marți, 28 iunie 2011

Open for Questions: Live Chat Today on the Way Forward in Afghanistan

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
 

Open for Questions: Live Chat on the Way Forward in Afghanistan

Join us for a live chat today, Tuesday, June 28th, at 4:00 PM EDT with Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, and Brian Deese, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, on President Obama’s strategy to draw down troops in Afghanistan and our plan to focus on investments here at home.

Here's how you can participate:

Photo of the Day


President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are briefed by senior advisors in the Oval Office, June 27, 2011. Participating in the briefing, from left, are: Senior Advisor David Plouffe, Gene Sperling, National Economic Council Director; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Rob Nabors, Assistant to the President and Director of Legislative Affairs; and Jack Lew, Office of Management and Budget Director. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog.

Announcing the Stop. Think. Connect. PSA Challenge Winners
Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt announces the winners of the Stop.Think.Connect. Campaign’s Public Service Announcement Challenge which called on the public to create short videos encouraging their fellow citizens to be safe and secure online. Check out the winning PSAs.

Our Energy Independence: Join the Live Chat
On Wednesday, June 29th, at 2:00 pm ET, please join Dr. Arun Majumdar at Energy.gov for a frank, two-way discussion about the investments the federal government is making in innovative research and technology today that will move us off of foreign oil and toward the clean energy infrastructure of the future.

Broadband and the Latino Community: Let's Keep the Momentum Going!
Ms. Anna M. Gomez is one of the highest ranking Latinas in the administration on telecommunications and information issues participated in the annual National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in San Antonio. 


Today's Schedule

10:00 AM: The President and the Vice President meet with Secretary of State Clinton

10:35 AM: The President departs the South Lawn en route Joint Base Andrews

10:45 AM: The Vice President meets with His Royal Highness Prince Philippe of Belgium

10:50 AM: The President departs Joint Base Andrews en route Moline, Illinois

12:55 PM: The President arrives Moline, Illinois

1:45 PM: The President tours Alcoa Davenport Works

2:05 PM: The President delivers remarks on the critical role the manufacturing sector plays in the American economy WhiteHouse.gov/live

3:45 PM: The President departs Moline, Illinois

5:40 PM: The President arrives at Joint Base Andrews

5:55 PM: The President arrives at the White House

WhiteHouse.gov/live Indicates event that will be live streamed on WhiteHouse.Gov/Live

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President Obama Launches the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership

The White House Tuesday, June 28, 2011
 

Good morning,

Last week, President Obama visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he toured Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) and delivered remarks announcing the launch of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP), a $550 million dollar project to bring together industry, government, and higher education.

Today, the President travels to Bettendorf, Iowa, to visit the Davenport Works factory of AMP participant Alcoa. The factory is a state-of-the-art aluminum rolling mill that serves as the manufacturing hub for Alcoa's $3 billion aerospace business. You can watch the event live at 2:05 PM EST on Whitehouse.gov/live.



President Barack Obama delivers remarks following a tour of the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., June 24, 2011. The President spoke on the need to focus on cross-cutting technologies that will enhance the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing and speed up ideas from the drawing board to the manufacturing floor. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

 

The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) is a national effort that brings together industry, universities and the federal government to invest in emerging technologies that will create high quality manufacturing jobs and enhance our global competitiveness. As President Obama remarked in Pittsburgh:

We’ve launched an all-hands-on-deck effort between our brightest academic minds, some of our boldest business leaders, and our most dedicated public servants from science and technology agencies, all with one big goal, and that is a renaissance of American manufacturing. Throughout our history, our greatest breakthroughs have often come from partnerships just like this one.

American innovation has always been sparked by individual scientists and entrepreneurs, often at universities like Carnegie Mellon or Georgia Tech or Berkeley or Stanford. But a lot of companies don’t invest in early ideas because it won’t pay off right away. And that’s where government can step in. That’s how we ended up with some of the world-changing innovations that fueled our growth and prosperity and created countless jobs -- the mobile phone, the Internet, GPS, more than 150 drugs and vaccines over the last 40 years was all because we were able to, in strategic ways, bring people together and make some critical investments.

