Another series of eagerly anticipated government bond auctions went off without a hitch this morning, after Spain, Greece and - everyone's favourite bête noir at the moment - Ireland all successfully raised debt through auctions this morning.

Ireland was particularly in the spotlight as a bellwether of investor sentiment after reports that it might choose to tap the European Financial Stability Fund intensified over the last two weeks, pushing the country's credit default swap spreads to near their record wide levels. Those contracts measure the cost of insurance against default in a country's bonds.