Follow the money: new data-visualization tool helps track the world economy

The global economy can be difficult for the average person to understand. Money funnels towards and away different countries quickly, creating a delicate balance of economic power that can be knocked off its axis by a variety of factors. Nowadays, with a flagging Euro, a still-recovering U.S. and doomsday-style economic reports on China, trying to diagnose the economic health of the world head spin.

The Global Economy Dynamics Project (GED), a research institute funded by prominent German non-profit Bertelsmann Foundation, created an interactive data-visualization called GED-VIZ that illustrates the individual economies of countries —  as well as their trade interactions with other nations across the globe — over the last 10 years.

Users can select any number of countries for the graphic, which automatically shows a country’s GDP as well as its trade volumes. When a country is highlighted, little strings light up that show the proportional break down of trade — showing…