Central Perk: 1 nov. 2013

vineri, 1 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

What's the Threat to Our Constitutional Rights?
Maastricht Treaty and the Euro: Failure for Over 20 Years
Daily Show on NSA Spying, on Obamcare, on the Know Nothing President in a "Bubble of Darkness"

What's the Threat to Our Constitutional Rights?

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 07:36 PM PDT

What do you think is the greatest enemy or threat to our constitutional rights?

I ask this question because a five page article in Foreign Policy Magazine says "The Greatest Enemy of Privacy Is Ambiguity"

The main thesis of the article is "If we can't define what it means to be left alone, don't be surprised when the government comes knocking."

Is that all there is to it? It took me only a few minutes to decide there are numerous threats to privacy, and numerous threats to constitutional rights in general.

What about ambivalence, coercion, and ignorance?

The public is force fed lies about why we need all these security measures. Most believe the lies. As a result of believing lies, most are ambivalent about the loss in constitutional rights.

Others are simply too stupid to understand what is happening in the first place.

Still others are ignorant of what history teaches us about freedoms given up, or taken away by the state.

Beware Charismatic Politicians

An American major after the destruction of the Vietnamese Village Ben Tre: "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."

Vice President Joe Biden: "We Have to Go Spend Money to Keep From Going Bankrupt."

President George W. Bush: "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."(For a discussion please see The Most Redeeming Feature of Capitalism is Failure)

Nancy Pelosi said "We have to pass the health care bill to see what's in it." (YouTube Video)

Larry Summers says "The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending." (Reuters)

Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

Please recall what Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring (in English his name is also spelled as Hermann Goering) Nazi founder of the Gestapo, Head of the Luftwaffe, said at the Nuremberg Trials.

Here is a clip of the interview in Goering's cell in prison, after the war.

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

And now we are told by charismatic politicians that we are under attack. We must give up our constitutional rights to prevent further attacks.

With that in mind, what is the greatest threat to our rights?

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

Maastricht Treaty and the Euro: Failure for Over 20 Years

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 08:39 AM PDT

The Maastricht Treaty (formally, the Treaty on European Union or TEU) was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands. It created the European Union and led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro.

Obligations

One of the obligations of the treaty for the members was to keep "sound fiscal policies, with debt limited to 60% of GDP and annual deficits no greater than 3% of GDP."

Over 20 years have passed. Let's see how those "obligations" panned out.

Via translation from Les Echos, please consider Severe Crisis of Adolescence to the Maastricht Treaty and the Euro.

Once in the monetary area, governments shall, subject to penalties, limit their deficit to 3% of GDP and debt to 60% of GDP. The treaty, however, is violated even before the euro was born because of the 11 states that agreed to adopt the treaty in 1999, six were above the required level of debt, including Germany, Austria, the Netherlands Netherlands and Italy.

Pursuing the logic of "every man for himself", a "no bail-out" clause prohibits the central bank and the U.S. to rescue a partner if it has no access to financial markets.

Original Sin

Titles on the following chart from Les Echos are in French, but with the above translation should be easy enough to understand.

Maastricht Disillusionment

Eurointelligence reports on Maastricht Disillusionment.

The world has changed since the Maastricht treaty ten years ago. Les Echos shows public debt then in 1992 and now, showing how drastic public debt has risen in all member countries. Today, only four member states have debt to GDP levels below the 60% limit. Looking back the three original fault lines of the Maastricht treaty have been revealed with the eurocrisis: the lack of solidarity, insufficient mutual surveillance and lack of economic convergence. These fault lines put into question the project as such.

A recent poll showed that today only 36% would still vote for the Maastricht treaty (compared to 51% in 1992) in a referendum, the anti-euro rhetoric has become acceptable in the establishment.

The bureaucrats are holding this mess together, by force. A vote now would not even pass.

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

Daily Show on NSA Spying, on Obamcare, on the Know Nothing President in a "Bubble of Darkness"

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 08:25 AM PDT

In an extremely funny spoof, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show rips Obama for not knowing what is happening in the administration regarding NSA spying, Obamacare, on "NIPF". Obama is the know nothing president in a "bubble of darkness".

Link if video does not play: Daily Show Rips the "Know Nothing" President

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

Damn Cool Pics

Miley Cyrus' Halloween Costume

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 10:39 AM PDT

There is a nipple pasty.

Sexy Halloween Costumes

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 09:41 AM PDT

This is why men love Halloween.

Trick-or-Treating at the White House, and More:

Featured

Trick-or-Treating at the White House, and More:

This Halloween week, the President visited a cutting-edge STEM school in Brooklyn, swore in the new director of the FBI, honored former House Speaker Tom Foley, and spoke on the Affordable Care Act in Boston's historic Faneuil Hall.

Click here to watch this week's West Wing Week:

Using Google+ to Appear in the Top Results Every Time - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 31 Oct 2013 04:13 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

Many marketers are wondering about the effects of Google+ on search results, and for anyone with a Google+ profile, a few personalized searches make those effects quite apparent. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Marshall Lee the vampire king (don't be afraid, it's just Rand) explains how having the right circlers on Google+ can lead to top-ranked results for even the broadest of queries in their SERPs.

