Can Europe’s debt crisis be contained?

Europe's debt crisis, and expectations that Greece will default, threaten to tip the global economy back into recession.

"One analyst recently likened the situation to the 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers, which sparked the near-collapse of the entire financial system," my colleague Zachary Roth writes at the Lookout. "'You were concerned if Lehman went, how many other banks would go,' Hans Lorenzen, a credit strategist at Citigroup, told the Washington Post. 'If Greece defaults, what's the probability of Portugal and Ireland and then Italy and Spain?'"

"Europe's leaders met in Washington over the weekend, trying to devise a plan to address Europe's debt crisis," his report continues. "And U.S. government officials are using increasingly urgent language in their appeals to their European counterparts to come up with a viable plan before the crisis spirals out of control, plunging the global economy back into recession."

Go read Roth's explainer on the background to and implications of the crisis, and who can fix it.