Portugal Third Country to Receive Eurozone Bailout

Portugal is the third, and hopefully final, country in the Eurozone to request aid for debt repayments coming due in June. Over the course of a year the Eurozone and its allies have structured funds to provide relief to Eurozone countries unable to make debt repayments.

Initial aid required by Greece was called upon in May 2010 and since then additional structured funding created by the European Central Bank and the IMF has relaxed the risk outlook for the region. Consent by the ECB and IMF to structure available funding for countries in need of a bailout has likely stopped a widespread contagion in the region as debt is highly interconnected within the seventeen member zone.

Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2011
Portugal Pleads for Rescue