GERMANY - German demand, and German money, has propped up the eurozone. Now Its main industry is in freefall. Its political system is descending into chaos. The banking system is in crisis, and consumer demand is stuck in the doldrums. With every week that passes there are more and more signs of a deep malaise in its economy. The nation once known as Europe’s powerhouse, and the locomotive of the entire eurozone, is slowly turning into its sick man instead. That is partly a German story, of course, but it is also a global one. When the world’s fourth-largest economy runs into trouble, it has repercussions far beyond its own borders. Such as? Germany’s stagnating economy will make the eurozone more unstable than ever, it will make the European Union more protectionist, it will destabilise global trade at the worst possible time, and may well trigger a financial crisis.
It is going to be one of the most dangerous trends of the 2020s.