Central Perk

luni, 5 noiembrie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Most Unusual Road Signs of Leh-Manali Highway
Hot Hooters Girls
Obama vs. Romney: Where They Stand on the Issues [Infographic]

Most Unusual Road Signs of Leh-Manali Highway

Posted: 05 Nov 2012 03:09 PM PST

Leh–Manali highway in Northern India probably has the most unusual road signs in the world.

Hot Hooters Girls

Posted: 05 Nov 2012 11:22 AM PST

Selection of hot Hooters girls photos.

Obama vs. Romney: Where They Stand on the Issues [Infographic]

Posted: 05 Nov 2012 10:38 AM PST

Obama vs. Romney, who is better overall for the mortgage and real-estate industry? Success and failures by Obama and what Romney promisses if he gets elected.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Via mortgagerefinance

5 Ways to Get Your Client to Like You (and get bigger budgets along the way)

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 06:48 PM PST

Posted by Julianne Staino

Do your clients like you? We’d all like to say “yes,” but have a think for a minute. Do they really, honestly and truly, like you as an SEO and as a person?

Although thinking about your "likeability" factor may bring back good or bad memories from high school, it is something that can greatly affect your work relationships and the success of a project. Some of you may be thinking that it shouldn’t matter, and that your work will speak for itself. I'm here to tell you that a mindset like that will get you tossed whether it’s in a month or a year of working together.

Don’t believe me? Story time:

While working as a consultant, I’ve been a part of meetings where, when a potential client is asked why they’re coming to us even with their metrics up and to the right, they’ve responded with a simple, “We just want to see what else is out there.”

This indifferent statement threw me for a loop. How could a company not be happy and satisfied with “success?” Then it hit me: no matter how hard you work, if your clients don’t like you, really and truly like you, you’re gone.

But don’t get discouraged yet! Not all successful projects (or even failed projects) are a lost cause. There are some simple project management skills and tasks that can get your clients to like you more and keep you around for a longer period of time.

Let’s get the love fest started:

1. Hit the ground running

The beginning of any project can be an exciting, yet rocky time. First impressions matter, so don’t ruin yours by dropping the ball. I often like to start my projects by delivering a “Quick Wins” piece in the first few days. This piece aims to identify issues on the site that will take minimal resources to fix and will have a big impact.

Don’t worry about making this an involved piece that takes a lot of time to complete. The point should be to show your new client that they made the right decision by bringing you in, and to keep them busy for a week or two!

Quick Wins

Why they’ll love you:

You get stuff done quickly.
You’ve already identified big opportunities.
Confirmation they made a good decision by bringing you on.

2. Pre-deliver and collaborate

If you do not currently pre-deliver some of your work and collaborate with your client, you are doing it wrong. Why would you want to spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy on a piece of work that your client will later tear to shreds if it’s not what they were looking for, or isn’t plausible for them to implement?

Save yourselves a huge headache and take the guesswork out of it early. By emailing your point of contact along the way, you’ll get many opportunities for feedback. Additionally, by pre-delivering, you can ask the client if there is anything they’ve been trying to get buy-in for or pushed through. If so, include it! (If it makes sense and it’s a good idea, that is. By helping your point of contact get something pushed through, you’ll most definitely gain some loyalty points.)

Why they’ll love you:

They’ll feel included in the process.
You delivered pertinent recommendations and confirmed what a great idea it was to bring you in.
You helped get one of their objectives pushed through quickly.

3. Call your client

Don’t let Carly Rae Jepsen tell you otherwise. There’s no maybes about it, call your client. The ghost of SEO past, Tom Critchlow, taught me early on that communication solves all problems, and he is 100% right. The simple act of picking up the phone and calling a client unannounced has resulted in some of the most rewarding and insightful calls I've experienced.

Unscheduled calls can give you and your point of contact a chance to just talk. No agenda. No one else interrupting. You can speak freely, and sometimes you’ll even get your client to open up about their own frustrations, ambitions, etc. These impromptu sessions can turn into a great bonding sessions for you and your client.

Why they’ll love you:

Calling them out of scheduled time shows you care.
You share the same project pains, so you can work together to find a resolution.

4. Visit your client and take them out for beers

This little project management, get-my-client-to-love-me-tip is a bit more involved, but has a big effect. Not being able to meet your client face-to-face is a strange thing if you think about it. You simply become a voice on the other side of the phone. If you really want to win over your client and get them to like you, schedule a trip to visit them or tie it in with conference traveling, vacationing, etc.

