Chart of the Day - Selected Euro Nations debt positions

May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Germans, who largely opposed their country’s participation in a bailout for Greece, are more indebted than the citizens of the Mediterranean nation they share a currency with. 

The CHART OF THE DAY shows that while Greece has the highest level of government debt as a percentage of gross domestic products, shown in white, its household debt, shown in red, is less than Germany’s. Overall, Greece has 26 percent more debt as a percentage of GDP than Germany, according to data from Luxembourg-based Eurostat and the European Central Bank.

“Greece is a relatively rich country but with an impoverished state,” Ciaran O’Hagan, a fixed-income strategist at Societe Generale SA in Paris, said in an interview. “Greece does have the means to repay its external debts, especially when you add in the private sector.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who delayed German approval of a bailout plan for Greece, had to be pressed by France, Italy and Spain last week to back a separate rescue package for the euro region worth almost $1 trillion. Merkel’s Christian Democrats lost the majority in Germany’s most populous state in May 9 elections, two days after the parliament approved aid to Greece.

In exchange for aid, Greece’s government is pushing through budget cuts that labor unions have called “savage” and “unjust.” Germany’s share in the euro rescue, the biggest contribution of the 16 nations that use the currency, is 123 billion euros ($156 billion) and may be increased by 20 percent.