Official figures Tuesday showed that unemployment across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro has struck 12 percent for the first time since the currency was launched in 1999.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said the rate in February was unchanged at the record high after January's figure was revised up to 12 percent from 11.9 percent.

Spain and Greece have mass unemployment and many other countries are seeing their numbers swell to uncomfortably high levels as governments across the region enact tough austerity measures to get a handle on their debts.

The eurozone, which is made up of a little more than 330 million people, is one of the world's major economic pillars and the turmoil surrounding it has been one of the main reasons why the global recovery has been muted.

A total of 19.07 million people were officially out of work in the eurozone in February, nearly two million more than the same month the year before. For the 27-country European Union, of which the eurozone is a large part, the unemployment rate was 10.9 percent.

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"The system's profile as an offshore financial center is unlikely to survive this crisis," Moody's senior credit officer Sarah Carlson said. "The potentially irreparable damage to the country's current drivers of economic growth leaves its ability to sustain its current debt highly in doubt."

The crisis had negative implications for the credit ratings of the region's countries. Moody's Investors' Service says Cyprus will still be at risk of default for a "prolonged period" and possibly a euro zone exit. "Even if negotiations are successful and Cyprus remains within the euro area," the service said in a Monday statement, "policy makers' recent decisions raise the risk of deposit outflows, capital flight, increased bank and sovereign-funding costs and broader financial market dislocation."

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Cyprus secured a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) package of rescue loans in tense, last-ditch negotiations early Monday, In return for the bailout, Cyprus' second-biggest bank, Laiki, will be restructured, and holders of deposits exceeding 100,000 euros will have to take losses.

It was unclear just how big of a hit big depositors will have to take, but the tax on deposits was expected to net several billion euros.

U.S. investors won't care too much about who takes losses in Cyprus, as long as there's a bailout that stops the run on banks in the Mediterranean island nation and keeps the eurozone stable, said Karyn Cavanaugh, market strategist at ING Investment Management in New York.

"If this works out, regardless of the terms, this is going to be good for the market," she said Sunday night.

Without a deal by Monday night, the tiny Mediterranean island nation of about 1 million would have faced the prospect of bankruptcy, which could have forced it to become the first country to abandon the euro currency. That precedent would have roiled markets and spurred turmoil across the entire eurozone.

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Everything from police and tax agency headquarters in Athens to some of the world's most beautiful beaches are now open for investment at bargain basement prices as the government struggles to raise capital.

Take Afandou, a beach on the island of Rhodes. It could be yours for about $85 million.

Selling it could help this country recover from economic catastrophe. But that's not how locals see it.

Elisa Malliaraki, 29, who owns a pharmacy in Rhodes' medieval town, says losing public access would be "tragic."

“We already can’t access many of the beaches on the island since there huge hotel units informally block our way,” she said.

Beach access may seem minor compared to the enormous burdens facing the Greeks. Their ailing economy is barely staying afloat on rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund.

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Surprisingly (or perhaps not, considering they didn't catch the mistake to begin with) the company, Bouygues Telecom, told her that nothing could be done about it, and later offered to set up installments to pay off her bill--which was  nearly "6,000 times France's annual economic output."

The company later acknowledged the printing error, admitting that the true amount of the bill should have been €117.21. In the end, they retracted the bill completely.

h/t BBC

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