Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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Ceasefire in Tatters; Separatists Reject Losing Proposition; Poroshenko Rejects "Green Corridor" Posted: 16 Feb 2015 10:31 PM PST Battles continue northwest of Lugansk, near Mariupol, and in other locations, in addition to the Debaltsevo cauldron. The only reason for the ceasefire that I can see was for Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to allow his troops to escape the Debaltsevo cauldron. The separatist refused the ceasefire losing proposition because the intent of Kiev was known from the start. Kiev never intended to honor Minsk II, having denied upfront amnesty and constitutional agreements. (See Ceasefire or Not? Will Kiev Honor Agreement? Poroshenko Says "Prepare for Martial Law"). Also note there never was agreement on the Ukrainian forces surrounded in the Debaltsevo cauldron. Situation Hopeless for Ukraine The Ukrainian situation is hopeless given the rebels have said that the ceasefire does not oblige them to lift the encirclement. And from Kiev's perspective, there is no longer a reason for a ceasefire. Translation Difficulties Continue Colonel Cassad reports "Debaltseve Ours. We Do Not're Gone" More accurately, that is what Google translate says Cassad reports. I pinged Jacob Dreizin asking him what "Мы не уйдём" means. It does not mean "We Do Not're Gone", but rather "We Won't Leave". In context it means "Debaltsevo is ours and if you think we're leaving it, you're crazy". My synopsis of the rest of the article follows. An associate of Yushchenko Balogh [former minister of emergencies in Ukraine] made ​​a suggestion 'let's not repeat the situation with the airport.' But such statements are clearly not in the political mainstream in Ukraine. Propaganda hastily sculpts another myth about the 'Ukrainian Stalingrad' under Debaltseve. This will end as pointless and bloody as the airport 'cyborgs'. People die for no reason. The Debaltseve truce is moribund. Ceasefire in Tatters The Guardian confirms the above in its report Ukraine Ceasefire in Tatters as Clashes Escalate in East. Fighting has escalated in eastern Ukraine as government and pro-Russia forces struggle for control of the besieged town of Debaltseve, leaving the new ceasefire in tatters on its second day. The Ukrainian military said on Monday that rebels had fired on its troops 112 times in the past 24 hours. At least five Ukrainian fighters have been killed and 25 wounded since the ceasefire began on Sunday, a military spokesman, Vladislav Seleznyov, told the Guardian. Most of the fighting was concentrated around Debaltseve, where thousands of soldiers have been cut off from the main Ukrainian lines near Artemivsk by rebel artillery. Pro-Russia forces have been trying for weeks to take the town, which holds a rail junction connecting the main rebel centres of Donetsk and Luhansk. The rebel leader, Alexander Zakharchenko, said this weekend his forces would observe the ceasefire everywhere except in Debaltseve. Kiev has repeatedly denied that Debaltseve is cut off, despite evidence to the contrary. "These aggressive actions and statements by the Russia-backed separatists threaten the most recent ceasefire," the US State Department said in a prepared statement. "We call on Russia and the separatists it backs to halt all attacks immediately." Donetsk negotiator Denis Pushilin said on Monday that pro-Russia forces would offer a "green corridor" through which the Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve could leave "without weapons and vehicles". But the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, rejected similar proposals during bargaining last week in Minsk, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported at the weekend. US Nonsense and Ukrainian Stupidity "These aggressive actions and statements by the Russia-backed separatists threaten the most recent ceasefire," the US State Department said in a prepared statement. Let me point out the obvious: There never was agreement on the Debaltseve cauldron, and it is Ukraine, not the separatists who have openly rejected terms of what was agreed upon. This is not taking sides. Rather it's a simple point-by-point assessment of the accord. Poroshenko Rejects "Green Corridor" The lunatic masquerading as president of Ukraine has committed his troops in the Debaltseve cauldron to their doom. The Guardian reports "Debaltseve has been virtually cut off from the rest of the Ukrainian forces. A group of Ukrainian soldiers who broke out of Debaltseve on Sunday told the Guardian their column of seven trucks had come under heavy fire from rebel positions despite the ceasefire, and two of the vehicles were destroyed. They said that more than 60% of the city has been ruined by near-constant fires and shelling, and Kiev's troops are trapped there with dwindling ammunition and supplies." The above Guardian quote is nearly the same as Cassad's assessment "This will end as pointless and bloody as the airport 'cyborgs'. People die for no reason. The Debaltseve truce is moribund." Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Bailout Talks Collapse in 4 Hours; Greece Says Extension is "Absurd"; 79% Support Syriza's Negotiation Stance Posted: 16 Feb 2015 12:11 PM PST Greece Says Extension is "Absurd" Talks between Greece and eurozone officials were expected to last through the night. Instead Greece Bailout Talks Collapsed in Acrimony after four hours. A crucial meeting of eurozone finance ministers over the future of Greece's bailout broke down in acrimony after Athens angrily rejected the bloc's insistence that it extend its current €172bn rescue as "absurd" and "unacceptable". It is the second time in five days that negotiations between the new anti-austerity Greek government and its eurozone creditors have collapsed and it means Athens, whose public finances are deteriorating fast, could soon be left with no European financial backstop. The eurozone gave Athens until Wednesday night to reverse course. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chairman of the eurogroup of finance ministers, said the time available for a Greek request was almost out: "We can use this week, but that's about it," he said. "There was a very strong opinion across the eurogroup that the next step has to come from the Greek authorities," he added. Monday's talks collapsed when Yanis Varoufakis, Greek finance minister, strongly objected to a draft statement according to which Athens would drop its fierce opposition to prolonging its bailout. Mr Dijsselbloem said holding another finance ministers this week to discuss Greece was contingent on a request for a bailout extension from Athens. He added that he had spoke with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, and that Mr Tusk had no intention of calling a summit of eurozone heads of government. 79% Support Syriza Negotiation Stance It's easier to take a hard stance when you have the support of the country as does Syriza. The BBC has poll data in its report Greece Rejects EU Bailout Offer as 'Absurd'. Talks between Greece and European finance ministers have collapsed early after Greece rejected the EU's bailout offer as 'absurd' and 'unacceptable'. Before the meeting, German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had already said he was not optimistic a deal would be reached. Mr Schaeuble told German radio: "The problem is that Greece has lived beyond its means for a long time and that nobody wants to give Greece money any more without guarantees," Mr Schaeuble said. Greece has proposed a new bailout programme that involves a bridging loan to keep the country going for six months and help it repay €7bn (£5.2bn) of maturing bonds. The second part of the plan would see the county's debt refinanced. Part of this might be through "GDP bonds" - bonds carrying an interest rate linked to economic growth. Greece also wants to see a reduction in the primary surplus target - the surplus the government must generate (excluding interest payments on debt) - from 3% to 1.49% of GDP. In Greece last week, two opinion polls indicated that more than three-quarters of Greeks supported Mr Tsipras's hardline stance. According to the polls, 79% of Greeks backed the government's policies and 74% believed its negotiating strategy would succeed. Drop the Debt Rally Protesters showed their solidarity with Greece at a rally in Trafalgar Square over the weekend. AP How Long Can Greece Last Without Funds? Andrew Walker, World Service economics correspondent, offers his opinion on how long Greece can last if the ECB pulls the plug. Two pressing financial issues loom over Greece: whether the government can pay its bills and the stability of the banks. Greek officials have said the government could keep going for several months, but there are doubts. How long it takes depends to a great extent on Greek taxpayers. The banks have already seen money being withdrawn and increasingly need central bank loans. If there is no bailout programme, the European Central Bank could pull the plug on the banks. If it came to that, it really would mean a major financial crisis, with perhaps the imposition of extensive financial controls to prop up the banks and possibly even the re-introduction of a national currency. It's hard to nail down a date by which an agreement must be done to avert some sort of financial Armageddon, because it depends on the actions of taxpayers, bank customers and the ECB. But time is getting short. Primary Account Surplus How long Greece can remain on the euro depends on how long Greece can keep a primary account surplus. Tax revenues are key, but so is a run on the banks. If the ECB pulls the plug, and it will if talks break down, Syriza will have no choice but to quickly see capital controls. Then it will be up to the tax collectors. Given that capital controls can come at any time, I once again repeat my message to Greek citizens Get Out While You Still Can; Buy Gold. For further discussion of how Greece can default and still stay on the euro, please see ... Third Greek Bailout? Another €53.8 Billion Needed? Primary Account Surplus Revisited Competing Views: Grexit Would Be "Lehman Squared" vs. No Problem; Where to Point the Finger When it Blows Playground Bully Theory vs. Eurozone Gang Rules; The Only (and Ironic) Solution By the way, it appears we have the answer to this question: Austerity Queen Angela Merkel Ready for Compromise on Greece? Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

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Damn Cool Pics

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The Most Intimidating Muzzles You Can Buy For Your Dog Posted: 16 Feb 2015 11:29 AM PST If you take your dog for a walk while it's wearing one of these muzzles it's safe to say that no one is going to be messing with you.

