So Germany is at a crossroads – once again. We have been here before (a search on Google for “Germany at a crossroads” yields 5m hits). Still, it is hard not to think that something special is happening in the Berlin republic beyond the unprecedented utter confusion following from last Sunday’s federal elections.

For a start Of course, right off we have there is the intricate Chinese puzzle that everyone is trying to solve. Will the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens join the Liberals to form a new government? Will the Greens join the Liberals and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)? Could the SPD and Greens make common cause with the new Left party, a mix of communists and SPD defectors? Or perhaps we will get a “grand coalition”, with the CDU and SPD working together – which then raises begs the question of who becomes the next chancellor and whether canwhether Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schröder can can survive the next coming weeks. No matter what the outcome, the new government is likely to be unstable and short-lived.