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The leaders of Germany and Italy sought to present a united front Wednesday in the fight to resolve the eurozone debt crisis and revive the ailing European economy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the efforts of Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti to cut government spending and make his nation’s economy more competitive.

"We have followed with great respect how quickly the measures are being implemented," said Merkel. "The work of the Italian government is being honored."

Monti said Italians support a "very hard series of measures," adding that Europe "doesn’t have to fear any more that Italy is a possible source of contagion."

Italy has been a big worry for global investors in recent months. The nation’s economy has been stagnant for a decade and its borrowing costs have ballooned, raising concerns about the government’s solvency.

Monti acknowledged that high interest rates could have been justified when market participants were uncertain about Italy’s economic policies. "But not anymore," he said, adding, "especially after representatives of those same markets have said they appreciated the efforts [Italy] made."

That assertion will be put to the test this week when the Italian government will offer €8.5 billion in bills Thursday and up to €4.75 billion in bonds Friday.

On Wednesday, yields on 10-year Italian bonds eased, but still held above the key 7% threshold.

Europe’s debt crisis: An end in sight? Not so fast

The meeting in Berlin between Merkel and Monti was the latest in a series of talks this week among top European Union leaders as they piece together a solution to the long-running government debt and banking problems in the eurozone.

Merkel met with International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde late Tuesday and French President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday. Lagarde will meet with Sarkozy later Wednesday in Paris.

Merkel and Sarkozy will travel to Rome for more talks with Monti on Jan 20. Then, the top leaders of all 27 members of the EU will gather in Brussels on Jan. 30 for their first summit of the year.

On Wednesday, Merkel and Monti discussed the situation in Greece, where Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is under pressure to push through reforms needed to secure additional bailout funds.

Merkel said the first step in resolving the debt crisis is to "create the preconditions" for a second bailout for Greece fast payday loan.

EU leaders agreed in October to provide a second €130 billion rescue package for Greece and announced a deal with private sector investors to voluntarily write down the value of Greek government bonds by 50% as part of a debt exchange.

But negotiations with the private sector have stalled and there is still disagreement among some policymakers over whether requiring Greece to enact more austerity as a condition of a second bailout will help or hurt the nation’s fragile economy.

"The talks with banks are being pushed so that the question of Greece can be solved rationally, so that we can then focus on structural reforms in the euro zone as a whole," said Merkel.

Europe: Still a huge pain in the neck for investors

Still, European leaders are optimistic that a proposed fiscal compact, designed to ensure that governments do not spend beyond their means and rack up unsustainable debts, will be signed by the end of the month.

"There is work to be done but there is a good chance that we can expect significant progress or a political conclusion already on Jan. 30," said Merkel.

The terms of the pact include, among other things, a balanced budget requirement with an "automatic correction mechanism," and a provision to make national budget policies subject to EU authority "ex ante," or before the fact.

The political leaders of the 17 eurozone nations, which share the embattled single euro currency, agreed in principle to abide by the pact following a summit on Dec. 9. But the agreement is still subject to parliamentary approval in some member states.

Merkel also suggested that Germany, the eurozone’s largest economy, could commit more capital to the European Stability Mechanism, which is expected to come into effect this year.

But Merkel was careful to say that Germany would contribute more capital to the fund only if necessary and other eurozone governments do the same.

The ESM would enhance or replace the eurozone’s current bailout fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility. European leaders have said they will decide in March on a proposal to put more capital into the €500 billion ESM.

– CNN’s Diana Magnay contributed reporting from Berlin. 

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European stock markets headed higher in early trading Monday, while South Korea’s benchmark Kospi closed flat following the New Year’s holiday weekend.

Britain’s FTSE 100 index rose 0.1 percent at 5,572.28. Germany’s DAX was 1.1 percent higher at 5,960.04. France’s CAC-40 rose 0.5 percent to 3,174.76.

South Korea’s Kospi index, which lost 11 percent of its value last year, closed nearly unchanged at 1,826.37. Most other Asian markets were closed for an extended New Year’s holiday.

South Korea’s tech sector move higher, with Samsung Electronics up 2.1 percent and LG Electronics gaining 2.3 percent. Steel giant POSCO slid 1.1 percent and Korea Electric Power shed 1.8 percent.

Taiwan’s TAIEX, which was also open for business Monday, fell 1.7 percent to 6,952.21. Foxconn Technology, the world’s biggest contract electronics manufacturer, which makes iPads and iPhones for Apple Inc., fell 0.9 percent. Personal computer maker Acer Inc. shed 2.3 percent.

