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That is the ultimate doomsday scenario with the unprecedented fiscal deficits around the world — that governments’ credit lines could run out and they couldn’t raise the cash they needed in the bond markets. At that point, after bailing out banks that had faced the same dilemma, who’s there to bail out the governments?

That hasn’t happened in Greece, ground zero in the European debt crisis. Earlier this week, Greece found ready and willing buyers for its short-term bills, albeit at yields twice what the government had to pay just a few months ago.

It was Germany that didn’t receive sufficient bids to sell all the bonds it offered. In other words, the auction failed.

This just doesn’t happen in major government bond markets. In the U.S. Treasury market, if the total of bids isn’t double the total of securities being offered, it’s considered horrific auction.

But, Wednesday, the auction of €3 billion (just over $4 billion) of 30-year German government bonds, or bunds, attracted only €2.752 billion in bids and wound up selling €2.458 billion at a yield of 3.83%.

The Wall Street Journal attributed the shortfall in demand to a combination of the bonds’ pricing and heavy supplies of new issues in the European bond markets.

And a spokesman for the German debt agency downplayed the results, saying these things happen ever so often.

But other, more disinterested observers see the failed German bond auction as an expression of the market’s concern about the effect of the proposed bailout of Greece on the finances of the core eurozone countries that will have to foot the bill, most notably German taxpayers.

All eurozone bond trading is frozen while the Greek government negotiates the bailout package provided by the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, says from a keen observer of the global capital markets. So, he wouldn’t put too much weight just on the German bund auction flop.

Meantime, Greek government bonds spreads over bunds continued to widen Wednesday, with the yield on the 10-year note hitting 8.25%, up from 8% Tuesday.

But, this market pro continues, Greece will need to be supported with some €10 billion a year from German taxpayers — about 10% what they had to pay for unification with their brethren in communist East Germany in the 1990s. And the French would have to kick in about half as much, or €5 billion annually. All told, he sees some the rest of the eurozone diverting a total of €100 billion a year to Greece in de facto transfer payments, to the detriment of their economies.