There are warnings the blizzard could cause power outages and will bring road and air travel to a halt. A rush for supplies led to long queues and empty shelves at supermarkets. The weather system has already proved to be deadly, with two drivers killed in North Carolina, one in Tennessee and a pedestrian dead in Maryland.

In summary:

• states of emergency declared in Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia

• blizzard watches in effect from Arkansas through Tennessee and Kentucky and as far north as New York

• heaviest snowfall (24ins) predicted for area just west of Washington DC

• the capital's transport system - the second busiest in the US - will close all weekend

• Garth Brooks has postponed two sold-out concerts in Baltimore

• schools across the region are closed on Friday

• airlines have issued waivers for travel, meaning passengers can rebook

High winds could compound problems, with 30mph (50km/h) winds forecast for Manhattan on Saturday, and even stronger gusts in Washington and Baltimore. National Weather Service director Louis Uccellini said the system had "the potential of being an extremely dangerous storm that could affect over 50 million people". He added: "We are talking about a potentially paralysing storm that is already setting up."

He, like most Germans, according to a recent poll by the public broadcaster ZDF, thinks the country cannot cope with the huge amount of refugees and other migrants who have arrived over the last year.

Turkish-German social worker Ercan Yasaroglu, who has lived in Berlin for three decades, is gloomy. "In one night in Cologne, Germany's welcome culture was destroyed. There's now a new kind of racism here, affecting all of us with a migrant background." The danger is, there could then be a backlash amongst some migrants who feel ostracised and angry. Violence breeds violence.

We can do this, Mrs Merkel said a few months ago. But would she repeat that now? The migrant question has thrown the EU into crisis, and even this, its most powerful nation, is struggling to find a way out.

In particular, Monte dei Paschi is a complete and utter basket case at this point. A staggering one-third of their loans are “non-performing”, and the stock price has fallen a staggering 57 percent since 2016 began. Monte dei Paschi is going to need a major bailout, and the same thing could be said about almost all of the largest Italian banks. Overall, the FTSE Italia All-Share Banks Index has plummeted 21 percent over the first three weeks of this year.

We normally only see numbers like this during a major financial crisis, and that is precisely what is happening. Of course trouble has been building at Italian banks for a very long time. They have been exceedingly reckless, and almost all of them are absolutely saturated with bad loans at this point.

In the US, our markets are still in better shape than most of the rest of the world, so we don’t necessarily understand the severity of the situation quite yet. But let me assure you that what we are facing is incredibly serious. Even at the best of times, most of the major banks in Europe and Asia were on shaky ground, and all it was going to take was a major financial downturn for them to start toppling like dominoes.

Many people are now beginning to speculate that Italy may be the next Greece. Those that are saying this don’t truly grasp what is going on. Greece is the 44th largest economy on the planet. Italy is the 8th. We have already seen how the rest of Europe really struggled to come up with a bailout for tiny Greece. What in the world are they going to do when Italy goes down?

Those that believed that the European crisis was “finished” were sadly mistaken. The European crisis is not over. The truth is that the European crisis is just beginning. Italy will probably be first, but economic and financial problems are going to spread like wildfire. And by the time it is all said and done, European society is going to be fundamentally altered, trillions of euros will be lost, and the face of the continent will change.

A fall in Germany's prosperity could drag the eurozone down with it - a scenario becoming more likely amid growing signs of the country's slowdown. The country has the biggest economy in Europe and is where a large portion of the bloc's wealth is created. Germany's money has helped the eurozone struggle ahead, despite the ailing finances of Italy, Spain and Greece.

If the German economy crumbles it could start a domino effect that would pull down other countries' economies with it. That would also be a huge hit to Britain as Europe is one of the UK's biggest trading partners. The biggest shock facing Germany is the slowing global economy, which spells disaster for its export-driven growth.

China is one of Germany's biggest markets, and its falling demand is expected to hit home hard. France is one of Germany's closest trading partners and its economy is struggling, further dampening demand for German exports. Expert Peter Lundgreen, head of investment firm Lundgreen's capital said: "German exporters are feeling the pain from the slowdown in business investments in many emerging market countries, as commodity prices have tumbled."

As you will see below, some of the big banks have a tremendous amount of loan exposure to the energy industry, and now they are bracing for big losses. And the longer the price of oil stays this low, the worse the carnage is going to get.

All over the planet, big banks are absolutely teeming with bad loans. And to be honest, the big banks in the US are probably in better shape than some of the major banks in Europe and Asia. But once the dominoes start to fall, very few financial institutions are going to escape unscathed. In the coming days I would expect to see more headlines like we just got out of Italy.

Apparently, Italian banks are nearing full meltdown mode, and short selling has been temporarily banned. To me, it appears that we are just inches away from full-blown financial panic in Europe. However, just like with the last financial crisis, you never quite know where the next “explosion” is going to happen next.

But one thing is for sure – the financial crisis that began during the second half of 2015 is raging out of control, and the pain that we have seen so far is just the beginning.

The figures were the weakest in 25 years, coming in below expectations and prompted alarm among investors. But some critics believe China's growth could actually be less than four per cent, which would unleash a very nasty surprise and sting for the global economy in the months to come. The slowdown of the world's second-largest economy is one of the reasons that stock markets across the world have been crashing since the start of 2016.

If China was in reality growing at an even smaller pace than authorities let on, markets would have reacted even worse than has already been seen. China makes up around 17 per cent of global GDP, in today's inter-connected world its financial health is crucial to trade and economies across the world - including Britain.

Yet it's thought that policymakers frequently fiddle official data to make it better than it really is. Marc Faber - dubbed Dr Doom as publisher of 'The Gloom, Boom and Doom report' - is just one critic who believes growth in China is much lower than official estimates. He told CNBC: "An economy is very complex and you have some sectors of an economy expanding and some sectors contracting. My sense is that at the very best, the economy is growing at around four per cent per annum but it could be lower."

But Mr Faber is not alone in his fears, and many investors believe that China's official economic figures must be taken with a pinch of salt.

The most controversial element of TTIP is the ‘corporate court’ system, formally called ISDS. This system allows multinational corporations and other foreign ‘investors’ to sue governments for enacting regulation which damage their profits. Proponents argue that this offers investors, like small businesses, protection against ‘arbitrary’ government action.

Gus van Harten’s new report shows that the really big winners of these cases are, unsurprisingly, really big corporations (over $1 billion in annual revenue) and super rich individuals (over $100 million wealth). Almost 95% of all compensation awarded in the corporate court cases studied went to these groups.

On January 17, Francis crossed Rome to visit the city’s historic Great Synagogue, his first visit to a Jewish place of worship since his election to the papacy in March 2013. It marked the third time a pontiff has gone to the Rome synagogue, located within the boundaries of what was once a papally-imposed Jewish ghetto.

On January 25, as popes do every year, Francis will go to Rome’s Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls to mark the close of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which falls on the feast of the conversion of St Paul. Generally, it’s the most important annual occasion for popes to reflect on ecumenism.

Though it’s not yet confirmed, reportedly Francis will leave the Vatican yet again on January 27 to visit the Mosque of Rome, one of the largest Islamic places of worship outside the Arab world. If so, he’ll become the first pope to do so, and historically it will be just the ninth time a pontiff has entered a mosque.

In light of the flurry of activity, one has to ask: Why is interfaith and Christian unity so much on the pope’s brain right now? Whether by luck or design, January 2016 is giving Pope Francis a platform to broadcast that message in unusually high-profile fashion. What remains to be seen is whether his frenzy of outreach will pay off in terms of changing hearts and minds where it counts.