“Whatever it takes.” Three simple words that tamed the financial markets, saved the euro from possible collapse and turned Mario Draghi from an Italian technocrat into the central banker of his generation. And an obvious choice to head a new coalition government in Rome at a time when the country is facing the triple whammy of Covid-19, economic collapse and political chaos. Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, was desperate to appoint someone with the authority to lead the country out of deep recession and counter the euro-scepticism of parties of the right, and who better than “Super Mario”, the man who dug the single currency out of a deep hole in 2012? The venue was London, just ahead of the Olympic Games. The occasion was a financial conference organised by Mervyn King, then governor of the Bank of England. The backdrop was speculative attacks on Italian and Spanish bonds that put the very survival of the single currency in doubt. Central bankers rarely deliver memorable soundbites. Some – such as Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve – have actually thought it a good idea to leave the markets guessing by being as cryptic as possible. But this was an existential crisis for the euro and Draghi – only recently installed as president of the European Central Bank (ECB) – knew it was a time for clarity not obfuscation. Having told the speculators that they underestimated the political capital that had been invested in monetary union, Draghi continued: “Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.” The markets got the message: if they wanted to carry on selling Italian and Spanish bonds they would have to take on the ECB and its considerable firepower. Few were prepared to take that risk and even before the Frankfurt-based bank had bought a single bond the pressure on the governments in Rome and Madrid eased. Draghi has had a long and varied career. Born in the postwar Italy of the 1940s, he was an academic, worked for the World Bank, and the Italian treasury before leaving for a job in the private sector with Goldman Sachs in 2001. After four years, he became governor of the Bank of Italy and was appointed to run the ECB in 2011. Those who thought Draghi would be only a figurehead at the ECB, with the real decisions being made by Germany and its allies in northern Europe, were quickly proved wrong. A central bank that had traditionally been slow moving and rigid in its thinking under his predecessor Jean-Claude Trichet, became much more interventionist and innovative. The ECB embraced quantitative easing (QE): the money creation programme that involves the central bank creating money through purchases of bonds. When Draghi thought the eurozone economy was still not receiving sufficient stimulus, he argued successfully for the ECB to push one of its key interest rates into negative territory – the first major central bank to do so. Germany voiced misgivings but could not prevent Draghi from having his own way. The ECB president proved to be a political operator as well as a skilled communicator. During his time in Frankfurt, Draghi regularly insisted that the ECB could not cure all the problems of the eurozone through low interest rates and QE, and that it was up to national governments to make more use of tax and spending to boost growth. He now has to use his experience and credibility to sort out the problems of an economy that – after a disastrous 2020 – is barely bigger than it was in 1999.