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Germany’s government collapsed on Monday after Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence — one he called himself, expecting to lose. The vote will dissolve parliament and leave Europe’s largest economy in the hands of a caretaker government until general elections take place on Feb. 23, which Scholz calculated was his best chance at a breakthrough in the gridlock in Berlin. The writing had been on the wall for quite a while: Scholz’s three-party “traffic light coalition” disentangled over budgetary and economic reform disagreements in early November.