For Germans, 'Tis the Season to Be Spending; Holiday Is Boomtime for Merchants, Shoppers Despite Economic Decline Elsewhere
- Lavish holiday gifts fly off the shelves: porcelain sets priced at $10,000 to $20,000, new cars, video cameras - all are so much in demand that stores can't keep them in stock.</br></br>Merchants are ecstatic. Wholesalers can't keep up with demand. Manufacturers search desperately for ways to increase capacity.</br></br>The rest of the world may be in the throes of an economic downturn this Christmas season, but it is boomtime in the new, bigger Germany. The holiday season is going gangbusters here - despite the Persian Gulf crisis, the weak world economy and doubts about the transformation of the ex-Communist East.</br></br>From Berlin's sumptuous KaDeWe, a department store whose gourmet food displays are a feast to the eye, to the family shops that line the pedestrian zones of Germany's cities and towns, merchants are crowing about crowds of customers shopping with a new confidence.</br></br>"It is incomparably, massively good," said Josef Teupe, general manager of the Karstadt department store on Duesseldorf's tony shopping boulevard. "We are seeing Christmas sales like we haven't in a decade. The customers have more money and they're in a mood to spend."