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.
