Despite the daily blitz of headlines about Europe’s financial crisis on Drudge and cable news, it’s clear events in Europe have yet to distract the majority of Americans away from shopping and football. This is too bad, considering that what’s unfolding in Europe will radically upend the life of every American.

Yes, it’s that serious.

Did you know the European Union and the United States have the largest bilateral trade relationship in the world? And that together, they account for about half the entire world gdp and nearly one third of world trade flows? Twenty percent of total U.S. trade is done with the EU. This means that if Europe’s economies contract—and they are—then demand for American goods shrinks! As foreign demand dwindles, U.S. companies will be forced to tighten their already tight belts, meaning fewer new hires, more lay-offs, and limited spending on upgrades and infrastructure.

For an economy already dangling by a thread, even a marginal drop-off in foreign demand will inflict terrible damage.

Then there’s the slew of U.S. financial institutions, none of which are the picture of financial health, that are exposed to European debt. Right now Goldman Sachs has $38.5 billion tied up in Europe. Morgan Stanley has $28.1 billion while JP Morgan Chase has $22.8 billion. Bank shares tumbled for two weeks when Fitch Ratings warned that it might reduce its “stable” rating outlook for U.S. banks. “Unless the eurozone debt crisis is resolved in a timely and orderly manner,” warned the ratings agency, “the broad outlook for U.S. banks will darken.”

If the eurozone collapses, there’s a chance your bank will too.

In Washington this week, President Obama and his finance gurus held emergency closed-door meetings with top European leaders, including European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. Mr. Obama’s alarm at what is happening in Europe was palpable in his post-meeting press conference. A financially healthy Europe is vital to American interests, he reiterated, which is why the “United States stands ready to do our part to help them resolve this issue.”

Although the president didn’t explain what he meant by “do our part,” there was a burst of headlines following his remarks declaring that America was preparing to bail out Europe. The White House quickly doused the story, which entailed Press Secretary Jay Carney confidently stating, “We do not in any way believe that additional resources are required from the United States or from American taxpayers.”

Less than two days after Carney’s promise, Ben Bernanke announced that the U.S. Federal Reserve, in consort with other central banks, was cutting the interest rate it charges on loans. The Fed did this for one reason and one reason only: to make it cheaper for ailing European banks and corporations to borrow dollars to pay their bills.

Meanwhile, just as the Federal Reserve announced its cheap money bonanza, EU finance ministers were demanding that the International Monetary Fund (imf) contribute more to the European Financial Stability Facility, the eurozone’s diminutive bailout fund. Of course, an increase in funds from the imf stands to impact most members of the organization. But guess who the largest contributor to the imf is? About 20 percent of the imf’s funding comes from America.

Call these “programs” what you like—loans, collective financial security, an emergency rescue, an act of altruism, an act of self-interest—the reality is both are essentially bailouts. “Stripped to essentials, America is once again having to rescue Europe from itself,” is the way Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard put it. Jeremy Warner, one of Britain’s leading finance pundits, agreed. “Faced with Europe’s abject failure to sort out its own mess,” he wrote, “the U.S. Federal Reserve has been forced to come riding to the rescue instead.”

This is incredible. Germany refuses to bail out its neighbors—its legal, political and financial partners, fellow members of the European Union. Instead, it leaves it to the U.S. Federal Reserve to click its printing presses into a higher gear and churn out the cash to bail out indebted European banks and states.

Ironically, both these developments occurred within 48 hours of the White House assuring Americans that it doesn’t “in any way believe that additional resources are required from the United States or from American taxpayers.”

There is even talk of the U.S. directly bailing out faltering European states by purchasing sovereign bonds. The question many are now asking, wrote Evans-Pritchard this week, is, “should the U.S. Federal Reserve assume leadership as a monetary superpower and impose policy on a paralyzed ecb [European Central Bank], acting as a global lender of last resort?” I know it’s hard to believe, but a growing number of economists sincerely believe America needs to print more money, which it should then use to purchase the bonds of failing eurozone states.

In August, Nobel-winning economist Myron Scholes mused: “I wonder whether Bernanke might not say that ‘we believe in a harmonized world, that the Europeans are our friends, and we know that the ecb can’t print money to buy bonds because the Germans won’t let them. And since the ecb will soon run out of money, we will step in and start buying European government bonds for them.’”

In 2002, Bernanke himself discussed the possibility of the U.S. buying the debt of other countries. “The Fed can inject money into the economy in still other ways,” he stated. “For example, the Fed has the authority to buy foreign government debt. Potentially, this class of assets offers huge scope for Fed operations.” It makes you wonder, was Bernanke’s decision this week to make it cheaper for European banks to borrow dollars the first step in this direction?

Of course, bailing out Europe in such a direct manner would not be simple, or popular. But this option is being endorsed by plenty of “smart” people. “The Federal Reserve needs to buy up every single European bond owned by every single American financial institution for cash,” said Berkeley’s Brad DeLong. According to David Zervos, an economist from Jefferies, the U.S. needs to penalize Germany for refusing to allow the European Central Bank to bail out Europe. “We in the U.S. need to snuff out these [German] sado-fiscalists and fast, they are a danger to the world,” he said recently. “The U.S. can force monetization at the ecb. We should back up the forklift and buy euro area bonds. Lots of them.”

Can you imagine? The U.S. federal government is swallowed in debt so high it’s incomprehensible, multiple states and counties are fighting off bankruptcy, the national economy is seizing up, many major banks are struggling to stay solvent, unemployment is high and likely to soar further, and U.S. industry is wallowing. Yet, in spite of this perilous outlook, pressure is mounting on America to take dramatic and risky measures—even including sinking hundreds of billions of dollars into purchasing foreign bonds—to rescue Europe!

Don’t you wonder how this happened? There are plenty of people, states and factors to blame for Europe’s financial problems, including Europe’s profligate southern states, the EU’s flawed financial strictures, and even the 2008 U.S. financial crisis. But there’s one main reason the crisis has been allowed to reach critical mass and the point where the euro and the eurozone are now days from total collapse. That reason?

Germany.

More than any other factor, Germany’s inaction, its chronic dawdling, its half-hearted measures, its deliberate and uncompromising control of European fiscal policy (via the ecb), has brought Europe—and the world—to this point!

We’ve reached the point where world leaders are practicallybegging Germany to intervene. Read the tortured plea of Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. “I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say this,” he writes, “but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear its inactivity. You have become Europe’s indispensible nation” (emphasis added).

That’s a telling and shocking admission—from a nation whose greatest fear historically has been unchecked German power!

This financial crisis, the worst in modern history, has brought European countries to their knees before Germany. Now it’s threatening to spill over and inflict terrible damage on American banks, corporations and manufacturers—and at the worst possible moment for the U.S. economy! Whether you believe it to be intentional or not, Germany has pushed Europe to the precipice. In doing so, it has single-handedly created a scenario in which the rest of the world, most especially the U.S., feels increasingly compelled to take on enormous risk and intervene to rescue Europe.

When will we wake up and see reality? Germany isn’t simply exploiting this crisis to conquer Europe, it’s using it to gain leverage over the world, including the United States!

It’s hard to know precisely what will soon happen. Germany may wait till the eurozone draws its last breath, at which time it will release its death grip and breathe life back into its victim. Then again, it may also be prepared to let the eurozone disintegrate, after which it will refashion the Continent as it sees fit. Either way, Europe, the U.S. and the rest of the world lose.

Soon now, perhaps in days, Germany gets the victory!