Washington ( CNN ) -- Which is scarier ? Letting Greece go bankrupt ? Or saving Greece from bankruptcy ? If you 're a European businessman or banker , the answer is obvious : Bankruptcy is scarier . If Greece can not pay its debts , Greece will likely quit the euro . By quitting the euro , Greece would regain the power to print its own money and inflate its way out of its debt . Now think what that would mean for your business . If Greece quit the euro , people would begin to worry : Who 's next ? Will Portugal quit ? Spain ? Italy ? France ? Do you own a 1000 euro deposit in a Spanish bank ? Tomorrow that account could be denominated in new pesetas , at who knows what exchange rate . Better cash out today . Likewise : Better sell your Portuguese and Italian bonds -- not only government bonds , but bonds issued by any agency sponsored by government : water , electricity , transit authorities , and so on . A Greek default would trigger , in effect , a bank run on every governmental institution in southern Europe , the biggest bank run perhaps in the history of the world , bigger even than the run triggered by the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 . As I said : scary . But now think like a politician . It 's been obvious for some time now what has to be done to avert the bank run : a European Super TARP , a version of the Troubled Asset Relief Program that was used to bail out Wall Street in 2008 . The European Union will have to assume responsibility for the debt of southern European countries . In return , the EU will have to take control of the finances of those countries -- cutting their spending and raising their taxes . The debt assumed by the EU will have to be serviced somehow . That means the EU will need its own revenue stream sufficient to pay for and ultimately retire the southern European debt . In other words , what we 're looking at is : . -- A transfer of Greek and other southern European debt to all the people of Europe . -- Big government spending cuts especially in southern Europe , but also everywhere else . -- Higher taxes everywhere to support the southern European debt . -- All of it imposed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels . How 'd you like to be the politician who has to explain that to the voters of Bavaria ? So now you see why action is so slow . The trouble is , the longer the action takes , the more expensive it gets -- and the less likely the action is to be successful . If the action comes early and if it is decisive and orderly , then it may be possible to force creditors to eat some of their losses . But in a panic , governments will not have time or leeway to negotiate . They 'll face a starker alternative : pay in full or default , the same stark alternative the United States faced back in the fall of 2008 , which led to unappealing actors such as Goldman Sachs being made whole in backroom deals at the expense of the taxpaying public . And if markets get the idea that the politicians of northern Europe will flinch from the Super TARP , then the bank run could start very fast . Last week , the German parliament voted 440 billion euros in bailout funds . ( That 's almost $ 542 billion in U.S . dollars . ) Bigger would have been better . The supreme need is to overwhelm the problem -- to show markets that the resources are at hand to pay all obligations -- and thus to gain credibility for tough negotiations so that lenders bear some of the costs of rescue . Americans had better hope that these negotiations succeed , because it 's very doubtful that the United States can avoid being dragged into an emergency euro rescue . In 2008 , we worried about banks that were too big to fail . In 2011 , we have to worry about countries that are too big to be saved by European action alone . If the crisis comes , it will require funds from the International Monetary Fund and very possibly the U.S. Treasury too , like Mexico in 1994 only much , much bigger . And remember how popular that was with the Congress . Better to anticipate -- and to prevent . Act big . Act fast . Act now . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum .
David Frum : If Greece defaults , all of Europe 's debts would be suspect . He says the U.S. could be forced to participate in rescuing Europe 's finances . Europe 's leaders need to take unpopular , dramatic steps to bail out the south , he says . The sooner and bigger the bailout , the better , Frum says .