Now why would they be having a hissy fit with their fellow sister from the Club Med cartel of the Euro Zone?

Perhaps ...

Ten-year yields for Italian bonds edged up to 4.8 percent on Monday, from 4.7 percent last week. Rates for Spain’s comparable bonds rose to 5.5 percent, up from 5.2 percent.

I think Frau Merkel said it best though ...

"It is also important that people in countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are not able to retire earlier than in Germany -- that everyone exerts themselves more or less equally. That is important."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,763294,00.html

Here's the problem. Seems Grecian reforms to its pension system were aimed at reducing early retirement and raising the average age of retirement to 63. Incentives to keep workers in the labor market beyond 65 have likewise been adopted.

However, in Germany they just raised the retirement age from 65 to 67.

So on one hand there's a Club Med mentality in Greece, Italy and Spain to go easy on themselves and enjoy the largess of what the Euro zone has to offer

And on the other hand, their northern partners of the Euro union make it difficult for their people to retire early and are expected to tow the line and work to pay taxes so the ECB is flush with cash to ease the financial burden in the Club Med region because of a lack of work ethics.

But the true significance is what just happened to Spain and Italy, as mentioned above, will happen to the US if the GOPer's push the deficit debate to the wire. At the moment the US pays doodley-squat in interest rates for borrowed money...at the very least you get back exactly what you put in and don't have to worry about loosing you ass if the market goes tits up again. If the US defaults, they''re gonna want interest to offset the possibility of another GOP attempt to pretend to know what they're doing.