You are right in that its in no ones interest to have things blow up. But the question is : who's going to stump up the bail out money to ensure things don't blow up? Can u imagine German and French politicians telling voters : " sorry I have to raise your taxes but we have to bail out the Greeks, Italians and the Spanish. " very tricky sell.

And on the contrary, its in the politicians interest to play down the issues as much as possible instead of playing it up. You play it down and Italian and Spanish bond prices stay stable and they have no problem selling more bonds, and the game goes on. You raise the alarm, and Italy and Spain are shut out of the market and suddenly Germany gets a call to bail them out to save the eu, and the politician that says yes gets voted out by German voters .

So that's the scary part - all this negative stuff is coming out despite best efforts of everyone involved to play it down. Like I said, we are not out of the woods yet in regards to the public debt saga.