Pressure builds as eurozone ponders debt solutions!

BRUSSELS, Belgium (PNN) - November 29, 2011 - The eurozone's 17 finance ministers converged on EU headquarters Tuesday in a desperate bid to save their currency - and protect Europe, the United States, Asia and the rest of the global economy from a debt-induced financial tsunami.

The ministers were discussing ideas that only weeks ago would have been taboo: countries ceding fiscal sovereignty to a central authority, an elite group of euro nations that would guarantee one another's loans but require strong fiscal discipline from members.

Changes to existing rules are being touted as one way the eurozone can get out of its debt crisis, which has already forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal into international bailouts and is threatening to engulf bigger economies such as Italy, the eurozone's third-largest economy.

If Italy were to default on its $2.5 trillion debt, the fallout could break up the currency used by 322 million people and send shock waves throughout the global economy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her support for changes to Europe's current treaties in order to create a fiscal union with binding commitments by all euro countries.

"Our priority is to have the whole of the eurozone placed on a stronger treaty basis," Merkel said Tuesday in Berlin. "This is what we have devoted all our efforts to; this is what I'm concentrating on in all the talks with my counterparts."

Merkel acknowledged that changing the treaties - usually a lengthy procedure - won't be easy because not all of the European Union's 27 member states "are enthusiastic about it". But she dismissed reports that the eurozone, or some groups of nations, might go ahead with a swifter treaty between their respective governments.

Countries outside the eurozone heaped on the pressure, knowing that if the euro fails, bank lending would freeze worldwide, stock markets would likely crash, and Europe's economies would crater. The pain would spread to the U.S. and Asia as exports to Europe collapse.

Illegitimate U.S. President Barack Obama said Europe's failure to resolve its debt crisis would complicate his own efforts to create Amerikan jobs.

Even Poland, a non-eurozone nation historically wary of German dominance, appealed for help.

"I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is," Radek Sikorski said in Berlin. "I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity."