Global Economy

ATHENS, March 11 (Reuters) - Greece's economy shrank at an annual 5.7 percent in the last quarter of 2012, combining for a 20 percent slump in real terms since 2008.

The Mail division inherits most of the traditional mail services formerly offered by the state-owned monopoly, for which it uses the Deutsche Post brand. Its exclusive right to deliver letters under 50 grams in Germany expired on 1 January 2008, following the implementation of European legislation. A number of companies are vying to challenge Deutsche Post's near monopolistic hold on letter deliveries, including Luxembourg-based PIN Group and Dutch-owned TNT Post.[2] In 2002, Deutsche Post was granted a license to deliver mail in the United Kingdom, breaking Royal Mail's long-standing monopoly.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Deutsche Post started an e-mail service called ePost. Today, a verified e-mail hosting service is run under this brand which allows customers to send and receive messages with digital signatures according to the De-Mail law.

Although it has yet to be implemented or even clearly delineated, the mere threat of an ECB bond-buying program, which is what the OMT boils down to, has been enough to drive down yields and reopen the fixed-income markets to the single currency’s struggling sovereigns.

ultimately, politicians will have to make the decisions on whether the euro zone can be saved by choosing to accept either inflation or massive, and unlimited, cross-border transfers or painful unwinding of past excesses through internal devaluation and restructuring.

France and other countries have begun talks to change those conventions, so Internet companies could be taxed in the country where a sale takes place, rather than in the location where the transaction is recorded. But that could take many years, with no guarantee of any change.

A recent study by Ovum, a research firm in London, showed that 81 percent of Internet users in France would use a “do not track” feature on Web sites if it were readily available. That was the highest percentage in any of the 11 countries surveyed.