Now it's almost official: A European oil and gas embargo against Russia would plunge the German economy into a deep recession.
However, the economic slump would most likely be less severe than that during the corona crisis.
This was calculated by the Bundesbank, which judges anything but lightly, and thus confirmed the magnitude of previous estimates.
It puts the federal government under even greater pressure to justify itself.
The refused an embargo with reference to the threat of mass unemployment and poverty.
It has so far failed to substantiate these scenarios with reliable analyses.
It urgently needs to catch up if it doesn't want to finally get the reputation of trusting warnings from CEOs and union representatives more than independent science.
If the government remains silent, its cautious stance will appear increasingly hypocritical: it is not willing to pay a high but bearable price to cut off the money supply to Putin.