Last Summer, the ECB stemmed the panic in peripheral sovereign debt markets with a promise. The promise was to undertake 'Outright Market Transactions'; purchases of short-term debt issued by troubled sovereigns, from secondary markets, in quantities not limited at the outset, provided the country in question submit itself to the discipline of seeking conditional assistance from the European Stability Fund. It seems amazing to me that this has worked so well and that no-one has tried to call the ECB's bluff.