“There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics”, a famous quote attributed to the British politician Benjamin Disraeli. As of today we can add the bubble charts. Researchers from JP Morgan messed up their data on the capitalization of banking stocks terribly.

The lay offs apparently have reached the researchers in the basement, wife and children have been put to work. Confusing diameter with area leads to chart junk, overstating the impact of the crisis (yes, overstating). Heard they left out Fortis of the research – the remaining market cap couldn’t be visible on pixel level. A decent and less dramatic graph from portfolio.com.

Click for larger image of the bubble chart.

• bank, chart, economic, research