarantee the debt of Greece and other troubled nations might keep the crisis from worsening, but it raises another big problem: moral hazard. The concern is that by rescuing a country that for years flouted fiscal discipline, the European Union would be encouraging such behavior rather than discouraging it, The Wall Street Journal reported. One of the strengths of the euro was the idea that when a country joined the European Union it was a one-way trip that came with strict fiscal responsibilities.

Seoul will not follow the global banking reform plans initiated by U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which include capping the size of banks and the creation of a global bank tax, a ranking financial regulator said Thursday. The remarks by Yi Jong-goo, a standing commissioner at the Financial Services Commission (FSC), shows that global coordination may not be as easy as countries had hoped when it was discussed during the peak of the recession, The Korea Times reported.

Regulators have declared Capinordic Bank, a small player in Denmark's fragmented banking sector, insolvent and begun bankruptcy proceedings, the bank's parent company Capinordic A/S said on Thursday. Capinordic is the 18th Danish bank to fold or be bought up by stronger entities since the start of 2008, though the country still has more than 130 banks, making its financial industry the most fragmented in the Nordic region. The highest profile collapse during the financial crisis in Denmark was that of Roskilde Bank which the government seized in July 2008 after loan losses piled up.

Fewer Britons had their homes repossessed in the final three months of 2009 and there was a sharp drop in the number of court orders for properties to be seized, data showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. The Council of Mortgage Lenders said 10,200 homes were repossessed by lenders in the three months to December, 13 percent fewer than the previous quarter and 2 percent lower than a year earlier. There were 16,928 orders for home repossession according to seasonally adjusted data in the October to December period, 15 percent lower than the three months to September.

The Asper family's role in CanWest Global Communications Corp. continues to wane, as two of Izzy Asper's children, Gail Asper and David Asper, resigned from the board of directors, The Globe and Mail reported. Their brother, CanWest chief executive officer Leonard Asper, is the last sibling with a major role in the media conglomerate founded by their father. The resignations are part of a process intended to reduce the size of the board as CanWest undergoes restructuring. Leonard, who took the reins from his father in 1999, will stay on as CEO and a director.

Europe scrambled for ways to prop up Greece's crumbling government finances Tuesday, restoring some stability to this unlikely keystone of the global financial system and sending markets higher around the world, The Washington Post reported. But the underlying economic problems facing Greece and some other European countries mean that radical cutbacks to government spending and more social pain are likely to follow as these countries move to avert a sovereign debt crisis, in which nations find themselves unable to pay on their obligations.

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.