Euro Crisis (I) - From May 2009 to March 2012
A rough outline for this runs as follows. May 2009: spread to the PIGS (Portugal,
Ireland,Greece and Spain), leading up to the Euro crisis;November 2010: the bailout
plan to Ireland;May 2011: the bailout plan to Portugal; July 2011: the second-round
bailout plan to Greece, and enlargement of the EFSF (European Financial Stability
Facility); 26 October 2011: the EU summit; 11 December 2011: the EU summits the
main theme of which was to establish the 'Fiscal Union'. Standard & Poor's (S&P)
arguably remarked that the EU summit determined only a long term matter (Fiscal
Union), without considering the short term one; 21 December 2011: the ECB
announced a drastically easy monetary policy ('Long Term Refinancing Operation')
which contributed to keep the financialmarket calm; at the beginning of 2012: there
emerged the Euro crisis in various countries; 25 January 2012: Merkel clearly
referred to 'PoliticalUnion'; 30 January and 2March 2012: the EUsummit themain
theme of which was, again, the 'fiscal compact'; 9 March 2012: Greek 'haircut'
negotiation (debt swap deal) was finally agreed. However, this does not mean that
Greece and the Euro zone escaped from the Euro crisis, for these measures aim at
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quelling the financial sectorwithout any consideration for the difficulties of the PIIGS
(Italy added) economies.
