If the US has more population growth, that means it needs more GDP growth to sustain the same standard of living. (Krugman commented on this recently, but I can't find it right now.)
If you include UK banks and UBS (Swiss) then the European banks did get some serious toxicity.
[Of course all the usual caveats about GDP growth and hedonic indexing still apply.]
On the banks, as I said, it depends on the perimeter you apply. Switzerland and the UK are special cases. He's no doubt counting them in so he can labour that particular bad point for Europe. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
