Why the Greek meltdown became a Euro-zone crisis

The article looks at the debt crisis in Greece and analyzes the role it played as a causal factor in the European sovereign debt crisis beginning in 2009. The author notes that the roots of Greece's debt problem lie earlier in the 2000s, when primarily German and French banks provided a high volume of low-interest loans to the country, counting on their own governments' implicit loan guarantees. He argues that because eurozone leaders took many months to respond effectively to a possible Greek default, the contagion effect of Greece's situation became far worse than it would have been. Also discussed are possible policies and mechanisms to strengthen eurozone economic governance, including more centralized control over countries' budgets.