Meeting your client and looking them in the eyes can work wonders. While you’re there, you should most definitely take some sound advice from Paddy Moogan and take your client for a drink. Nothing says, “Hey, I’m a great person even outside of work,” than taking your client for a beer. Similar to calling them unscheduled, you’ll most likely get a new perspective on some issues they are dealing with and get to know them outside of just work.

Why they’ll love you:

Visiting them in person shows commitment.
You’re fun! You have a life outside of work so show them a little more of who you really are (you may even have things in common!).
They’ll have a face to put to a name and have more of a connection to you.

5. Do work they haven’t asked for

This last bit may have people be thinking, “Why would I voluntarily do work for free?” Well, if you really want to go above and beyond for your client, then you’re gonna have to throw the dog a bone and do some extra work.

Whether it’s completing an extra competitor analysis or outreaching to a blogger who forgot to put in a link, you’re showing your client that it’s not just what’s in the contract that matters. It’s truly seeing them succeed that counts.

Additionally, this is a great opportunity for you to show them a bigger project vision. If your project is set up for a smaller engagement, you can naturally up-sell your client and get them excited about what else you can do achieve together.

Why they’ll love you:

You did “free” work.
You took some initiative for the betterment of the client.
You’ll open their eyes to bigger opportunities.

Will my clients like me?

That’s the goal! But, in all seriousness, the sign of a good consultant is someone who can build strong relationships and deliver quality work. Often times we forget the former by getting to bogged down in work. SEO is easy. Consulting is hard. Remember to come up for air and say hi to your client, because, who knows, it could save your project if the timing is right.

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!

A Briefing on Storm Relief

Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, November 5, 2012

A Briefing on Storm Relief

Following a briefing with FEMA leaders and Cabinet officers on Saturday in Washington, DC, President Obama stressed the importance of making sure all those who have been impacted by Hurricane Sandy know that help is available for them, and outlined the steps being taken to restore normalcy in the region.

He asked all Americans to spread the word that anyone looking for assistance -- for housing, childcare, medicine, and a whole range of support -- should call 800-621-FEMA.

Check out the President's remarks and learn more about the response to Hurricane Sandy.

President Barack Obama receives a briefing about the ongoing response to Hurricane Sandy, at FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., Nov. 3, 2012. Seated, from left, are: FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. November 3, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : Why vote? The marketing dynamics of apathy

Why vote? The marketing dynamics of apathy

Here's what political marketers learn from people who don't vote:

Nothing.

If you don't vote because you're disappointed with your choices, disgusted by tactics like lying and spin, or merely turned off by the process, you've opted out of the marketplace.

The goal of political marketers isn't to get you to vote. Their goal is to get more votes than the other guy. So they obsess about pleasing those that vote. Everyone else is invisible.

Steakhouses do nothing to please vegetarians who don't visit them, and politicians and their handlers don't care at all about non-voters.

The magic of voting is that by opting in to the system, you magically begin to count. A lot.

If you don't like negative ads, for example, then vote for the candidate who ran even 1% fewer negative ads. Magically, within a cycle or two, the number of negative ads begins to go down.

One reason that people don't vote (a real, usually unspoken reason) is that they don't want to feel responsible for the person who wins. The other reason is that they don't want to live with the disappointment of voting for someone who loses. Both of these reasons ignore the marketing reality: not voting doesn't make marketing or politics go away. It merely changes the person the marketers are trying to please.

Vote tomorrow. Bring a friend. If enough smart people start voting again, things will improve, because billions of dollars in political marketing will suddenly be trying to please you.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 4 noiembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Is the Yuan About to Replace the Dollar as the World's Reserve Currency?

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 10:30 PM PST

Once again we are seeing articles and research papers stating the Chinese renminbi (yuan) is about to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.

Here is a working paper by Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler at the Peterson Institute of International Economics stating The Renminbi Bloc is Here: Asia Down, Rest of the World to Go?.

A country's rise to economic dominance tends to be accompanied by its currency becoming a reference point, with other currencies tracking it implicitly or xplicitly. For a sample comprising emerging market economies, we show that in the last two years, the renminbi (RMB) has increasingly become a reference currency which we define as one which exhibits a high degree of co-movement (CMC) with other currencies. In East Asia, there is already a RMB bloc, because the RMB has become the dominant reference currency, eclipsing the dollar, which is a historic development.

