Debts owed to the world’s biggest banks visualised by Paul Scruton
Before leaving for the US, I worked on this visualisation with graphic artist Paul Scruton, a version of which has just been published in the latest issue of Wired UK magazine.
The data comes from a paper published in December by the Wharton School (PDF) in Pennsylvania which analyses bank debt in relation to each country’s GDP. In the weird old world of banking the money you owe to a bank counts as an asset for them
Market Watch wrote about this earlier this year, with Steve Goldstein pointing out that
A country can have big banks that aren’t bad, and, fact, well-run banks can boost a nation’s economy. At the same time, though, high levels of exposure present risks, as Cyprus and Ireland have discovered
The data behind this chart can be downloaded here. What can you do with it?
Data journalist, writer, speaker. Author of 'Facts are Sacred', published by Faber & Faber and a 
Simon Rogers 
“high levels of exposure present risks,”
you mean that good banks if they are too visible become targets?
who targets them?
Posted by charleskafka | October 16, 2013, 9:24 pm