Central Perk: 8 sept. 2014

luni, 8 septembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

EU Threatens New Sanctions; Russia Responds with Threats on Natural Gas and Airspace Flight Restrictions
Japanese Economy Contracts Bigger than Expected 7.1% in 2nd Quarter; Really Bad Theories
Should Banks Lend Money At All?

EU Threatens New Sanctions; Russia Responds with Threats on Natural Gas and Airspace Flight Restrictions

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 12:28 PM PDT

The tit-for-tat sanction madness in Europe took a huge leap forward today with new sanctions in the work on Russian energy companies.

Russia responded by threatening to restrict commercial flights over its airspace, by threatening to halt reverse flows of natural gas to Ukraine, and with a threat to reduce gas delivery to Europe.

EU Plans New Sanctions

The Wall Street Journal reports New EU Sanctions to Stop Fundraising by 3 Russian Oil Giants

New European Union sanctions on Russia will expand the number of Russian companies unable to raise money in the bloc's capital markets to include three state-owned oil companies, according to documents seen by The Wall Street Journal.

The documents show the EU seeking to hit Russian oil companies, but leaving unscathed those involved in gas production and export, which are critical to many European countries' energy supplies.

Under a modest expansion of sanctions introduced in late July, the three oil companies — Gazpromneft, the oil-production and refining subsidiary of OAO Gazprom, oil transportation company Transneft, and oil giant Rosneft — will be forbidden from raising funds of longer than 30 days' maturity.

Three companies involved in military production — Oboronprom, United Aircraft Corp., and Uralvagonzavod — will be barred from future EU fundraising. The sanctions will also bar new contracts for services needed for oil exploration and production in deep water, the Arctic or shale-oil projects.

Unacceptable Behavior

EC president José Manuel Barroso commented on the Unacceptable Behavior of Russia.

"We are showing to the Russians this kind of behaviour is not acceptable," José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Wales. "We believe it's extremely important to have a firm position in terms of making clear to Russia it should respect international principles."

Russia immediately responded to the threat of more sanctions with its own views on what is unacceptable behavior.

Airspace Restrictions

In part one of Russia's two-part asymmetrical response to the EU, Russia Threatens Flight Ban.

Blaming the West for damaging the Russian economy by triggering "stupid" sanctions, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow would press on with measures to reduce reliance on imports, starting with increasing output of domestic aircraft.

Medvedev suggested Russia should have hit back harder over the action by the United States and European Union to punish Moscow for its role in Ukraine, saying it had been too patient in the worst confrontation with the West since the Cold War.

"If there are sanctions related to the energy sector, or further restrictions on Russia's financial sector, we will have to respond asymmetrically," he told Russian daily Vedomosti, adding the airlines of "friendly countries" were allowed to fly over Russia.

"If Western carriers have to bypass our airspace, this could drive many struggling airlines into bankruptcy. This is not the way to go. We just hope our partners realise this at some point," he said in the interview published on Monday.

Russia Threatens to Reduce Gas Supply

For part two of Russia's response to the EU regarding unacceptable behavior, please consider Russia Aims to Choke Off Gas Re-Exports to Ukraine.

Moscow is seeking to prevent its European customers re-exporting Russian gas to Ukraine, threatening to choke off a crucial lifeline for Kiev and deepen the energy crunch it faces this winter.

The threats come as EU officials geared up to announce sanctions against three state-controlled Russian energy companies – Rosneft, Gazpromneft and Transneft – that will sharply limit their access to western financial markets.

In an effort to offset lost volumes from Russia, Ukraine has sought to secure more gas from the EU, principally through "reverse flows" – re-exports of Russian gas via countries such as Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

But Gazprom, Russia's state gas company, has long complained about the re-exports, with Alexei Miller, its chief executive, denouncing them as a "semi-fraudulent mechanism".

Senior officials in the European Commission and in eastern European governments say Russia has been raising the prospect of reducing export volumes so their customers have no gas left over for reverse flows to Ukraine. "They say this pretty openly," said one central European ambassador.

Why EU and US economic-jackasses think sanctions will accomplish anything positive or change Russia's behavior one bit is at first glance a bit of a mystery.

However, economic-jackasses by definition are going to do stupid things, so we should expect more and more of the same failed tactics.

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

Japanese Economy Contracts Bigger than Expected 7.1% in 2nd Quarter; Really Bad Theories

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 10:45 AM PDT

By now it should be pretty clear that Abenomics is a complete failure. Abenomics did not spur lending, investment, hiring, or wage growth.

It's one touted "success" is that prices have gone up. And for cash-strapped consumers facing higher taxes, that alleged "success" is actually a disaster.

