Well it does illustrate how transient "exemplary" is. Ireland and Spain were exemplary in the years leading to the crisis, beating Germany in the debt and surpl

Well it does illustrate how transient "exemplary" is. Ireland and Spain were exemplary in the years leading to the crisis, beating Germany in the debt and surplus metrics.[0][1] Media like to show "feel good metric" to put a patriotic positive spin (us good, them bad) on the result of regular political arm-wrestling between temporarily weaker countries. You won't see those metric in France however the media will use different things to achieve the same effect. The idea is to build a moral high horse so that your people can forget that over there, few people have benefited but a lot will pay. [0] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=teina225&plugin=1 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&l... [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=teina200 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1...