Central Perk

luni, 17 octombrie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 02:47 PM PDT

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been spreading across the United States for the last month. Starting in New York City's financial district, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to just about every major city in the United States. From Chicago, to Los Angeles, to Houston, and now, sadly, to Sesame Street. Yes, the Muppets have decided to Occupy Sesame Street.

The perfectly photo-shopped images were created by the website Tauntr to help get kids interested in the movement. I mean, who cares if a hippy gets maced? But attack Big Bird..

The perks of working at a Silicon Valley tech company [infographic]

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 02:37 PM PDT

Earlier, we brought you word of awesome perks at various startups; now, we bring you perks at a number of Silicon Valley's largest and finest. From yoga to catered lunches, 401(k)s to dry cleaning, sports teams to vacation days, these tech companies seem to understand that quality of life affects productivity — and that having to run fewer errands after work means you're more likely to stay at the office.

Check out the infographic below from ResumeBear for a breakdown of who offers what perks. Do you work at any of these companies and take advantage of any of these perks? Let us know in the comments below.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Source: ResumeBear

"I Know We Will Overcome"

Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, October 17, 2011

"I Know We Will Overcome"

Yesterday, nearly half a century after Martin Luther King, Jr. led the historic March on Washington for equality, tens of thousands came to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Dedication. Looking towards the future, President Obama spoke to the inspiration Dr. King instills in us to this day to continue his legacy:

As tough as times may be, I know we will overcome. I know there are better days ahead. I know this because of the man towering over us. I know this because all he and his generation endured -- we are here today in a country that dedicated a monument to that legacy.

Watch the video

President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, daughters Sasha and Malia, and Marian Robinson tour the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial before the dedication ceremony in Washington, D.C., Sunday, Oct. 16, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Seth's Blog : The math of favors

The math of favors

One of three things is going on in your head when you're entering into a transaction of any kind:

I'm doing you a favor, bud
Hey, this guy is doing me a favor
This is a favorless transaction

It's interesting to think about how this internal monologue effects the way we do business. A favor, after all, is an investment in a future relationship.

At the famous old-school pizza joint, they act as if they're doing just about everyone a favor. No need to answer the phone nicely or smile or add just a little bit extra to that pie. (Godin's first law of pizza joints: quality is often inversely proportional to niceness). Whether or not they are actually doing you a favor by selling you this pizza, they believe they are, and act accordingly.

On the other hand, when your buddy Lorne Michaels does you a favor and gets his friend Steve Martin to stop by your kid's birthday party, it's really obvious that a favor is being done. So you bend over backwards, you're dancing at the edge of obsequiousness, putting as much extra on the table as you can get away with. After all, he's doing you a favor.

And most of the time, it's the third category: business as usual. My hope is that during business as usual, you're aggressively overdelivering, but still, it's not like they're doing you a favor by transacting with you. It's an exchange, a sustainable transaction, where both sides win.

The disconnect happens when one party in the transaction thinks he's doing the other guy a favor... but the other guy doesn't act that way in return. In fact, when both sides think they're doing the other a favor, it's a meltdown. (The flipside, on the other hand, is great--when both sides act as if the other guy is doing them a favor.)

The shortcut to success is this: why not always act as if the other guy is doing the favor?

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duminică, 16 octombrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Deutsche Bank Seeks "Voluntary" 50% Haircut on Greek Debt, Resists Recapitalization Efforts
Property Developers Hurting in China; New Homes Sales Down 50% in Shanghai; Preposterous Prices Won't Last; Commodities to be Hit in Building Slump
Nigel Farage Calls Juncker a "Political Ostrich" in European Parliament, says Wake up to the misery you're inflicting on millions!
In One Day, Trichet Proves He is a Liar; IMF Proves it is Clueless

Deutsche Bank Seeks "Voluntary" 50% Haircut on Greek Debt, Resists Recapitalization Efforts

Posted: 16 Oct 2011 07:05 PM PDT

The Economic Times reports Deutsche Bank boss in talks over Greek debt

The head of Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, is conducting talks over a 50-percent write-down of Greek debt in his capacity as chairman of the global banking lobby, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Citing both government and banking sources, the mass circulation Bild said that Josef Ackermann was participating in negotiations on a voluntary "haircut" on Greek debt that could be as high as 50 percent.