Japanese Economy Contracts Bigger Than Expected 7.1% in Second Quarter

Please consider Japan says economy contracted 7.1 percent in April-June on bigger drop in business investment.

Japan's economy contracted at a larger than earlier estimated annual rate of 7.1 percent in April-June, as companies and households slashed spending following a tax hike.

The revised data released Monday show business investment fell more than twice as much as estimated before, or 5.1 percent, while private residential spending sank 10.4 percent, in annual terms. The earlier estimate showed the economy contracting 6.8 percent.

The recovery of the world's third-largest economy has slowed following the increase in the sales tax to 8 percent from 5 percent on April 1.

Really Bad Theories

Here's a statement from the article regarding theories that caught my eye:

"Theoretically, there should be no impact from the consumption tax increase on corporate spending or long-term corporate planning, but a large number of Japanese corporations seemed to see a large impact from the hike on final demand," said Junko Nishioka, an economist at RBS Japan Securities in Tokyo.

Good grief. Nishioka has theories, but they are as sound as a home foundation in a swamp. Here's an easy to understand explanation.

Eight Point Explanation

Japan's sales tax increased from 5% to 8%.
Wages did not go up.
Consumers have 3% less money to spend.
Consumers with less money, spend less.
Businesses faced with a slowdown in consumer spending reduce future plans.
Abe plans to hike the sales tax again and businesses know that as well.
Business sentiment sours.
Japanese demographics are such that businesses already have substantial worries.

What is it about those eight points that economist Nishioka fails to understand?

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

Should Banks Lend Money At All?

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 01:45 AM PDT

Banks are in the business of making loans. Is that the right model?

Before answering, please consider the model of Lending Club.

Lending Club is an online financial community that brings together creditworthy borrowers and savvy investors so that both can benefit financially. We replace the high cost and complexity of traditional lending with a faster, smarter way to borrow and invest.

Here is the initial process straight from the Lending Club Website.

Steps

You decide you want to borrow money
You go to the Lending Club website
You enter the amount
You specify what it is for
You answer a question regarding your credit
Lending Club evaluates the information with no impact on your credit score, determines an interest rate and instantly presents a variety of offers to qualified borrowers
If accepted, you can prepay at any time with no penalty

Lending club claims borrowers substantially reduce their rates over those offered by banks.

Exploring Lending Club

Bloomberg columnist Mat Levine explores the issue in Lending Club Can Be a Better Bank Than the Banks.

There are a lot of ways in which [Lending Club] is not a bank, but the big one is that basically all (95.6 percent) of its liabilities are "notes and certificates," that is, just unsecured structured notes tied directly to specific underlying loans.

Banks, on the other hand, are funded mostly by deposits and repo and other short-term senior borrowing.

Lending Club's assets and liabilities are perfectly matched in duration: Those notes and certificates mature when the corresponding loans mature. A bank, on the other hand, is in the business of borrowing short to lend long.
Lending Club's assets and liabilities are perfectly matched in loss bearing: Every dollar that a borrower doesn't pay back to Lending Club is a dollar that Lending Club doesn't pay back to note holders. The note holders know going in that they bear the entire risk of loss on the underlying loans. A bank depositor expects to get her money back even if the bank makes some bad mortgage loans.

This takes, in round numbers, all of the risk out of Lending Club's balance sheet.

In any useful sense, Lending Club is a 100 percent equity-funded bank: Every dollar that it lends comes from long-term, loss-bearing investors.

100% Equity-Funded Bank

Lending Club is effectively a 100% equity-funded bank with 0% lending risk!

Ironically, Lending Club does not make loans. Instead, it facilitates matching borrowers with creditors and takes a fee for its efforts.

So, what's not to like?

Unfortunately Levine jumps off the deep end with his next set of statements.

First: You wouldn't want all banks to be like Lending Club. People like having checking accounts. Even beyond checking accounts, people like having liquid risk-free money-like claims. Banks exist to turn risky investments -- loans to people and businesses! -- into risk-free money-like claims, whether those are checking accounts or certificates of deposit or repo agreements....

For starters, the idea that banks can turn risky investments into risk-free claims is preposterous. Second, the idea that checking accounts would disappear is preposterous. Third, I certainly would prefer lending banks to be legitimately risk-free operations like lending Club.

