Back to reality

摘要

Earlier this year it all looked so rosy. In April, just two years after Greece imposed the biggest sovereign-debt restructuring in history on its private creditors, it raised €3 billion ($4.2 billion at the time) in five-year bonds at a yield of less than 5%. In July its ten-year bonds were yielding less than 6% and their Spanish and Italian equivalents less than 3%, not far off Germany's. The troubled economies of Europe's "periphery" were beginning to turn around, it seemed, and the European Central Bank (ECB) would do whatever it took to keep the euro zone together.