Central Perk: 22 iul. 2012

duminică, 22 iulie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

German Vice Chancellor "Very Skeptical" Greece Can Be Rescued, Euro Exit has "Lost its Terror"; Will Defeat Be Snatched From the Jaws of Victory Once Again?

Posted: 22 Jul 2012 09:14 PM PDT

At long last, everyone is willing to wave the white flag on a Greece exit from the eurozone. Please consider German Vice Chancellor 'Very Skeptical' Greece Can Be Rescued.

German Vice Chancellor Philipp Roesler said he's "very skeptical" that European leaders will be able to rescue Greece and the prospect of the country's exit from the euro had "lost its terror."

Roesler, who is Germany's economy minister, told broadcaster ARD that Greece was unlikely to be able to meet its obligations under a euro-area bailout program as its international creditors hold talks this week in Athens. Should that be the case, the country won't receive more bailout payments, Roesler said.

"What's emerging is that Greece will probably not be able to fulfill its conditions," Roesler said today in an ARD summer interview. "What is clear: if Greece doesn't fulfill those conditions, then there can be no more payments."

Greece Behind on Asset Sales, Spending Cuts, Deficit Targets

Adding additional details to the above story, Bloomberg makes a nice understatement with
Greece Back at Center of Euro Crisis as Exit Talk Resurfaces

Greece retakes its position at the heart of the European debt crisis this week as its creditors assess how far off course the country is from bailout targets, raising again the specter of its exit from the euro.

Greece's troika of international creditors -- the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- will arrive in Athens tomorrow amid doubts the country will meet its commitments and reluctance among euro-area states to put up more funds should it fail.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's three-way coalition, formed last month after a June 17 election ended a six-week political deadlock in the country, has scrambled to assemble budget cuts to convince troika officials.

Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras has identified about 8 billion euros of spending cuts and savings for the next two years out of 11.5 billion in additional cuts required.

The Greek government is also behind on state asset sales, having so far brought in 1.8 billion euros, a fraction of the 50 billion euros it aims to raise by 2020, half from sales in company stakes and half from real estate. The state is unlikely to generate more than 300 million euros this year, short of the about 3 billion euros targeted for 2012, according to the outgoing chief of the state's asset-sales fund, Costas Mitropoulos.

Once taboo, the possibility that Greece could exit 17- member monetary union has been voiced by European officials this year who consider the fallout from such a scenario would be the lesser evil against a seemingly perpetual crisis.

Roesler, who is Germany's economy minister as well as the Free Democratic chairman, told ARD that a curtailment of aid to Greece would lead to a sovereign default, which would in turn lead to "Greeks coming to the conclusion that it is probably wiser to leave the euro area."

Will Defeat Be Snatched From the Jaws of Victory Once Again?

The ducks for a Greece eurozone exit are lined up once again. Admittedly, every time the ducks had been lined up for default previously, defeat has been snatched from the jaws of victory.

I say that because Greece really does not belong in the euro. Of course, no other country belongs there either because the euro was fatally flawed from the beginning and the sooner this mess goes down the toilet the better off Europe will be.

Comparatively Speaking

I was asked earlier today if I thought Greece would recover if it returned to the Drachma. My answer was something along the lines of "At least it has a chance". For comparison purposes, Greece has no chance of a meaningful recovery in the euro.

In that regard, there is absolutely no point in any further delays, something I correctly said three years ago as well.

In the short-term Greece is likely doomed either way. In the long-term Greece has a chance once it rids itself of the shackles of the euro. Hyperinflation may be Greece's destiny, but if so, I see no point in delaying it.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

IMF Seeks to Halt Aid to Greece; September Bankruptcy Awaits; Dominoes Will Fall

Posted: 22 Jul 2012 10:08 AM PDT

According to Der Spiegel, the IMF Wants to Stop Aid to Greece as soon as the ESM is up and running in September. At that time Greece would become bankrupt.

This is a Mish-modified translation from German:

The patience of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with Greece comes to an end: According to to information obtained by SPIEGEL, senior IMF officials told EU leaders in Brussels that the IMF was no longer willing to provide additional funds for Greece.

The Troika estimates that Greece needs between ten and 50 billion € to meet targets, but many governments in the euro zone are no longer willing to shoulder new burdens. In addition, countries like the Netherlands and Finland, have linked their support because the IMF was involved.

