European sovereign debt crisis

The crisis began in Greece in late 2009 when a newly-elected government revealed the country's budget deficit was far larger than previously reported, and spread as investors questioned whether other heavily-indebted eurozone members — Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, sometimes labeled the 'PIIGS' — could service their debts under a shared currency they could no longer devalue. Greece, Ireland, and Portugal all required multi-billion-euro bailouts from the EU and IMF conditioned on deep austerity, while Spain and Italy saw borrowing costs spike sharply even without formal bailout programs. European Central Bank president Mario Draghi's July 2012 pledge to do 'whatever it takes' to preserve the euro is widely credited with finally calming bond markets. The crisis left Spain and Italy with years of near-zero or negative growth and youth unemployment above 40% in Spain and Greece at its worst.