Bund auction failure - a new sign of the times

The talk of the week was about the poor unemployment numbers from the US and the poor confidence numbers in Europe. It is a coin toss about which economy will be worse so there is no clear direction in the dollar/euro trading.

What has not been given as much attention has been the failure of the 6 billion euro bund auction which was not able to raise the expected amount of money. What does this mean when the German government is not able to raise the money it wants with euro rates still relatively high versus the US? Germany has not planned the same type of aggressive fiscal plan so this should not have been a problem. If Germany cannot raise money what will this say about Italy or some of the other lower quality euroland countries? What does this tell us about the US and its ability to raise over $1.2 trillion in this fiscal year. We may be in for some surprises with investors less willing to fund at these low levels in the size that the governments would like.

This is the real story for the first week of the year.