Mario Draghi

Mario Draghi studied economics at La Sapienza University in Rome and received his PhD from MIT. He held senior positions at the Italian Treasury, the World Bank, and Goldman Sachs (as managing director of international operations) before becoming Governor of the Bank of Italy and then President of the European Central Bank in 2011. He took office as the eurozone was experiencing its gravest crisis since the euro's founding: rising sovereign yields for peripheral European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece) threatened to force some out of the eurozone entirely. In July 2012, at a conference in London, Draghi stated that the ECB "would do whatever it takes to preserve the euro — and believe me, it will be enough." This sentence — just 14 words — immediately caused sovereign spreads to collapse across peripheral Europe and ended the acute phase of the crisis without a single euro being spent, simply through credible commitment. The subsequent implementation of the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program — allowing the ECB to purchase unlimited quantities of short-term sovereign bonds — provided the institutional backstop that confirmed the commitment. Draghi subsequently introduced quantitative easing in Europe, eventually purchasing €80 billion of assets monthly, and cut ECB interest rates to below zero. He served as Italian Prime Minister from 2021 to 2022. Draghi is widely regarded as one of the most consequential central bankers of the 21st century.