Greece default and why are US States not seen defaulting? Reading various articles, it is clear that Greece is in the situation simply due to the fact that they have indulged in overspending on their national budget for over a decade, and with the 2008 financial crisis this have have worsen as they have lost additional revenue.

Every US state and city is also responsible for their own budgets, and making sure that they are kept in balance -- while a handful of US cities have gone bankrupt, there have not been any news about US state getting into a crisis of the same scale as Greece has.

Is there a difference between how a national budget is run in the Euro Zone versus how a US State budget is run with respect to oversight where a US State cannot get insolvent to the same degree as Greece before the US Fed steps in?

What are the lessons from the US model which would need to be implemented in the Euro Zone to prevent another Euro Zone member to end up in a similar situation?

EDIT

Specifically; Are there any specific laws in the US which allows the Feds to step in before a state defaults?
Two reasons:


The United States has a capable federal government that takes care of social insurance transfers and countercyclical economic policies. The American states spend less.
The American states have stronger anti-tax sentiments, and increasing public spendings face opposition from business and rich people.


Take the 2008 crisis for example.

As for 2008, all developed countries, including Greece, had a lot of bad debt in the private sector and a subsequent recession due to the credit crunch. The United States immediately approved two things in response: a $700 bn stimulus and the Fed's QE programs. They cleared bad debt and supported business in 2009.

These measures was done at the federal level. It's the federal government that took additional debt. And the debt looked like this:



(McKinsey - 2012 - Debt and deleveraging)

The EU was slower. And its recovery fund lent money to European countries (as if the US fed government lent money to the states), so increasing their debt-to-GDP levels. This is how the EU, IMF, ECB happened to be the holders of all Greek bonds and a demanding creditor, as for now.

In short, US states got their federal stimulus for free, while Greece had to buy the stimulus on its own.