The fiscal crisis is cantered in Greece, which will need to restructure its government debt, and two other countries, Ireland and Portugal, subject to extended financial-assistance arrangements with the International Monetary Fund. However, as concerns over fiscal sustainability in the eurozone stretches also to Italy, a country “too big to bail out,” the principal challenge is how to avoid contagion and ring-fence the inevitable Greek debt restructuring so as to avoid a generalized undermining of the “risk free status” of euro-area government debt. Inside the euro currency union, the central bank is legally barred from guaranteeing the sovereign debts of individual member states.