Central Perk: 1 sept. 2013

duminică, 1 septembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

India in Serious Trouble (and Gold at the Heart of It)

Posted: 01 Sep 2013 11:09 PM PDT

Last week India's trade minister, Anand Sharma, came out with a laughable suggestion: RBI should consider monetizing gold.

India's central bank should look into the possibility of monetizing gold holdings, trade minister Anand Sharma said on Thursday, in the latest proposal aimed at combating a yawning current account deficit that has hammered the rupee.

It was not immediately clear whether Sharma was referring to the 557.7 tonnes of gold the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) holds in its own reserves, or gold in private hands. He did not give more details of how the proposal would work.

India has the world's third largest current account deficit (CAD), which is approaching nearly $90 billion, driven in large part by a huge appetite for gold imports. The deficit has helped undermine the rupee, the worst performing major currency since May.

Any talk of using the country's gold to help meet India's international obligations revives memories of a 1991 balance of payments crisis—when India flew 47 tonnes of gold to Europe as collateral to avoid a sovereign debt default.

In comments published by The Hindu newspaper last week, David Gornall, chairman of the London Bullion Market Association, said India could raise $23 billion by swapping gold for a payable currency for a period of its choice, while remaining the long-term holder of the gold.

Free Money?

I am not sure which is sillier 1) proposing selling gold or 2) Proposing India could get $23 billion in free money by swapping gold while retaining ownership.

India Might Buy Gold From Citizens to Ease Rupee Crisis

Reuters picked up on this story in an equally convoluted report India Might Buy Gold From Citizens to Ease Rupee Crisis

India is considering a radical plan to direct commercial banks to buy gold from ordinary citizens and divert it to precious metal refiners in an attempt to curb imports and take some heat off the plunging currency.

A pilot project will be launched soon, a source familiar with the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) plan told Reuters, although the idea was met with some scepticism.

India has the world's third-largest current account deficit, which is approaching nearly $90 billion, driven in a large part by appetite for gold imports in the world's biggest consumer of the metal. That has played a major role in driving the rupee to a record low.

"We will start a pilot project among some banks where we will allow them to buy back gold from individual households," the source, an official familiar with the central bank's plan, said. "This will start soon, we have discussed (it) with banks."

Radical Plan With Scant Details

Somehow India wants to buy gold from citizens, and it also wants to sell it (or sell gold bonds supposedly backed by gold). Details are scarce but it safe to conclude that the scheme is preposterous no matter what it is.

Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog pinged me with this comment "The Indian government is instituting one stop-gap measure after another. Buying gold from its citizens? For rupees? Don't make me laugh...Indians buy gold to get out of the rupee"

Stop-Gap Measures

In his post covering Stop-Gap Measures by India's Government, Tenebrarum stated ...

It also seems likely to us that some traders are worrying that India's government might do something stupid about its gold reserves or the gold held by its citizens. This worry is definitely justified, as India's government has so far done nothing but institute stop-gap measures to halt the slide of the rupee and the deterioration of the country's current account. Not a single step has been taken that would actually be required: bold reform is needed, but it is politically unpopular. And so the government takes one useless emergency measure after another – and it is definitely eying gold as the next vehicle to do something stupid with.

Should India try something with gold, it is perfectly safe to conclude no matter what the plan is, the plan will fail.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Terrorists Won the War on Terror; 74% of Pakistanis View US as Enemy, 60% Have No Confidence in Obama

Posted: 01 Sep 2013 11:16 AM PDT

Eric Tillberg, writer on Policy Mic says The War On Terror is Over, and the Terrorists Won.

After the first two shots of the War on Terror on September 11, 2001, the first major battle of the war occurred, and was lost, on October 26, 2001. This was the day the PATRIOT Act was signed into law by President Bush.

Terrorists, by killing 3,000 people in a spectacular fashion, goaded the United States into compromising its values and betraying its citizens.

As a followup, the terrorists won another victory with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security on November 25, 2002. This department gives a much more menacing facade to the federal government and proved to be the moment when American citizens got the idea that they were viewed as the enemy by their own government.

Defeats continued with the establishment of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), representing an increase in funding for an already bloated (and misnamed) Department of Defense. By this point, the American idea was on life support with little hope of reversal. The final blow that rang the bell of defeat for our nation was PRISM. Although PRISM began in 2007, we have only recently learned of its existence thanks to Edward Snowden.

The defeat of America in the War on Terror provides an excellent explanation for the resurgence of libertarian politics at home. It is a natural reaction, when one no longer trusts the government, to demand the right to keep and use arms and to demand that the government extract itself from most if not all aspects of our lives.

We don't only have to look internally to see that the terrorists have won. Al-Qaeda has not gone away and has not been obliterated. In this grand game of whack-a-mole, the moles see our weakening resolve to preserve ourselves and are encouraged by it. The passage of these laws must be seen as propagandistic victories to the terrorists and undoubtedly help in their recruitment. We must rediscover the American idea and begin living by it once again. This would be the best way to turn the tide on the War on Terror.

Pakistan and US Drone Policy

Shortly after 911, the US had support of the vast majority of Pakistani citizens. Polls now show only 55% unfavorable attitude towards Al Qaeda even as support dwindles elsewhere.

74% of Pakistanis View US as an Enemy

A PEW Research survey on Global Attitudes shows 74% of Pakistanis Call America an Enemy.

Roughly three-in-four Pakistanis (74%) consider the U.S. an enemy, up from 69% last year and 64% three years ago. And President Obama is held in exceedingly low regard. Indeed, among the 15 nations surveyed in both 2008 and 2012 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, Pakistan is the only country where ratings for Obama are no better than the ratings President George W. Bush received during his final year in office.

