Central Perk: 14 oct. 2013

luni, 14 octombrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Marc Faber on Investment Strategies, Government Idiocies, Gold, Safe Havens

Posted: 14 Oct 2013 10:23 AM PDT

Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, told Tom Keene and Sara Eisen on "Bloomberg Television" today "there is no safe haven. The best you can hope for is that you have a diversified portfolio of different assets and that they don't all collapse at the same time."

On the debt ceiling debate in Washington, Faber said, "It's basically a dysfunctional government that we have that is far too large that is essentially wasting money left, right and center. The Republicans are wasting money on the military complex and the Democrats are basically buying votes with transfer payments, with entitlement programs, it goes on. It is a huge waste. The problem is that I don't see a solution."

Link if following video does not play: Faber on Investment Strategies and Gold

Faber on Gold:

"We have a strong rally from the lows at 1180 to over 1400 and now we are backing off. I think between around 1200 and 1250 it is getting into buying range. The sentiment about gold is very negative, but if you look at everything considered - the monetization of debt, the debt ceiling, which sooner or later will be increased because both Republicans and Democrats are big spenders and the government's debt has expanded from $1 trillion in 1980 to $5 trillion in 1999, now we are at $16 trillion. Both Democrats and Republicans have been big, big spenders because a lot of money flows through the government."

Faber on Debt Ceiling:

"If they don't agree by the 17th, I think what can happen is that the Fed will actually finance the Treasury independently so the interest payments are being met. If the interest payments are not being met, I think it will cause quite a bit disruption to the financial market. I am not that concerned about that. I think this larger issue is like the euro issue a year ago where people were very negative and it was debated and so forth. In the end it is a political decision. I think both parties want to spend. It's just on different items that they want to spend money."

Faber on Equities, Bonds, Currencies, Commodities, and Government Idiocies:

"Yes, idiocies by governments. That is exactly the word. It's basically a dysfunctional government that we have that is far too large that is essentially wasting money left, right and center. The Republicans are wasting money on the military complex and the Democrats are basically buying votes with transfer payments, with entitlement programs, it goes on. It is a huge waste. The problem is that I don't see a solution. I think the current debate about the debt ceiling and the budget is more a symptom of a problem than a problem itself. The problem is really that the government, not just in the US but other countries as well, has grown disproportionally large and that retards economic growth."

Faber on Safe Havens:

"There is no safe haven. Bank deposits are not safe, which used to be safe. Money in treasury bills is not 100% safe because there is inflation in the system and you hardly get any interest. Bonds are not very safe anymore because eventually interest rates will go up. Equities in the US are relatively expensive by any valuation metrics you might use. I don't see anything particularly safe. The best you can hope for is that you have a diversified portfolio of different assets and that they don't all collapse at the same time."

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

Bond Market Closed; Obama Warns of Catastrophe, Calls Meetings with Congressional Leaders; Likely Result is More Spending

Posted: 14 Oct 2013 10:00 AM PDT

Bond markets are closed today but the likely reaction to all this talk of catastrophe would be the same big yawn as before.

And one has to wonder how many times the stock market can rally on the same non-news that meetings are underway.

The BBC reports President Obama to meet with Congressional leaders on debt limit.

US President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden are scheduled to meet congressional leaders from both parties as the deadline to raise the nation's debt limit nears.

The bipartisan meeting will include leaders from both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Officials warn of economic calamity should the US default on its debt.

Expected to attend are Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Weekend negotiations between US congressional leaders failed to reach a breakthrough to raise the nation's debt limit ahead of Thursday's deadline.

Negotiations between Republican and Democrat Senate leaders continued on Sunday, with both sides reportedly awaiting the Monday opening of US financial markets to reassess their negotiating positions.

On Monday, Republican Senator Bob Corker said the Democrats were demanding too much.

"For about 48 hours now, the Democrats have overreached by wanting to spend more, unbelievably", he said in an interview with NBC's Today show.

Real Irony

If Boehner put the damn thing to a vote right now, there would be no increase in spending.

It is the Republicans who want to increase the deficit by dropping the medical device transaction tax. And it is Republicans who want to soften the cutbacks in the increase in military spending. Notice that I said "cutbacks in the increase", not cutbacks.

Likely Result is More Spending

After all this bitching and moaning about the deficit, here's the likely "compromise": leaders of both parties will sit down and pass a spending bill that increases spending now while pushing hypothetical cuts further into the future.

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

Damn Cool Pics

Bride Waited 7 Years for the Wedding

Posted: 14 Oct 2013 06:44 PM PDT

26-year-old Kirsty Thomson from the UK refused to get married because she was overweight. She spent 7 years to get her body in shape. After she lost most of her weight she was ready to get married.

Orgasmic Movie Posters

Posted: 14 Oct 2013 06:17 PM PDT

Each cast member from the new Lars von Trier's movie 'Nymphomaniac' gets own orgasmic movie poster.

Inbound Recruiting: The Tactics You Already Know Make Hiring Easier and More Fun

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 04:21 PM PDT

Posted by RobOusbey

[Hi, I'm Rob Ousbey, the COO at Distilledâ€"I haven't blogged here for a long time. Much of my time is spent on internal issues such as hiring, so I wanted to share some ideas about how to apply techniques that you're already familiar with to the difficult process of recruitment.]

A client asked me recently about Distilled's "inbound recruiting" process. I thought this was a fantastic term that described a large part of our approach, even though it's never consciously been part of our strategy.

Recruiting is universally hard, time consuming, and expensive. Distilled is super-picky about finding and hiring team members who match our core people attributes, and since we rarely write about the process publicly I'd like to share some of the the tactics that we use. I'll be specific in my suggestions; all of this practical advice can be applied to many other organisations.

