German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble presented a five-year fiscal plan that would end almost half a century of rising federal debt by forgoing net new borrowing starting in 2015.

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel must consider joint European bonds as part of a battery of measures aimed at stamping out the debt crisis or risk a “worldwide depression”, said Germany’s BGA exporters’ association.

GERMAN investor confidence fell the most in 16 months in March, exacerbated by the bombings in Madrid, amid concern about the strength of a recovery in Europe’s largest economy, the ZEW Centre for European Economic Research said.