Who Murdered Context?

When I saw today's Business Daily screaming that "Kenyan banks rank poorly among peers in region, says IMF", one thought came to mind: context has been murdered in cold blood!
You see, the piece by Geoffrey Irungu is factually correct in the observation that Kenya ranks lower than, for instance, Mauritius in the Banks Assets/GDP measure; the former is at about 64 percent while the latter is at nearly 350 percent.
The question that one needs to ask is: does this amount to a poor ranking? The answer requires somebody to work much harder than the Business Daily requires of its reporters. The only reasons why this piece is  giving a comparison of Kenya and other "peer countries" in Africa is because the economies under consideration have the "privileged" status of being "middle income".
Mauritius' per capita income according to IMF data is presently estimated at US$9,186 compared to Kenya's US$1,432. South Africa, which according to the Business Daily ranking in terms of Banks Assets/GDP is third, with the ratio being slightly more than 100 percent - behind Mauritius and Cabo Verde - has a per capita income of  US$5,773.
To a non-trained eye, there is a pattern here: The high Bank Assets/the GDP and the per capita income must be linked; and that is the reason Mauritius leads and Kenya's ranking is poor. That quick conclusion can only arise out of mere coincidence. To a trained eye, however, if you bring in other parameters and more context, there will be reasons to be cautious (even to worry) about such pedestrian ranking. Lets introduce a few more numbers to set the scene for context.
South Africa, with a population of 54 million people, has a nominal GDP of US$317 billion. Kenya, with its 44 million people, has a nominal GDP of US$ 63 billion. Mauritius has a population of 1.3 million people and a nominal GDP of US$ 12 billion.
So when I look at the size of the Mauritian economy and the size of the assets of the banking industry in that economy relative to its output, one country comes to mind. That country is called Iceland.
Iceland is an advanced country with a per capital GDP of a colossal US$51,068. It has a population of about 330,000 people and a nominal GDP of about US$17 million (meaning the size of its economy is a fraction of Kenya's).
In 2000, Iceland's total banking sector assets to GDP were estimated at 96 percent. They rose astronomically to about 800% by 2006. In the thinking displayed by the Business Daily, this is something to be celebrated, and therefore any economies  - including other advanced economies such as the US  - with a much lower Banks Assets/GDP ratio are poorly ranked.
There is a problem with such thinking, if we use the Iceland example. Such high ratios are a reflection of the so-called internationalisation of the banking industry by a small-open-economy; much of those assets are foreign owned. This comes with the risk that financial vulnerabilities external of such economy can ruin the domestic economy. This is the script that led to the near-collapse of the Iceland economy on the back of the global financial crisis.
 So when I saw the Business Daily story, my mind raced back to a 2008 paper by economists Willem  Buiter and  Anne Sibert titled "The Icelandic banking crisis and what to do about it: The lender of last resort theory of optimal currency areas" published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
Did I expect the Business Daily to let such context interfere with a good story? Of course not! Context will ruin the flavour; so it must die.
This is precisely the same way I see quick judgement that an economy with low debt to GDP ratio is necessary debt  sustainable compared to one whose debt to GDP ration is rising. In other worlds, context is slayed by the same crude weapon of taking leave of critical analysis.