In other words, although Spain's GDP might have increased since 1,000 A.D., Spain's GDP as a percentage of global GDP might have remained constant. Check out all the full chart below. (Mind the ...

As noted in the chart above, sales/revenues rise faster than GDP during an expansion, and collapse during a contraction (wholesale trade fell 20% in 2009; retail trade dropped over 7%).

Asia (minus Japan) accounts for 60% of the world's population and 30% of its GDP. So, one way to read the graph, very broadly speaking, is that everything to the left of 1800 is an approximation ...