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Germany Caught in Whirlpool of EU Economic Woes

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Germany’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) faltered in April, as the nation could not escape the troubles across the European Union that have done more damage than can be measured by this sort of statistic. Clearly there is not enough demand for German products in places like the United States and China to offset the pull of gravity in Europe. If Germany faltered, based on PMI, then the rest of the region is still crumbling.

According to Markit data for the eurozone:

The Markit Eurozone PMI Composite Output Index was unchanged on March’s reading of 46.5 in April, according to the flash estimate. The sub-50 reading indicated a drop in activity for the nineteenth time in the past 20 months, the exception being a marginal increase in January 2012.

And:

Divergent trends were evident in the region’s two largest member states. While France saw the rates of decline in both business activity and new business ease sharply to the slowest for four and eight months respectively, Germany saw both activity and new business fall at the steepest rates for six months. The drop in German activity was also notable in being the first since last November. Elsewhere across the region output fell at the slowest rate for three months in April, though the rate of loss of new business remained marked.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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