Bond investors have worried most about countries with big borrowing needs adding to an already high stock of debt.
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Officials hoped the sum, enough to cover Greece's borrowing needs for less than a year, would be enough to calm markets.
Europe's bailout funds, probably helped by some new resources of the International Monetary Fund, could stretch to cover Spain's borrowing needs.
Also in the coming year Italy has to borrow 450 billion euros in total to refinance maturing debt and its new borrowing needs.
Even when spreads were at their widest, Greece and Ireland, the euro-zone's high-yielders, were able to finance their borrowing needs at a reasonable cost.
But Mr Tucker suggested that efforts by banks to build up liquidity - cash, or nearly-cash to fill short-term borrowing needs - were less welcome.
The economic outlook was simply too dismal and the borrowing needs too great for Spain to avoid the same fate as Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
Its economy will shrink by 1.9% this year and will remain in recession next, whilst needing to raise the equivalent of 25% of its GDP just to service its borrowing needs.
So if our banks are knackered, which all of them have been to a greater or lesser extent, then they become less able to fulfil all the borrowing needs of the economy.
Breedon wants to make it easier for smaller businesses to raise money from investors rather than banks, and also to encourage cash-rich big companies to mitigate the borrowing needs of their smaller suppliers.
Meanwhile, in not much more than six months, Spanish banks' borrowing from the European Central Bank has risen from 106bn euros (in November 2011) to 365bn euros - or 9.5% of all their borrowing needs.
Although in the 2012-2014 fiscal program, the government sees smaller deficits and lower levels of debt and further needs for borrowing, it is no longer based on conservative oil price assumptions.
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For the moment, though, the Fed clearly believes that what the American economy urgently needs are lower borrowing costs and a spur to investment, which lower interest rates can offer.
In effect, Europe's politicians are telling the US government that it needs to keep borrowing to support global growth - even though, when it comes to their own economies, they are doing the exact opposite.
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Indeed, given the current dearth of creditworthy sovereign borrowers elsewhere in the world, due to the ravages of the international debt crisis, Western bankers and securities firms continue to offer Moscow more borrowing opportunities than the USSR needs.
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Bernanke says the Fed needs to drive down borrowing rates because the economy is not growing fast enough to reduce high unemployment, currently around 8%, to 6.5%.
If the Treasury needs their OK to keep borrowing, they eventually give it for another few months.
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The rapidly growing public borrowing will fuel the political debate about what level of cuts needs to be made to public spending to bring the budget into balance.
Government borrowing will continue to crowd out the private investment that Poland needs to raise growth and catch up with its richer neighbours in the European Union, which it joins in May.
So, is it so difficult to understand that spending needs to be reduced over the long term so that annual borrowing is reduced to a sustainable level?
Wales, by comparison, has limited tax and borrowing capabilities, and the money it gets each year to fulfill its spending needs comes automatically from the British treasury.
But Mr Hollande will have to countenance reform all the same, because he needs a credible medium-term plan to pay for welfare spending without resorting to borrowing.
With Spanish borrowing costs edging up to 6.7%, the moment is approaching when Madrid will struggle to finance its needs at such rates.
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