The euro quickly became a major international currency: the eurobondmarket soon came to rival the dollar bondmarket; euro bank notes began circulating around the world.
Scared investors rushed into the safest dollar assets, lured by the liquidity of the vast market for us Treasuries, as the euro area was revealed as a mess of fragmented bond markets.
The euro crisis has spread to Italy, the world’s third-largest bondmarket, which means the stock of rich-world government debt that is considered safe has shrunk dramatically.