GDP Changes of Germany and America since the Beginning of 2008

choi

Jack Ewing, For Europe's Tepid Ecobnomy, a Lost Decade Looms. New York Times, Aug 17, 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/1 ... ade-looms.html?_r=1

Quote:

"With the exception of Germany, none of Europe’s biggest economies have returned to the level of economic output they had at the beginning of 2008, before the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States spread across the Atlantic, according to calculations by two US economists, Peter Rupert and Thomas F Cooley. * * * Mr Rupert [is] a professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"Only Germany is wealthier than it was in the first quarter of 2008, when economic activity peaked. France is close, according to Mr. Rupert and Mr. Cooley, a professor at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. (The two publish a blog that tracks the business cycle, at european snapshot.com.

My comment: There is no need to read the text. Just view the graphic, whose caption states, "Economic output in Europe has yet to return to its peak level and only Germany has experienced any real growth."
(a) The starting point of the graphic is the beginnig og 2008. At the starting point (Jan 1, 2008), why nations were grouped in two: some at ~2.5% and all others at 0%?  My guess is that, as there are too many nations in the graphic (each color coded), it would be chaotic if all nations start at 0%.
(b) The graphic includes United States and major Europaen nations (namely, Germany, France, Netherlands, Britain, Spain and Italy), as well as unnamed OTHER European (minor) nations. For the last group, the data sources must come from the graphic's "Sources," which are "Eurostat; Bureau of Economic Research."
(c) Cooley-Rupert European Economic Snapshot. Aug 10, 2012 (blog)
http://europeansnapshot.com/
("The peak occurred in the first quarter of 2008 and the trough of the contraction was in the second quarter of 2009. * * * The following graph [graphic 2] plots the percentage change in Real GDP for several EU countries from the peak of the previous business cycle. It underscores how different the recovery has been for many of the economies. For instance, Germany experienced one of the most severe contractions with real GDP falling more than 6% from the peak")

Therefore, the NYT graphic and the europeansnapshot.com's graphic are basically the same with regard to the starting point--the difference is the latter incorporates major European nations only (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Netherlands; no US).
(d) People tend to say Germany's economy is good, but it is not as superb as that of US (as the NYT grahic clearly shows).