Things They Should Study: do countries' political positions correlate with the strength of their economies?

Quick, name a European country that's having economic problems. Just keep the name of that country in mind when you click the link further down in this post.

A while back, I was pondering the fact that when we hear about European economic problems, we never hear about Scandinavian countries. We keep seeing articles about how this economic crisis shows that the European socialist model is unsustainable, but Scandinavia, which is generally considered the epitome of European socialism, is never mentioned.

Now think of the countries that are mentioned in conjunction with the economic crisis, like the country that you thought of at the beginning of this post.

Now click here to see where European governments fall on the political compass.

At first glance there seems to be a correlation, doesn't there?

I don't have the economic or political knowledge to conduct a proper analysis and determine definitively if there is in fact a correlation. But it would be really interesting if someone who does have the knowledge could do this.