The risk of withdrawal of Greece from the monetary union is now held in the countries of the Euro-zone control. To limit the risk of contagion to other countries, governments want to wait for the start of the new bailout ESM.

The judgment of the German Constitutional Court regarding the ESM on September 12th will come into play.

Dominoes Will Fall

I picked this story up from Roel at Automatic Earth. Here are some interesting point of view from Automatic Earth that I generally agree with.

It'll be a lot of fun seeing the IMF, and European leaders, try to deny the article and its implications. From what I understand, they want to wait until the ESM is effective, and then dump Greece. The article may trump any such intentions. Some things only work in secret, and once Pandora's box is open, they no longer do.

I still think it would be curious that the ESM, supposedly good for €700 billion or so (if not more), would be used to "save" Spain and perhaps Italy, but not Greece. For countries like Portugal and Ireland, dumping Greece would mean they need to get very nervous about being the next one thrown under the wheels and off the back end of the wagon.

The message might become that any and all reform and austerity measures demanded must be adhered to very strictly or else. Politicians in these other "borderline" countries might go along with it all, but will the people? Do the Irish really enjoy the idea of being strangled into submission? And will Spain really be "saved" once real debt numbers are known?

It seems far more likely that getting rid of Greece will be merely the first step in dissolving the entire eurozone. The rest of the dominoes can then fall in rapid succession.

There's more in the AE article including a discussion of the resignation of Peter Doyle, former division chief in the IMF's European Department, who, upon resigning, shared a few of his thoughts on the fund: "After twenty years of service, I am ashamed to have had any association with the Fund at all..."

Everyone Prepared to Pull the Plug

DW has a bit more information in IMF to provide no new funds to Greece

In an article published on its website, Spiegel cites unnamed senior European Union sources in Brussels who told the news magazine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had signaled it would not contribute to any further aid for Greece.

The report comes ahead of a planned visit to Athens by a team of auditors from the troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF. They are to conduct another inspection of the new government's economic program to determine whether Greece is doing enough to comply with the terms of its second international bailout to merit receiving the next tranche of funds.

Just this past week, leading Greek politicians pushed back talks on how to cut almost 12 billion euros ($14.6 billion) from the budget after it became clear that they were far from reaching a comprehensive agreement.

On Friday, the ECB increased the pressure on Greece to comply with the terms of the bailout when it announced that it would stop accepting the country's bonds as collateral in return for ECB funding, at least until after a positive verdict from the troika.

In a further indication that patience may wearing thin among Greece's paymasters, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Saturday ruled out the possibility of relaxing the conditions of Athens' second bailout.

Many signs suggest that everyone is finally ready to pull the plug on Greece. Hundreds of billions of euros have been wasted in the last three years attempting to stop the unstoppable.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

A Look at Full and Partial Feeds in an Increasingly Mobile World Graywolf's SEO Blog

A Look at Full and Partial Feeds in an Increasingly Mobile World

Posted: 21 Jul 2012 07:28 AM PDT

As of July 2012 I no longer recommend using this tactic, as it creates too many low quality links to your website

I’ve long stated that I prefer full feeds over partial feeds. Now that I’ve spent the past few weeks using an iPad, I feel even more strongly that full feeds are the way to go and that offering partial feeds is an obstacle to getting your posts read by as many people as possible.
Two sites I read on a regular basis that offer partial feeds are Search Engine Land and Wired Magazine. I like both websites and read them on a mostly daily basis, using a either Google reader or the Newsrack iPad app. In an effort to be clear, I’ll disclose that I am also a regular columnist for Search Engine Land.

As use of blackberries, iPhones, iPads, android, smart phones, and other Internet consumption appliances increases, I think it’s time that publishers rethink the use of partial feeds …

My typical routine includes scanning the list of feeds 1-3 times per day. If an article is interesting and something I want to read, I’ll send it off to Instapaper to read on the iPad while I’m at the gym later that day or (if absolutely necessary) on the laptop. The iPad has really affected the way I consume. It’s much easier to read on the iPad than it is on a laptop or desktop computer.

When I encounter a partial feed, it’s problematic because I have to send it through a middle service provided by Google. Google actually scrapes the content and provides a “light” version. You can see an example at this URL or the screen shot below.

As use of blackberries, iPhones, iPads, android, smart phones, and other Internet consumption appliances increases, I think it’s time that publishers rethink the use of partial feeds. Providing content that has barriers to consumption isn’t a smart long term solution.

