Chart of the Year

Greece isn't Germany, and if the Wehrmacht couldn't turn Greeks into Germans, than Brussels bureaucrats are less likely to succeed. So, everything you need to know about why the Euro was a mistake, and the gravity of Europe's current sovereign debt crisis, is captured in this chart of the perils of lending to Eurozone countries as if they all were supervised by the Bundesbank:


source: Der Spiegel

The same chart also appeared in Atlantic magazine's "most important charts of the year" with this comment:

"Despite repeated European Summits over the past eighteen months that were supposed to provide definitive resolutions to the European debt crisis and despite enormous IMF-EU bailout packages, government borrowing costs for the European periphery rose to unsustainable levels. More disconcerting yet, by mid-2011, a crisis that had embroiled the smaller countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, started knocking on the door of Italy and Spain, which is now calling the very survival of the Euro into question" -- Desmond Lachman, AEI

See also MaxedOutMama.

By comparison, see this chart, from George Mason University's Anthony Sanders:


source: December 15th testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts

(via the Tax Policy Center's Donald Marron via Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, ZeroHedge)