Thanks for your articles and your initiative in collating information on the crisis. They're really helpful.

I have a question which I hope you would help with. You wrote, 'Admittance to the eurozone promised great economic rewards as nations whose sovereign credit ratings were lower than those of the strongest member states would be able to borrow money as if they too had the superior rating.'

Greece's and Portugal's overconsumption and Spain's and Ireland's real estate bubble had to be financed. The convergence of interest rates allowed these countries to borrow cheaply. My questions are:

1) how did government borrowing filter through to public overconsumption and real estate investments? That is, how did public sector debt eventually come to finance retail and corporate sector expenditures?

A related question would be, did the lowering of national credit costs resulted in an overall decrease in the yield curve, allowing corporates to raise financing through both banks and the markets more easily? If so, is there a decoupling of corporate and sovereign credit with a select coterie of the former now being able to borrow more cheaply than the latter?

2) who financed these borrowings? You mentioned that European banks carried about 20+% of EU debt, how about the rest?

Thank you for your time.