I bet if you asked a number of Americans which had the larger population of Ireland or Germany, a significant number would not know or would even guess Ireland.

I bet if you asked a number of Americans which had the larger population of Ireland or Germany, a significant number would not know or would even guess Ireland. This may be true of the average US citizen. Probably much less true of readers of thestreet.com or any US publication about economics. And certainly not true of folks reading economic publications in the UK, who are well aware of the relative sizes of Ireland and Germany. Spain, on the other hand, has fifty million people, and is being talked about as possibly the next domino to fall. If that happens, it's much more serious than Greece or Ireland. PS. Ireland and Massachusetts are roughly the same size; I think anyone can be forgiven for not knowing which is larger.