A January 2011 story in the "Diário de Notícias" (a Portuguese tabloid newspaper) reported that the government of Portugal encouraged overspending and investment bubbles in public-private partnerships between 1974 and 2010, and the economy has been damaged by risky credit, public debt creation and mismanaged European structural and cohesion funds for almost four decades. Prime Minister José Sócrates' cabinet was unable to foresee or forestall this when symptoms first appeared in 2005, and could not ameliorate the situation when the Portugal was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2011 and required financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.