A tough vote for Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, passed off without a hitch as she won enough votes from her own coalition to pass new powers for the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).
Failure to pull enough support from her own party would have put her political survival at risk, as well as her ability to push through additional rescue measures, as citizen protests grow louder against Germany's increasingly expensive participation in euro zone bailouts.
Bloomberg reported that the new powers granted to the EFSF include the ability to buy bonds in secondary markets, enable bank recapitalizations and offer precautionary credit lines. Germany's share of guarantees for the fund also increase, to 211 billion euros ($287 billion) from 123 billion euros.