The same authors present a case in the Financial Times article China's currency rises in the US backyard.

East Asia is now a renminbi bloc because the currencies of seven out of 10 countries in the region – including South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand – track the renminbi more closely than the US dollar. For example, since the middle of 2010, the Korean won and the renminbi have appreciated by similar amounts against the dollar. Only three economies in the group – Hong Kong, Vietnam and Mongolia – still have currencies following the dollar more closely than the renminbi.

This shift stems from China's rise as a trader; its share of east Asian countries' manufacturing trade has risen from 2 per cent in 1991 to about 22 per cent today. Countries that sell to the growing Chinese market or are locked in supply chains centred on China see the advantages of maintaining a stable exchange rate against the renminbi.

This development has two implications. First, it is one more important marker in the shift of economic dominance away from the US and towards China. Not only is China, by some measures, the world's largest economy in purchasing power parity terms, the world's largest exporter and the world's largest net creditor (for more than a decade), but the renminbi bloc has now displaced the dollar bloc in Asia. The symbolism and its historic significance cannot be understated because east Asia, despite physical distance, has always been part of the dollar backyard.

Déjà Vu Rehash

The analysis by Subramanian and Martin Kessler is nothing but a Déjà Vu rehash of easily rebutted arguments that crop up time and time again.

Three Essential Facts

China's bond markets are not big enough or deep enough for the Yuan to displace the US dollar.
Contrary to what most think, having the reserve currency is a a curse more than a blessing.
Neither China nor the US wants to be the global reserve currency.

The first point alone seals the fate in my opinion but let's take a closer look at the "curse of the reserve currency".

Via email, Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets responds to points two and three. ...

I think there is a lot less to all this than meets the eye. I have many times expressed my deepest skepticism about much of what is said about reserve currency status, and especially about most of the arguments based on the claim that "history proves…" History almost never proves the many statements made about reserve currency status, especially when the history of shifts from one dominant reserve currency to another consists of a single case, the shift in the 1920s to 1940s from pound sterling to the US dollar.

But history aside, there is a much more important objection to the idea that the RMB is likely to become a dominant reserve currency. Reserve currency status involves substantial costs to the issuing country. In fact – and I will discuss this extensively in my upcoming book due February next year (Princeton University Press) – I do not think that the role of the dollar provides for the US any "exorbitant privilege", contrary to what many suppose. Rather, I have argued, it creates an exorbitant burden for the US economy, one that forces the US to choose between higher debt and higher unemployment whenever a country takes steps to force up its savings rate or, which is pretty much the same thing, to force up its current account surplus

It is for this reason that I have never thought that the RMB would become an important reserve currency – precisely because Beijing has made it very clear that it will not accept any of the important costs that reserve currency status bring. Besides the fact that major reserve currency status would require complete liberalization of the capital account and a flexible financial system largely independent of government control, with clear and enforceable rules, it would put China's economy at the mercy of countries that want to turbo-charge growth by running large trade surpluses. Beijing isn't eager to accept any of these things.

But what about the advantages of reserve currency status – don't they more than compensate the costs? The two most widely cited advantages in China of reserve currency status are first, that reserve currency status allows a country to borrow in its own currency and second, that it protects a country from accumulating too-large foreign currency reserves.

It turns out that the first "advantage", however, has absolutely nothing to do with reserve currency status. Lots of countries, including China, borrow in their own currency. What matters is the quality of the balance sheet.

In fact in the case of China if the preconditions for reserve currency status were imposed there is a good chance that it would be harder, not easier, for China to borrow in its own currency. Why? Because at least part of the reason the Chinese government can borrow so easily in RMB has to do with restrictions on capital outflows and control of the domestic savings through the banking system. Relax both constraints, which are necessary if the RMB is ever going to become an important reserve currency, and domestic financing may very well be much more difficult.

The second "advantage" is mostly confused nonsense. Aside from the fact that no country can accumulate its own currency in its foreign currency reserves, the size of foreign currency reserves has nothing to do with whether or not others accept your currency as a reserve currency. Reserve accumulation is fully explained by the sum of the current account and the capital account.

