BBC News published a very interesting chart to explain the euro crisis. And the root cause is private debts, no public debts. It looks like the ECB didn’t do its job well, and the Euro was to cheap in the period 2000-2010. The full chart is available after the jump.

BBC News – What really caused the eurozone crisis? via kwout

For France we have:

BBC News – Eurozone debt web: Who owes what to whom? via kwout

 
For UK we have:

Debts figures are worst for UK compared to France, however risk status for France is higher. 

Currently almost everybody seems to be knowing what the European Central Bank has to do to solve the European sovereign debt crisis. There is a game that allows to verify your central banker skills (link below). The game is available for both Web and iPhone. The goa is to set interest rate to limit inflation around 2%. 

Found via NPR Planet Money.

Data Points: An Overview of the Euro Crisis – NYTimes.com via kwout

Found via European Debt: The Big Picture

Le monde produced an interesting chart showing the Greek Debt comapared to others debts or revenues. It’s strange that the European stability fund has to be twice the Greek debt. 

Full description after the jump.

JP Morgan explains the euro crisis with lego | Felix Salmon via kwout

JP Morgan explains the euro crisis with lego | Felix Salmon

undefined

The Thomson Reuters Blog  Graphic of the day published a summary of the credit ratings for US, Japan and main European countries published by the 3 rating agencies: S&P, Moody’s and Fitch.

Time Magazine compiled a list of the 25 Best Financial Blogs. It’s a good reading list.

Full List – The 25 Best Financial Blogs – TIME via kwout

In a  podcast published a few weeks ago, NPR Moneys interviewed Niall Ferguson (author of The Ascent of Money,).  I summarized below some of the key ideas highlighted in the discussion:

• Bank assets. Most of those assets are banks loans. It’s the money banks lent to their clients.  This means bank customers’ liabilities. Bank assets are their client debts
• Money is any token accepted in payment of goods and services
• The key thing is money system is trust. We believe banks have (all of) our money. But they don’t because of the fractional reserve system
• Money is a relationship between a lender and a borrower

The following interactive graphics on FT.com gives an interesting view of the weight of Bank/Finance in main European countries. This page highlights some special situation. For instance in Iceland, the total 2007 asset of the main Bank (Kaupthing) is equal to 623 % of the GDP of the country. 

FT.com / Video & Audio / Interactive graphics – Are European banks too big to fail?