These Actors Went To Extreme Lengths To Prepare For These Roles Posted: 16 Feb 2015 11:19 AM PST When it came to getting ready for these roles, the actors listed below took no chances. This is method acting at its finest. Via distractify

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How Hashtags Work on Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr - Moz Blog

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How Hashtags Work on Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr Posted on: Sunday 15 February 2015 — 23:06 Posted by AnnSmarty This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc. A hashtag is the wonder of the past decade. It was born to address the need to organize and make sense of the overwhelming social media buzz. Thanks to active and creative user adoption, hashtag support has been added to most popular social media platforms. This article shows how different social media sites make use of hashtags. Most importantly, it shares some insight into how you can make the most effective use of hashtags for your brand. Twitter Twitter hashtags don't support special characters like +, !, $, %, -, ^, &, *, etc. They do support letters, numbers and _ (underscore). There are no hashtag limits (length, number) as long as you keep your message within 140 characters (which is already limiting in itself). While Twitter hashtags are reported to increase engagement, the most efficient way to use them is through hosting and participating in Twitter chats. Here's a detailed tutorial on hosting a Twitter chat. Event hashtags (conferences, festivals, etc.) also work very well on Twitter. You don't need to actually be in an event to network with people through the official hashtag. Event organizers usually market the official hashtag very well, which means additional exposure for you if you use it. Twitter search results are ranked by most popular. You can switch to "All" results,  which are filtered by date. Useful Twitter Hashtag Tools: Hashtagify tracks trending hashtags and shows "related" hashtags for any base terms you provide. TwChat lets you discover, participate in, and easily host Twitter chats. It's also a useful tool for monitoring and archiving any hashtag streams. Instagram Like Twitter, Instagram hashtags don't support special characters like +, !, $, %, -, ^, &, *, etc. They do support numbers and _. You can add up to 30 hashtags to a single photo. You can even tag your photo after publishing it. Simply list your hashtags in the comments. (Note that you can only do this for your own uploads.) Instagram hashtags increase your following dramatically, especially if you use hot and trending hashtags. The best use of hashtags on Instagram is to participate in hashtag games like #tbt and #MondayBlues. Both can make your Instagram posting very consistent (e.g., you have a theme for every day of the week) and increase your following and interactions.) In my experience, people are very willing to click these specific hashtags to see the photos of other participants. Location-based hashtags also work very well for Instagram. I use both abbreviated and full location names  (#la and #losangeles, for instance). Instagram search results are sorted by "most recent". Use Websta to track hot hashtags on Instagram. Google Plus The only official rule for Google Plus hashtag character support is "no spaces". However, you may have trouble using any characters (which are not letters, numbers or underscore) because Google Plus will attempt to drop them from the linked part of the hashtag. There's no way to make a hashtag with numbers only (e.g., #2015). Google Plus has perceived hashtags differently from the very start. Instead of letting users organize and monitor their conversations, Google Plus hashtags allow for greater exploration of the platform, by Google and users.  This explains why Google Plus updates are auto-hashtagged, meaning that they are added automatically by Google when the topic is clearly discerned. There are no known limits to the number of hashtags you can add to Google Plus posts. Google Plus hashtags seem to work great for exposing your updates to a wider range of people. I haven't found any research to back this up, but I've personally seen them work this way. Any time I use hashtags on Google Plus, I see more people outside of my extended circles like and comment on my content: Unlike Twitter and Instagram, "specific" hashtags (e.g., games, events, and locations) don't seem to work well on Google Plus. Instead, I try to let Google understand what my update is about by using descriptive hashtags (e.g., #marketingtips). Google Plus hashtag search results seem to be ranked by popularity. Moreover, search results are powered by "related" hashtags. Sometimes the result will even miss your initial search term. Cyfe is the only tool I know of that supports searching and archiving Google Plus hashtag results. Pinterest Pinterest hashtags have been quietly supported for some time. "Supported" means the word after the # is clickable (and only in the description). There are no official rules or limitations on the number of hashtags you can add to a Pinterest post, and Pinterest hashtags seem to support the same set of characters as most other social platforms do.  