In Upside-Down Bond Market, Italy and Greece Are Big Winners

As fiscal-deficit concerns rocked global bond markets last month, an unusual thing happened. The bonds of Italy, Greece and Spain rallied.

Just a few years ago, this would have been unthinkable. The countries had long been relegated to the periphery of European markets — incorrigible spenders, in the eyes of traders, nursing perennially bloated bureaucracies — and so at moments like this, when a wave of angst about soaring government debt swept the globe, their bonds would have been among the hardest hit.