How safe are eurozone government bonds? This superficially technical question is central to the future of economic and monetary union: without safe bonds, another eurozone crisis could loom right after the pandemic. The last one erupted in 2010 because of uncertainty about the status of government bonds. Financial-market actors saw those bonds as at risk of default and demanded massively higher interest rates from many governments. These latter, unable to finance deficits, had to implement harsh austerity policies, which led to mass unemployment and nearly brought down the entire euro project. Only when the then ... (full story)