And with anaemic demand sapping metals prices, mining companies have been hit hard: on January 14th shares of Glencore and Anglo American, FTSE-listed miners, both fell 9%.Ominously, even hitherto strong economies are showing signs of weakness.
"Anaemic demand continues to hold back the private sector," said Jack Kennedy, a senior economist at Markit, "with further price cutting insufficient to prevent new orders from falling".
In short, the risk is that we could be headed for more years of anaemic global demand, as well as increasingly nasty trade relations.
Raising fares in an anaemic economy, when demand for air travel might soften anyway, is risky but perhaps inevitable.
With domestic demand anaemic, Japan perennially relies on exports and overseas production, especially of cars and electronics, to keep its economy going.
Oil is expensive because anaemic supply and soaring Asian demand have led to an unusually tight market, so a series of smallish supply disruptions, including sanctions on Iran, has had a big effect.
Demand would be anaemic anyway but credit growth to the private sector, which ran at over 21% a year in 2006 and 2007 and a still perky 16% in 2008, has collapsed.
We have rather shown that older, anaemic multiparae who are experiencing recurrent demands of pregnancy and lactation under seasonally adverse conditions (Anya 2004, Billewicz and McGregor 1981) clearly benefit from MMN supplementation.
Even before this week, pundits were concerned that anaemic growth, especially in America, was dragging down oil demand.
The excess of saving over investment represents a shortfall in demand, and weak demand shows up in anaemic growth figures and low inflation.Normally a central bank would try to fix the imbalance between saving and investment by reducing interest rates (which should discourage saving and encourage borrowing).
Anaemic sales of goods and services priced in sterling lead to weak demand for pounds.
