Since then, however, euro-zone bond markets have calmed significantly, pulling Slovenian yields lower, too.
The French finance minister warned that the German ban could reduce liquidity in euro-zone bond markets.
Here is another one: If international investors flee the euro-zone bond markets, who will hurt the most?
The U-turn owes a lot to the shifting dynamics of the euro-zone bond markets, which have also affected Italy.
To nervous euro-zone bond markets France looks a lot closer to Greece than to Germany: a potential problem country, not part of the solution.
Citigroup is forecasting a 40% increase in bond issuance in the euro zone and a doubling of issuance in America.
The recent surge in bond yields issued by euro zone countries is a sign that investors don't believe leaders are fully committed to saving the currency, he said.
Investors are watching for indications that the meeting discussed unified bond issuance for the euro zone at some point in the future, which is another item that Germany has thus far rejected, saying it is too early to create such bonds.
FORBES: Stocks Battered As Words From EU Meetings Alarm Investors
Independent market-data providers, including Thomson and Greenwich Associates, have consistently ranked Deutsche Bank as the number one bond underwriter in the euro zone, as a leader in international debt and equity markets, and as one of the world's largest foreign-exchange and derivatives houses.
The Euro Zone 10-year bond yield is 4.626%, and the Japanese 10-year bond yield is 1.985%.
In the current European crisis, ratings firms had begun to downgrade peripheral euro-zone countries years before bond markets woke up to default risk.
But even a tussle over autonomy would create prolonged uncertainty just when Spain needs to reassure the bond markets and fellow euro-zone governments that its problems are in hand.
You do not have to be a German taxpayer to fret that the corollary of giving weaker euro-zone governments refuge from the bond markets is to ease the pressure on them to cut their deficits.
European stocks ended a bumpy session in the black Tuesday, underpinned by stronger-than-expected U.S. consumer-confidence data, a well-received Italian bond auction and hope that euro-zone policy makers will make progress in tackling the region's debt crisis.
Then came the European Financial Stability Facility, but it turns out to be too puny to halt the bond vigilantes' rampage through the euro zone, and anyhow rests in part on France's waning ability to join Germany as a guarantor by retaining its triple-A credit rating.
WSJ: Agenda | Irwin Stelzer: Euro-Zone Shark Still Has Its Appetite
The financial markets, which pioneered the three-time-zone world, have grown used to rolling bond books around the globe.
As bond investors hunting for higher returns revisit the euro-zone periphery, ignoring short-term economic prospects, the pressure they were previously exerting to enact structural reforms eases.
And today's announcement by Spain that there was no growth at all in its economy won't do anything to pull its bond yields significantly further away from that 7% danger zone, where a possible Italian bailout could be followed by a Spanish rescue.
There is a correlation between the amount of creative accounting that went on in the euro zone in the decade to 2003 and government-bond yields now.
When ECB President Mario Draghi was asked if the central bank would increase its sovereign bond-buying in light of weak auctions across the euro zone, he said no.
FORBES: Stocks Battered As Words From EU Meetings Alarm Investors
"The longer the political vacuum persists, the more vulnerable Italy's bond market becomes at a time when sentiment towards the euro zone has already taken a knock" from Cyprus, said Nicholas Spiro, head of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London.
Another concern, particularly among fiscally struggling euro-zone states, is how a tax on sovereign-bond transactions might affect governments' borrowing costs.
By February, it became obvious that the 16-nation euro zone would have to do something to address the Greek bond meltdown.
Many countries in the euro zone had no choice but austerity to try to calm bond markets that were pushing them into bankruptcy.
For the euro zone to find its way through this crisis, intervention in bond markets needs to be combined with a bolder overhaul of the system itself.
European stocks closed in the red Wednesday and the euro erased gains versus the dollar as the woes of the euro zone continued to bug investors, highlighted by lackluster euro-zone economic data and a subdued German 10-year government bond auction.
That would be less of a worry if the euro zone had a stronger safety net for countries that have fallen foul of bond markets.
"A lot of tourists, citizens and residents who live in high rise buildings along the lakefront are not protected, and that's what we are fighting for, " Bond said, adding that the mayor had originally advocated instituting a no-fly zone of 25 miles around O'Hare Airport.
Over recent years, European politicians also reacted only to periodic scary plunges in their stock and bond markets, taking belated and panicked actions each time to repeatedly kick the euro-zone debt crisis down the road.
Belgian 10-year bond yields rose to nearly 6%, the highest level since the start of the euro zone.
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