ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

European sovereign-debt crisis: List of acronyms

So, you know how sometimes adults use big words and letters to talk about things? Well, when they talk about the European sovereign-debt crisis, they use a lot of letters that might be hard to understand. So, here are some of the acronyms they use and what they mean:

- EU: This stands for the European Union, which is a group of countries in Europe that work together on things like trade and laws.

- ECB: This stands for the European Central Bank, which is like the bank that takes care of money stuff for the European Union. They make decisions about things like interest rates and how much money to print.

- IMF: This stands for the International Monetary Fund, which is an organization that helps countries who are having money problems.

- PIIGS: This stands for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. These are the countries that were hit the hardest by the debt crisis.

- EFSF: This stands for the European Financial Stability Facility, which was a fund set up by the European Union to help bail out countries that were struggling with debt.

- ESM: This stands for the European Stability Mechanism, which is another fund set up by the European Union to help countries in need.

Basically, all these acronyms are just ways for adults to talk about the European debt crisis in a simpler way.