Sunday, April 12, 2009

Off the Charts - Trade Is Falling Fast Around the Globe

By FLOYD NORRIS

Published: April 10, 2009

(The Depression) The Single Men's Unemployed A...

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THE plunge in world economies that accelerated last fall is now reducing the volume of world trade at the fastest rate seen in decades. But February trade figures released this week by several countries provided tentative signs that the fall may be starting to slow

The total value of exports shipped by 15 large exporters in February was nearly a third lower than in the same month of 2008 — a rate of fall much faster than anything seen in recent recessions.

“World trade is falling much faster now than in 1929-30,” two economists, Barry Eichengreen of the University of California and Kevin H. O’Rourke of Trinity College in Ireland, wrote in a paper released this week titled, “A Tale of Two Depressions.”

“That is highly alarming,” they added, “given the prominence attached in the historical literature to trade destruction as a factor compounding the Great Depression.”

Off the Charts - Trade Is Falling Fast Around the Globe - NYTimes.com

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