Projected Government Spending For Developed Countries in 2013

Denmark has the highest projected government spending as a percentage of GDP, with 58.4 percent. France and Austria also have notably high expentiture percentages, even above Noric countries Finland and Sweden. Greece doesn't have that high government spending after all with 48.3 it is around the average. Australia has the lowest government spending for the selected countries.

History of EU/Euro Zone (1929-2013)

Large overview of the history of the EU and the implementation of the Euro. From the first suggestion for a common European currency in 1929 until Croatia joining the EU in the beginning of 2013.

OECD Yearly 2012 GDP Growth

More and more countries have been reporting their fourth quarter GDP growth for 2012 lately, and hence the yearly 2012 GDP growth rate. For the countries that have reported their figures China had the highest yearly growth rate of 7.8 percent. Indonesia and Norway are following China with 6.2 and 3.0 percent respectively. Yet, most countries had a growth rate of less than 2 percent, with most all European countries on the lower end. Portugal and Italy saw their economy's decline the most, in Portugal even with 3.2 percent.

Global House Price Indicators (January 2013)

The Economist posted this overview of global house price indicators in January 2013. Some points of interest:

• Hong Kong saw the biggest rise in housing prices: 22 percent compared to year ago, while Spain saw its house prices contract the most.
• Hong Kong was also the country that saw its house prices increase the most after the start of the global financial crisis in 2007, while Ireland saw the biggest correction; house prices were slashed in halve. 
• Housing markets in Canada and France are most overvalued according to rent and income measures, while those in Japan and China are quite undervalued compared to their long term average values.

The Economist

Credit Ratings, U.S., Japan and Euro Zone (Oct 2012)

Thompson Reuters created this graph with the long term sovereign debt ratings for the Western countries. For the three major credit rating institutions the ratings are listed.

Thompson Reuters

Government Debt in the EU Countries (second quarter 2012)

This great graph from Reuters shows per EU country the government debt it had at the end of the second quarter, as a percentage of GDP.

Since the crisis Portugal, Ireland have been accumulating debt at a high rate, while seeing their economy shrink significantly. This is shows in the government-debt-to-GDP measure, for which they are in respectively  the third and the fourth place in having the highest government debt in the EU.

Estonia and Bulgaria have the lowest government debt in the EU.

Developed Countries GDP Growth (2nd Quarter 2012)

This chart show the quarterly economic growth (second quarter versus the first quarter of 2012) for the countries in the Euro Zone, compared with the United States and Japan. What is interesting is that most Euro Zone countries saw their economic growth far below the U.S. and Japan, especially Portugal and Italy. Not being in the Euro Zone is not a guarantuee for economic growth though, as you can see with the -0.7 percent contraction in the United Kingdom.

http://twitpic.com/aj9dlc

OECD: Official Versus Effective Retirement Age

The official retirement age is rarely equal to the effective retirement age, the average age the people actually retire. As you can see in this chart the official retirement age can be both higher and lower than the effective retirement age. What is the same for all countries is that the life expectancy was raised and that (assuming an equal or declining birth rate) the work force needs to finance more elderly people. A very reasonable option to do that is by raising the effective retirement age (with the official retirement age).

Japan and Sweden had the highest effective retirement age in 2010, while Austria, France and Belgium (and not Greece) had the lowest effective retirement age.

The Economist

EU: More than a Million Jobs Available

This chart from the Guardian shows the number of jobs available in the countries of the European Union. Especially in Germany and the United Kingdom are a lot of jobs for applicable. This is more surprising for the United Kingdom, since its economy is not in particular good shape. In Italy and France, with comparable number of inhabitants as Germany and the UK are surprisingly low jobs available.

Click on the source for details per country.

The Guardian

Credit Ratings Overview April 2012

The ratings by S&P and Moody's are generally viewed as the most important. As you can see only Germany, Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have an AAA-rating by all of the credit rating agencies.

Buildup of Total Debt (Consumers, Companies & Gov.) in 80s, 90s and 00s

In the left part of the graph you can see the total debt development for the United States across the Household, Corporate, Government and Government Sponsored Entity sectors. You can see that Great Depression levels are being reached again.

Not for every country data about debt levels are available for such a long period. There is data available however from 1980. In the right panel you can see the debt buildup for the three sectors combined (excluding financial sector) per decade as a percentage of GDP. You can see that from 1980-1990 Belgium, Sweden, Italy and Japan had the highest debt buildup. From 1990-2000 Portugal, Spain, Germany and Italy had the highest increase. From 2000 until 2010 however, Portugal, Spain, U.K., France, U.S. and Greece were among the countries with the highest buildup in their debt across the three sectors.

Overview of the Deficit And Debt History for Euro Zone (2000-2010)

The next two chart give a great overview of the government finances in the first decade of this century in the Euro Zone. It also shows which countries broke the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact. Which says countries can't have deficits higher than three percent and debt higher than sixty percent, both as a percentage of GDP.