Advantages

Lending club does not print money into existence
Lending club does not offer loans of mismatched duration
There is a zero percent chance of a run on the bank with lending club
Investors in Lending Club take a risk in return for the opportunity to earn interest
There is no legitimate need for FDIC
Lending Club itself takes no lending risk, instead investors willing to lend money take a risk

Lending Banks vs. Safekeeping Banks

For all intents and purposes, Lending Club is the ideal risk-free lending bank. Given that it does not lend money, no bank-associated financial crisis is possible in such a model,

Does that mean checking accounts cease to exist? Hardly, and Levine should know better.

All that's needed is a separation of duties (lending vs. safekeeping): Safekeeping banks don't make any loans or facilitate making loans, ever. All checking accounts (demand deposit accounts) would reside in safekeeping banks.

In return for safekeeping, banks charge fees (just as they do now - ATM fees, transaction fees, checking account fees, etc.) There is no need for FDIC as no money is lent.

In this separation of duty model, lending banks would facilitate lending exactly as does Lending Club. Want to earn interest? OK you pick a loan you like, for a duration you like, and you invest in it.

Such loans would be term-duration loans, not FDIC guaranteed (and that is an added bonus, not a drawback). Those lending money for interest should logically assume some risk.

We might see some changes such as the end of cheap 30-year mortgages. Some might see that as a drawback, but that too is an advantage. Cheap, easy loans contributed to the housing bubble and a near financial collapse. If 10- or 15-year loans became the standard, so much the better. Houses should primarily be a place to live, not a speculative plaything.

Printing money into existence is at the forefront of every financial crisis, and it also helps explain the growing income inequality problem.

I am not against loans. Rather I am against borrowing money into existence, FDIC, duration mismatches, etc.

I suggest it's time to change the model to a 100% reserve system that eliminates duration mismatches, does not allow printing of money into existence, and also stops runs on banks without FDIC.

A distinct separation between lending banks and safekeeping banks appears to be a great starting point for discussion, not that peer lending itself is the perfect solution.

Note: I revised the last statement to make it clear that I am after a 100% reserve system model, not a peer lending model per se.

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

Damn Cool Pics

Abandoned Horse Rescued

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 05:05 PM PDT

People from Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) have found and rescued a horse named Polly. Let's see before and after pictures of an amazing transformation.

Slide to the left:

10 million -- that's the number of jobs American businesses have added over the last 54 months, marking the longest streak of private-sector job growth in American history.

While there's still a lot more work to do, the economy has improved significantly since President Obama took office in 2009. Back then, the economy was shedding jobs by the hundreds of thousands, the housing market had hit rock bottom, and the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse.

But the President took action, and now -- thanks to the resilience of American workers and business men and women -- you can see the progress we've made in four key economic sectors that have helped make 10 million jobs possible.

Want to see exactly how far we've come since the Great Recession? Just slide to the left:

From breaking ground on new homes and building more cars, to selling more American products abroad and buying more at home, check out these interactive charts to see where we stood when President Obama took office and where we are now -- then share them with whoever needs to see it.

"These Are Some Special Stones"

Featured

"These Are Some Special Stones"

As the last stop on his trip to Estonia and to the NATO Summit in Wales, President Obama visited the prehistoric monument Stonehenge on Friday -- and really enjoyed his time there.

"I would come here, and if it wasn't a monument, I'd sit on one of these rocks and I'd just watch the sunrise," the President said. "It would really cleanse your mind."

Watch President Obama's stroll around Stonehenge here:

Seth's Blog : Things well done (and the smartest Lt Gov candidate ever)

Things well done (and the smartest Lt Gov candidate ever)

The Overcast podcast app is my favorite. And this is my favorite podcast.

Chris Guillebeau's new book is a pleasure to read. And here are two insightful books on b2b consultative selling, one a classic, one new. And Rohan's blog is better than ever.

Tim Wu, perhaps the smartest person crazy enough to run for Lieutenant Governor of New York, wrote a book called The Master Switch that ought to be read by every person who cares about the future of the internet, even if you're not able to vote for him tomorrow.

These earplugs actually work. While it's not true that reading in bed will ruin your eyesight, it's pretty easy to set yourself up for fifty years of aural unhappiness in exchange for just a few too-loud experiences.

The Sprout is a simple, elegant, powerful way to listen to music that sounds better than you're used to...

Hover is my go-to for domains. They're humans. That says a lot.

• Email to a friend •

6 Things I Wish I Knew Before Using Optimizely

Posted: 07 Sep 2014 05:15 PM PDT

Posted by tallen1985

Diving into Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) for the first time can be a challenge. You are faced with a whole armoury of new tools, each containing a huge variety of features. Optimizely is one of those tools you will quickly encounter and through this post I'm going to cover 6 features I wish I had known from day one that have helped improve test performance/debugging and the ability to track results accurately.

