The Darkening Skies Over Europe’s Economy

“I love Europe,” newly inaugurated U.S. president Donald Trump proclaimed to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. Yet there was also much he did not love, such as that time back in his days as a property developer when he gave up a project in Ireland because, he said, European Union approval would take five or six years. “I’m trying to be constructive,” Trump said. 

The global elites who swarm the Swiss ski resort every January don’t agree with Trump on much, but on one issue, their minds melded: Europe is in deep trouble. It faces “an existential threat,” European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said. BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink called Europe’s much-vaunted single market “a beautiful myth.”