Euroland woes

Although Greece represents less than 3% of the Euro zone economic output, its ability to service its rapidly mounting debt is clearly impacting on international sentiment for Euroland as a whole. And TV pictures over the last year showing riots in Athens over budget cuts are unlikely to encourage tourists to go there, the main source of the country's income.

To see things in context, to a limited degree, this ranking from last year (but some countries' data is 3 years old) shows foreign debt as a percentage of GDP, ranking of all countries. This has changed since then, but the debt of Ireland in per capita terms is also very high not to mention Iceland (although it is not part of the EU, most of its debt is held in the EU). It is not clear if this is gross debt or net debt (debt less assets): in the cases of Switzerland and Luxemburg foreign assets would make a big difference to their status.

A drop in the value of Euro which for a long time has been an expensive currency, should boost economic activity there, however, and in the longer term things will return to some semblance of normality.