GDP of Western Europe during debt crisis

I was interested in visualizing the actual discrepancy between the Gross Domestic Product figures in Western Europe during the recent recession between the relatively healthier economies of Germany, France, the U.K. and so on, and the so-called “PIGS” countries (so called, that is, by their unsympathetic neighboring countries) — Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.  Particularly, the quarrel between Germany and Greece continues to remain in the headlines., and was even used for comic fodder by John Oliver, who described Greece as “a country of, and in, ruins.”  Only recently, Greek has tried to demand that Germany pay reparations for World War II, so the quarrel continues, as Germany seeks debt repayment from Greece, which the news (and the persistent redness of the country) seems to doubt will happen any time soon.  The clip from John Oliver confirms that Greek is both defiant and stubborn, but the real persistence is shown by the consistent red of the graph.

I retrieved the data from the World Bank website for prominent European countries (excluding Eastern Europe and tiny countries, to avoid visual clutter) and for African nations with the intent to examine how the “PIGS” countries’ GDP growth compared to that of emerging nations, but chose to stay with the simpler (and all too familiar) narrative of European countries sniping at one another.  The World Bank data stops at 2013 as of this writing (4/14/15) so it would be interesting to see which of the countries in the red (“Hades red,” as one beta viewer described it) have managed to struggle at least to beige.  All the headlines are about Greece, but probably primarily because Greece is the most notorious, with its flamboyant finance minister (again, see the Oliver clip) and its quarrel with Germany.  But is a certain national scorn also involved?

A look at the map as it changes shows that for 2012-2013, Italy, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands (!) are also turning pink or red, and yet they are not included in the PIGS acronym (although, as this BBC article states, some did expand the slur to PIIGS to include Italy (but still, not the Northern European countries).  Italy was at times darker than Ireland, and the Czech Republic and the Netherlands were as well, so it is interesting that the focus was on faraway Ireland.  The other three members of the “PIGS” group have also shown recovery, unlike Greece.

I included the line chart to show more clearly the actual rise and fall of the GDP growth rate year over year, since mere shades of red did not reflect the rise and fall year over year.  I chose colors which were not already used in the map chart to avoid confusion to the eye.