EU House Price Change Since Credit Crisis (2008-2012)

This chart with data from Eurostat shows the average change in the house prices in the EU since the credit crisis really started to break down in the United States, the second half of 2008, until the third quarter of 2012. Countries known for being in a big crisis at the moment saw the largest declines in their house prices, mainly Ireland and Spain. The Netherlands and Denmark have to highest household debt-to-gdp ratio's in the world and saw their house prices declines a lot as well. The last group of countries on the downside are several East-European countries for which Latvia and Lithuania saw big declines. In contrast, three out of four Scandinavia countries had their house prices increase substantially.

Luxetveritas

Credit Ratings Of European Countries: Dec 2011 Update

Since the last update on my blog at the end of September some countries have been downgraded. Belgium by S&P from AA+ to AA. Cyprus by Moody's and S&P. Italy by Moody's from Aa2 to A2 and Fitch from AA- to A+. Portugal by Fitch from BBB- to BB+ and Spain by all the three Credit Rating Agencies.

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.

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

Credit Ratings Of European Countries: Update

Since the last graph on the Euro Zone Credit Ratings Portugal and Ireland have been downgraded by Moody's. This graph from Reuters gives a great overview of the ratings of Euro Zone countries by the three rating agencies.

Reuters

Change in Industrial Production in the Eurozone 2005-2010

Der Spiegel made a great graph with the percentage change in the Industrial Production for the Eurozone countries between 2005 and 2010. Check Belgium and Luxembourg. Click on the image for a bigger version.