Central Perk: 16 ian. 2016

sâmbătă, 16 ianuarie 2016

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Weekend Entertainment Courtesy of Jim Cramer: "How I Knew to Buy Before the Big Rebound"

Posted: 16 Jan 2016 04:29 PM PST

The "Big" Rebound

Those looking for a laugh this weekend need look no further than this video of Jim Cramer on Thursday, January 14: "How I Knew to Buy Before the Big Rebound".

It took less than a day to wipe out his entire "big rebound".

Click on the link to play the video. How anyone could possibly watch his "Mad Money" show on a regular basis is a mystery.

Cramer's artificial melodrama, insincere hype, and pompous attitude outweigh any entertainment value on days like today.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

EU's Farcical Plan to "Quasi-Automatically" Redistribute Refugees

Posted: 16 Jan 2016 12:52 PM PST

Last Autumn, the European Commission and Angela Merkel hatched a plan to redistribute 160,000 migrants from overloaded countries to countries less overloaded.

Results so far: 272 refugees relocated. In the meantime, another 400,000 or so refugees have poured in.

Rather than admit they are hopelessly out of touch with reality, and despite no popular backing from citizens, European leaders have decided automation of a failed plan is the way to go.

Quasi-Automatic Redistribution

The Wall Street Journal reports European Commission Plans New Try at Redistributing Migrants.

The European Commission is seeking a sort of automatic mechanism for redistributing asylum seekers across Europe, despite most governments showing little support for the idea.

A plan to reallocate migrants who have already come to Europe was the main response from the European Union's executive arm to the bloc's migration crisis last year—during which more than one million people from the Middle East and North Africa arrived, mainly via Turkey and Greece.

But the EU program to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers out of Italy and Greece to the rest of the bloc has so far managed to move only 272 people, mostly because many have gone on their own to EU states that were more welcoming and gave more generous benefits, particularly Germany and the Nordic countries.

Speaking to EU lawmakers on Thursday, migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said he envisaged a "system under which applicants will be quasi-automatically allocated to member states."

Mr. Avramopoulos gave no details as to how many people would be reallocated under such a plan, and under what circumstances. EU diplomats familiar with the talks say that if a country were faced with an influx it couldn't cope with, a certain share of the burden would be evenly redistributed to other EU states.

"We have to be realistic and honest," he said. "The situation is getting worse. This year we had no winter break: There were 3,000-4,000 arrivals a day over Christmas and New Year."

Time to be Realistic

By all means, let's be realistic. And honest.

Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania have refused to go along with relocation plans despite being obliged to do so.
2,000 to 4,000 refugees arrive every day. Assuming the lower bounds, that's 60,000 every month, 180,000 or so every three months.
Assuming quasi-automatic redistribution will achieve a 100% success rate, up from zero (0.17% to be precise), within three to four months, new refugees arriving will exceed those relocated.

And how is this quasi-automatic redistribution supposed to work?

No one has stepped up to the plate to explain how, or what happens when various countries refuse to participate.

It's magic.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Seth's Blog : The first fifteen minutes

The first fifteen minutes

Learning something new is frustrating. It involves being dumb on the way to being smart.

Once we get good enough (at our tools, at our work) it's easier and easier to skip learning how to do the next thing, because, hey, those fifteen minutes are a hassle.

Learning to use the new fax machine, or a different interface on the voice mail or even, yikes, a new version of Photoshop. (I confess that I dropped off the Photoshop train a half dozen versions ago, much to my chagrin.)

And so we get in the habit of giving a half effort, not really reading the instructions, shrugging our shoulders and moving on. The professional in us that was always eager to find tools that added leverage becomes the complacent coaster, defending what's on the table as 'good enough'.

The problem with evaluating the first fifteen minutes of frustration is that we easily forget about the 5,000 minutes of leverage that frustration earns us if we stick it out.

Yes, Isaac Asimov typed all 400 of his books on a manual typewriter. But I'm glad Cory Doctorow has a laptop.