The chart shows all 27 EU members, plus a couple others I thought would be a nice comparison. In particular, Iceland and the United States are included.
Two caveats: 1) Poland didn't have a recession, at least according to the annual data, so the "pre-recession peak" was chosen to be 2008, by default, since that is the peak for most of the sample. 2) Malta, for whatever reason, has no official 2011 data yet, so I used the IMF forecast--be wary of Malta's data, I'd guess it is too optimistic.
Oh yeah, about that Latvian success. Can you see it? I't really is quite impressive--after the recession ended they managed to go from dead last in the EU to...dead last.
