Morning Briefing: Mit diesen drei Punkten verstehen Sie die neue Eurokrise

Good morning, esteemed readers, should your crisis management capabilities already be covered by the global situation, please proceed to the next topic. For those who remain, the euro crisis is creeping back in. Usually, bond markets are not places of sudden eruptions, but rather sluggish, not always in the glare of public attention.

However, the numbers defy denial: the euro fell to $1.116 on Monday, the lowest level in 17 months. The risk premium on French government bonds compared to German bonds has surged by 32 basis points in just one week, as steep as in no week since Bloomberg data began in 1990. Spain and Italy are now on the radar of bond investors.

There are three developments that should be kept in mind: First, contagion. France primarily remains in the crosshairs. The country is plagued by a debt-to-GDP ratio of 119 percent, and given the political majority, prospects for reducing the debt to healthier levels are slim. Even the head of the French central bank, Emmanuel Moulin, warned in "Financial Times" that France might be "strangled by interest rates" if it does not get its finances in order.

This seems contagious. On Monday, Spain felt it: Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for new elections on November 29, and the yield of Spain's 10-year bonds rose to 4.15 percent. Italy's spread to German bonds is also in the triple digits. The unrest does not disappear, it travels. Secondly, the sovereign bond. It is the safe harbor – and now almost the only one.

The United States may set the benchmark currency, but it fails as a refuge: over $40 trillion in debt, the yield of 10-year bonds rose again on Monday, to up to 5.35 percent. Thirdly, the ECB. Markets are testing whether its safety net holds. Above all, in France, it could run dry, according to economist Lars Feld, who in his weekly Handelsblatt column points this out: The OMT program, which can support faltering states, requires France to accept a rescue fund ESM reform program.

Paris would only receive help against those reforms that are politically unlikely. "Look at the dollar rate over the past weeks, how it's rising," wrote a market participant to me last evening. "The Europe story is again dead." This was unthinkable a half year ago, considering the uncertainty in the United States. But even good opportunities always put Europe at the top.