Pinterest hashtag support remains limited. If you search Pinterest by a hashtag, search results will include all types of words and phrases from the hashtag. This makes using Pinterest hashtag almost pointless. The only reasonable way to use Pinterest hashtags is to use them for branding, especially for cross-promotion (to further spread awareness of your event, Twitter chat, etc.). Tumblr Tumblr hashtags work similarly to Wordpress tags. They will be linked only in the "tags" field. You can't create an in-text hashtag by simply adding # in front of a word. Unlike Wordpress, Tumblr hashtags improve the discoverability of your updates across the whole platform. Here's a quick example: I am not really active on Tumblr, but I do post random updates from time to time.  I treat Tumblr more as a curation tool rather than a social media network, so I've never cared about hashtags or if my updates get any visibility, which they didn't until I used a few hashtags in this post. That day I saw a sudden spike in activity on my pretty abandoned Tumblr blog! [Note: I did nothing special to create the spike. All I did was adding a few hashtags. Seems pretty easy, right?] You can have spaces, apostrophes, commas, dots, and many other symbols in your Tumblr hashtags. There are no limitations as to how many hashtags you can use on Tumblr, but only the first five hashtags you use are searchable. Your update will only make it to the search results if it's an original one, not a re-blog, so don't bother adding tags if you re-blog. Any hashtag search will bring up users who recently used those hashtags for you to follow, which means that hashtags are huge for acquiring followers on Tumblr. Tumblr filters hashtag search results by "most popular" by default. You can switch this to "most recent". Furthermore, Tumblr has a "track your tags" feature which allows anyone to add hashtag search results to their "favorite search". There are no stats available as to which hashtags are tracked by more people, though. Flickr Flickr allows all sorts of symbols to be typed after the #, but seems to only link letters and numbers. While serving the same goal (e.g., organizing photos), Flickr tags and hashtags do behave slightly differently. Clicking on a Flickr tag brings you to search/?tags= page, where you can filter by license, search for groups, and more. Clicking on a Flickr hashtag brings you to /explore/ page, which shows related [hash]tags and the photos with the same tags (yes, that's confusing). These results are sorted by "most recent" by default, although you can switch to "most interesting." It's still not quite clear whether hashtags improve visibility on Flickr, or how different they are from tags, which have existed on the platform for ages. The fact that Flickr hashtags were announced and are now proactively supported in the iOS app may indicate that the whole point of a hashtag on Flickr is to make it easier to organize your photos from the iPhone. Facebook Facebook hashtags support the standard set of characters that most popular social platforms support. There are no limitations as to the number of hashtags you can add to a Facebook update. Facebook hashtag search is somewhat weird. Try searching for #california, for example. You'll likely end up landing on a Facebook page instead of a hashtag search results page. An easier way to generate hashtag search results is to simply add the hashtag after facebook.com/hashtag/ (e.g., facebook.com/hashtag/dogs). You can also bring up hashtag search results by clicking on any hashtag in your Facebook stream. Facebook's ranking algorithm is complicated. It seems to be a mix of lots of factors, including how closely you are related to the person posting the update, how often you interact with him/her, how popular the actual update is, etc. I don't use hashtags on Facebook beyond random cross-posting from Instagram. I have also seen quite a few of my friends become irritated when someone uses hashtags, so I guess it's too early to tell. With Instagram's help,  however, hashtags may ultimately become widely adopted by Facebook users. To sum up...   Twitter Instagram Google Plus Pinterest Facebook Tumblr Flickr Introduced August 23, 2007 January 27, 2011 September 25, 2013 N/A June 12, 2013 August 18, 2009 March 17, 2013 Supported characters Letters, numbers and _ Letters, numbers and _ Letters, numbers and _ ()no numbers-only hashtags Letters, numbers and _ Letters, numbers and _ Any Letters and numbers Limitations None 30 hashtags per update, max None None None None None Most effectively used to... Brand events and hold / participate in Twitter chats Build a brand following by participating in Instagram games Allow Google Plus to better understand what your update is about [Don't work for discover-ability. May still be used for branding and cross-promotion] [Don't really work for discover-ability. Getting used more often thanks to cross-posting from Instagram] Organize your updates and build your following Make it easier to organize your photos from mobile device Search results Are ranked by most popular (You can switch to "All" which are filtered by date) Are sorted by "most recent" Seem to be ranked by most popular (No way to change) Are ranked by most popular Are ranked by many factors, including relation and popularity Are ranked by most popular by default (You can switch to most recent) Are ranked by most recent by default (You can switch to most interesting) Best tools Hashtagify & TwChat Websta Cyfe - - - - (All images in this post were created by the author) 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!

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