The European sovereign debt crisis

Executive Summary

The report studies the effect of the European sovereign debt crisis on global financial markets and polices being employed by policy makers and financial institutions to curb the crisis. Academic journals as well as business journals were used for this report and furthermore, relevant information was obtained from Bloomberg. To give a concise and rich report, comparisons are made between past defaulting sovereign nations to determine whether there are lessons the EU members could learn. In addition, a forecast was regarding the long-term global impact of the crisis.

Introduction

The European debt crisis is an ongoing financial crisis that has made it difficult for some countries in the Eurozone to repay or re-finance government debt without the assistance of third parties. It is understood to be Europe’s struggle to pay historic debt. Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Spain and Italy, all EU member states, have failed to boost their economic growth enough to be able to pay bondholders as agreed…….

The debt crisis started in early July 2007 at a time when the so-called subprime crisis was just a point of discussion in the world at large. At this time, the spread on the risk premium on an Irish ten-year maturity sovereign bond was still negative. Also, the Irish sovereign government paid a lower interest rate than the German sovereign government. It was in March 2008, when Bear Steams had just been rescued from its financial crisis, that in the view of the public, the European banking crisis took a decisive turn. At this point, the Irish risk premium was only about 30 basis points; the spread rose at a more rapid rate with fluctuations due to the Lehman Brothers’ financial crisis which led to the nationalization of Anglo Irish in January 2009…..

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