An analyst at Deutsche Bank created some buzz the other day when he said that the PIIGS’ (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) debt crisis could be a “dress rehearsal” for a U.S. one.

It makes for a catchy headline, but the funding crisis in America will play out differently than the PIIGS’ bloc does. The key difference is our ability to print money and devalue the dollar. QE is off-limits for EU members, at least. Bernanke would probably call that an advantage, but I’m not so sure.

Either way, it is nice to see some light shined on America’s debt problem. It’s not pretty, and the sooner we deal with it the better. From BusinessWeek:

The cost of insuring against U.S. and U.K. debt defaults may rise in the same way as it has for so- called European peripheral nations including Greece and Portugal, Deutsche Bank AG said.

‘The problems currently faced by peripheral Europe could be a dress rehearsal for what the U.S. and U.K. may face further down the road,’ Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank in London, wrote in a research note today.

The cost of insuring against U.S. and U.K. debt defaults may rise in the same way as it has for so- called European peripheral nations including Greece and Portugal, Deutsche Bank AG said.

‘The problems currently faced by peripheral Europe could be a dress rehearsal for what the U.S. and U.K. may face further down the road,’ Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank in London, wrote in a research note today.

I  heard the “dress rehearsal” line on Bloomberg yesterday, during a Niall Ferguson segment. Scroll down for the clip, it’s among the better mainstream coverage of the global-debt-crisis coverage.

Worse than Greece?

The fundamental outlook for PIIGS is bad. Greece has gotten the lion’s share of attention lately lately. But you could argue the same or worse for the United States or U.K.

Zero Hedge recently escalated the acronym-hoopla by adding the U.K., Turkey, and Dubai to create STUPID. Regular readers objected to the absence of the U.S., expanding it to STUUPID.

America’s situation isn’t pretty, and may be worse than PIIGS’ or STUPID’s long-term. In the Bloomberg clip I mentioned earlier, Niall