A decade ago, Europe clambered out of the 2008/09 financial crisis only to fall into the sovereign debt crisis of 2010. As the global economy rebounded, Greece, Italy and Spain all had to be bailed out by the ECB as investors lost faith in their ability to carry on servicing their loans. Deep economic cuts imposed in Greece as a condition of the bailout threatened political stability.
Could it be about to happen again? Will Europe climb out of the very deep economic hole created by the Covid pandemic only to slide into a hole of sovereign debt? For the moment, that seems a distant question because the Covid hole is still getting deeper. A third wave of the disease has forced France, Germany and others into lockdowns which they had hoped to avoid. Yet the warning signs are there that sovereign debt could once again compromise eventual recovery. According to an analysis by the Financial Times, there has been a sharp rise in exposure of Eurozone banks to securities and loans issued by their own governments which in total has risen by £140 billion to £2.1
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