European Union leaders are gathering next Sunday in Brussels and hope to present a comprehensive solution to the eurozone debt crisis that threatens to tip the 17-nation zone -- and the rest of the world -- into recession.

It is widely expected that leaders will announce that private investors will have to accept a greater loss -- or "haircut -- on their holdings of Greek debt. Speculation has focused on a 50 or even 60 percent write-down.

To prevent these heavier losses from prompting a bank crisis, EU leaders are also thought to be looking at ways to recapitalise the main lenders.

Ackermann spoke out on Thursday against a "forced" recapitalisation of banks, saying the debate was "counterproductive" because most banks had beefed up their capital resources on their own already.

The head of the eurozone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, however has insisted that cash must be pumped into banks "to ensure that there is no danger of contagion for the entire banking system."

Not "Voluntary"

For starters there is nothing voluntary about 50% haircuts. Second, a 50% haircut is not enough. Third, regardless of what Ackermann says, the entire European banking system is insolvent and thus in desperate need of recapitalization.

Banks passed stress tests only because there were no sovereign debt writedowns included.

We need to look beyond Greece to Portugal and Spain. More haircuts are coming and for countries other than Greece.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Property Developers Hurting in China; New Homes Sales Down 50% in Shanghai; Preposterous Prices Won't Last; Commodities to be Hit in Building Slump

Posted: 16 Oct 2011 12:21 PM PDT

Developers in China are struggling and it's about to get much worse because China Construction Bank Raises Mortgage Rates for first time borrowers according to the Wall Street Journal.

Channel News Agency Asia reports Credit crunch in China hurts property developers

The co-founder of SOHO China, one of the nation's leading developers, is worried Beijing's efforts to cool the sector are hurting sales and threatening to send some debt-laden property developers to the wall.

"In my sixteen years as a developer this is by far the most challenging year I've ever had, in terms of what we could sell," Zhang, chief executive of Beijing-based SOHO, recently told reporters.

Since the beginning of this year Beijing, fearing a bubble, has been trying to bring down dizzying prices by hiking interest rates and restricting lending to developers, making it nearly impossible for many to get financing, Zhang said.

Industry officials and analysts are worried that the measures are now squeezing sales so much that property developers who have borrowed heavily to fund new projects could be tipped into bankruptcy.

"A wave of newly completed property is about to hit the market. Developers are likely to find themselves holding large volumes of unsold property."

In Shanghai -- where the average cost for one square metre of downtown housing was 48,000 yuan (about $7,500) last year, about 12 times the average monthly salary -- home buyers have little sympathy for cash-strapped developers.

"Considering the high housing prices in Shanghai, a new flat is just a dream," said Qian Xueqi, a manager at an international hotel.

Housing Math in China

One square meter = 10.7639104 square feet
Cost per square meter = $7,500
Cost per square foot = $7,500 ÷ 10.7639104 = $696.77
An 800 square foot home (74 square meters) would cost $557,418

How many in China can afford that? Moreover, other than bubble mentality, there is no reason to pay such prices, even if one could afford it.

Commodities to be Hit in Building Slump

Home prices will not perpetually stay levitated above wages regardless of perceived shortages. Notice I said "perceived" shortages. Housing shortages in China are a mirage just as they were in Florida, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego and other places in the US.

In China, bubble dynamics coupled with inane government intervention and growth policies make it appear as if there are shortages. The entire property sector in China will collapse as will the demand for commodities need to build those houses.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Nigel Farage Calls Juncker a "Political Ostrich" in European Parliament, says Wake up to the misery you're inflicting on millions!