I think it’s time for publishers to rethink using partial feeds as consumption habits change …

The most common argument revolves around advertising and not being able to include it in the feeds. To be honest, this really isn’t a valid argument. There is a lot of off the shelf space available right now for free. You can use the feed footer to randomly insert advertising links in the bottom of each post. Want the ads at the top? Use the RSS Footer and you’re all set. If you need a more sophisticated solution you should have enough of a budget to build a custom plugin.

The next biggest argument is that the posts will get scraped. Getting scraped sucks but, to be honest, it’s a non issue most of the time since Google is pretty good at figuring out the original. They aren’t perfect, but they are right more often than they are wrong. Lastly in most cases getting scraped works to your advantage.

Another solution would be to turn full feeds into a revenue-generating opportunity. You could offer partial feeds for free, and publish full feeds using a subscription model. Give each subscriber a unique feed that redirects to the full feed published at a secret URL. If the subscription is expired redirect to a partial feed. Change the full feed secret URL every month to eliminate people sharing or getting access when the subscription expires. Concerned about people republishing? Embed a unique identifier in each feed in the form of a tracking bug. Its not a perfect or foolproof solution, but it’s a big step forward.

I think it’s time for publishers to rethink using partial feeds as consumption habits change and devices allow content to be read in new ways. Publishers have to adjust and make changes.

PS: I’ve read a lot of reports about mobile consumption and, unless you are delivering rich media, you should consider providing a “lite” or “mobile” version. If you view this website on an iPhone, iPad, blackberry, or even a Wii, you’ll see a slightly different version. I use the wptouch plugin with some custom user agent settings, and it works pretty well.
photo credit: Yutaka Tsutano

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A Look at Full and Partial Feeds in an Increasingly Mobile World

WordPress SEO: How to Use RSS and Scrapers to Build Links

Posted: 21 Jul 2012 02:12 AM PDT

As of July 2012 I no longer recommend using this tactic, as it creates too many low quality links to your website

When you run wordpress or any other blog for that matter, chances are your blog is getting scraped, and re-used without your permission. In this post I’ll show you how you can use this to your advantage to build links with the anchor text of your choice.

The first step you need to take is to make sure you are publishing a full feed. I know this sounds counterintuitive, as publishing a full feed will actually encourage more people to scrape your feed, but that’s exactly what you want to happen.

Next you’ll need the RSS Footer plugin from Joost de Valk. By default the plugin links back to your home page with the name of your blog, and back to the individual post with the post title as the anchor text. This helps the search engines figure out who is the source of the blog post.

However you can take this plugin to a whole new level by also adding in links to different parts of your blog (or another website) with the anchor text that you put in. Initially I used this plugin in test mode to help me rank for the term [seo blog]. Once I had established that worked as proof of concept it was on to something more competitive. I’m now using it help me rank for the phrase [seo consultant].

Some important aspects of using this strategy, you don’t want to leave the anchor text, links, or surrounding text in place to long, you want to change it somewhere between every 30-90 days. This helps your backlink profile look more natural, and helps the scrapers from filtering out your links with pattern matching. Second go ahead and use it to build links for commercial terms, but don’t be greedy about it. Stuffing it full of 30 links pretty much shines a big spotlight on what you are doing, keeping it down to to 2-4 links keeps it from attracting too much attention.

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Advertisers:

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BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
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Link Building Services - Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation.
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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

WordPress SEO: How to Use RSS and Scrapers to Build Links

Seth's Blog : Commander Obvious chimes in with Tip #3 for effective web marketing...

Commander Obvious chimes in with Tip #3 for effective web marketing...

Hey Kids: Professional web site marketers understand that you should treat different people differently. I'll be really specific—if you run a store in the real world, every single person who walks into that store sees the same windows, the same door, the same aisles and the same prices.

But on the web, the cost of multiple home pages, for example, is close to zero.

Example: I've been a user of Filemaker's Mac database since 1985 (!). I launched the software recently and saw an alert about the ability to upgrade to the new version. Of course, I clicked the link. And it took me... to their homepage. I needed four minutes and a bunch of clicks to actually find the upgrade on their site.

They went from treating me like a trusted customerr, someone who had been buying upgrades for 27 years and went to treating me like the hoi polloi, like a stranger who just stumbled in from a Google search.

Don't do that. Different pages for different people. It's not difficult, and it represents an understanding of how the web works and how valuable your customer's time is.