Benchmarks in the Philippines and India rose while Indonesia fell.

The Asian-Pacific region’s major benchmarks, including Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and Australia’s S&P ASX 200, were closed. Markets in the U.S. are also closed in observance of New Year’s Day.

Last year was one that traders would prefer to forget: most Asian equity indexes closed out 2011 deeply in the red unsecured personal loans. The Nikkei in Tokyo ended the year at 8,429.45 _ its lowest closing since 1982.

China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, closed Monday, endured a 21 percent loss for the year as the impact of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar stimulus faded and the government tightened curbs on lending and investment to cool blistering economic growth.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index finished at 18,434.39 _ a precipitous slide of 19.7 percent from a year ago. Singapore’s Straits Times Index took a 17.5 percent dive when it closed at 2,646.35 on Friday.

Australia’s benchmark S&P ASX 200 ended the year at 4,140.4 _ 14.5 percent lower for 2011.

India’s benchmark Sensex index fell more than 22 percent in 2011, making it one of the worst performers globally. The rupee also lost about 14 percent this year and recently hit an all-time low, breaching 54 rupees to the dollar.

In hopes of reducing volatility and attracting foreign cash, India announced Sunday that it would allow individual foreign nationals to invest directly in its stock market starting Jan. 15. Currently, foreign investors are limited to indirect investments such as mutual funds.

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Stocks wavered in midday trading Friday as investors balanced signs of future growth in the U.S. economy with a looming deadline for Congress to reach a deal in debt talks.

The Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators rose more than Wall Street analysts were expecting, a sign that the economy may pick up in the coming months. But many investors remained cautious as a key Congressional committee remained deadlocked on ways to cut the U.S. deficit.

A bipartisan panel must agree on making at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts by Thanksgiving. If the committee fails, automatic spending cuts will take effect beginning in 2013. Economists worry that a deadlocked Congress will erode business confidence and slow the already-fragile economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 3 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 11,768 as of 12:10 p.m. Eastern.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 index fell 4, or 0.3 percent, to 1,213. The Nasdaq composite slid 18, or 0.7 percent, to 2,569.

The Dow had been up as much as 84 points in early trading after borrowing costs fell for Italy and Spain. That is a signal that bond investors are less fearful of a default by those countries. Spain and Italy have had to pay high interest rates because bondholders fear that that they will default. Holders of Greek bonds were all but forced to take steep losses on that nation’s debt.

Europe’s debt problems are far from settled, however. Comments by German and British leaders Friday suggested that they have divergent views on how to address the debt crisis. German Chancellor Angela Merkel cautioned against expecting too much from the region’s leaders. British Prime Minister David Cameron called for “decisive action” to shore up the struggling currency union.

Positive economic reports this week _ including a drop in unemployment applications and an increase in industrial production _ barely budged markets because a European meltdown would easily drag down the U.S. economy, said Kim Caughey Forrest, equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group.

“Our economy might be improving, but the fixation is on what’s going to happen with the world banking system if defaults happen in Europe,” she said. She said investors are reluctant to take big positions because no one knows how Europe’s problems will be resolved, or how U.S. companies’ future profits will be affected.

In corporate news, ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co. fell 2.5 percent after it said its second-quarter net income fell almost 6 percent, although its adjusted results narrowly beat expectations. Sales in emerging markets remained strong, and price hikes in other areas helped offset lower volumes.

Retailer Gap Inc. slid 3.5 percent after its third quarter revenue came in slightly below Wall Street’s forecasts. The company said materials costs are continuing to eat into profit margins. Salesforce.com plunged 9 percent after its quarterly results came in below estimates.

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Investor Warren Buffett says his company bought $10.7 billion of IBM stock this year, about a 5.6 percent stake.

Buffett revealed the new investment during an interview on CNBC Monday. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., will file a full quarterly update on its U.S. stock portfolio Monday afternoon.

Buffett has long refused to invest in high-tech companies because he it’s too difficult to predict which technology businesses will prosper in the long run.

Buffett says he recently changed his view of IBM’s role in industry. So Berkshire bought about 64 million shares since March, or about 5.6 percent of IBM.

Buffett says he believes IBM has a sound plan for the future.

IBM shares rose $1.62 to $189 in premarket trading after rising as high as $190.55 earlier.

Besides investments, Berkshire owns roughly 80 subsidiaries including insurance, railroad and utility firms.

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Spanish telephone company Telefonica said Friday it lost euro429 million ($584 million) in the third quarter, its first quarterly loss in nine years, after hefty costs laying off workers in Spain’s moribund economy.