Posted: 16 Oct 2011 09:46 AM PDT

Here are a couple of highly entertaining videos of Nigel Farage attacking the credibility of Jean Claude Juncker in front of parliament. The second video discusses the no vote by Slovakia's parliament that cost the Prime Minister her job.

Link if video does not play Nigel Farage: Wake up to the misery you're inflicting on millions!

Link if video does not play Nigel Farage: United States of Europe insane politics

In the second interview Farage immediately corrects the interviewer on how many nations actually passed the EFSF and other Eurozone bailout agreements.

Nigel Farage, we salute you.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

In One Day, Trichet Proves He is a Liar; IMF Proves it is Clueless

Posted: 16 Oct 2011 12:06 AM PDT

On Friday, outgoing ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said the "ECB will not act as a lender of last resort". It took one day for Trichet to prove he is a blatant liar.

Please consider ECB to end bond-buying when markets stabilize: Trichet

The European Central Bank signaled on Saturday it would not abruptly end its bond-buying program now that the euro zone bailout fund EFSF has powers of secondary market intervention and would wait until financial markets stabilize.

"It is because we have the absence of financial stability in the euro area that we have to intervene to help restore a better transmission of monetary policy," Trichet said.

In plain English Trichet effectively said "ECB will be the buyer of last resort until financial markets stabilize."

Thus, it only took only one day for Trichet to contradict himself. I would love to be at a press conference and call him a liar to his face. Why the press lets him get away with these blatant lies is beyond me.

IMF Proves it is Clueless

This one is more subtle. See if you can catch it. Reuters reports IMF calls for pan-European deposit insurance

The International Monetary Fund called on Saturday for an EU-wide deposit insurance scheme and more coordinated regulation of the continent's banks to prevent contradictory national regulation from exacerbating its debt crisis.

A common bank crisis management system, a supra-national resolution regime and common deposit insurance rules would help significantly stabilize the banking system, said Ajai Chopra, the deputy director of the IMF's European Department.

The IMF believes a deposit insurance scheme should be introduced in parallel to an increased harmonization of deposit insurance schemes in the member states to ensure sovereign problems don't trigger destabilizing bank runs, he said.

The headline itself discloses the stupidity of it all. Insurance is not stabilizing, it is destabilizing.

In the United States, FDIC "insurance" protects deposits no matter what stupid things banks do. Scores of banks offered high interest rates attracting deposits simply because they were government insured. Banks took those deposits and made risky loans to condo development in Florida and Las Vegas, then blew up. Corus bank is a prime example. Larger banks were bailed out.

If there was not deposit insurance, these banks never would have gotten funding or if they did they would have failed early. Instead, they were able to attract deposits because deposits were insured, and only because they were insured.

Here is another example: Would money have flowed to Icelandic banks if governments did not guarantee the deposits? I assure you the answer is no. Ironically, Icelandic banks blew up in spite of the alleged insurance, when Iceland rightfully said "screw you".

Bank runs are only destabilizing when they are concentrated. It is far better to have a few isolated bank failures sporadically than none for a decade followed by 700 in two years.

Insurance coupled with AAA ratings on garbage entices people and lenders to take obscene risks in the belief nothing can go wrong. Insurance concentrates systemic risk until the whole mess blows up at once.

This has been proven in spades, multiple times, in multiple countries, and the IMF consists of a collective group of complete fools to not see the simple truth.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

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How to clean up your act and your timeline on Twitter

Posted: 14 Oct 2011 05:58 AM PDT

In this day and age, it's probably fair to say that we're all aware of the value of Twitter – both on an interpersonal level and in a business context – so I'll spare you the "why everyone should be on Twitter" blurb. Those 'in the know' will know that following the right people is important in terms of reaching out to an appropriate audience – those it will benefit you to interact with and who will share your tweets with their followers. As you build up your Twitter followers, you've probably done a fair bit of work to follow people who appear to share your interests. But in the process, you've probably ended up following a load of Twitter users who add little or no value to your Twitter experience, and I've discovered a great tool to help you weed them out.

