After making brief cameo appearances during the first couple of years post-Credit Crunch, the EU’s sovereign debt crisis will ensure 2010’s status as the year of the Big Bad Bond Markets. What do they look like? Nobody knows. Where do they live? Nobody knows. But whether it’s David Cameron saying they will come and break our kneecaps if we don’t cut the deficit, or columnists warning that they’re just biding their time before an all-out assault on the eurozone, the bond markets have been the voiced or unvoiced threat underpinning many of the last year’s political decisions. Imagine politics as a conversation between a petrified debtor and a smiling loan-shark in a suit: the bond markets are the gangster’s gnarled henchmen, cracking their knuckles in the shadows.