Global Economy - Chart Porn

Another problem brewing. The world is running out of places to kick the credit can. As usual, there is much insight to be gained from the discussion and comments over at Barry Ritholtz’s The Big Picture.

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Financial Crises (1810-2010)

In: Finance Global Economy History

18 Jan 2012

A new graphic from HistoryShots, based on Reinhart & Rogoff’s well researched book: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. The top half of the chart maps financial crises in terms of GDP affected, while the bottom indicates number of sovereign defaults.

I just ordered a copy. If you’re into this long-term economic history stuff, check out US Booms and Busts (1775-1943).

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Gold

In: Global Economy Maps Reference

12 Jan 2012

Some pretty interesting facts about gold.

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Charting the Euro Zone Crisis

In: Bailout Finance Global Economy Politics Source: WSJ

20 Dec 2011

A series of excellent annotated charts on the main indicators of the European crisis.

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Economists’ Favorite Charts of 2011

In: Finance Global Economy Politics

14 Dec 2011

These 11 charts appeared on BBC, so they are very Euro-centric, but there are still some gems. My favorite:

For a long time the perception was that the creation of the euro meant sovereign risk was effectively the same across all countries. That of course proved to be wrong. The Lehman’s crisis and financial meltdown that followed affected the deficits and debt levels of different countries in different ways. Interestingly it is much the same countries now with very high yields as it was pre-euro, suggesting little has changed fundamentally in a decade.

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Corruption and Development

In: Culture Global Economy Source: Economist

5 Dec 2011

Graphing the Corruption Perceptions Index vs the Human Development Index shows a pretty clear correlation. Of course, “perception” indices are always of dubious value.

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Greek Crisis Videographics

In: Finance Global Economy Politics Video

23 Nov 2011

This jumps around a little too much for my taste – but it is a good example of using simple facts to put things in perspective.

Here’s a slightly more in depth, much more tongue-in-cheek version (from two years ago):

Finally, an even more tongue in cheek SNL skit about which god is in charge of Greek finance:

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Money – All of it

In: Global Economy US Economy

21 Nov 2011

XKCD pulls together a number of interesting statistics and presents them all as square blocks, varying the magnitude in each section. I’m not sure how much value this has as a graphic – the comparative value of the different groups isn’t very high in most cases. However, the statistics themselves are really interesting and worth browsing.

(note: the graphic’s viewer took a while to load – probably because of server load, which should quiet down later)

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Eurozone Debt Crisis Dashboard

In: Bailout Employment Finance Global Economy Interactive

18 Nov 2011

Some very well organized statistics on the Eurozone debt crisis, aggregated from the IMF, OECD, Eurostat, and the World Bank. It includes data on EFSF commitments, debt, SGP criteria, employment, trade, pensions, and mortgages. There are multiple dashboards, each with multiple tabs – so take the time to explore a bit. I particularly like the little sparklines – which I think do a great job of quickly illustrating trends, and don’t get used often enough.

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US Economy: A Lost Decade?

In: Global Economy US Economy Video

18 Nov 2011

A visually interesting video from the BBC. It does a good job of presenting basic facts, with a little annotation. The difficulty with these videographics, I find, is striking the right balance between being simple enough to understand easily, but complicated enough that they actually make a point. In the BBC’s favor, they appear to be using this as an introduction to issues, and link it back to their broader coverage of the global economy and crisis, including their video series “Make it Clear”, which answers basic questions like “How Can Countries Go Bust?” and “What is the IMF?”.