Twit Cleaner assesses the list of people you follow and categorises the ones who aren't adding much value according to a range of different annoying behaviour, including posting nothing but links, posting the same tweet several times, never interacting with anyone else and only tweeting about themselves.

Running the report on my 'Following' list on my personal Twitter account, @RachelsWritings, was quite an eye-opener. For any Twitter user, there are two main benefits to this exercise.

Most obviously, you streamline your timeline to ensure that you're only receiving interesting tweets from people you wish to engage with.
You learn from other people's mistakes by becoming more aware of the kind of Twitter behaviours that other people find annoying.

So what can we learn from a report run on the list of people I'm following on Twitter at the moment? The Twit Cleaner report gives you a neat list which looks like this:

As you can see in the screenshot, you can even unfollow the offending users directly from the report – convenience itself!

Key points to take away from a report like this in terms of how to run your own or business Twitter account in an appealing way – and how to avoid appearing on an Unfollow list yourself! – are as follows:

Post a range of content – not just links to other posts. If you only link to your own stuff it makes you look self-promotional, and if you only link to other people's stuff it makes you look as though you can't come up with anything original yourself (and this applies equally to people who only retweet other people's tweets). That doesn't mean you have to rule out links altogether – obviously not! – but make sure you throw in a reasonable number of 'proper' updates for your followers to engage with on Twitter itself, without being taken away from your actual tweets.

Don't send out the same tweet twice – and if you're accounting for audiences in different time zones, reword the tweet so that it's unique. E.g. "in case you missed it earlier…"

Tweet regularly – don't set up a Twitter account, get really into it for a week or two and then forget about it. I've seen plenty of surprisingly big businesses who've done this and it looks unprofessional and a bit lazy, quite frankly.

Interact – don't just post your own stuff: reply to and retweet other people's tweets. If you want to be a success on Twitter, you have to treat other people the way you'd like to be treated – or, as I would now like to paraphrase this old adage, "tweet other people the way you would like to be tweeted"!. If someone replies to one of your tweets, acknowledge them! There's nothing worse than businesses who don't respond to customers or people who can't be bothered to take the time to reply to someone who's taken the trouble to message them.

Avoid automated content – Twitter users want to engage with humans, whether you're a business or not. With the amount of spam and general background noise on the internet these days, a real human voice stands out.

Don't just talk about yourself – it's boring! Take an interest in other people and they will take an interest in you.

Finally, and (hopefully) for a bit of an ego-boost, Twit Cleaner also tells you how you appear to the rest of Twitter. Luckily yours truly got a clean bill of health. ;-)

So if you're in need of a wake-up call about your tweeting habits, this is where you get it!

What habits do you find annoying on Twitter? Are you guilty of any of them yourself? Let us know in the comments section below!

Seth's Blog : Yelling and whispering

Yelling and whispering

Have you ever encountered a really stressed, undertrained gate agent at an airport? She starts yelling into the microphone, strangling her words and insisting, demanding and EMPHASIZING just how urgent it is that David Johnson come to the gate immediately...

It doesn't work, because we shut her out. Like a toddler ignoring his ever more insistent parent, it's so easy to turn off the yelling. Just as we ignore the all caps emails, the flashing banner ad and the sirens in New York.

As a marketer, you resort to yelling more often than you should. There's an alternative...

Whispering piques our interest and demands our attention. Yelling, on the other hand, is a waste of time, regardless of how urgent the issue is.

PS some new posts on the Domino blog you might like...

• Email to a friend •

luni, 17 octombrie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

"I Know We Will Overcome"

Seth's Blog : The math of favors

The math of favors

More Recent Articles

duminică, 16 octombrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

SEOptimise

SEOptimise

Seth's Blog : Yelling and whispering

Yelling and whispering

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 17 octombrie 2011

More Recent Articles

duminică, 16 octombrie 2011

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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