This morning, I took a look again at total international trade data from the WTO (methodology here). The red circle in the graph above show how trade this summer has been roughly flat (the data go through July). Since the data are somewhat seasonal, I've put green circles on the corresponding period of prior years.
While there's no sign of the sharp slowdown characteristic of a recession, it does appear in this series, as in oil production, that global economic growth is stalling.
OK, here's a question. Everyone talks about efficiency being part of the answer (negawatts). What would the numbers look like if efficiency actually worked? Since efficiency reduces costs it would look just like poverty (assuming that actual standard of living is relatively unchanged).
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