As Germany's government breaks down, the question is, has Europe's largest economy gone kaput?

Good morning. You're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report, and we're live from the BBC World Service. I'm Leanna Byrne.

Germany's coalition government has fallen apart. Elections are expected early next year.

You see, the three-way coalition has been fractured for months and things came to ahead on Wednesday when the finance minister was sacked over the budget. Here's the BBC's

Damien McGuinness in Berlin. For months, the arguments have been grown louder within the

German government, mainly over how to balance the budget. Chancellor Schultz wants to boost spending

with new debt. The finance minister

opposed this and wanted to cut taxes too. This unusual coalition of centre-left social democrats,

Greens and free market liberals was always going to be tricky. When it formed three years ago,

there was enough money to paper over

the cracks. But then Russia invaded Ukraine, energy prices shot up, and Germany had to boost spending

on defence. The prospect of a Trump presidency is now adding to the sense of urgency that Germany

needs a strong and united government to kickstart the economy.

That was Damien McGuinness reporting and we'll come back to Germany's economic problems shortly.

But first, Nissan is cutting jobs in cutting production by 20% because of falling sales.

The BBC's Theo Leggett is looking at this one.

Hi, Theo.

Hello, Leanna.

Theo, what's behind these drastic moves?

It's Nissan being behind the curve in two of its biggest markets, really.

And those markets are China, where it's facing increasing amounts of competition from local producers, companies like BYD,

which have focused on electric cars, which have

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