Do you want customers (donors, backers, voters, members, vendors) who are:
Litigious
Price shoppers
Loyal
Bureaucratic
Demonstrative
Followers
Leaders
Luxury-focused
Skittish
Trusting
Bottom fishers
Eager
Confident
Easily amused
Uncomfortable talking about money
Part of the crowd
Afraid
Outliers
Desperate
Rich
Easily distracted
Secretive
Joyful
Here's the thing: you get what you reward. You attract the customers that respond to the way you act. You end up with what you tolerate. You build what your audience demands.
You might not get the customers you deserve, but you will probably end up with the customers you attract.
Sure, you can swoop in and make the numbers by attracting a certain kind of customer. Is it worth it?
Effective Jan. 1, the Centre National du Cinéma, the government agency that funds film production, will shun films in which the pay to the star actors exceeds a certain percentage of production costs. The limit varies depending on the budget; it is set at 5% for films costing between €8 million and €10 million.
"Public money isn't meant to pay salaries exceeding that sort of amount," CNC spokeswoman Françoise Pamps said.
In recent years, rising pay for top French actors such as Mr. Dujardin, who won an Oscar in 2012 for his performance in "The Artist," has claimed a bigger portion of movie budgets in France, forcing producers to rein in other spending. The trend has sparked controversy in France, where, excluding state financial support, the industry loses money, according to data from the CNC.
The attempt to cap the pay for the likes of Mr. Dujardin, Gérard Depardieu, and Marion Cotillard points up how the government's system to protect France's film industry from world competition is becoming less sustainable as the domestic economy stagnates.
The cherished French model insulates the country's film producers from market pressure through a complicated cross-subsidy managed by the CNC. The aid is generated by a levy on each movie ticket sold in the country, as well as payments imposed on TV channels and DVD sales.
In trade negotiations, the film subsidy has been targeted by the U.S. and other countries as an unfair market intervention, but France has stuck to its guns. During recent talks for a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Union, the French government insisted, successfully, on keeping culture off the table.
According to an annual ranking compiled by Le Figaro newspaper, the best-paid French actors—mainly popular local comics little known abroad like Dany Boon —charged in excess of €1.5 million ($1.85 million) per movie in 2013. Mr. Boon's agent didn't answer emails seeking comments.
Preposterous Film Setup
The entire process is preposterous from start to finish. France should get out of the movie-making business altogether. Instead it pays subsidies to films that the free market would never create, then to pay for that boondoggle it charges a tax on every ticket, every DVD, and every TV station.
With all that graft, it's no wonder some actors are overpaid.
Yet, it's highly likely that some are actually underpaid. The problem is government would have absolutely no way of knowing. With all the subsidies and taxes, it's impossible to know who is overpaid and who isn't.
What we do know is that dozens of bad films are subsidized in the name of "preserving culture". It's the same setup in France's agricultural industry, and everywhere else one looks as well.
For example, please consider Sunday shopping rules.
The French government wants shops to open on more Sundays, according to a proposed reform to be unveiled this week, but the measure is running into opposition.
In a country where stores are currently subject to tight restrictions on opening hours, the move is seen as a spur to much-needed consumption in an economy badly in need of a boost.
Town halls would be allowed to grant trading licences on 12 Sundays a year, compared to the current five Sundays annually. In addition, local officials would be obliged to grant five Sundays a year whereas currently they can decide to grant none.
But the measure has run into opposition in France where, unlike in many of its European rivals, the idea of Sunday as a day of rest still attracts considerable support.
Opposition to the Sunday opening comes from all points of the political spectrum, as well as from the Catholic and union lobbies.
An opinion poll published on Friday showed that 62 percent of respondents were in favour of shops opening on Sundays, although 60 percent said they would be reluctant to work on that day.
Sunday Shopping "Reform" French Style
Towns halls could approve shopping on 12 Sundays up from the current 5
Local officials would be obliged to offer 5 Sunday shopping days
This is so controversial, debate is at the highest levels. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said "Paris in particular was at risk of seeing visitors go elsewhere to spend unless retail laws were loosened." Nonetheless, Valls noted "there will be a debate" about the proposal.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Before you finish your new idea or launch your new project, it's worth taking a few minutes to realize that two costs are dramatically underestimated:
1. The cost of selling. How much will it cost you to sell this to an agency, a nation, a customer? How much will it cost them to sell it to the next user?
