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IN A BRIEFING NOTE written by Astrid Schilo of Exane BNP Paribas, on the politics and disfunction of the Eurozone, this drawing is shown to describe the current situation.

This is really the story of the year in a nutshell.

The ECB has done an extraordinary amount of work in 2012 establishing itself as a real monetary authority that has the power to backstop the entire financial system (as exists in England, the US, and Japan). And that is super-powerful in and of itself (and it’s why Mario Draghi should be Person Of The Year).

But other than the ECB – which has the benefit of being undemocratic – the rest of the project remains a mess. There’s no political union, fiscal union, banking union, or common Eurozone budget, all of which need to exist for the project to actually work sustainably.

It’s a huge deal that the sovereign debt part of the crisis came to an end (for the most part) in 2012. But there’s massive heavy lifting yet to come.

- Joe Wiesenthal

Read: Eurozone’s new bailout fund loses AAA credit rating