In a series of late-night moves, European finance ministers, the European Central Bank, and the IMF threw everything at defending the euro.
This was unveiling the nuclear option and more. A truly staggering $1 trillion has been deployed in an effort to stabilise world markets. In a short space of time this was no longer about the debts of Greece or Spain; it was a race to save global economic recovery.
Banks once more could have faced liquidity problems. President Obama was working the phones with Europe's leaders. In the desperate race to have a plan in place before the Asian markets awoke, doubts were swept aside. The rule book was forgotten in a matter of hours. The European Central Bank decided to buy eurozone government bonds; a policy it had only recently fiercely resisted.
Some believe that the massive 500bn euro package to guarantee loans to eurozone countries should have required a new treaty, yet it was almost nodded through. The Commission has based the arrangement on a narrow interpretation of the Lisbon Treaty, which refers to "exceptional circumstances".
The European Commission, which is after all a civil service, could now find itself borrowing on the markets to lend to any state in difficulty. "This truly is overwhelming force," said Marco Annunziata, from Unicredit. This firepower is all aimed at steadying the markets, or as the Swedish finance minister put it, stopping the "wolf-pack behaviour" of the speculators.
