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There has been considerable discussion as to whether the potential Greek default makes it this cycle's Lehman Brothers, but that is surely wrong. Greece is much too small to destroy large areas of the world economy, as did the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. It is also being bailed out on exceptionally favorable, not to say squishy terms, as was Bear Stearns, where shareholders received an entirely unjustified US$10 per share from JPMorgan Chase.

To be Lehman Brothers, one must be a previously undoubted name, albeit with hidden weaknesses in management, whose bankruptcy is large enough to disrupt the entire global economic system and plunge it into depression for years thereafter. There is surely only one candidate for such an honor: it is not Greece, Portugal or Ireland (too small) or Spain (getting better management, and stronger than it looks - think Citigroup) but Italy.

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A "technocrat" successor such as the much loved (by the European Union bureaucracy) Mario Monti [at present the prime minister designate] would be much worse; he would secure a large handout from his friends at the EU or the International Monetary Fund, and would then waste the proceeds in government aggrandizement, making an eventual Italian bankruptcy 12-18 months down the road all the more painful. Since the market would quickly spot the road down which a Monti government was heading, it would withdraw support for Italian bonds within weeks, well before that inevitable destination had been reached.

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As they have done and are continuing to do in Greece, the EU panjandrums, by taking over the management of Italy by putting in their man Monti and providing limited bailout help, will make matters much worse. For one thing, their solution and the austerity they will call for will have very little legitimacy.

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With the budget more out of balance than under Berlusconi because the politically connected lobbies that Monti has brought with him will seize the opportunities to seize available resources, the markets will wrongly perceive Italy as being as much of a basket case as Greece, and close access to Italian government re-financing.

Within a very short period, that may not drive Italy out of the euro, but it will produce a default on Italian debt that could have been avoided with better management. Since Italy's debt is so huge, the resources for a full bailout do not exist (even Germany's taxpayers suffer under a high tax regime that is within a few percentage points of becoming counterproductive) and so the southern European government securities market will collapse.

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Economic growth has all but stopped in Europe, statistics showed Tuesday. The stall comes just when Italy, Greece and other nations need growth to help them wriggle out of the chokehold of debt.

The European Union economy grew a paltry 0.2 percent in July, August and September compared with the three months before, the EU statistics agency said. That is the same growth rate as the previous quarter, and far slower than the 0.7 percent before that.

And the picture is probably even worse. The statistics did not include Italy and Greece, the two countries in the most debt trouble. And their debt crisis only got worse in October, the month after this snapshot was taken.

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Economic growth has all but stopped in Europe, statistics showed Tuesday. The stall comes just when Italy, Greece and other nations need growth to help them wriggle out of the chokehold of debt.

The European Union economy grew a paltry 0.2 percent in July, August and September compared with the three months before, the EU statistics agency said. That is the same growth rate as the previous quarter, and far slower than the 0.7 percent before that.

And the picture is probably even worse. The statistics did not include Italy and Greece, the two countries in the most debt trouble. And their debt crisis only got worse in October, the month after this snapshot was taken.