The high Euro and low Renminbi led to the financial crisis via petroleum and other commodity prices.
USA states are free to default. Bonds of USA states have different (face) interest rates, (effective) yields and ratings. Most USA states have rules against having deficits, but not all. No one kicks them off the dollar when they default.
European states are also free to default and default does not move anybody automatically of the Euro. In fact, currently there is no mechanism for this at all.
I hate to ask but how did a high euro cause a crisis in commodities market? It is the low dollar that may have caused them, not the high Euro. Oil is traded in dollars so a low dollar will spark increases in price
I'm partially surprised Greece hasn't been "invited" to leave the eurozone. After all, it seems certain now they only got there under false pretences.
I suspect they serve a purpose though, as a kind of circuit breaker stopping attention turning to Ireland, Spain, Portugal, etc., which the euro would definitely struggle to defend.
I do hope the euro manages to survive though. I listen to a lot of US financial podcasts and there's far too much "we told you so" going on at the moment. As if the States wasn't exactly the same in many ways, only they have dysfunctional States instead of nations. I mean, Italy and Belgium probably have more in common with each other than Washington and South Dakota!
But it's the only game in town. And maybe if they all agree to keep playing, global financial momentum will continue for long enough for someone to come up with a good plague or a proper war to reset the global economy in traditional fashion.
My money's on peak oil providing the excuse, so they probably only have four or five years at most (assuming China & India keep buying cars and scooters) to keep the illusion of wealth going.
Instinctively I feel it'll be tough to maintain. But with Ben Bernanke and the Keynesian Ubermench at the helm of the world's reserve currency, they might just manage it, in the process making bond brokers like Goldman & Morgan Stanley rich beyond the dream of Croesus... or even the average Euromillions winner.
Fascinating times though, whatever happens.... though I can't help feeling that's what some folk used to say in 1930.
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