It compared to profits of euro5.1 billion in the same period of 2010, although that figure included a one-off gain from Telefonica’s takeover of Brazilian cell phone company Vivo.

Telefonica said the third quarter 2011 results included costs of euro1.87 billion in compensation for workers being laid off in Spain.

Revenue in Spain for the quarter was down 8.8 percent. But total revenue for the quarter _ in Spain and all the countries where Telefonica operates _ was up 3.7 percent to euro15.8 billion no fax payday advances.

The poor performance in Spain was offset by a 17.5 percent rise in revenue in Latin America.

Telefonica is eliminating up to 6,500 jobs, or close to 20 percent of its work force, in Spain through 2013 to reduce costs.

Telefonica’s profits for the first nine months of the year were down 69 percent to euro2.73 billion, again in part because of redundancy costs. Revenue for the January-September period rose 5.4 percent.

Telefonica shares were practically unchanged at euro13.9 in early trading.

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AmeriGas will buy the propane operations of Energy Transfer Partners for about $2.9 billion, the company said Monday.

The Valley Forge, Pa. propane retailer is paying $1.5 billion in cash and about $1.3 billion in AmeriGas common stock. It also will assume $71 million in Energy Transfer’s debt.

Energy Transfer Partners L.P., of Dallas, has propane operations in 41 states through subsidiaries including Heritage Propane. The deal gives more than a million additional retail propane customers to AmeriGas, effectively doubling its size. It’s expected to contribute to AmeriGas’ goal of increasing distribution by 5 percent per year.

The deal is expected to close late this year or early in 2012. AmeriGas Partners L.P. says shareholder approval is not required at either company.

“This transaction provides AmeriGas with an outstanding opportunity to grow its core business,” CEO Eugene V.N. Bissell said in a statement.

It is also the third sizeable energy deal announced in just two days.

Earlier Monday, Norwegian oil company Statoil ASA said it would buy Brigham Exploration Co need a personal loan with bad credit. of Austin, Texas for $4.4 billion in cash, giving it control of fields in North Dakota. That came a day after Kinder Morgan announced plans to buy El Paso Corp. for $20.7 billion in a bid to create America’s largest natural gas pipeline operator.

After closing, Energy Transfer will own about 34 percent of AmeriGas Partners’ common stock and will keep the shares until at least 2013. Energy Transfer will appoint one director to AmeriGas’ board after the closing.

The deal was structured so that AmeriGas’ balance sheet would remain strong and its credit ratings preserved, the company said. It will contribute to AmeriGas’ goal of growing earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by 3 percent per year, the company said.

Shares of AmeriGas, which has more than a million residential, industrial and commercial propane customers, closed Friday at $45.92 and have traded in a range of $36.76 to $51.50 in the past year.

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The International Criminal Court will investigate three to six people in Ivory Coast for their actions during the West African nation’s violent six-month-long political crisis, the court’s top prosecutor said.

“We will focus on the most egregious and the most responsible,” Luis Moreno-Ocampo said late Saturday during his visit to Ivory Coast as part of the court’s recently opened investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity. Officials said Sunday that he had left the country.

Moreno-Ocampo said national authorities should investigate other suspects.

He said the public will not know the names of the international court’s suspects until he collects evidence and the judges review it.

“I don’t know (who they are) yet,” he said.

Earlier this month the court’s judges authorized the prosecutor to investigate violence committed after November 2010.

On Saturday, Moreno-Ocampo said the probe may look at violence committed as early as 2002.

“Today people volunteered to provide us with more information,” he said. “The judges are requesting more information and we will provide it.”

Human rights groups have called on the court to probe violence committed before the elections, when the nation was plunged into civil war, then underwent a de facto split along north-south lines.

Former president Laurent Gbagbo failed to hold elections when his first term ended in 2005. After a poll last November, he refused to accept his electoral defeat. Thousands died during the political standoff that followed.

Moreno-Ocampo did not meet Gbagbo during his visit, but said: “We will probably request through his lawyers to interview him.”

On Sunday, a spokeswoman for Ivory Coast’s prosecutor’s office said authorities arrested a fugitive military commander accused of serious crimes while working as a top aide to the former first lady. Habiba Coulibaly said Commander Anselme Seka Yapo was arrested Saturday.

In 2005 the U.N. accused Simone Gbagbo of leading death squads to kill opposition members.

French and U.N. forces assisted the forces loyal to President Alassane Ouattara who removed Gbagbo from power in April. Ouattara took office in May.

