Maybe this isn't news to anyone, but if you're into international trade and do not shy away from a few stats or a graph, I highly recommend this post at VoxEU. It's a short article that tracks trade flows and compares individual country stats to some aggregate numbers.

Here's the bottom line:

[P]eriods of abrupt decline of total trade flows were not uncommon at the individual country level, but these drops were not occurring simultaneously. The unique feature in the current crisis is the negative growth rates exceeding -10%, from November 2008 onwards for all six countries depicted, with the fall increasing to more than 20% as of January 2009.

So why has this happened? The culprit, says the authors, is globalization.

(…)
Read the rest of Global Trade Has Fallen Over A Cliff

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© Stan for China Hearsay, 2009. |
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