But there is a danger that the result will be a bureaucratic mess that polarises the haves and have-nots of the euro zone, while further dividing the euro-zone and non-euro-zone members of the European Union.
ECONOMIST: Plans for common supervision could easily turn messy
An even bigger problem is how the euro zone would prevent financial turmoil engulfing the euro zone's other weaker economies.
In recent weeks, the euro zone's debt crisis has spread to Spain, the euro zone's fourth-largest economy, forcing it to seek a bailout for its banks.
Once the euro is safe, the rest of the euro zone might just conclude that Greece will cause less trouble for the European Union inside the euro zone than outside, where it might sink into the criminal swamp of the Balkans.
But if the euro zone insists that Greece follow the bailout, the government's relatively small primary balance makes life outside the euro zone more feasible.
Most lending from the euro zone and the IMF is now going to pay interest on existing debt, which will increasingly be owned by the euro zone itself, rather than fund the government's operating expenses.
European stocks closed in the red Wednesday and the euro erased gains versus the dollar as the woes of the euro zone continued to bug investors, highlighted by lackluster euro-zone economic data and a subdued German 10-year government bond auction.
There is one way they could do it: by messing up their management of the euro zone so badly so that once again the specter of a euro-zone breakup raises its head.
The receding breakup fear also hit momentum among governments to correct the flaws in the euro zone's makeup, slowing the push to complete a euro-zone "banking union" and to cut the links between governments with weak finances and feeble banks, which was undermining confidence in both.
That could also result in additional tensions in the euro zone if Hollande follows through on the issues he campaigned on, including insistence on renegotiation of the recently agreed German-led euro zone fiscal compact.
FORBES: Slowing U.S. Economy Is Fine But Europe Can Do Real Damage
An orderly sale of Italy's state-owned industries and Greece's land holdings would take time, which is no longer available, so the immediate solution to the crisis is to place such hard assets in a euro-zone trust that would then issue euro-zone bonds backed by those assets.
The concern is that if the euro zone unraveled, the Gateshead facility could be overwhelmed with requests from former euro-zone countries to print their national currencies, the person said.
"The latest euro-zone inflation and PMI business activity data do nothing to alter our view that the euro zone is set for another very tough year in 2012, " said Ben May, European economist at Capital Economics.
Even if the market's focus is on Italy, the attention of euro-zone policy makers will be entirely focused on Cyprus, whose debt crisis has the potential to blow apart everything the euro zone has achieved since June.
While the positions may get hurt if there is no new stimulus from the Fed, or if the euro-zone situation improves, Mr. Gross has been doing well so far this year amid the uncertainties over the 17-nation euro zone and the U.S. growth outlook.
Having fled these currencies in late 2011 as the euro zone's crisis deepened, investors returned to emerging markets and other riskier assets at the beginning of this year, buoyed by encouraging economic data out of the U.S. and signs the euro-zone debt crisis is calming down.
Even if this was legally possible, which it isn't under current euro-zone rules, it was politically impossible: there is no appetite in some euro-zone countries, notably Germany, to create a transfer union, nor to bail out a country whose banking system is widely suspected to be a haven for money-laundering.
With growth in the euro-zone roughly on a par with the 3-3.5% forecast for the United States, and with the euro-zone's trade surplus a stark contrast to the Americans' deficit, the euro is due for a correction.
Comments by Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup of euro-zone finance ministers, spooked financial markets Monday after he suggested that a bailout deal for Cyprus could serve as a template to resolve any future problems with euro-zone banks.
In Switzerland, which like the U.K. isn't part of the euro zone, the central bank has used the euro as its external reference point in its efforts to keep the Swiss franc's value stable.
Germany, France and other euro zone states have so far described the 130bn-euro figure agreed in October as a red line that must not be crossed.
The European Central Bank's offer to buy unlimited quantities of the bonds of governments that have requested support from the euro zone's bailout funds has already eased fears of a euro break-up, serving as a reminder that it is always a mistake to underestimate the power of a central bank.
In principle, a default by Greece or by any other euro-zone country would not threaten the euro any more than default by New York City in 1975, or California today, would mean the end of the dollar.
Cyprus, the third smallest economy in the Euro zone (the term used to refer to the 17 countries which use the Euro as their currency), was on the brink of default.
If the euro zone had put a credible firewall around the government bonds of Italy and other troubled euro countries, a Greek default would not now be threatening contagion.
ECONOMIST: The markets are not the euro��s only threat. Voters may be too
Alexandros understood something important that seems to have eluded a great many politicians and pundits outside the euro zone who have lined up recently to give their views on how to solve the euro crisis.
New data from the European Union showed that the euro zone unemployment rate had risen to 10% in November, the highest rate since the euro was introduced in 1999.
U. may be faced with a stark choice: Continue the half-measures that are driving the euro zone ever deeper into recession, or allow the introduction of dual currencies to preserve the euro.
Euro-zone politics could indeed again bring the euro low, but that is not an option any rational policy maker would choose.
One survey earlier this year suggested that over 60% of euro-zone citizens expect prices to rise when euro notes and coins are introduced.
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