The President’s plan, which leverages existing programs and proposals, will invest more than $500 million to jumpstart this effort. These investments will build domestic manufacturing capabilities in critical national security industries and reduce the time needed to make advanced materials used in manufacturing products. Additionally, we will invest in next-generation robotics, increase energy-efficiency in the manufacturing process and develop new technologies that will dramatically reduce the time required to design, build, and test manufactured goods.

Read more about the President's visit and AMP.

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SEOptimise

SEOptimise


30 (New) Google Ranking Factors You May Over- or Underestimate

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 06:05 AM PDT

ranking me ranking you*

SEO is a fast changing discipline.

What worked 5 or 10 years ago might be completely unnecessary these days or even bad for your site’s ranking.

Thus leading search industry publications publish the most probable Google ranking factors each year. Nonetheless many webmasters prefer to stick to the past or follow wrong advice from bloggers who just repeat SEO myths.

In recent years, Google has not only included lots of new media types into Universal search results; it has also added numerous ranking factors while rethinking many old ones.

I made a list of new or current ranking factors that get underestimated by webmasters and neglected because of this. At the same time, I included those often old school ranking factors webmasters tend to overestimate the power of. These may not work anymore, or may even hurt your site in Google’s search results.

 

 

These ranking factors are gaining importance or haven’t been as popularly accepted as they deserve

Site Speed – site speed is an official ranking factor that Google has been pushing quite hard for a while. Despite this, I still see plenty of sites that don’t seem to care. They load huge images where you don’t need any or are cluttered with widgets and rich media that take too long to load. Especially on mobile phones, Google prefers sites that load quickly.

Social Signals – Twitter, Quora and even Friendfeed get used by Google Social search to populate your social search results, but these services also influence regular results. Hundreds of tweets by real accounts with some authority can push your site significantly. A few tweets by authority accounts or even one Google Buzz mention can get you indexed. Google just acquired social media analytics tool PostRank so they can measure this even better.

Usability – with the Google ”Panda” high quality update, user experience as chekecd by human quality raters and automatically measured by algorithms have been introduced as a direct ranking factor.

Outgoing Links – it has already been two years since Matt Cutts disclosed that outgoing links to authority sites are a positive ranking factor like bad neighborhoods are a negative one. These days some of the most renowned SEOs advise linking out not just for direct ranking benefit, and link out a lot themselves.

Google +1 – with the launch of Google +1 it has been announced that +1 votes will count as a ranking factor. There are still penalty of sites who don’t seem to care. Inserting a +1 button is easier than a Facebook-like widget.

Branding – over the years, branding has seemingly become one of the most important ranking factors for Google. Make sure that people know your name and link to you using it. This way you ensure that you will be created as a brand while generic sites get downranked. It’s even feasible that Google counts the number of mentions of your name or brand that do not link to you. The more you get talked about the better, of course.

SERP CTR – Google can measure how many people actually click your site in search results. You can even see the numbers in Google Webmaster Tools. The less people do click, the less valuable it must be is the logic I’m afraid. Make sure you sport an enticing meta description and title tag. Don’t just stuff keywords in there like 10 years ago.

Readability – Google is also measuring the readability level of a text. For instance, most of my blog posts don’t require a university degree to get understood. That might be an advantage in many cases, unless someone needs scientific advice of course.

Ads to content-ratio – too many ads on your site may mean bad karma as your site might get considered to be a thin content site with more ad than actual text. If you use Adsense, this might be even easier to determine.

Site topic – what is a page about? Increasingly, search engines try to understand the meaning of a query to return the best results. Google is still at a very early stage of this, but it already matters what the page linking to you deals with. So placing an SEO article on a gardening site may not work in the future.

Page age (not domain age) – Google is increasingly keen on displaying dates on your articles and posts. While it’s not yet clear whether it’s a direct ranking factor as well, it will surely impact your click-through rate. The older the date, the less likely people are to click.

Link velocity – by link velocity, we describe the actual number of links a site gets in a particular time frame. If you get links too fast, you may end up in a Google filter. On the other hand, a good viral campaign with a large number of links in a matter of hours or days can propel you to the top accordingly.