In many ways, recruiting exceptional people follows a very similar path to finding potential customers, appealing to them and leading them to a conversion, so the inbound techniques that work in other situations are often extremely relevant to recruitment as well.

Though Moz readers need no reminding, feel free to spend a moment looking at Rand's list of tactics that he includes under the "inbound" banner.

To begin with, it's worth mentioned that Distilled does actually use paid advertising for our job ads.

However, when we use an advert on a site like LinkedIn, Gumtree, Guardian Jobs, Inbound.org, etc. to announce that we're looking to fill a particular role, many of the readers are often already very familiar with us and keen to work with us. So, while an advert is a highly visible statement of intent, it's much more powerful after we've already put in the legwork to generate interest in us as a company. That legwork begins with awareness.

Awareness and brand building

A large part of an inbound strategy is building awareness for your brand or organization, and about the opportunities you provide. Through activities like blogging on our site, our content, our meetups, our conferences, and maintaining a social following, we've been able to build a community of followers that may one day be interested in working for us.

To cast an even wider net: The audience members may know other people who are a perfect fit for us, and having a fan of our company pitch a position to their friends can be fantastically effective. This is one reason why I'm happy we publish content that isn't just about trying to drive potential clients.

A fair amount of our blog posts also demonstrate why Distilled might be a good place to work. The attributes that you talk about and the attributes that you look for in people will vary between companies, roles, and industries, but it can't hurt to make sure that you allow people to see behind the veil from time to time. An authentic message will go a long way here, in terms of helping your name stick in people's minds.

In Distilled's case, we believe that the opportunity to solve hard problems, to work on innovative proposals, travel the world and to have fun will appeal to the right people, so we make sure to talk about those on our blog.

Finally: Building up a social following also has value for when a role becomes available; we share every new job on our Twitter feed, which immediately puts it in front of a highly relevant audience. (For free! Inbound!)

Awareness in other niches

The tactics above become less appropriate when you are looking for employees who would never have been a fan or follower of you. For example: Distilled's audience members are predominantly online marketers, so this doesn't help us to hire a bookkeeper, a project manager, etc.

Similarly, for a small company with less time to dedicate to lots of content production, the tactics I listed might be less effective.

Fortunately there are plenty of other inbound techniques to help you here, and I have three in particular that have been effective.

Publishing offsite content: This seems almost trivially simple! Propose a guest contribution to a site relevant to the niche you're targeting. For example: if you're looking to hire online marketers, publishing on YouMoz will help to put you in front of some very relevant people.
Using the social networks of others: In the early days of Distilled US, as we were getting off the ground in Seattle and New York, Rand would tweet our job announcements and send tons of well qualified candidates. That's fantastic when we're looking for online marketers, but next time we hire for sales people or finance experts, I'll be asking influential friends in those circles to share the news.
Put yourself in front of them: Speaking at the right events/conferences can make you extremely visible, but even just attending the right meetups can be incredibly effective. In addition: many meetup groups are looking for sponsorship. Write to the organizer of a relevant group to see what you could offer; buying a few rounds of drinks, or providing a space for them to meet will allow you to network with all the promising talent, and a chance to say a few words to everyone about who you are, why you're supporting their meetup, and why you're hiring.

Serendipity

Sometimes you just can't anticipate the moments when you will generate awareness that leads to an application or a great hire.

Distilled's classy 404 page had minor success on Reddit a few years ago. One person who visited was Rob Toledo, who subsequently clicked around the rest of the site, thought we sounded cool, saw we were advertising for an Outreach role, and applied. Rob's now been with us two years, and has just been promoted to be the head of a ten-person teamâ€"all because he was bored online and someone had submitted our page to Reddit!

This was just something for an intern to work on; we never expected the page to help us hire multiple people.

Invest in landing pages

At the latest SearchLove conference, Rand discussed recruiting. He mentioned that organizations often under-invest in their jobs landing pagesâ€"and he couldn't be more correct! Given the importance and associated value of these pages, they should be treated like any other important commercial pages.

The relevant pages should appeal to the right types of person: Are you looking for very professional candidates? Those who are motivated by particular aspects of a job? For some great examples, there's a really good-looking recruitment page right here on Moz. I'm also a big fan of the simplicity of the Amicus jobs page.

So meta.

Building a fantastic page has many benefits, the critical one being that a better page (where it's easy for people to find the information they need, read & compare job details) will generate more responses.

Analytics and testing

I mentioned "conversions" earlier on, and by keeping most of the recruitment funnel on our website (the full job descriptions, the application forms, etc.); we are able to use many of the web analytics techniques that we're already used to. With Google Analytics installed on every page of the funnel, we can assess how people are finding us (though search, social, and referred traffic), and which channels deliver the best results. By defining specific conversions, there's also the opportunity to use CRO techniques to improve the number of people who read through a job ad, begin an application, submit a completed application, etc.

Real analytics data for our latest marketing internship advert in London. The bounce rates seem fairly high, but many of those were people clicking the 'Apply Now' button and thus leaving the site.

One (rather advanced) technique that I've not had the chance to try out just yet would be to add a unique identifier for each application as a GA Custom Variable. In addition to finding out where your job applicants are coming from, this would let you track them through to acceptance/rejection, and find out which sources are sending the best candidates.

In conclusion

Doing what you can to help your organization "become loved" is valuable in many ways, but it can have huge benefits when you find yourself looking for great people.

Although I've shared learnings from my own Distilled experiences, there are many other things I know we could be doing better in this area. Specifically, having an "always open" application process to avoid missing out on an inquiry from a great candidate, greater investment in our recruitment pages, and better data analysis of adverts and applicants through the funnel.

Finally: if you have any thoughts or questions about how to generate interest from potential candidates, please do drop a comment below.

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