In case you're unfamiliar, Rand is Marshall Lee the Vampire King.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard:

Video transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to a spooooky Halloween edition of Whiteboard Friday! I'm wearing some fangs this week, so if you have some trouble understanding me, don't worry, all the text is right down there below.

I wanted to talk a little about using Google+ to appear in Google's top results. It's really interesting what we've been observing over the last few weeks and months of Google's development, so check this out. If I do a search for "data science," and I'm logged into my Google+ account (which is "randfish," rightâ€"randfish@gmail), I see under data science "How Moz's Data Science Team Works." Which is pretty weird, actuallyâ€"I think that's very strange, because this was just posted on our Dev Blog, which isn't on our main site. It's a subdomain, and it doesn't rank very well. If you search and you're not logged in, you won't find it in the first 100 results at all. It's showing up here because it's been shared by an account that I follow. It'll say, "Moz shared this." And that's happening because of the Google+ integration.

You might say, "Okay, that's moderately interesting." I can search for very broad things, too, like "industry survey," and getâ€"yes, the S&P Industry Survey of the Americas, the Standard & Poorsâ€"but then I get "Take the 2013 Moz Industry Survey." Whoa! Suddenly Moz is ranking all over the place. Again, this is happening because Jonathon Colman, Dharmesh Shah, Pete Meyers, and one other person I follow on Google+ +1'd it. Google+ biasing again.

And there's more. I tried some queries for "happy Halloween." Happy Halloweenâ€"think how broad a search query that is. There was a post by Gianluca that he had shared today with a photo, and that showed up in my results. Consumer purchasing powerâ€"a Google+ post by Avinash Kaushik showed up because it was shared and I follow him. Patrick Stewart! Patrick Stewart, I mean it's a celebrity query that gets millions of searches a month (well, probably hundreds of thousands because Star Trek TNG hasn't been on for a while, but in our hearts it's always been on). A post by George Takei, right? I follow George Takei on Google+ so a post from him about Patrick Stewart is in there (it was a delightful post, by the way).

What this means for marketers, particularly SEOs who are using search and social and content together in their marketing, is the audience on Google+ is becoming more and more valuable to us. These are search-savvy, tech-savvy folks who are potentially reachable, and reachable without the classic kinds of ranking signals. I don't have to do one tenth of the work that I had to do to rank for these types of queries before. All I have to do is get you to follow me on Google+.

Even if these people aren't using Google+ as a social networkâ€"even if they're not visiting plus.google.com, and they're not sharing things and following people and +1'ingâ€"it doesn't matter, because they're still being biased so long as they follow your account. So long as you're encircled by those individuals, it's valuable. And by the way, this is not just happening to people who have set up Google+ and are actually following you. It happens to anyone who is logged into a Google account, and has connected with you over email. Meaning, they've exchanged one or a few emails back and forthâ€"it can't just be you spamming them, it's got to be that you're actually receiving email from them as well.

Gmail is another way to get this same sort of bias. You can see it in there if you're logged into your Gmail account, and you can see "Hey, I'm not following this person on Google+. Oh, we've exchanged emails, so they're showing me these results higher that they've +1'd."

Google+ sharing obviously is critical because of these influential factors, to SEOs in particular. But, be very careful, because think about thisâ€"if I shared every single page that I wanted to rank on just so that anyone who followed me on Google+ would be biased to seeing it? I would soon lose subscribers. In fact, I'm sure I would lose them very fast. People would be like, "What the hell is Rand doing filling up my stream? None of these have +1s." It wouldn't surprise me at all if Google is using some indication of metrics around usage to actually determine, "Hey, wait a minute, this is getting no +1s, no shares, no comments; why would I show this to anybody? I'm pushing it down in the results. I'm not going to show it."

These are all things that did receive quite a lot of activity. Well, actually, Gianluca's post hadn't received any activity yet, but it was very recent and lots of his posts do receive activity. So, if you overshare, you have to be carefulâ€"I like to say I think discretion is key here. Also, even if you don't have a Google+ audience, it doesn't matter because influencersâ€"people who do have audiences on Google+â€"might be sharing your stuff.

That's fascinating to imagine. It's almost like "Hey, I don't use Twitter, but if I can just get someone to tweet some of this stuff for me, I know I'll get traffic." Well, on Google+, it's not just the traffic you'll getâ€"you'll also get high rankings from all of their audience. It's really remarkable.

By the wayâ€"one thing of warning. There is a time decay on this stuff. I don't see all of the posts that George Takei has historically made (historically, I can barely say "historically" with these teeth)â€"that he's historically made about Patrick Stewart, I only see the ones from just recently. So, there's a time decay factor, it looks like between a week and a month, depending on which accounts you're following and what types of queries you're doingâ€"at least that's what I'm seeing in my accounts. Being aware of that time decay means that if there's a topic that's very valuable, and you know you have a potential social audience to reach that's either following you on Google+ or connecting with you through email, that might mean that publishing on a regular basisâ€"I might say "Hey, if ranking for consumer purchasing power is really important to me, maybe I want to put up a blog post every month or two about consumer purchasing power."

What's crazy is you don't need exact keyword matching. The post about Patrick Stewart here did not have exact keyword matching, so this is a very broad algorithm that's currently biasing to show these Google+ results. This is an incredibly powerful tool for search marketers and social marketers, and I think it's something that is going to get a lot more attention in the year to come.

With that, everyone, happy Halloween!

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