But for Greece, economists believe austerity measures attached to its rescue package will slow economic growth and weaken the country's competitiveness for years to come. What's more, orderly defaults in industrialized nations are essentially unprecedented, which partly explains why investors are so spooked by what's happening in the eurozone.
"One of the founding pillars is this concept that the debt of industrialized countries is risk free," says Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "Markets are asking if it turns out there's risk in Greece maybe there are other countries in the industrialized world that face the same issues."
Hope for a soft landing
One of the big hopes, if the eurozone's debt crisis worsens, is that it would force a larger rescue fund, such as dramatic expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility. Italy is one of the eurozone's biggest debtors and its heavy debts have raised questions about the health of European banks, which have bought bundles of Italian bonds. The problem is that Europe's emergency bailout resources are far from enough to support anything more than smaller countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland.
One of the glaring weaknesses that the debt crisis has exposed is the lack of a common treasury in the construction of the euro, financier and businessman George Soros has said. While the EFSF is tasked with providing a safety net for the eurozone as a whole, the fund merely has the ability to raise money, leaving governments of member countries with authority over how to spend it.
"This renders the EFSF useless in responding to a crisis; it has to await instruction from the member countries," Soros wrote earlier this month in The New York Review of Books.
To be sure, eurozone leaders did widen the EFSF some but refused other bigger expansions during a summit in July. Committing much more money would likely have helped convince global markets that the fund is big enough to can handle just about anything -- even Italy. Several key governments, including France and Berlin, oppose strengthening the fund. And understandably so, since agreeing to pledging ever-growing sums of money to weak European states could strain the finances of some governments while causing political havoc for those dealing with disgruntled voters.
Nevertheless, the International Monetary Fund has urged eurozone leaders that a much bigger fund is needed. It remains to be seen how much influence the global lender has, but perhaps the possibility that the organization might share some of the financial burden in resolving the crisis could bring more support for a much grander EFSF.
A default -- however orderly or disorderly -- hasn't been able to calm markets. Spooked investors might likely find calm in an expanded EFSF.