Moreover, roughly four-in-ten believe that American economic and military aid is actually having a negative impact on their country, while only about one-in-ten think the impact is positive.

Only 17% back American drone strikes against leaders of extremist groups, even if they are conducted in conjunction with the Pakistani government.

Pakistani Views of US, OBama

Unwinnable War

Terror is a method. It is not possible to win a war on a method.

And because US drone policy kills many innocent people as did senseless invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, more people resent US aggression now, than before 911.

Place yourself in the shoes of the average Pakistani who has lost a friend or family member in drone attacks. Would you think the US was an enemy? Of course you would.

Would you view those drone attacks as an act of terror? Of course you would. The US is making enemies hand over fist with its drone policy (which itself is an act of terror killing innocent civilians along the way).

How can you when a war on method, especially when you use the method yourself?

Is Obama another Bush Clone?

Please also see Is Obama Another Bush Clone? Another Nixon Clone?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

6 Google Analytics Filters I Couldn’t Live Without!

Posted: 28 Aug 2013 03:54 AM PDT

I have been using Google Analytics for a long time now, and every week it continues to change and improve, which is great. During that time, I have constantly kept and updated a library of filters, advanced segments and dashboards that I can call upon when the time is right to allow me to do what is required. Recently it occurred to me that it might just be me who does this (I hope not!), so I wanted to provide you with a list of filters that I use on a regular basis. This may turn into a series depending on the success of this post, but let’s start with those filters.

IP Exclusion

This is a filter that I rarely see used when I dig into a pre-existing Analytics account, yet it’s one that could skew your data the most.

Generally, the majority of your workforce will visit your website whilst in the office, and if some people are working on it all day, they definitely need to be removed from the profile.

How do you filter out your IP Address in Google Analytics? Well, Google has created a handy online tool to help make the process really easy.

First you need the start of the IP range, which could look like this: 63.212.171.1. You also need to have the end of the range, for instance 63.212.171.254. Now you want to exclude any visits to your website from an IP address within the range shown above. Now you have that data, go over to Google’s handy IP Address Range Tool and generate the RegEx that you need. It should look something like this:

^63\.212\.171\.([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1([0-9][0-9])|2([0-4][0-9]|5[0-4]))$

The next step is to create a filter within Google Analytics:

Custom Filter
Exclude
Filter Field > IP Address
Filter Patter > Add your RegEx
Case Sensitive > No

Hit save, apply it to the relevant profiles, and you will have removed all visits from those IPs. If you haven’t already done this, then I would highly recommend that you go and implement it.

Handling Webmail

If you have been looking through your GA account, you might have seen that some of your referral traffic is coming from Webmail. Ideally, you want all your email traffic to be consolidated as an email referrer.

We can do this using a 2-step filter process. The first step is to consolidate all the webmail providers to a campaign source using the filter below.

Custom Filter
Advanced
Field A -> Extract A > Campaign Source > mail.*\.(.+)\..{2,4}|mail-|inbox\.
Field B -> Extract B > Campagin Medium > ^(referral)$
Output To -> Constructor > Campaign Source > webmail
Field A Required > Yes
Field B Required > No
Override Output Field > Yes
Case Sensitive > No

Now that we have consolidated all the webmail to a specific output (webmail), we take that and add it to the email Medium using the filter below.

Custom Filter
Advanced
Field A -> Extract A > Campaign Source > ^(webmail)$
Field B -> Extract B > Campagin Medium > ^(referral)$
Output To -> Constructor > Campaign Medium > email
Field A Required > Yes
Field B Required > No
Override Output Field > Yes
Case Sensitive > No

Using these filters together will attribute all email traffic received to a single email medium, making it easier to analyse your data traffic.

Sub-Folder Profiles

Most of us like to look at certain sections of a website in more detail, especially if that is your area of interest within the business.

Using a sub-folder filter, this can be done easily and for as many folders as you feel are necessary.

Custom Filter
Include
Filter Field > Request URL
Filter Pattern > ^/folder/$|^/folder
Case Sensitive > No

Regional Domain Profiles

I have used this recently, where we have been using a single GA code across multiple international websites. With this implementation, it was imperative that we had separate profiles for specific regions to ensure granular reporting. To do this, each profile had to have a filter applied that only tracked traffic from a specific hostname.

Custom Filter
Include
Filter Field > Hostname
Filter Pattern > ^domain\.at|\.domain\.at
Case Sensitive > No

Add a trailing slash

This filter might not be used in all cases, and I am sure could be modified to your needs, but I have used it recently and thought it would be a good one to provide you with.

On some websites, you are able to access a page from multiple versions of the same URL /example or /example/ or even /example/index.html. All of these URLs are showing the same content and GA code. Ideally these would be resolved to show a single URL, which would help from a user perspective, but also from an SEO perspective. Sometimes this is not possible, so we need to be able to consolidate these URLs to provide amalgamated data. This can be done using the following filter:

Custom Filter
Advance
Field A -> Extract A > Request URL > ^(/[a-z0-9/_\-]*[^/])$
Field B -> Extract B > -
Output To -> Constructor > Request URL > /$A1/
Field A Required > Yes
Field B Required > No
Override Output Field > Yes
Case Sensitive > No

Force Lowercase

Similar to the previous filter, this may not be required in all instances, but is another way of combining data from multiple URLs for the same page. This filter will amalgamate all data from those URLs that have both upper and lowercase variations into a single lowercase version. This allows ease of reporting as well as consistent data.

Custom Filter
Lowercase
Filter Field > Request URL

Do you use any of the filters that I have mentioned above? What filters do you use on a regular basis? Any that I have missed out that you feel would be a good addition? Do you have a go-to list of Google Analytics filters you use? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter @danielbianchini.