ECB timeline:
Why is Germany worried about peripheral Eurozone countries reneging on their promises to reform.
December 2008: EU leaders agree on a €200bn stimulus plan to help boost European growth following the global financial crisis.
December 2009: Greece admits that its debts have reached €300bn while prime minister George Papandreou insists the country isn't about to "default on its debts."
February 2010: Greece unveils a series of austerity measures aimed at curbing the deficit.
May 2010: Eurozone members and the IMF agree a 110bn-euro bailout package to rescue Greece.
November 2010: EU and IMF agree a bailout package to the Irish Republic worth 85bn.
February 2011: Creation of a bailout fund called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), worth about €500bn.
May 2011: Eurozone and the IMF approve a €78bn bailout for Portugal.
July 2011: Greece gets a second bailout worth €109bn designed to resolve the Greek crisis and prevent contagion among other European economies.
October 2011: Eurozone finance ministers approve the next, 8bn euro ($11bn; £7bn), tranche of Greek bailout loans, potentially saving the country from default.
March 2012: Eurozone finally backs a second Greek bailout of 130bn euros. IMF backing was also required and was later given …
*** what are bonds doing ***
July 2012: Mario Draghi makes his famous speech in which he vows to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro. Spiking periphal bond yields fall and it's widely credited with ending the Eurozone crisis … reasurred markets … nick-named "big-bazooka" speech.
September 2012: The ECB reveals outright monetary transactions (OMTs) … days later Germany's constitutional court says it will review it.
6 June 2013: The European Central Bank (ECB) cuts its growth forecast for the Eurozone to -0.6 per cent, down from -0.5 per cent.
13 August 2013: The fragile eurozone finally begins to climb out of recession, posting two consecutive quarters of growth for the first time in nearly two years.
February 2014: German constitutional court says OMT illegal and refers it up to the ECJ.
5 June 2014: The ECB became the first major central bank to introduce negative rates, slashing its main benchmark interest rate to 0.15 per cent from 0.25 per cent. Frankfurt also unveiled targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTROs) which would encourage banks to lend to households and non-financial institutions. It announced it had begun preparatory work for "QE-lite" which would include the purchase of Asset Backed Securities (ABS) and covered bonds.
14 August 2014: The Eurozone economy unexpectedly failed to grow in the second-quarter, with the single currency area's power house Germany contracting for the first time in more than a year,
4 September 2014: ECB cuts its main interest rate to 0.05 per cent to encourage economic growth and stave off deflation. It also announced the beginning of "QE-lite", which would kick-off with the purchase of … next month.
20 October 2014: The ECB starts buying covered bonds in its bid to revive the flagging Eurozone economy.
26 October 2014: 24 out of 123 EU banks fail the ECB's "stress tests", and are given nine months to boost their finances or risk being shut down.
4 December 2014: The ECB cuts its 2014 forecast to 0.8 per cent from 0.9 per cent,
7 January 2015: Eurozone slid into deflation in December for the first time since 2009, with a 0.2 per cent year-on-year fall in prices.
15 January 2015: A European Court of Justice (ECJ) adviser says OMT is "compatible in principle" with EU law. This is widely taken as a "green-light" for quantitative easing which has a similar bond-buying function.
22 January: ECB unveils €60bn-a-month government bond-buying programme – much higher than the expected €50bn a month.
Draghi whatever it takes to save the Euro – OMT.
LTROs, negative interest rates etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13856580
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2015/01/14/euro-timeline.cnnmoney/