Any country that runs a surplus on both accounts must accumulate foreign currency reserves, and the reason Germany has a large current account surplus and no foreign currency reserves is simply because it runs a large capital account deficit. Instead of recycling its current account surplus by having the central bank lend to foreign governments, as the PBoC does, it recycles its current account surplus by having German banks lend to other European countries.

Math is Math

But let's leave all of this aside. The paper by Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler argues that, regardless of what people like me believe ought to happen, in fact the RMB is actually displacing the dollar, whether or not we think it can or should. The proof?

In East Asia, there is already a renminbi bloc, because the renminbi has become the dominant reference currency, eclipsing the dollar, which is a historic development. In this region, 7 currencies out of 10 co-move more closely with the renminbi than with the dollar, with the average value of the CMC relative to the renminbi being 40 percent greater than that for the dollar.

You can't argue with the math, can you? As The Economist put it in their review of the article, "Seven currencies in the region now follow the yuan, or redback, more closely than the green." Since this only leaves three recalcitrant currencies, sheer arithmetic shows that the dollar is being displaced by the RMB.

Well actually you can argue with the math, or at least you can argue with the interpretation of the math. There are alternative – and much simpler, I think – explanations for the increased "co-movement", and these do a much better job, I think, of explaining what is happening than reserve currency displacement.

Assume for a moment a global scenario in which the largest exporter of manufactured goods in the world has a significantly undervalued currency. Assume further that many of its competitors also have undervalued currencies, and would like to revalue in order better to manage their domestic monetary policies. Assume finally that the world is in crisis, and exporting nations are having trouble maintaining the necessary growth rate of their exports, so they cannot allow their currencies to rise faster than that of their main export competitors.

In this scenario which currency would the currencies of the smaller exporting countries track, the US dollar, or the undervalued currency of the largest and most competitive exporter of manufactured goods in the world? Almost certainly the latter, right? The smaller exporters would want their currencies to rise, but the rise in their currencies would be limited by the rise in the currency of their largest competitor. This would happen not because they are tracking a new reserve currency but only because they are in export competition with that currency.

Is my scenario a plausible description of the world today? I think it very clearly is. The world certainly is growing slowly, exporters are having real trouble, countries are engaged in currency war, and one can very easily argue that the RMB is seriously undervalued and acting as a constraint on other Asian currencies. In fact over the past several years many Asian finance ministers have said exactly that – they cannot appreciate their currencies as much as they would wish until the RMB appreciates more. The conclusion, then, might be not that there is a RMB bloc, but rather that the appreciation of the RMB against the dollar is a kind of cap against which other currencies are constrained.

Or let's take another scenario. Assume the world is in crisis and the US dollar is seen widely as the "safe" asset. In this world, perhaps when risk perceptions rise, investors and traders move generally out of riskier currencies into the dollar, and when risk perceptions decline, traders move out of the dollar into riskier currencies. Perhaps we could even call these trades "risk-on" and "risk-off" trades.

In this case it would be natural to see an increase in the correlation among riskier currencies. Would this be a sign of an emergent currency bloc? No. It would just be a sign that the dollar is the dominant reserve currency and that everyone is treating it as such, buying and selling it is response to changes in risk perception. Is my second scenario a plausible description of the world? Again, it almost certainly is.

I am not saying that Subramanian and Kessler are necessarily wrong. I am just suggesting that there are alternative, and in my opinion far more plausible, explanations for the greater correlation between the RMB and these other currencies than the RMB bloc hypothesis. Of course if the RMB were a freely floating currency and there was no longer PBoC currency intervention, and the correlations that the authors find still hold, then perhaps this could be a more powerful argument about the rise of the RMB. Until then, it is almost wholly irrelevant.

Who is Top Dog?

But where I have a real difference of opinion is the claim that "American optimists" somehow don't want the RMB to become the dominant reserve currency and want the US dollar to retain the title. This suggest to me that the argument here is really not about the whether or not the RMB is likely to become a reserve currency but rather about whether or not you expect this to be the "China Century", and if the RMB becomes the reserve currency Chinese dominance will inevitably follow.

In fact I have also argued many times that if the US does not take steps to prevent foreign countries from acquiring unlimited amounts of US dollar reserves, for example by forcing, as Keynes wanted, reserve accumulation to be more evenly divided amount all the major currencies, it will force the US into a very difficult position and can actually hasten the coming of the China Century. As I see it, "American optimists" or at least those who want the US to remain the only "indispensable country", should actively encourage a greater role for the RMB and a lesser role for the dollar.