Link decay – as content gets older, many links in it end up being broken. Or even worse, some of them redirect to bad neighbourhoods. So link decay may hurt in two ways, by either showing that your content is now obsolete or by hurting it directly by linking to spammy or rogue sites.

Internal link anchor text – the actual anchor text your internal links have can be a major ranking factor. So don’t link ”services” in the menu but ”seo services”.

Alt text – in 2009 it seemed that alt text, the text you add in the alt attribute on images, may be one of the most important ranking factors on page. I admit that I still neglect this ranking factor, sometimes due to sheer haste and laziness. Blind users are only aware of the alt descriptions so you may want to think twice and add them.

On page link position – over the years, Google has been stepping up its efforts to identify where a particular link is on a webpage, in the footer, sidebar or the editorial part of the content. These days editorial links are best, of course.

Natural link profile – a natural link profile consists of all kinds of links:  branded ones, deep links, nofollow links, even links from low quality scraper sites. By now it’s quite sure that Google has to look at the overall link profile of a site. If your site has only links from one geographical area, sites on one specific topic or specific links (e.g. blog comments), for example, this may mean that you will be ranked accordingly.

Deep link ratio – with the new Panda algorithm, sites with many pages that have no external incoming links have suffered. Until now it was enough to have enough authority from the homepage to push thousands of pages down in the hierarchy. From now, deep links get even more important for so called long tail content.

Link geography – as noted above, UK-based links are good for UK sites that want to rank in the UK. If you want to also rank well in the US, you want to make sure you publish and promote your posts while most US citizens are awake (not in the morning UK time). This also works for tweets, as some tests have already shown.

Backlink diversity – links from a lot of different sites are important not only for the natural link profile. Backlink diversity is similar to domain popularity and ultimately part of a natural link profile. This ranking factor has been around for ages, and some people have seemingly forgotten about it.

Just consider this:  a new site is buying links from a few high PageRank sites and has barely any other links from domains with no Google authority. Doesn’t it look suspicious?

 

These ranking factors are losing ground or are even negative ranking factors

Facebook likes – in recent days there’s been a lot of news coming in that Facebook likes do not count as much or at all for Google rankings. Until now, after a disclosure a few months ago, it was assumed that Google counts public likes from profiles that are visible to everyone (like mine is for example).

Exact match domains – for years, so-called exact match domains e.g. seo.com for the query [seo] have been the best bet to rank quickly and stay on top. The good times seem to be over, however; branding gets more important, and even an exact match generic keyword domain is no guarantee of ranking these days.

Backlink anchor text – when every link to your site from the Web has the same anchor text, such as “seo agency”, this will be easily detected by Google. The anchor text of incoming links gets monitored more closely, so using it in an over-optimised way might even hurt you.

h1 headlines – some already old studies suggest that the h1 tag has lost much of the impact it once might have had on Google results. h2 and even smaller headlines most probably counted for more until now. Other specialists tend to dismiss h-tag altogether these days. I’m not sure here, but headlines are not a place to stuff keywords in anymore.

Top level domain – the TLD, that is the .com .co.uk or .fr ending of your domain, doesn’t count that much these days. Sites with .ly,  .me, .is and other similarly exotic top level domains can rank well now without major disadvantages. Just look at Good.is – it even outranks Good.com.

Server location – my own SEO blog over at SEO 2.0 has been ranking for years in the US, despite being hosted in Germany. So while hosting locally is a good thing, it won’t stop you from ranking when you get your SEO strategy right and earn links from your target market. I considered moving it, but I decided that the change would not be significant enough to justify the risks of moving.

Content length - I remember when one of the most common pieces of SEO advice was to write content that is at least 200 words long. Also, over the years, pages with very long on-site copy have traditionally ranked better than short ones. Now that Google has cracked down on content farms that focused on size not quality, it would seem that content length is not a signal of utmost importance anymore.

Backlink number – I also remember a time when you looked at the sheer number of links a site had. Soon the number turned completely useless because of thousands of footer links from ”partners” many websites got. With the appearance of widely used CMS systems like WordPress and Drupal, Google has taken measures to curb the footer link game.

Keyword density – the higher the keyword density, the more likely you get penalised by Google for keyword stuffing. Keyword density is not a metric most serious SEO practicioners use in 2011. While it’s good to mention your actual keywords on page, any suggested density of several per cent is nonsense and barely readable.

