Greek Problem - Good Charts

One of the big questions in the world economy right now is how long can the Europe crisis go on and when will it break. The German magazine Spiegel has the following charts showing the worsening condition for Greece - it does not look good.

The first chart shows clearly how debt growth is outpacing GDP growth (which is negative).

























Clearly Greece is going down (unless the Germans want to permanently support them). One of the big unknown is the losses a Greek (and Irish and Portuguese) restructuring will do to European banks - will the debt crisis cause a European Lehman crisis. The balance sheet of the ECB is looking shaky, as shown in the chart below.