1. You don't have to use the editor

The editor within Optimizely is a useful tool if you don't have much experience working with code. The editor should be used for making simple visual changes, such as changing an image, adjusting copy or making minor layout changes.

If you are looking to make changes that change the behaviour of the page rather than just straightforward visual changes, then the editor can become troublesome. In this case you should use the "Edit Code" feature at the foot of the editor.

For any large-scale changes to the site, such as completely redesigning the page, Optimizely should be used for traffic allocation and not editing pages. To do this:

1. Build a new version of the page outside of Optimizely

2. Upload the variation page to your site. Important: Ensure that the variation page is noindexed.

We now have two variations of our page:

www.myhomepage.com & www.myhomepage.com/variation1

3. Select the variation drop down menu and click Redirect to a new page

4. Enter the variation URL, apply the settings and save the experiment. You can now use Optimizely as an A/B test management tool to allocate traffic, exclude traffic/device types, and gather further test data.

If you do use the editor be aware of excess code

One problem to be aware of here is that each time you move or change an element Optimizely adds a new line of code. The variation code below actually repositions the h2 title four times.

Instead when using the editor we should make sure that we strip out any excess code. If you move and save a page element multiple times, open the <edit code> tab at the foot of the page and delete any excess code. For example, the following positions my h2 title in exactly the same position as before with three fewer lines of code. Over the course of multiple changes, this excess code can result in an increase of load time for Optimizely.

2. Enabling analytics tracking

Turning on analytics tracking seems obvious, right? In fact, why would we even need to turn it on in the first place, surely it would be defaulted to on?

Optimizely currently sets analytics tracking to the default option of off. As a result if you don't manually change the setting nothing will be getting reporting into your analytics platform of choice.

To turn on analytics tracking, simply open the settings in the top right corner from within the editor mode and select Analytics Integration.

Turn on the relevant analytics tracking. If you are using Google Analytics, then at this point you should assign a vacant custom variable slot (for Classic Analytics) or a vacant custom dimension (Universal Analytics) to the experiment.

Once the test is live, wait for a while (up to 24 hours), then check to be sure the data is reporting correctly within the custom segments.

3. Test your variations in a live environment

Before you set your test live, it's important that you test the new variation to ensure everything works as expected. To do this we need to see the test in a live environment while ensuring no customers see the test versions yet. I've suggested a couple of ways to do this below:

Query parameter targeting

Query parameter tracking is available on all accounts and is our preferred method for sharing live versions with clients, mainly because once set up, it is as simple as sharing a URL.

1. Click the audiences icon at the top of the page

2. Select create a new audience

3. Drag Query Parameters from the possible conditions and enter parameters of your choice.

4. Click Apply and save the experiment.

5. To view the experiment visit the test URL with query parameters added. In the above example the URL would be: http://www.distilled.net?test=variation

Cookie targeting

1. Open the browser and create a bookmark on any page

2. Edit the bookmark and change both properties to:

a) Name: Set A Test Cookie

b)URL: The following Javascript code:

<em>javascript:(function(){ var hostname = window.location.hostname; var parts = hostname.split("."); var publicSuffix = hostname; var last = parts[parts.length - 1]; var expireDate = new Date(); expireDate.setDate(expireDate.getDate() + 7); var TOP_LEVEL_DOMAINS = ["com", "local", "net", "org", "xxx", "edu", "es", "gov", "biz", "info", "fr", "gr", "nl", "ca", "de", "kr", "it", "me", "ly", "tv", "mx", "cn", "jp", "il", "in", "iq"]; var SPECIAL_DOMAINS = ["jp", "uk", "au"]; if(parts.length > 2 && SPECIAL_DOMAINS.indexOf(last) != -1){ publicSuffix = parts[parts.length - 3] + "."+ parts[parts.length - 2] + "."+ last} else if(parts.length > 1 && TOP_LEVEL_DOMAINS.indexOf(last) != -1) {publicSuffix = parts[parts.length - 2] + "."+ last} document.cookie = "optly_"+publicSuffix.split(".")[0]+"_test=true; domain=."+publicSuffix+"; path=/; expires="+expireDate.toGMTString()+";"; })();</em>

You should end up with the following:

3. Open the page where you want to place the cookie and click the bookmark

4. The cookie will now be set on the domain you are browsing and will looking something like: 'optly_YOURDOMAINNAME_test=true'

Next we need to target our experiment to only allow visitors who have the cookie set to see test variations.

