Eurozone finance ministers were last night edging towards approval of a €31.5bn (£25.4bn) tranche of lending to Greece, which the Athens government needs to avoid a default and a disastrous exit from the single currency.

Eurozone finance ministers were last night edging towards approval of a €31.5bn (£25.4bn) tranche of lending to Greece, which the Athens government needs to avoid a default and a disastrous exit from the single currency.

The jobless rate in the euro area climbed to a record in September as the fiscal crisis and tougher austerity measures threatened to deepen the economy's slump.

Report says taxpayers would bear brunt of  the measure without  funding from the ECB

One Spaniard in four is now officially out of work as the economic crisis tightens its grip on the country.

As European Central Bank President Mario Draghi struggles to build bridges between quarreling Governing Council members, he soon will have a specialist in international kissing by his side.

Spain won more breathing space from international investors, as it escaped having its debt cut to junk by a leading credit rating agency yesterday.

Rising speculation that Spain will soon ask for outside help to keep a lid on its borrowing costs has helped ease the pressure on the country in financial markets.

Pressure continues to mount on Spain's Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, to request a bailout from the European Central Bank as the country strained to sell €4bn (£3.2bn) of debt.

Outlook The "Greenspan Put" was the assumption rife among Wall Street traders that should shares fall to a certain level, Alan Greenspan, the former head of the US Federal Reserve, would intervene by slashing interest rates so much that bonds were no longer worth buying. Investors would turn to equities and the Dow Jones would soar. Everyone would be happy, or at least would feel like they were getting richer, even if asset prices were plainly inflated.

But Rajoy plays chicken with bond markets as he 'thinks he might get away with it'

The European Central Bank has left its key interest rate unchanged at a record low of 0.75 per cent.

All eyes were once again on Madrid and Athens as protesters crowded the streets and politicians tried to convince markets and the populace that they had a route out of the crisis: "We know what we have to do, and since we know it, we're doing it," said the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as the details of his government's emergency budget started to emerge.

Financial markets recovered their poise today, though investors remained concerned that Greece and Spain will struggle to implement debt-reduction strategies in the face of popular outrage.