MADRID – Investors dealt Italy and Spain a battering Tuesday as the yields on their bonds struck euro-era highs amid mounting fears that an economic slowdown will hurt their chances of dodging Europe's spreading debt crisis.
The yield for the Spanish 10-year bond rose as far as 6.45 percent, the highest since the euro was created. The rate is near the levels seen in Greece, Ireland and Portugal before they were forced to ask for rescue loans, and prompted Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to delay his vacation to monitor the situation.
Italy's equivalent bond yield jumped to 6.18 percent, above where it was before July 21, when the EU announced its latest debt crisis plan, including a second Greek bailout, to calm and contain market jitters.
Spain's main stock index was down 1.3 percent in late afternoon trading after plunging 3.2 percent a day earlier, while Italy's fell another 1.4 percent.
The heightened market pressure bodes ill for Italy and Spain, the eurozone's third- and fourth-largest economies, which are both too expensive to rescue for Europe's bailout fund.
The turmoil is due to a toxic mix of market concerns about growth, not only in Europe but also the U.S., and the possibility that the debt crisis will continue spreading.
Over the past two weeks, markets have been roiled by worries that the U.S. economy may be sliding back toward recession and have its credit rating cut. In times of trouble, investors' knee-jerk reaction is to sell what they perceive as high-risk assets and buy into safer ones.
That was evident by the fall in the yield for German bonds, which investors bought up as they sold so-called peripheral ones, those of countries with poor government finances.
"There is increasing uncertainty in the market and all the peripheral markets, the ones which have weaker political contexts, will continue to suffer," said Luca Peviania, managing director of P&G, a Rome-based asset managment company.
The rising borrowing rates sent shockwaves rippling through the two nations' political leadership.
Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti called an emergency meeting in Rome to analyze the situation and arranged to meet Jean-Claude Juncker, the chairman of the Eurogroup meetings of eurozone nations, on Wednesday.
Zapatero, meanwhile, delayed his vacation so he could "follow more closely the evolution of economic indicators," his administration said in a statement.
The move came just four days after he called early general elections for November — largely due to pressure on his administration from the financial crisis and because he wants a new government to manage the troubled Spanish economy for all of next year instead of part of it.
EU officials sought to downplay the danger of Spain and Italy edging closer toward needing a bailout, but the European Commission said it was monitoring the situation closely.
"We are very confident in both the Spanish and Italian authorities' determination to get their economies back on track," said Chantal Hughes, a spokeswoman for the EU's executive.
She said that in the Commission's view, "there is no factual evidence (about the two countries' economies) that has changed in the last few days."
"The question of a rescue plan (for Spain) is not on the table, it hasn't been discussed," Hughes said.
Eurozone leaders agreed July 21 on a second, euro109 billion ($157 billion) bailout for Greece and overhauled their rescue fund in hopes of keeping market turmoil from spreading to Spain and Italy.
But the deal gave only a temporary lift to Spanish and Italian bonds.
Just days later, global markets were rocked by the possibility that the U.S. may default on its debt by not raising its borrowing ceiling. It managed to clinch a deal just in time, but investor sentiment was shaken profoundly. At the same time, U.S. indicators showed its economy was slowing sharply. The combination caused traders to move their cash into the safest investments — such as German bonds, Swiss accounts, and gold.
In that context, confidence in the EU crisis plan's ability to protect Spain and Italy from the market turmoil dropped rapidly.
That is partly because the deal included asking bondholders to take losses on the value of their holdings by swapping them for longer-dated bonds with lower interest.
Losses for private investors — a first in the 21-month debt crisis — has underlined the risks to banks, insurance companies and others who hold eurozone debt.
Elevated yields show the additional interest investors demand to hold the country's debt, and underline how their financing costs could rise when they need to tap bond markets again. As fears of default increase, interest rates rise and make paying debt even harder in a vicious circle.
Spain is struggling to recover from nearly two years of recession triggered in large part by the collapse of an overheated real estate sector. Burdened by a swollen deficit, the country's jobless rate stands at a eurozone high of nearly 21 percent.
Italy has debt of 120 percent of economic output, but had been viewed for months with calm by bond markets. The country has low levels of private debt and has not had the real estate boom and bust that caused trouble for the United States, Spain, and Ireland.
But it suffers from chronically low growth and investors doubt the government's willingness and ability to push through painful economic reforms.
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David McHugh in Frankfurt, Colleen Barry in Milan, Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels and Paolo Santalucia in Rome contributed to this report.
