Germany is coming out of the recession.

Was the headline not long ago. Now we hear that retail sales are down by 4% or so year on year.

One of the old household names in retailing there - Quelle - a mostly catalogue / mail order business is going down into bankruptcy with a total sale-off until Christmas. Quelle went down following the demise of Arcandor the troubled company behind one of the last two remaining German department stores - Karstadt. They also owned 53% of Thomas Cook.