The Beast From The East.
In the year 2018, even as animal spirits were running wild on the bourses and the world was approaching the longest economic expansionary span on record, Europe was buffeted by one storm after another. With the Brexit hurtling towards an ugly finish, political and social unrest in France, a resurrecting Italian debt crisis and an EU-wide industrial production and consumer confidence slump, Europe’s economic engines were sputtering. Germany, by far Europe’s financial powerhouse, was facing mounting troubles of its own. Caught in the crossfire of a China-USA trade war and being the epicentre of a refugee crisis, its own slowing economy was doing it little favours. Over the course of the year, several German companies egged Angela Merkel’s government to loosen its purse strings to resuscitate an economy that was on the precipice of a recession. At the start of 2018, the cold wave dubbed ‘The Beast From The East’ had blanketed Europe in thick snow and sent both temperatures and con