Unfortunately what should be a technical discussion about the merits for and preconditions of reserve currency status has been completely subsumed into the idiotic argument about whether you are "for" China or "against" China. But anyone who conflates his opinion about which country should be top dog with his analysis of the rise of the RMB as the dominant reserve currency is, I think, engaged in bad economics.

There are of course plenty of generals, journalists, and policymakers in China who believe that dominant reserve currency status is desirable and inevitable, but very few Chinese monetary economists, even among those blessed few that do not believe China is going to have a very difficult adjustment, think reserve currency status is likely to happen soon. Among economists, it seems that only foreigners, and based mainly abroad, seem to believe that this process is happening.

Discussion Simplified

Portions of the above discussion may be a bit complicated for some to understand. Let's see if this simplification helps:

The US treasury department, President Obama, Mitt Romney, and especially Ben Bernanke all want the Yuan to rise.
China does not want the yuan to rise because of export issues.
No country is acting as if it wants ownership of the reserve currency, precisely because no country does want ownership of the reserve currency. Currency wars are proof enough.

I consider Michael Pettis to be the foremost expert on international trade. I am very pleased to have him as a speaker along with John Hussman, James Chanos, John Mauldin, and Chris Martensen on April 5 at the Wine Country Conference.

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

"Wine Country" Economic Conference Hosted By Mish
Click on Image to Learn More

Canada Bleeding Private Jobs; Vancouver Home Sales Plunge 16.7 Percent; Crash Awaits

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 12:14 PM PST

The Financial Post has an interesting story on the state of the Canadian jobs market. It seem over 100% of job growth is from government jobs.

Please consider Employment numbers hide the fact Canada is bleeding private sector jobs

Canada may have added 1,800 jobs in October, but that number hides the fact that almost all the gains came from government and that the private sector lost more than 20,000 jobs.

The 1,800 jobs added was already a disappointment compared with the 10,000 economists had forecast. According to Statistics Canada, that left the unemployment rate unchanged at 7.4%.

The six-month average for jobs gains is now 29,400, according to Reuters. But it's a very different story when you look at the private sector and public sector separately.

"Details of the report were much worse than the headline number with the private sector showing a loss of 21,000 in October, the fourth decline in six months," said Matthieu Arseneau, senior economist with the National Bank of Canada. "Over the period, the private sector is actually showing a loss of 12,000 jobs, compared to a surge of 76,000 jobs in the public sector."

"With earnings of TSX companies down 30% so far in the third quarter, we do not expect a hiring spree anytime soon," he said.

It is good to see realistic comments from analysts. Matthieu Arseneau, is spot on with his comments.

Vancouver Home Sales Plunge 16.7 Percent

The Globe and Mail reports Vancouver home prices sink 3.4% from peak as sales plunge

Home sales in the Vancouver area plunged 16.7 per cent in October from a year earlier, though picked up markedly from September.

In an indication of how that market's performing, sales were 28.5 per cent below a 10-year October sales average of 2,700, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said today, while the composite benchmark price for residential properties is down 3.4 per cent from its peak of $625,100 in May.

Along with Toronto, Vancouver has been a worry spot for observers. The country's housing market has cooled notably since the latest round of government efforts to tighten the mortgage market, though most economists don't envision a meltdown.

Economists never envision a meltdown. But a massive meltdown is coming anyway. I must admit the pool of greater fools in Vancouver and Toronto was far, far bigger than I thought possible, but at long last the pool seems to have dried up. A crash awaits.

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

luni, 5 noiembrie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

5 Ways to Get Your Client to Like You (and get bigger budgets along the way)

5 Ways to Get Your Client to Like You (and get bigger budgets along the way)

1. Hit the ground running

2. Pre-deliver and collaborate

3. Call your client

4. Visit your client and take them out for beers

5. Do work they haven’t asked for

Will my clients like me?

A Briefing on Storm Relief

Seth's Blog : Why vote? The marketing dynamics of apathy

Why vote? The marketing dynamics of apathy

More Recent Articles

duminică, 4 noiembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 5 noiembrie 2012

1. Hit the ground running

2. Pre-deliver and collaborate

3. Call your client

4. Visit your client and take them out for beers

5. Do work they haven’t asked for

Will my clients like me?

More Recent Articles

duminică, 4 noiembrie 2012

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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