Meta keywords tag – no major search engine uses the meta keywords tag as a ranking factor these days, yet some blogs still advise you to use it for SEO. Some SEO experts assume that it’s even a negative ranking factor. Google might be checking whether the keywords mentioned in it are also found on page, and if they aren’t, you might get downranked.

 

Of course, ranking by itself is not the only thing important in SEO, but if your SEO strategy is based on outdated ranking signals that do not matter anymore, while you ignore the most important current ones, you may be heading in the wrong direction.

Make sure you stay on top of developments. On the other hand, you may have to focus on the actions that work in search due to the fact that they are popular. This way, you are ahead of Google in many cases.

 

Read more about ranking factors:

* Image by Peter Gerdes

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. 30 (New) Google Ranking Factors You May Over- or Underestimate

Related posts:

  1. 40 Title Tag SEO for Google Ranking Factors & Optimization Techniques + Resources
  2. Can You Get a New Domain Ranking Using Just Facebook Likes & Tweets?
  3. A Natural Link Profile and Nofollow as a Ranking Factor or Signal

Seth's Blog : Are you wow blind?

Are you wow blind?

Kevin asked me: "Do 'great ideas' possess universally some sort of Wow Factor?"

The problems with this question: What does 'great' mean? And who decides what 'wow' is?

The challenge is this: lots of people think they know what both words mean in their area of endeavor, and many of them are wrong.

Consider the case of web 2.0 companies. People like Brad Feld and Fred Wilson are brilliant at understanding what wow means from the point of view of an investor. They have great taste about what's going to pay off. They have a sense for which teams and which ideas will actually turn into great businesses.

The peanut gallery at tech sites, though, don't have such great abilities (if they did, they'd be Brad, not anonymous voters). As a result, they mistake consumer wow for investor wow, and often focus on the wrong attributes when they're criticizing or congratulating a company.

This is endemic in the book business, which resolutely refuses to understand the actual P&L of most of the books it publishes. As a result, there are plenty of editors who continue to overpay for the wrong books, because their wow isn't the market's wow.

In his book Money Ball, Michael Lewis wrote about how virtually every single scout and manager in baseball was wrong about what makes a great baseball player. They had the wrong radar, the wrong wow. When statistics taught a few teams what the real wow was, the balance of power shifted.

By definition, just about every great idea resonates early with those that have better radar than those that don't. The skill, then, is to expose yourself often enough, learn enough and fail enough that you get to say wow before the competition does.

 

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luni, 27 iunie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


$18.7 Billion of $20 Billion Bush Sent to Iraq for Reconstruction is Missing

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 11:39 AM PDT

Over $18 billion in US funds the Bush administration sent to Iraq for reconstruction is unaccounted for. The Pentagon claims it could find it if given enough time. Interestingly, they have been saying this for six years.

Apparently $18 billion is such a trivial amount for the Pentagon that it has not bothered to look.

Please consider Missing Iraq cash 'as high as $18bn'.
Osama al-Nujaifi, the Iraqi parliament speaker, has told Al Jazeera that the amount of Iraqi money unaccounted for by the US is $18.7bn - three times more than the reported $6.6bn.

Just before departing for a visit to the US, al-Nujaifi said that he has received a report this week based on information from US and Iraqi auditors that the amount of money withdrawn from a fund from Iraqi oil proceeds, but unaccounted for, is much more than the $6.6bn reported missing last week.

The Los Angeles Times reported last week that Iraqi officials argue that the US government was supposed to safeguard the stash under a 2004 legal agreement it signed with Iraq, hence making Washington responsible for the cash that has disappeared.

Pentagon officials have contended for the last six years that they could account for the money if given enough time to track down the records.

The US has audited the money three times, but has still not been able to say exactly where it went.

Al Jazeera's Iraq correspondent, Jane Arraf, reporting from Baghdad, said: "It's an absolutely astonishing figure - this goes back to 2003 and 2004.


"Safeguarding the money was up to the Americans ... after the invasion, provisional authority here was run by the American military.

