While it is widely believed that the euro area crisis started from Greece, incidentally the first sign of crisis within the euro area appeared in Ireland after Bear Sterns was rescued in March 2008, whereby Irish sovereign spreads started to diverge noticeably. Nine months later, in December 2009, there was heightened pressure on GGBs.
Greece was the first country though within the euro area to sign a financial assistance programme, and unfortunately the last one to exit from such a programme. Figure 6 Ten-year government bond yields in euro area crisis countries vis-à-vis German Bund yields (September 2008-December 2014, in percentage points)  Source: Haver Analytics.