Explaining the European Debt Crisis with Reference to the Back to the Future Trilogy (UPDATED)

People often say to me: "Bertie, I find most explanations of the European debt crisis unnecessarily technical and confusing.  Can you explain it to me in clear, simple terms, ideally with reference to the Back to the Future movies?"

Well, no, asshole, I can't.  You find explanations of the European debt crisis confusing because it is a massive, complex, legitimately confusing issue.  If you genuinely need to understand it, you should get to work studying modern finance and the structures of Euro-governance rather than sitting around whining and hoping for some absurd pop culture short-cut.


UPDATE:
Okay, okay!  If you insist!  Do you remember in Back to the Future part one, where Marty McFly has accidentally travelled back in time and has to play cupid to his father and mother in order to insure his own future existence?  Well, imagine that instead of a socially awkward 1950s American teenager, Marty McFly's father is a medium-sized Mediterranean nation with a heavy debt burden but also a primary budget surplus.  Okay, and instead of a big-haired high school beauty queen, Marty's mother is the healthy 3-4% growth rate that George McFly needs to meet the interest payments and push down his debt.  Right?  So of course, Marty has to get George and Lorraine together.  But, now imagine that European Central Bank President Biff Tannen insists on setting a monetary policy better suited to Frankfurt than to Rome, okay, and then George McFly's 10-year bond yields shoot up above 7% and he loses access to the financial markets at his high school senior prom!  I mean, disaster, right?  Marty starts to disappear!  So he and his eccentric wild-eyed scientist friend, the European Financial Stability Facility, have to hold a series of increasingly desperate intergovernmental summits with a black American rhythm and blues band wherein they restore Lorraine's confidence in George by enacting strict new Europe-wide debt rules and inventing rock-and-roll.  Meanwhile, when Biff attempts to force a credit default swap on Lorraine, George McFly discovers his inner strength by replacing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with former European Union Competition Commissioner Mario Monti.

Okay, so everything seems fine, right?  But, but, but, the painful austerity measures forced on George McFly and other south European countries are bound to drive up unemployment and send them further into recession, making it even more difficult for them to pay off their debts.  And, because they lost the ability to set independent monetary policy when, uh, future Biff Tannen went back in time and gave a copy of the Maastricht Treaty to his past self, they no longer have the capacity to inflate their way out of debt.  Right?  Okay, so now Marty and the EFSF are back in 1885 for some reason, and they're stuck, because the European Commission can't reach a speed of 88 mph without the unanimous consent of all 27 members and local outlaw gunslinger Mario "Mad Dog" Draghi has ruled out issuing Eurobonds to back sovereign debt.  Okay?  Does that make sense now?