Central Perk: 10 mar. 2012

sâmbătă, 10 martie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Spain's Two Largest Unions Call for General Strike; Mood of the Nation

Posted: 10 Mar 2012 12:57 PM PST

The Spanish economy is deteriorating rapidly, and a general strike will not help matter any. Nonetheless, strikes, and I am willing to bet increasing violence, will soon befall Spain.

Please consider Spain's new government faces first strike

Spain's two largest unions, Comisiones Obreras and UGT, voted on Friday to call for a general strike on March 29 against reforms they called "the most regressive in the history of Spanish democracy".

The labour reforms of Mariano Rajoy's government grant employers greater flexibility to pay lower compensation when they fire workers, a change Mr Rajoy argues is crucial to increase Spain's economic competitiveness, but one that has enraged the country's unions.

Spain is struggling with more than 5m people, a fifth of its workforce, unemployed. The government argues that strong support from employers for the labour reforms demonstrate that it is taking the right steps to tackle joblessness.

The previous general strike in Spain, called in September 2010 against the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for raising the national retirement age, saw 7.5 per cent of all state workers walk out, according to the then government.

"There is no precedent for a decision this brutal, that puts us on an unknown road without considering the consequences," said Cándido Méndez, head of the UGT union. "It is a general strike both just and necessary."

Work Rule Changes Desperately Needed

The irony in this sad mess is that work rule changes and pension reform are desperately needed.

However, with Spanish unemployment at 23.3% and youth unemployment at 49%, few are going to see it that way.

Making far matters worse, the balance sheet problems of Spanish banks and debt problems in Spanish regional governments are both dramatically understated. There is no way Spain can meet the EU demanded 4.4% deficit target, or even Rajoy's higher target of 5.8%.

For more on the problems confronting Spain, please see

Bond Yields Still Show Stress

The Spanish 10-year bond yield is down from a peak near 6.7% to 5%, but that is a steep premium to a 10-year German bond yield of 1.79%.

The 2-year government bond yields of Spain and Germany are 2.33% vs. 0.16% respectively.

Mood of the Nation

My friend Bran who lives in Spain writes "Here we have a general strike announced for the 29th, and the political sniping and arguments are going on as usual. I expect some initial protests this week. The sad situation is an unusual confrontation of ethics and abilities that is hard to describe. The strike on the 29th will show the mood of the nation - for now not obvious how it will be."

Indeed. And it will be the mood of the nation (over time, not just on the 29th), not the mood of bureaucrats in the EMU and IMF, that decides the ultimate fate of Spain.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Damn Cool Pics

Angry Birds in Space

Posted: 09 Mar 2012 09:07 PM PST

The first ever game announcement and gameplay footage from space. In this video, NASA Astronaut Don Pettit plays Angry Birds in Zero Gravity. Rovio is launching Angry Birds Space on 22 March and the game will be available on iOS, Android, Mac and PC. Here watch the video and don't forget to see the gameplay footage at the end of this video.

Seth's Blog : Learning from four viral events

Learning from four viral events

March 2012 is a big month for viral ideas that change the way people think about more than just LOLcats. Here are four that happened in the last week or two and each brings its own lessons:

Marilyn Hagerty's review of the local Olive Garden was a huge Twitter sensation, an easy target for ironists in search of something to snark about. The octogenarian (as much fun to type as it is to say) was fabulous in her refusal to take the bait, and this is a classic Internet meme, here today, gone tomorrow. One lesson: you can't count on media stories to pop, and when they do, they are not worth much to the media companies that publish them. You need more than one to make it a business.

The Kony video is the fastest-spreading internet video of all time, and one that is much harder to pigeonhole than an Olive Garden review. The most important takeaway is that this overwhelming pop is unlikely to ever happen this way again. A video this long, on this complex (and previously little known) a topic, for a non-profit--no, this is the exception that proves a bunch of rules. I have no doubt that the success of the video (seen by more people than any single TV show this week) will lead many organizations astray in the naive belief that they can emulate this one. If a non-profit board decides to spend precious resources on a video hoping it will change the world in three days, I think they're misguided.

I don't have the stats of time watched, but my confident guess is that the vast majority of viewers only lasted a few minutes. It's also worth noting that 60,000,000 or more views led to significantly less than a dime donated (on average) per viewer, and that unlike Dollar Shave Club, there was no well-rehearsed method to turn a viewer into a fan into a donor into a repeat donor.

I'm hopeful that good causes and complicated ideas benefit from rapid viral spread among strangers moving forward. My fear is that this looks like an easy shortcut, and it's not.

One thing we can learn, I think, is that production values are rising. For an idea to spread, it's more important than ever that the sneezer (the one spreading the idea) feels comfortable enough to send it along. In the case of the Olive Garden, the sneering tweeter could do so feeling comfortably superior. In the Kony video, the production values were a clue that the story was safe to share.

Dollar Shave Club isn't just a clever online video, it's a business. Of the four, it's the one that was most intentional and was best designed to lead to long-term success. The key distinction: Use the viral spread to gain a permission asset. Then, turn that asset into a profitable business.

