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How seriously should Americans take what is happening in Europe? The European Union is in turmoil over a crisis of confidence in Greece, which faces the possibility of having to default on its debts.

Whatever happens, Greece is going to have to raise taxes and cut spending in the midst of a recession. In recent days, this new financial emergency has hammered the euro on currency exchanges and buoyed the dollar as investors have again turned to U.S. Treasury bonds as a safe asset.

But Greece is not unique. It has put the risk of wider government debt defaults at the front of lenders' minds. Could the U.S. soon face a similar crisis of confidence, with all its dire consequences?

It depends on what you mean by "soon." At the moment, the United States is borrowing with no great sign of stress. Far from coming under pressure, the dollar is still strong, and the cost of U.S. government borrowing (the interest rate on Treasury bonds) shows no sign of spiking. Greece, to be sure, has some problems all its own. Where it leads, the United States need not follow. Yet one should not dismiss the parallel too blithely. Sentiment in financial markets can change abruptly, and the differences between Greece's financial condition and America's are not as vast as one would wish.

This year, the U.S. budget deficit will be on the order of 11 percent of gross domestic product. Greece's deficit is forecast to be bigger, but not much, at 13 percent. The underlying "cyclically adjusted" Greek budget deficit -- the number you get if you subtract the automatic effects of the recession on revenues and outlays -- is about 10 percent. America's is 9 percent.

Greece's ratio of public debt to GDP stands at 120 percent of output. On the similar measure of "general government debt," which includes the debts of state and local governments as well as the federal government, the figure for the U.S. is about 90 percent. In 2011, this will rise to around 100 percent. In the White House budget forecasts, the ratio keeps going up.

True, there is no fixed threshold at which deficits or debts get too big. Countries with smaller debts than America's -- Ireland and Spain, for instance -- can still get into severe fiscal difficulty. And countries with much bigger debts can avoid a public finance crunch.

Japan's ratio of general government debt to GDP will be nearly 200 percent this year. But nobody in his right mind could call the medium-term outlook for U.S. government finances healthy. The Obama administration itself terms the situation "unsustainable."

A lot of commentary this week has concentrated on the way the Greek government cooked its budget books -- with help (needless to say) from Goldman Sachs and other financial advisers. This made Greece an exceptionally bad case, it is argued. The dramatic upward revision of deficit estimates as its various ruses in public finance were uncovered certainly added to the panic. That could never happen in the United States, right?

I wish I could be so sure. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their prime were the biggest off-balance-sheet vehicles in the world, and they set pretty impressive standards for imaginative, not to say imaginary, accounting. Is everything in the government-sponsored enterprises now out in the open? We'll see.

Perhaps that figure I just mentioned for U.S. general government debt struck you as high. The measure of public debt usually quoted in the U.S. excludes the debts of state and local governments. This and other statistical differences give you a debt ratio for 2010 of just over 60 percent -- the figure you might be familiar with -- not 90 percent. But it is not obvious why you would want to exclude the debts of state and local governments. Doing so is not standard international practice. If some states approach default, which is by no means unthinkable, some of those debts may end up on the federal government's books anyway. Even if it does not come to that, the debts are still public obligations, and most countries would fold them into their overall measure of public debt.

If America does get into a fiscal crisis, expect to see a surge of alarm about the pools of state and local government debt, hidden in plain sight.

Moreover, tunnel into the fiscal practices of America's state and local governments and you find (as in most countries) plenty of "financial innovation." Revenue bonds, for instance, securitize future cash flows from taxes, lease payments, lottery profits, federal aid, and what have you. Borrowing against these future income streams can be used to keep spending off the books: Lack of transparency is often part of the attraction. The maneuver also gets around constitutional and other restrictions on borrowing using general obligation bonds. While you're at it, throw in generous tax advantages for state and local debt. And let's not forget states' unfunded pension and health insurance obligations.

If the United States does face a fiscal crisis at some point, expect to see a surge of alarm about these pools of debt, hidden in plain sight, and plenty of wisdom in hindsight about fiscal recklessness -- not that different from what people are now saying about Greece.

The biggest differences between Greece and the United States are size, of course, and the dollar: Together these allow the United States to tap a far deeper global pool of investors. The dollar's unrivaled standing as a global reserve currency is crucial, and so is the fact that the dollar can fall in value if need be.

Greece is locked into the euro system. It has no currency or monetary policy of its own. As with the other struggling southern European "PIGS" (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain; geography notwithstanding, Ireland is now often included as an extra "I"), it cannot devalue, which would make its exports more competitive and cut real wages by making imports dearer. Instead, that adjustment will have to happen through falling wages in cash terms -- a wrenching process.

These are important differences, but the U.S. should not get too complacent. If, one day, a much lower dollar does help the economy to adjust, the remedy may seem almost as bad as the sickness. A gradual depreciation is one thing -- and much to be desired, in fact. A run on the currency is quite another. That is the kind of shock that can shake loose a lot of other problems and cause a cascade of economic difficulties. Devaluing at the measured pace you would prefer is not something you can always do.

Greece has the advantage that the E.U. is there to bail it out. Its European partners are not happy about this, as you can imagine. Many, especially Germany, are reluctant to help, because they have problems of their own and they worry that a rescue mission might encourage fiscal recklessness elsewhere in the Union. In the end, though, they will have no choice.

Outright default by Greece might well start a run of other European financial collapses, as additional stressed and overborrowed economies are put to the test. Pushing Greece out of the euro zone would run the risk of an even bigger financial mess. The best course would be for the International Monetary Fund to step in. But the E.U. cannot just turn its back, even if it might like to; it has too much at stake.

America's size makes a Greek-style crisis less likely, but should it somehow happen, that asset will become a liability. There is no vastly larger, richer entity to which the U.S. can turn for help.

All of which underlines the need for the U.S. to start confronting its long-term fiscal problem. As I have previously argued, short-term stimulus is still needed. It would be a big mistake to withdraw fiscal support for the economy too soon. But it is not too soon for the Obama administration to start explaining how longer-term borrowing is going to be brought under control in 2012 and beyond. This is something its budget should have done. For the second year, the problem was kicked down the road. A bipartisan budget commission is being tasked to do the hard work, the White House said. This week, the co-chairmen of this panel were announced: Erskine Bowles, a White House chief of staff under President Clinton, and Alan Simpson, a Republican eminence and former senator.

Perhaps handing the problem off to a commission is as much as the politics will allow. President Obama has promised not to raise taxes on the middle class. He will have to break that promise. Realistically, this cannot happen before November's elections, and when it does, Obama will need all the political cover he can find. Perhaps the budget commission can provide some. The president has said that the commission should consider all options: As it starts its work, he is not taking tax increases off the table.

Good. That is something. But the problem of delay remains. So does the difficulty of getting agreement on a plan, once the commission has reported. Meanwhile, the fiscal danger keeps growing.