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Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service.

I'm Tim Harford. This week is our special review of the year

through the excellent, extraordinary, eccentric numbers of 2012.

And who better to start the programme than one of the BBC's most

excellent, extraordinary and some might say eccentric presenters.

I'm Robert Preston, the BBC's business editor.

My statistic of the year was given to me by Jean-Claude Trichet.

He's the former president of the European Central Bank.

And he told me about the 80-20 ratio for Europe and the 20-80 ratio

for the United States. In Europe, roughly speaking,

banks provide 80% of the finance needed by businesses and households,

whereas in the States, banks provide only 20% of the finance required

by businesses and households. Why does this matter?

What it tells us a huge amount about the crisis in the Eurozone,

and it also tells us a huge amount about why the economy of Britain

and many of the economies of Europe, in general,

have singularly failed to recover since the great crash of 2008,

whereas, although the American economy isn't off to the races,

it has grown rather more strongly than the European economies.

...