"Piles and piles of shrink-wrapped US dollars came here, but the cash coming in is not the important part - it is what happened to it after [it got here].

"There are no documents to indicate who got it, where it was spent and what was ever built from it."
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Leading German Economist Buys Greek Bonds On Belief in "Boundless Stupidity of German Government", Says Bailout Programs Will Exacerbate Problems

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 08:14 AM PDT

Stefan Homburg, a leading German economist believes the bailout of Greece is exactly that wrong thing to do and will exacerbate bankruptcy problems.

Nonetheless Homburg invested a "considerable sum" in Greek bonds on belief in the "boundless stupidity of the German government to pay up".

Please consider this Der Spiegel Interview with Stefan Homburg.
SPIEGEL: ... the voluntary participation of private creditors, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have agreed on, will achieve little or nothing?

Homburg: It was all just a big show which was mainly intended to calm the German public. Merkel wanted mandatory participation, Sarkozy wanted none at all. In effect, Sarkozy has prevailed.

SPIEGEL: But the plumber is not, as they say, too big to fail -- his or her bankruptcy wouldn't cause entire banks to collapse. The European Central Bank has warned of a massive new financial crisis if it comes to the compulsory involvement of private creditors or even a restructuring of Greece's debt.

Homburg: The alleged risk of contagion is a myth that doesn't stand up to closer scrutiny. If you share my conviction that all this talk of Greece being too big to fail is simply nonsense, then there is no reason for bailouts …

SPIEGEL: … yes, but only if you're right.

Homburg: No, it also holds true in the reverse situation. If the bankruptcy of little Greece were actually to trigger a global financial crisis, new bailout programs couldn't solve the problem: They would actually exacerbate it. If no more states or banks are allowed to go bankrupt because this might precipitate a financial crisis, then we're finished. Then the problem continuously escalates and leads to a much greater crisis.

SPIEGEL: Europe wants to use the bailouts to buy time. The idea is that during this period the banks can recover and countries like Portugal, Ireland and Spain can get back on an even keel, so the risk of contagion is not so great when the inevitable restructuring takes place in the distant future. That is the strategy.

Homburg: I wouldn't call it a strategy. First, states bailed out their banks, now states themselves are being bailed out. But there is no next level to fall back on beyond this bailout. The bailout packages have merely exacerbated the crisis. Last year, if we had adhered to the Lisbon Treaty, which prohibits assistance payments, Greece would have restructured its debt, just as Uruguay, Argentina, Russia and other countries have done over the past 15 years ...

SPIEGEL: In a monetary union, isn't there a much greater danger that the crisis will spread from one weak member country to another?

Homburg: No. The contagion spreads in precisely the opposite direction, because many banks and hedge funds benefit from the following business model. Step one: They sell the bonds of the country concerned. Step two: They spread negative rumors about the country. Step three: After bond prices have fallen, they buy them back cheaply. And, finally, they take governments for a ride with this nonsense that a default would have devastating consequences. In a zero-sum game, there are not only losers, like us taxpayers, but also winners.

SPIEGEL: And what is the risk of contagion now?

Homburg: After the Greek bonds have been paid back at full value, the gamblers will turn to the next candidate, such as Portugal. If creditors suffered losses in Greece, however, they would renounce this business model. In this sense, the rescue measures are exacerbating the problem.

SPIEGEL: If there were such a business model, a lot of people would be buying Greek government bonds now.

Homburg: In recent days, I myself have invested a considerable sum in Greek bonds. They will mature in one year's time and, if all goes well, produce a 25 percent return on investment. I sleep very soundly at night because I believe in the boundless stupidity of the German government. They will pay up.

SPIEGEL: And what will happen next?

Homburg: Many politicians have also come to the realization that the path that we are on ultimately leads to national defaults and currency reforms. This process is already irreversible, but nobody wants to say it out loud and go down in history as the one who triggered the explosion. So we leave the bankruptcy to subsequent German governments and, in the meantime, throw good money after bad. Sooner or later, this much is certain, the system will be blown apart by political and economic factors. And, unfortunately, there is a great danger that, when this happens, it is not only the euro that will fall apart, but also the entire EU.
The bailout is certainly the wrong thing to do for the reasons Homburg suggested. However, as much as I generally agree with the notion of "boundless stupidity" of governments, buying Greek debt is not risk free. There will likely be steep haircuts on long-dated debt.

