Back to the Eurozone. (Yes, we have to, depressing as it is.)
For starters (courtesy of the indomitable Martin Wolf in the FT)
There’s nothing to like about any of these four charts. The only point I would add to what you can all too plainly see for yourself is that (with the exception of the bottom-right labor cost spreads chart), each of these comprises one line from January 2009 to about late spring 2011, and another line after that. There was a market-investor-perceptual break midway through this year.
A little bit more background, particularly for my comrades on this side of the pond: The Eurozone consists of essentially Europe as we think of it except for Britain, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic.
Courtesy of The Economist, here’s an invaluable interactive graphic which I invite you to play with as long as your stomach can bear it to your heart’s content.
Some of the more revealing changes you can ring on this are Debt–>Public Debt, Debt–>Budget Balance, and the shocking Economy–>Youth Unemployment Rate.
Beyond the numbers–critical as they are to grasping the dimensions of the challenge–is putting the Eurozone crisis in context.
I submit that it’s nothing less than Europe having to grapple with the end of the West’s monopoly over the technologies and the institutions that have made it rich. Add in a social welfare system that might be supportable in a world of 3 children per family, but is headed for the rocks in a world of shrinking population–and these demographics are “baked in,” as statisticians like to say–and the need for answering some fundamental questions could not be clearer.
Angela Merkel’s approach has been described aptly as “just enough, just in time,” but the time for fiddling has run out. It’s time for “vast overkill, right now.” As Martin Wolf puts it:
Power brings responsibility. Germany alone has the power. It is up to it to exercise the responsibility.
