page_title: 2000s European sovereign debt crisis timeline
section_title: January
hierarchical_section_title: 2000s European sovereign debt crisis timeline / 2011 / January
caption_attribution_description: English: Greece Uprising. Image of the Syntagma square garden. 100.000 people gathered at the centre of Athens on Sunday, 29/5/2011. It was the first day of the people's protest against IMF in european cities. Русский: Массовый протест (100 тыс. человек) против жёстких мер экономии перед парламентом Греции в Афинах, 29 мая 2011 г.
context_page_description: From late 2009, fears of a sovereign debt crisis in some European states developed, with the situation becoming particularly tense in early 2010. Greece was most acutely affected, but fellow Eurozone members Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were also significantly affected. In the EU, especially in countries where sovereign debt has increased sharply due to bank bailouts, a crisis of confidence has emerged with the widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit default swaps between these countries and other EU members, most importantly Germany.
  This was the first Eurozone crisis since its creation in 1999. As Samuel Brittan pointed out, Jason Manolopoulos "shows conclusively that the Eurozone is far from an optimum currency area". Niall Ferguson also wrote in 2010 that "the sovereign debt crisis that is unfolding... is a fiscal crisis of the western world". Axel Merk argued in a May 2011 Financial Times article that the dollar was in graver danger than the euro.
  Concern about rising government deficits and debt levels across the globe together with a wave of downgrading of European government debt created alarm in financial markets.
context_section_description: January 2011 – Fitch becomes the third rating agency to cut Greek debt to "junk" status after S&P and Moody's.
caption: Demonstrators in front of the Greek parliament, 29 May
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