All right, Alexander, let's talk about the collapse of the Schultz government, the Traffic Light Coalition.

We're down to two, the SPD and the Greece.

And the CDU, Mertz, has now come out and said that he's not going to be doing Schultz any favors.

He actually wants the vote of confidence

and the election moved up. He doesn't want it to take place in March. He doesn't want the

Connandez vote to take place in January. He wants this to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Obviously, he wants to take power in Germany. And then we had the revelation that the dispute between Lidner,

the finance minister and Schultz, was over Ukraine. Lidner was talking tourist missiles to Ukraine and

no money and Schultz wanted money to Ukraine. What are your thoughts?

I mean, this is, I think the first thing to say is that there's a huge amount of political

theater and manipulation and grandstanding here. And it is fascinating that it was about Ukraine,

but we need to understand exactly what happened, because there is this

major hole, this huge hole, in the German government's budget. The government in Germany has,

is constrained by budget rules and what...

As of Ukraine.

Exactly. So, of course, they argue about funding for Ukraine.

Now, again, I don't think people really understand what we're talking about here, because

it's quite clear to me, though nobody says this, that this is clearly about the loan that

was agreed last year, you know, the $55 billion

euro dollar loan that was going to be paid over to Ukraine and which is going to be repaid

out of the proceeds of the Russian assets.

And then of course the Americans became cool because there was all sorts of legal problems.

...