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


Consumer Spending, Personal Incomes "Weaker Than Expected", Economists Optimistic for Second Half, I'm Not

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 07:01 AM PDT

Consumer spending numbers are out and economists were surprised to learn that Americans spend at weakest pace in 20 months
Americans spent at the weakest pace in 20 months, a sign that high gas prices are taking a toll on the economy.

Consumer spending was unchanged in May, the Commerce Department said Monday. That was the worst result since September 2009. And when adjusted for inflation, spending actually dropped 0.1 percent.

April's consumer spending figures were revised to show a similar decline when adjusting for inflation. It marked the first decline in inflation-adjusted spending since January 2010.

Economists are optimistic for the second half of the year, saying growth should pick up to a 3.2 percent pace. They note that two of the biggest factors slowing the economy are abating.

Gas prices are falling. And U.S. factories are expected to begin producing more once Japan's factories resume more normal operations. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in that country has led to a parts shortage, particularly for auto and electronics manufacturers.
Economists Optimistic For Second Half

Are economists ever pessimistic? The idea that growth will pick up because of falling gasoline prices is complete silliness. Gasoline prices are falling because growth is slowing.

Moreover, in about 2 months you will be able to toss that "auto parts shortage" theory in the ashcan where it belongs.

Personal Income Weaker Than Expected

Please consider Consumer Spending in U.S. Stagnated in May
Consumer spending unexpectedly stagnated in May as employment prospects dimmed and rising inflation caused Americans to cut back.

Purchases were little changed, the weakest outcome since June 2010, after a revised 0.3 percent gain the prior month that was smaller than previously estimated, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 0.1 percent gain. Prices excluding food and energy rose more than forecast.

The report showed incomes increased 0.3 percent for a second month. The gain was also less than forecast.

Today's report also showed that spending adjusted for inflation figures, which are used to calculate gross domestic product, dropped 0.1 percent for a second month. It was the first back-to-back decline in two years.

In May, cars and light trucks sold at an 11.8 million annual rate, the slowest since September and down from a 13.1 million pace a month earlier, according to researcher Autodata Corp. Some of the drop in demand last month reflected a shortage of Japanese-made vehicles after the earthquake and tsunami in March disrupted supplies. With inventories running low, companies offered smaller discounts, deterring buyers.

"The economic recovery appears to be proceeding at a moderate pace, though somewhat more slowly than the committee had expected," Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said at a press conference after a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on June 22. He said the slowdown is caused in part by "factors that are likely to be temporary," including more expensive commodities as well as supply chain disruptions associated with Japan's natural disaster.
Bernanke Latches On To Parts Disruption Theory

Note that Bernanke has latched on to this parts disruption excuse as well. To be fair, the disruption mattered, however, it is complete silliness to believe a parts disruption is the primary source of weakness.

The job market, wages, falling home prices, and exhausted pent-up demand for autos are at the center of things. The entire global economy is slowing and Bernanke has not figured that out, nor does he understand why.

There is no reason to be optimistic about the second half. The recovery, assuming you think we had one, is dead.

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


Stress Increases in Eurozone; Portuguese, Spanish, Irish, and Italian 10-Year Yields All Make New Highs

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 06:13 AM PDT

Eurozone sovereign debt yields pushed higher across the board today. Irish debt has topped 12% for the first time, Italian debt topped 5% and most Euroland debt yields are at all times high spreads compared to Germany.

Significantly, yields are at fresh new highs for Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal.

If by any chance you are wondering whether to believe EU officials or the bond markets, I suggest you believe the bond markets.

The charts below are delayed, but the quotes are accurate. Stress increases in Eurozone.

Spain 10-Year Government Bond Yield



Portugal 10-Year Government Bond Yield


Italy 10-Year Government Bond Yield



Ireland 10-Year Government Bond Yield



Greece 10-Year Government Bond Yield



Greece 2-Year Government Bond Yield



If EU and ECB officials thought they solved something with their Greek bailout maneuvers, the bond market disagrees and so do I.

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