The European Union has confirmed its economy would shrink this year, just 6 months ago, the European Commission was expecting growth of 9.5% for the Euro Zone economy, but Europe's continuing debt crisis has prompted the commission to publish a more pessimistic forecast, it now expects the economy to shrink this year before returning to growth in 2013, 17 countries used the Euro Zone currency.

 

And Spain will force its banks to set up a new 39-billion-dollar financial cushion, and remove risky, property assets from their accounts, the government also ordered an independent audit on loans in property assets across the entire banking sector, the banks now have until the end of the year to move their property holdings into assets management firms for a fire sale, the Spain's troubled banks currently have well over 200 billion dollars in property loan of assets.