Before the crisis Ireland, Spain, Estonia, Luxembourgh and Finland were the only countries that never broke the rules. Especially notice France and Germany, which both had a debt higher than 60% every year since 2003. France had a deficit higher than 3% for 2002-2004 and Germany for 2001-2005.


This chart shows the deficits per year for all the Euro Zone countries from 2000-2010.

This chart shows how the government debt changed per year for all the Euro Zone countries from 2000-2010.

Macrobusiness

Activity of Purchasers Managers Declines in most of EU (Nov 2011)

The PMI stands for Purchasers Managers Index. The research firm Markit surveys managers of private companies and asks questions about five different topics. These topics are New orders, Output, Employment, Suppliers' delivery times and Stocks of purchases. When the index is at 50 there is no change. Anything below 50 means a decline in activity; similarly above 50 means an increase. This picture shows the data for November 2011.

EFSF Guarantees Per Country (Total And Per Capita)

The EFSF is the Euro Zone Bailout Fund. Established on May 9 2010 and located in Luxembourg (registered as a company from Luxembourg).

In the last few weeks all 17 Euro Zone Members have ratified the bigger Euro Bailout Fund. The EFSF can now lend out 440 billion euros. In July Euro Zone leaders have agreed to a few amendments to the EFSF. It will also be able to finance recapitalization of financial institutions to through loans to governments. It can also intervene in the secondary markets (buy bonds on the markets of countries losing confidence from the markets) on the basis on an ECB analysis to avoid contagion. Lately the question has been raised by many whether the current amount of the EFSF is enough. Certainly not if Italy and Spain need bailout money as well.

In this chart the updated committed guarantees per country are pictured on the upper side and the guarantees person on the lower side of the graph. As you can see Germany is the biggest contributor to the EFSF with 211 billion euros committed guarantees. Luxembourg has the highest committed guarantees per person.

Note: K=1000. So 100K = 100 billion euros.

Credit Ratings Of European Countries: Another Update

Since Italy has been downgraded by Standard & Poors Reuters released a new graph of the current Euro Zone sovereign debt ratings. Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands and Austria still have AAA-ratings. Greece has the lowest rating C.

Change In Unit Labor Costs (Q2 2011)

The next graph shows the change in unit labor costs in some selected countries. According to many unit labor costs is a good measure for labor costs in a country. It is the cost of labor to make one unit of output. The measure increases when wage cost increase and decreases when productivity increases.

The graph is ordered decreasingly by the change in wages. In Norway and Australia unit labor cost rose the most and in Denmark and Austria the least.

The Economist

Euro Zone Second Quarter Economic Growth

This graph shows the economic growth of European Countries in the second quarter of 2011. In France the economy didn't grow or contract compared to the first quarter. Poland had a high growth percentage of 1 percent. Average Euro Area economic growth was 0,2 percent. The growth figures for the PIIGS countries are not available yet.

European Unemployment Pictured

This graph shows the unemployment in Europe with the average unemployment in Europe in the middle (EA17: 17 countries in the Euro Area). Notable countries are Spain with the highest unemployment by far and  Norway with the lowest unemployment.

Economic Pic

Current (EFSF) and Future (ESM) Euro Bailout Mechanims

This graph from Der Spiegel shows what the current Euro bailout fund is made of (called the EFSF) and on the right you can see the funding of the bailout fund from 2013; the Capital and Guarantees per country in billion euro's.

Der Spiegel

EU Bailout Fund (EFSF) Guarantees Per Country

The EU Bailout Fund for countries in financial problems called the European Financial Stability Facility has been created in may 2010. The EFSF lends on the financial markets by issuing bonds. These bonds are of the highest quality because the money is guaranteed by AAA-countries (with the highest credit ratings in the world). These countries are: Germany, France, Netherlands, Finland, Austria and Luxembourg.

The Wall Street Journal explains the difference between the current form of the EFSF and how it will change this fall:

''EFSF 1.0 (which is the current version) uses an absurdly complicated combination of prepaid interest, cash buffers, overguarantees and the like to ensure that all its debt issues are backed by triple-A guarantees or cash. EFSF 2.0, expected to be ratified this fall, makes things (relatively) simpler.

In EFSF 2.0, all the 17 countries pledge guarantees totaling €779.8 billion. Subtracting the guarantees of bailed-out Greece, Ireland and Portugal brings the total down to €726 billion. The countries agree that every EFSF bond will be backed by up to 165% of its size in guarantees, so the EFSF can borrow a maximum of €440 billion (since €440 billion x 1.65 = €726 billion).''

In total the EFSF 2,0 requires 450 billion euro's of guarantees by AAA-Countries. If France loses it's AAA-rating the other countries see their guarantees raise by 54%.