2. The cost of maintenance. How much will it cost you to stick this project out until it pays for itself? How much will it cost your users to maintain this idea over its useful life?
Hint: It took a decade to sell most people on the personal computer. And the cost of a PC out of the box is less than 1/6th of what it costs to keep it running and in use over its life...
In an interview with Bloomberg's Tom Keene, Janus Capital's Bill Gross said that he left PIMCO 'in good hands.' Gross said, "…it's obviously an opportune situation at Janus. Running $2.5 billion is different than running $2 trillion, so it makes it more flexible for me."
Gross said that the Federal Reserve may become more "dovish" after oil price drop and would have to take lower prices "into consideration."
If he would to give advice to Stanley Fischer, Gross said, "the Fed as the central banker of the world basically has to worry about financial conditions not just in the United States but the world. And so next week in terms of their language and their stance going forward, they should be very cautious about any type of tightening indications."
Gross also told Keene:
Fed must adjust to drop in oil price
'New natural' interest rate is 'zero percent or lower'
Very little liquidity in corporate bonds
Economic Illiteracy
In response to the above video, Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog pinged me with:
"Good grief, the world is brimming with economic illiteracy. If the "natural interest rate" were at zero or negative, we would all stop consuming altogether and would soon starve to death, because that would imply everything - even a slice of bread - one year hence would be worth more to us that one we can eat right now."
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Recently, several people emailed me stating an observation that gold is directly correlated to movements in the Yen.
Let's investigate that idea with a couple of charts courtesy of Nick at SharelynxGold (Gold Charts "R" Us).
Nick has 1,000's of pages and over 10,000 charts on a subscription basis, but you can check out the site for free until December 14. He made the following charts for me on request.
Euro vs. Yen. Vs. Gold Priced in Dollars Since 2012
click on either chart for sharper image
Sure enough. Since 2012, Gold has been tracking the Yen with pretty amazing accuracy. But let's hone in on 2014.
Euro vs. Yen. Vs. Gold Priced in Dollars Since 2014
Since the beginning of the year, gold has tracked movements in the euro even better than the Yen. But look still closer. Since November, gold has been inversely correlated to both the Yen and the Euro.
This past year shows why these kinds of correlations are typically meaningless. Sometimes gold tracks the euro, sometimes the yen, sometimes the dollar, and sometimes inversely to all of those.
I see no fundamental reason for gold in dollars to track the Yen.
For whatever reason (or more likely, for no reason at all), the divergence since November (a shift to an inverse correlation from a positive one), might be the end of the previous trend.
Often, by the time people spot such trends, that trend is about to end.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
China has offered to help Iraq defeat Sunni extremists with support for air strikes, according to Ibrahim Jafari, Iraq's foreign minister.
Wang Yi, Mr Jafari's Chinese counterpart, made the offer to help defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as Isis, when the two men met in New York at September's UN antiterrorism meeting, Mr Jafari said.
Any Chinese assistance would be outside the US-led coalition. "[Mr Wang] said, our policy does not allow us to get involved in the international coalition," Mr Jafari told the Financial Times in Tehran, where he was attending an anti-extremism conference earlier this week.
China is the largest foreign investor in Iraq's oil sector and stands to lose the billions its state-owned groups have ploughed into the country if the fields are lost to the insurgents. Sinopec operates in Kurdistan, while China National Petroleum Corp has interests in the giant Rumaila field near Basra and in Maysan province near the Iranian border. CNPC has already effectively abandoned oilfields it operated in Syria.
Global Times, the Chinese newspaper, reported this week that Isis crews were dismantling a small refinery, in which a Chinese company has invested, west of Baiji to scavenge equipment for Isis-controlled refineries in Mosul, Iraq's second-biggest city.
What Iraq needed now was more weapons, Mr Jafari said: "Our problem is with the supply of arms and weaponry." The Iraqi army was trained and equipped by US forces before 2011, but many of its US-supplied weapons have fallen into the hands of Isis.
US-Made Mess
There you have it. China volunteers to help clean up a 100% US-made mess.
It's not out of the goodness of their hearts, China's own interests are in play.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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