Ouattara asked the international court to investigate crimes committed by both sides during the postelection crisis payday loan no faxing.

During his visit Moreno-Ocampo met with Ouattara, with Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, with victims, members of the opposition and with the president of the newly formed reconciliation commission.

The commission, the prosecutor said, can address victims’ needs immediately, unlike the court.

“For those who were raped, who lost their homes, they need assistance now,” he said. “They don’t need to wait for a judge’s decision.”

Human Rights Watch says over a dozen people on both sides, including Gbagbo, led fighters to commit war crimes and likely crimes against humanity during the postelection violence.

Gbagbo’s spokesman Kone Katinan has said if he is to be judged, it should be by his own people rather than by an international tribunal.

Pro-Gbagbo newspapers have accused the international court of being one-sided. But residents have expressed optimism about the court’s involvement.

“It’s good to have someone from the outside of the country investigating … they can be more impartial, and more credible,” said beauty product distributor Kone Tresor Korona, 33, a resident of Abidjan who hails from the north, like Ouattara.

“Since the government is also doing an investigation, we can compare the (results of the) two, and hopefully when we put them together we can be closer to the truth,” Korona said.

The Ivory Coast investigation is the court’s seventh, all of them in Africa. So far, none of the cases has reached a verdict.

Ivory Coast is not a member of the court, but has accepted its jurisdiction in the case. It is the first time the court has opened an investigation in a nonmember nation following such a recognition of jurisdiction by a nonmember state.

Despite their lack of member status, the prosecutor said authorities have welcomed him.

“This is the first time in which we have a good relationship with national authorities. They are allowing us to (speak with) victims,” Moreno-Ocampo said. “It’s an interesting, new experience.”

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Cyprus’ draft budget for next year includes some euro840 million ($1.14 billion) in spending cuts and tax increases in a bid to slash the island’s fiscal deficit to 2.3 percent, the finance minister said Wednesday.

Cyprus has endured consecutive credit rating downgrades in recent months, mainly due to the large banking sector’s exposure to debt-laden Greece. The downgrades have made it difficult for the government to borrow from the markets and stoked fears the island may be forced to seek a bailout from its European Union partners.

Finance Minister Kikis Kazamias said the draft budget includes more spending cuts and tax hikes to bolster an initial, euro180 million ($245 million) austerity package that lawmakers passed in August, but which was deemed insufficient to tackle the burgeoning deficit.

The public sector takes up almost a third of all government spending. The new measures include scrapping 1,100 public sector positions and cutting new government workers’ salaries by a tenth, Kazamias said.

Other measures include rolling back social handouts by euro200 million ($272 payday advance.6 million) and raising the sales tax from 15 to 17 percent for at least three years _ a move harshly criticized by opposition parties.

Kazamias said the deficit for 2011 is projected to hover between 6 to 6.5 percent of gross domestic product. More fiscal belt-tightening is expected to shrink the deficit to around one percent in 2013 and 2014, he said.

Debt for 2012 is forecast to remain static at 65 percent of gross domestic product, dropping slightly to 64.2 percent in 2013 and to 62.8 percent in 2014. The finance minister also said growth for 2011 will be between zero and 0.5 percent at best, rebounding in 2012 to between 1 and 1.5 percent.

Kazamias will submit the Cabinet-approved draft budget to parliament next month, saying the risks of lawmakers voting it down were too serious to contemplate.

“In my calculations, there is no scenario of the budget being voted down,” Kazamias said.

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A political consultant stole more than $1 million from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg because he wanted to buy his father’s house, a prosecutor said Monday.

Republican consultant John Haggerty didn’t have the money to pay for the house, but he did have “access to one of the largest mayoral campaigns this city has ever seen. … And with it, the mayor’s money,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Brian Weinberg told jurors as Haggerty’s trial opened.

Prosecutors say Haggerty got Bloomberg to underwrite an elaborate 2009 poll-watching effort run by the state Independence Party but then mounted only a meager operation and used most of the money instead to buy the house. Haggerty says he did the job he was paid for and didn’t do anything illegal guaranteed unsecured personal loan.

Bloomberg, an independent, was running for re-election and was the Independence Party’s top candidate.

Defense lawyer Raymond Castello said the campaign used Haggerty as a scapegoat after questions arose on whether the campaign had followed campaign-finance law.

He said the mayor donated over $1 million to the Independence Party in order to maintain a distance from what could be seen as a questionable practice.

“This case is about winning at all costs,” Castello said. “That’s what Michael Bloomberg is all about.”

Bloomberg is expected to testify in the trial.

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