All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Germany.

And maybe we want to talk about Ola Schultz and his jogging accident and the eye patch.

But more importantly, we have to talk about the German economy and what's going on there.

So let's discuss the deindustrialization, the continuing

deindustrialization of Germany. Well, it's absolutely fascinating to see how this has now become

a mainstream issue. It's been talked about pretty much everywhere. Eurozone growth has now

fallen to 0.6% this year, which, I mean, it's stagnation.

I mean, bear in mind that we still have a high inflation situation in much of the Eurozone.

So we're talking about a stagnation situation. But, of course, Germany itself is now clearly in recession. And it's not

just a recession, a normal recession, which is a product of the business cycle. This is increasingly

looking and it's increasingly perceived within Germany as part of a long-term

process where Germany's economic model, as it has been developed over the last, well, 60, 70 years, starts to completely break down.

And, well, everybody can look at the statistics.

So far, they've managed to keep GDP growth.

They've kept GDP growth, well, GDP levels, look reasonably strong.

But this has only been done by an enormous amount of extra spending.

They're starting to hit apparently on the constitutional buffers,

that they're, you know, of the extent to which they can run deficits.

And there are good reasons, by the way, why Germany doesn't like to run budget deficits, because budget deficits

over time tend to undermine a trade surplus and the entire German economic system is based

upon running a trade surplus. So the Germans don't generally like to run a budget deficit.

But increasingly, they're beginning to push on the outer limits of that.

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