More evidence of the crushing pain being inflicted on the German economy by the commitment to squeeze it into the constraints imposed by the Maastricht vice for monetary union comes with the news that Dataquest Inc finds a big slowdown in the German personal computer market in the second quarter. And the current quarter isn’t looking much better: it says that over all, personal computer shipments rose 6.8% to 3.55m; in Germany, shipments were nearly flat at 811,107 units, compared with 810,404 a year earlier. The Italian market was also sluggish, with shipments rising just 3% to 294,892 units but they declined 9.7% in Sweden, where currency problems and the crimping of public spending are hurting the economy.
