Economic catastrophe is common enough, even in the go-go years - typically governments think they can 'check its occurrence' and eventually find out that the forces of nature remain stronger than any politician. Of course, all the interventions and can-kicking tried along the way serve only to make the eventual crisis longer and more severe.
It's of course possible that the Eurozone countries choose to hang together rather than hang separately, i.e. remain in the currency and print until they've made Mugabe blush. I think it's rather unlikely not because they ('they' the elite bureaucratic class) don't want to do it, but because the centrifugal forces will prove too politically difficult to withstand in nominally democratic states. All it takes is one radical party getting in a government somewhere to scupper the whole thing, and the Eurocrats are doing their very best to ensure this happens.
Tightening monetary policy? The chances of that appear extremely remote, so much that it's hardly worth considering until some evidence arrives that it's actually likely - not because Bernanke has promised low rates to 2014 (in the breach such promises are worthless) but because he's constitutionally hyper-dovish, and there will always be some reason to maintain extremely loose policy into the foreseeable future.