What is of most concern is the crisis has spread to Italy and Spain, and even the French banks have trouble funding themselves. This isn’t just the European periphery. It’s the heart of the European banking system and the whole European experiment.

When foreign policy cognoscenti run down threats on the global horizon, there is a temptation to cite China, Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, and perhaps pending trade agreements with partners in Latin America and across the Pacific. Europe was omitted entirely, but its serious economic implications alone should earn the story a front-page spot above the fold.

There has been much gnashing of teeth and rolling of eyes over eurozone leaders' repeated inability to solve their financial crisis once and for all. The rest of the world can best help, the reasoning goes, by shouting exhortations at Europe to just try harder. But what, exactly, are Europeans being urged to do?

The French, après tout, are not unlike Americans.

The Obama administration's fiscal stimulus is more Keynesian--and more radical--than even European leftists'.

A review of David Pryce-Jones's Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews.

The fiscal issues in Europe are far more pressing than those in the United States, but they raise similarly fundamental questions about the nature of governance.

The Atlantic interviews Desmond Lachman on the growing debt in Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. He said Ireland and Greece will likely have to default and leave the European Union.