The steady decline in the use of the phrase "credit crunch" and simultaneous rise in the use of the word “eurozone” in articles published in recent years charts how the financial crisis has moved from the private to the public sector.

The word "eurozone" appeared almost three times more this year than in 2010, according to media database Factiva, with terms such as "sovereign debt", "PIIGS" and "peripheral Europe" cropping up more than twice as often this year as in 2010.