FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - German officials quickly poured cold water over on a recent article in Der Spiegel suggesting that there are plans to leverage up the ESM to give it an effective lending capacity of €2.0 tr. A German Finance Ministry spokesperson described the idea as 'not realistic'.

Elsewhere in Europe, Finland Finance Minister Urpilainen noted that "lack of confidence" is the main problem for the prolonged Eurozone crisis. He remarked "markets do not trust political decisions" and "nations do not trust each other". He also opined that the current size of the ESM "must be enough" and refused to speculate on the possible use of leverage to increase the ESM lending power.

Finally, the Portuguese Finance Ministry reported that the budget deficit in the Jan-Aug period of 2012 narrowed to €3.5B from €5.18B in the same period last year. It noted that revenues from direct taxes rose 2.1%, indirect taxes dropped 5.0%, while spending rose 0.4% in the first eight months of 2012. According to Research Analyst Chris Walker at UBS, “the 1-month target for the EUR/USD still remains at 1.3000, while projecting 3 months into the future the figure drops to 1.2500 on growth concerns.”