In reality, Americans living in high tax countries like Canada, France, the UK, Germany etc would not owe the US any money anyway.

FORBES: Handling New IRS Foreign Reporting Requirements Without Doing Jail Time

Britain, Germany, etc could thus happily contribute.

ECONOMIST: Letters

So perhaps it's uncertainty about, say, the currency (euros) or budgets (America, Spain, Greece, Italy... etc etc) or elections (Germany, Spain, Italy etc etc) or just growth (everywhere) that markets hate?

BBC: Equity markets stay strong despite economic uncertainty

And as you can see the desired, target, interest rates are very different for the peripheral countries (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain, the so called PIGS) than they are for the core countries (Belgium Holland, Germany, France etc).

FORBES: The Inevitable Failure of the Euro

Germany, France, Austria, Finland etc (the creditor countries) would essentially want to manage the tax and spending of countries like Greece and Italy.

BBC: Stark choices for Europe

Spartan was also exporting various magnesium-cast parts (engine valve covers, cam covers, wheel armatures, console brackets, etc.) to Canada, Mexico, Germany, Spain, France, and Japan.

FORBES: Death By Antidumping

Agreed, we are also excluding this from the Spanish and Cypriot etc numbers, but pensions benefits in those countries will be very much lower than they are in Germany.

FORBES: Seriously, Cyprus Is Not Richer Than Germany