Adding the 300 billion euros already committed to Greece, Ireland and Portugal, euro-area finance ministers put the overall size of the firewall at 800 billion euros. In a statement, they ruled out using the 240 billion euros left in the temporary rescue fund to go beyond that.
Europe is counting on the sums pledged so far, plus a 1 trillion-euro cash infusion by the European Central Bank into the financial system, to persuade the rest of the world it's doing enough to keep its two-year-old debt crisis at bay.