5. Click the audiences icon at the top of the page

6. Select create a new audience

7. Drag Cookie into the Conditions and change the name to optly_YOURDOMAINNAME_test=true

8. Click Apply and save the experiment.

Source: https://help.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/200293784-Setting-a-test-cookie-for-your-site

IP address targeting (only available on Enterprise accounts)

Using IP address targeting is useful when you are looking to test variations in house and on a variety of different devices and browsers.

1. Click the audiences icon at the top of the page

2. Select create a new audience

3. Drag IP Address from the possible conditions and enter the IP address being used. (Not sure of your IP address then head to http://whatismyipaddress.com/)

4. Click Apply and Save the experiment.

4. Force variations using parameters when debugging pages

There will be times, particular when testing new variations, that there will be the need to view a specific variation. Obviously this can be an issue if your browser has already been bucketed into an alternative variation. Optimizely overcomes this by allowing you to force the variation you wish to view, simply using query parameters.

The query parameter is structured in the following way: optimizely_x EXPRIMENTID=VARIATIONINDEX

1. The EXPERIMENTID can be found in the browser URL

2. VARIATIONINDEX is the variation you want to run, 0 is for the original, 1 is variation #1, 2 is variation #2 etc.

3. Using the above example to force a variation, we would use the following URLstructure to display variation 1 of our experiment: http://www.yourwebsite.com/?optimizely_x1845540742=1

Source: https://help.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/200107480-Forcing-a-specific-variation-to-run-and-other-advanced-URL-parameters

5. Don't change the traffic allocation sliders

Once a test is live it is important not change the amount of traffic allocated to each variation. Doing so can massively affect test results, as one version would potentially begin to receive more return visitors who in turn have a much higher chance of converting.

My colleague Tom Capper discussed further the do's and don'ts of statistical significance earlier this year where he explained,

"At the start of your test, you decide to play it safe and set your traffic allocation to 90/10. After a time, it seems the variation is non-disastrous, and you decide to move the slider to 50/50. But return visitors are still always assigned their original group, so now you have a situation where the original version has a larger proportion of return visitors, who are far more likely to convert."

To summarize, if you do need to adjust the amount of traffic allocated to each test variation, you should look to restart the test to have complete confidence that the data you receive is accurate.

6. Use segmentation to generate better analysis

Okay I understand this one isn't strictly about Optimizely, but it is certainly worth keeping in mind, particularly earlier on in the CRO process when producing hypothesis around device type.

Conversion rates can vary greatly, particularly when we start segmenting data by locations, browsers, medium, return visits vs new visits, just to name a few. However, by using segmentation we can unearth opportunities that we may have previously overlooked, allowing us to generate new hypotheses for future experiments.

Example

You have been running a test for a month and unfortunately the results are inconclusive. The test version of the page didn't perform any better or worse than the original. Overall the test results look like the following:

Page Version	Visitors	Transactions	Conversion Rate
Original	41781	1196	2.86%
Variation	42355	1225	2.89%

In this case the test variation overall has only performed 1% better than the original with a significance of 60%. With these results this test variation certainly wouldn't be getting rolled out any time soon.

However when these results are segmented by device they tell a very different story:

Drilling into the desktop results we actually find that the test variation saw a 10% increase in conversions over the original with 97% significance. Yet those using a tablet were converting way below the original, thus driving down the overall conversion rates we were seeing in the first table.

Ultimately with this data we would be able to generate a new hypothesis of "we believe the variation will increase conversion rate for users on a desktop". We would then re-run the test to desktop only users to verify the previous data and the new hypothesis.

Using segmented data here could also potentially help the experiment reach significance at a much faster rate as explained in this video from Opticon 2014.

Should the new test be successful and achieve significance we would serve users on the desktops the new variation, whilst those on mobile and tablets continue to be displayed the original site.

Key takeaways

Always turn on Google Analytics tracking (and then double check it is turned on).
If you plan to make behavioural changes to a page use the Javascript editor rather than the drag and drop feature
Use IP address targeting for device testing and query parameters to share a live test with clients.
If you need to change the traffic allocation to test variations you should restart the test.
Be aware that test performance can vary greatly based on device.

What problems and solutions have you come across when creating CRO experiments with Optimizely? What pieces of information do you wish you had known 6 months ago?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

luni, 8 septembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Slide to the left:

"These Are Some Special Stones"

Seth's Blog : Things well done (and the smartest Lt Gov candidate ever)

Things well done (and the smartest Lt Gov candidate ever)

More Recent Articles

6 Things I Wish I Knew Before Using Optimizely

6 Things I Wish I Knew Before Using Optimizely

1. You don't have to use the editor

If you do use the editor be aware of excess code

2. Enabling analytics tracking