The economic roots of the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis are fairly well understood by scholars and analysts, but the political forces behind the crisis less so, despite the fact that the Eurozone predicament derives fundamentally from an intersection of mostly political factors, which led to the recent breakdown in European Union relations between northern and southern states. This paper fills in many of the gaps, by examining both the historical and the political forces behind the current Eurozone debt crisis with reference to Greece’s continuing debt problems.

In October 2012, the Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured the EU with the 2012 peace prize for creating a peaceful and stable Europe after the destructive wars and economic crises of the twentieth century. However, it would have been more appropriate to bestow the prize on the ‘Troika’: the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with special acknowledgement to ‘Super’ Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB who has done more than anyone to ease the Eurozone’s ongoing and existential economic crisis and keep the union still intact.

With Greece’s problems taking a back seat with the approval of the second €130 bailout and bond-swap deal, attention has turned to Portugal – the other most troubled economy in the Eurozone. Will Portugal’s debts also prove unmanageable, requiring debt restructuring where private creditors are forced to take a big haircut, or will the €78 billion bailout Lisbon has received from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, and domestic structural reforms, be enough to stave off a Greek-style default? This paper illustrates that Portugal’s woes are different from those of Greece, Ireland and Spain. Given the structural conditions and deep commitment to reform and political will demonstrated by the Portuguese leaders and citizens alike, Portugal has a good chance to avoid Greece’s fate.

Unlike many earlier financial crises, the current sub-prime-induced crisis originated in advanced economies (in the US housing sector) in the summer of 2007, and rapidly mushroomed into a global financial crisis by September 2008. Developing nations, especially the ‘least developed countries’ (LDCs), have been hit particularly hard with a sharp drop in export demand and in net capital inflows. The current turmoil threatens to undo the impressive gains in economic growth and convergence many developing nations have achieved over the past decade – a reversal of fortune that includes casting millions back into poverty. What explains the vulnerability of the LDCs, and how have the G8, the G20, the IMF and the World Bank responded to help mitigate the economic and social costs of the crisis? How can developing nations, especially the poorest, better insulate their economies from the vagaries of the global financial markets? This paper addresses these issues.