BERLIN (Reuters) ? A "disastrous" German bond sale on Wednesday sparked fears that Europe's debt crisis was even starting to threaten Berlin, with the leaders of the euro zone's two biggest economies still firmly at odds over a longer-term structural solution.
Investors were also unnerved by reports that Belgium is leaning on France to pay more into emergency support for failed lender Dexia under a 90-billion-euro ($120 billion) rescue deal that had appeared done and dusted.
A special report by Fitch Ratings suggested France had limited room left to absorb shocks to its finances like a new downturn in growth or support for banks without endangering its cherished AAA credit status.
After one of the least successful debt sales by Europe's powerhouse economy since the launch of the single currency, the euro fell to 1.336 to the dollar and European shares sank to 7-week lows.
"The debt crisis is burrowing ever deeper, like a worm, and is now reaching Germany," one of the more eurosceptic backbenchers in Angela Merkel's center-right government, Frank Schaeffler of the Free Democrats (FDP) who are the junior coalition partners, told Reuters.
The German debt agency was forced to retain almost half of a sale of 6 billion euros due to a shortage of bids by investors. The result pushed the cost of borrowing over 10 years for the bloc's paymaster above those for the United States for the first time since October.
"It is a complete and utter disaster," said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities in London.
The new bond promised to pay out a 2.0 percent interest rate -- the lowest ever on an issue of German 10-year Bunds. The auction's average yield was 1.98 percent, down from 2.09 percent for the previous benchmark in October.
Ten-year Bund yields were last up 12 basis points to 2.039 percent versus 1.946 percent for U.S. T-notes.
GERMAN EXPOSURE
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's spokesman told a news conference that the auction did not mean the government has refinancing problems and few on financial markets disagreed.
But it was a sign that as the bloc's paymaster Germany may slowly be pressured if the crisis continues to deepen. One senior ratings agency official said it could give Berlin cause to re-examine its refusal to embrace a broader solution.
"It's quite telling that there has been upward pressure on yields in Germany - it might begin to change perceptions," David Beers of Standard & Poor's told a conference in Dublin.
The borrowing costs of almost all euro zone states, even those previously seen as safe such as France, Austria and the Netherlands, spiked in the last two weeks as panicky investors dumped paper no longer seen as risk-free.
"Bunds are starting to lose their appeal because markets have to believe the euro bonds story and Germany is very close to starting, essentially, to guarantee the debt of other countries," said Achilleas Georgolopoulos, strategist at Lloyds Bank in London.
The crux of an acceleration of the crisis in the past month is Italian bond yields' jump to levels around 7 percent widely seen as unbearable in the long term, despite intervention by the European Central Bank to buy limited quantities.
Determined not to be pushed around by financial markets, Merkel is resisting calls, most notably from France, to allow the ECB to act more decisively.
In a forceful speech to the Bundestag lower house of parliament, Merkel issued one of her starkest warnings yet against fiddling with the bank's strict inflation-fighting mandate. She also hit back at proposals from the European Commission on joint euro zone bond issuance, calling them "extraordinarily inappropriate."
Shortly before she began speaking, French Finance Minister Francois Baroin told a conference in Paris that it was the ECB's responsibility to sustain activity in the currency bloc.
"The best response to avoid contagion in countries like Spain and Italy is, from the French viewpoint, an intervention (or) the possibility of intervention or announcement of intervention by a lender of last resort, which would be the European Central Bank," Baroin said.
STABILITY BOND
The chancellor has said the EU treaty bars the ECB from acting as a lender of last resort and printing money to buy government debt. She rejected joint "euro bonds," dismissed a proposal to mutualise the euro zone's debt stock, and rebuffed attempts to allow the bloc's rescue fund to borrow from the ECB or the IMF.
Yet at the same time, she has declared that the only answer to the crisis was "more Europe" and won endorsement from her party to press for a fully fledged European political union based around the euro zone.
The very public jousting over what to do next underscores just how divided European leaders are on how to resolve the turmoil which has accelerated to engulf big countries like Italy and Spain, and pushed out leaders in Rome and Athens.
With time running out for politicians to forge a crisis plan that is seen as credible by the markets, the European Commission presented a study on Wednesday of joint euro zone bonds as a way to stabilize debt markets.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso unveiled proposals for much more intrusive oversight of euro zone countries' budgets and efforts to meet macroeconomic targets, and set out the options for introducing common euro zone bonds.
"I welcome Barroso's proposals, which are a real step forward on many points," Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees De Jager said in a statement. "It will, however, still be an uphill battle, for there are those who resist further discipline.
"Eurobonds are not a magic solution to the current crisis and could even worsen it," he said. "We have to do first things first, and that means establishing strict supervision and enforcement of budget discipline."
Another alarm bell for financial markets on Wednesday came when Standard & Poor's warned that credit ratings in the euro zone could come under renewed pressure if large parts of the currency bloc slip back into recession, as expected, next year.
Another round of poor data on Europe's manufacturing and service sectors on Wednesday added to conviction that the continent is heading into another recession.
"With so much at stake, one would expect that some accommodation can be found between euro zone monetary authorities and national policy makers that balances substantive government policy actions with more aggressive steps by the ECB to counter a renewed economic downturn," Beers said.
(Reporting by Stephen Brown, Noah Barkin, Natalia Drozdiak, Veronica Ek, Eva Kuehnen; writing by Patrick Graham and Peter Millership)
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