Moreover, the proposed measures would compound Europe’s public-debt problems by reducing interest-rate spreads among countries even further, sustaining asset-price bubbles, and destroying the capital market’s allocative role. This was the mistake the United States made after its founding, when various rounds of debt mutualization fueled an unsustainable credit bubble that drove nine of the 29 US states and territories into bankruptcy from 1835 to 1842 and paved the way for the American Civil War.