Here's how they did it:

First, realize that razors are boring and expensive and that buying them is a bit of a hassle. If you address all three of these issues for the consumer, you don't need to deliver a better razor in order to succeed--all that's necessary is a better way to get the razor in the hands of the buyer. The model of permission is at the heart of the project--the razor business can't possibly pay off if consumers only buy one or two times and then get bored. Instead, Dollar earns the right to send you a bunch of razors every month forever, making the value of a new customer very high. They can invest that value into a clever video and into aggressive pricing. Also very smart: The affiliate program doesn't encourage you to pimp your friends to make money for yourself. Instead, they politely remind you that if you share their affiliate link, you get free razors, the very thing you're encouraging your friends to buy. The symmetry is compelling and successful.

And finally, my free ebook Stop Stealing Dreams continues to spread, with tens of thousands of new readers every day. There's no doubt I could have dramatically increased the number of viral engagements if I had made a video instead, and if I had created some sort of deadline (free this week only!). On the other hand, one lesson from this sort of gradual viral spread is that while it doesn't happen overnight, it can spread for months or even years into the future.

Here are two books on the topic, a new one by Dan Zarrella and an older one by me.

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Weekly Address: Investing in a Clean Energy Future

Your Daily Snapshot for
Saturday, March 10, 2012

Weekly Address: Investing in a Clean Energy Future

Speaking from a factory in Virginia, President Obama talks about how companies are creating more jobs in the United States, making better products than ever before, and how many are developing new technologies that are reducing our dependence on foreign oil and saving families money at the pump.

Watch the video:

President Barack Obama tapes the Weekly Address at the Rolls-Royce Crosspoint facility in Prince George County, Va., March 9, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Weekly Wrap Up

Your quick look at this week on WhiteHouse.gov:

A Special Bond: Addressing the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, the President reaffirmed the strength of our Nation's special bond with Israel, discussing both countries' mutual interests, the importance of securing peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and the actions his Administration has taken to support Israel. The President's statements at the AIPAC Policy Conference were followed by a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday. Speaking to reporters before sitting down for the meeting, the President noted, "As I've said repeatedly, the bond between our two countries is unbreakable."

An Important Milestone: On Thursday, President Obama welcomed Prime Minister Abdurrahim ElKeib of Libya to the White House—marking the first White House visit from a Libyan prime minister in nearly 60 years. At the meeting, President Obama applauded Dr. ElKeib's leadership and encouraged his government to make continued progress with the country's democratic transition.

Mutually Beneficial Partnership with Ghana: In 2009, Ghana was one of the first nations to host the President and First Lady Michelle Obama. On Thursday, the President returned the favor, welcoming the President of Ghana, John Atta Mills, to the White House to discuss the growing commercial and economic ties between the two nations. Thereafter, the President outlined a number of initiatives in which both countries are working together—"[The] President's government recently is collaborating with a number of American businesses to build infrastructure inside of Ghana, which will create thousands of jobs here in the United States. And the trade that we engage in creates jobs for tens of thousands of people back in Ghana."

Energy Efficiency from North Carolina: On Wednesday, President Obama toured Daimler Trucks North America in Mount Holly, North Carolina, where workers are busy assembling trucks that run on natural gas. While there, he announced a new $1 billion National Community Deployment Challenge to help boost the deployment of clean, advanced vehicles throughout the country.

New Help for Homeowners: In his first news conference of 2012, the President discussed new steps to support homeowners and their families, the situation in Iran, and took sundry questions directly from the press in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on Wednesday. In case you missed it, you can watch the video here.

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Seth's Blog : Information density

Information density

How many choices should your customers have? How much information should be presented, how many dials are there to turn, how quickly are you asking for people to grasp concepts and make choices? Consider two options:

When talking to an amateur, to a stranger, to a newbie, to someone who isn't committed, the best path is clarity, which means simplicity. Few choices, no guessing, no hunting around.

When talking to a fellow professional, to a peer, to someone in the same groove as you, the goal is to maximize useful density of choice. Put as much power in the hands of the user as possible.

If you're a frustrated user, it's likely that the marketer/presenter/doctor has made a mistake and either split the difference in how much information and power was conveyed or missed the mark entirely in one direction or the other.

The interface for your mail program ought to be far more information rich than the emergency kill switch at the gas station.

The texture of your sales pitch ought to be deeper and more sophisticated for a return customer than it should be when you're selling door to door.

The menu at a fancy restaurant should probably have more choices and more detail than one at a fast food joint.

One of the reasons to study up on a topic is so that you can earn the right to speak and be spoken to in shorthand, and to be given the pro version of the dashboard. And if you're entering a market, consider offering a super-simple data-poor version if the competition is focused on complexity, or offering a power version if the competition is in a race to offer the user as little as possible.

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sâmbătă, 10 martie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Seth's Blog : Learning from four viral events

Learning from four viral events

More Recent Articles

Weekly Address: Investing in a Clean Energy Future

Seth's Blog : Information density

Information density

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sâmbătă, 10 martie 2012

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