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24. Mario Draghi
AP Images
Title: President of the European Central Bank
Country: Italy
Age: 67
As president of the European Central Bank since 2011, Mario Draghi has made major strides toward lifting the 19-country eurozone out of its recession. This year he launched a massive stimulus program to purchase $64.2 billion a month in government bonds from eurozone countries — a strategy he says will continue at least through September 2016.
With the value of the euro continuing to decrease, Draghi said last month that the ECB planned to reevaluate the program before the end of the year, signaling that more quantitative easing — the controversial monetary policy in which central banks increase the money supply to encourage lending and stimulate the economy — could be in the future.
Draghi, a Goldman Sachs vet and former governor of the Bank of Italy, has also played a key role in preventing a widespread financial crisis stemming from Greece’s ailing economy, which has continued to teeter on the brink of insolvency despite three bailouts in five years from the ECB, the IMF, and the European Commission. The latest debt-relief package, approved in August and worth $95 billion, helped prevent Greece from exiting the Eurozone.
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