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Many EU nations are unlikely to surrender to the tight centralized restrictions demanded by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in return for a rescue. Merkel's voters, meanwhile, are terrified of hyperinflation, an unlikely but not impossible outcome of printing trillions of euros to buy up sovereign debt and restructure it. Even with an unlikely rescue, much of Europe faces years of hard times.

Beyond this, things get complicated, ugly and terrifying.

"The path of the eurozone is becoming clear," MIT economist Simon Johnson and Peter Boone, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, wrote on Bloomberg News recently. "As conditions in Europe worsen, there will be fewer euro-denominated assets that investors can safely buy. Bank runs and large-scale capital flight out of Europe are likely."