In the first Inside the Issues of 2012, we return to the topic of debt and global financial instability. This week's guest is CIGI Senior Fellow Pierre Siklos, who outlines the original causes of unsustainable sovereign debt loads and explains why they have plagued the global economy over the past year. He goes on to say that financial stability mechanisms in the European Union were too weak to enforce the macroeconomic conditions necessary for a common currency, and that poor supervision and regulation has led to the current contagion across the euro zone.