Central Perk

miercuri, 6 noiembrie 2013

No one should be fired for who they are

Hello --

This week, the U.S. Senate voted to consider the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. This legislation has a very clear purpose: to make sure that no one can be fired for who they are or who they love.

Right now, only 17 states prohibit employment discrimination against LGBT workers. That leaves millions of Americans who go to work every day fearing that they could lose their job because of who they are.

As the President said earlier this week, that's not acceptable.

A majority of Americans assume there is a prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace. There's not, and that's exactly why this is so important -- and why we need your help to get the word out. Yesterday, Press Secretary Jay Carney explained what ENDA does, and why it's so important in the fight for equality.

Watch the video -- and pass it on so that other people know what a big deal this is.

At a time when Washington is spending so much of its time bickering over partisan issues, Congress has an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans by passing this commonsense -- and overdue -- law.

It's not just civil rights advocates who support ENDA. Business leaders know that prohibiting employment discrimination is good for business. Inclusive workplaces attract the best and brightest employees, and improve their bottom line.

ENDA is set for a final vote in the Senate, and then the House needs to pass it. Americans need to know where members of Congress stand, and what is at stake.

We need your help -- please watch this video, and forward it on so that all Americans learn how important this is, too.

Thanks,

Valerie

Valerie Jarrett
Senior Advisor
The White House
@VJ44

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24 States Are Refusing to Expand Medicaid. Here's What That Means for Their Residents:

Featured

24 States Are Refusing to Expand Medicaid. Here's What That Means for Their Residents:

Some states are so locked into the politics of Obamacare that they've refused to expand the Medicaid coverage that would help more working families get covered. As a result, nearly 5.4 million of their own people are being left uninsured.

Take a look at our map -- and see what it means for their residents.

9,000 Uniques in One Day: A Viral Marketing Case Study

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 03:33 PM PST

Posted by ViperChill

One of the most popularised examples of viral marketing is that of Microsoft's Hotmail (now Outlook Online) email service. Every single email sent using the site came attached with a small signature which read "Get your free e-mail at Hotmail." Doug Rushoff was one of the first people to use the phrase viral marketing online, and likened the concept to someone who is susceptible to an idea being infected by another, and then sharing it with others, in turn "infecting" them.

The Hotmail example fits this ideology perfectly, and helped propel the service to a point where it was adding in excess of 270,000 new users every single day.

The concept of something going viral doesn't just apply to the internet of course. Another phrase associated with the ideaâ€"word of mouthâ€"is definitely more relevant to the offline world. It may be watching a TV show and going into work to talk about it, reaching more people who then watch the show and tell even more people. It may be having a great experience at a restaurant and telling a friend, who visits that very restaurant and then tells even more people to go.

The end result is that one person can help something spread to far more people than themselves. The internet has simply made it much easier for one person to reach a huge audience with a message that's worth sharing. In the last 10 years, the number of people using the Internet has gone from being measured in millions to being measured in billions.

This was a version of the planned introduction for the book Viral Marketing for Dummies which Wiley asked me to publish a little over a year ago.

Though I actually quit my contract and stopped working on the book (long story), I've still been involved in various viral marketing campaigns. The one I would like to share with you right now was built purely to show that the ideas I was sharing in the book actually had merit.

Join a story rather than creating a new one

Though it's certainly not impossible to create your own viral category to get some buzz, it makes your job much, much easier if someone is already talking about a topic that you can leverage for your own gain.

Lyndon Antcliff, most notable for fooling the world's media into thinking that a teenager stole his Dad's credit card to play Xbox with a hooker, is very good at this. He often tweets the latest viral trends and helps his clients to capitalise on hot topics of the moment.

Again, you don't have to only take advantage of what people are saying now. When Monster Slippers wanted their slipper company to go viral, they created an elaborate story to say that a Chinese manufacturing incident left one customer with a size 1,450 shoe, almost as big as a car.

The story was picked up by multiple news outlets, all linking to Monster Slippers as they were the one to break the story. That was until they all figured out the customer who received the unusually large footwear actually looked identical to a staff member of Monster Slippers.

I didn't have anything I actually wanted to promote in my example, besides a cause that I believed strongly in, so decided to pick up on a news event that a lot of people were talking about: The demise of Google Reader and, potentially, Feedburner too.

Stick to one core theme

"What did the fox say?" just wouldn't be the same if we also wanted to know what the eagle, walrus, and piranha say too.

The Old Spice videos featuring actor Bruce Cambpell basically ran as an idea that you couldn't be Bruce with his great physique and confidence, but you could at least smell like him. They didn't run with this theme just once, but used it in multiple highly successful commercials.

Old Spice is a smell. It doesn't necessarily make you smell better than any other product. There's nothing inherently amazing about it. Yet after those commercials ran, you couldn't walk into a supermarket and find it on shelves very easily. They found one theme and stuck with it, even creating unique videos for Redditors in an AMA format.

Another reason for sticking to one core theme is that you really have to give sharing a purpose (next section). If there's no clear message that you want to spread, it's hard for people to get behind the idea and want to share it with others, whatever it may be.

I've already mentioned that I wanted my idea to focus on the news events surrounding the demise of Google Reader as well as the potential demise of Google's Feedburner product. I think it was much better for me to pick one of these rather than try to get the message across about both.

You couldn't save Google Reader after it was announced to be shut down, but Feedburner still has some legs (for now) and that's the one I care about the most.

Make it easy to share, and give sharing a purpose (!)

This is possibility the most overused advice when it comes to teaching people how to get ideas to go viral but it is still relevant. Of course, you can't just stick social media buttons onto a site and expect something to instantly spread across the social stratosphere (that's what we're calling it these days, right?).

Not only did I put sharing buttons on my site, but I also decided to actually give people the text they could use on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Going back to my earlier point about purpose, people had to believe that they would actually get a response and that sharing would do something productive. Whether that's positioning themselves as someone who is intelligent and in on the latest news (whether it's movies, the next viral video, etc.) or, like me, they wanted to rally behind a cause.

One of my good blogger friends actually tweeted the story without knowing about it.

Thanks Steve!

Execute properly

Though I had no real idea if the Feedburner minisite would actually take off, it was worth a try. I wasn't actually promoting anything besides having a case study for the book I was writing, but even still, I wanted to at least make it look semi-professional and not just like a random blog post on a website.

I thought about not only the big detailsâ€"like why Feedburner might actually shut downâ€"but also the small details, like having an upside-down Feedburner logo as the website favicon. I also decided to take a comic strip style approach and use my limited skills in Photoshop to put together something hopefully, as least slightly, humorous.

There was even a comment that said I ripped off the style of the Oatmeal which I'll take as a compliment judging by Matt's huge success after working here at Moz.

Finally, I also enlisted the help of three others to throw in the ever-important cat pictures with the hashtag #pleasedontkillfeedburner. Thanks to Ramsay and Chris for kindly sharing pictures of their cats which I could also use in the comic.

To put together the theme of the site, I simply headed over to my usual design haunt, ThemeForest, and picked up a template. Then I got to work in Photoshop without caring too much for standards or usability. I viewed the project as time-sensitive, so I wanted to get something up as quickly as possible.

Just be careful which font you use...

Funny; that's not even Comic Sans.

The end result

Just to clarify, the only piece of promotion I did for this was around two personal tweets and I emailed no more than six people about the idea. If you consider that a tweet of mine would only get a few dozen clicks, I was quite surprised by what happened when I woke up the next day: The site made the homepage of Hacker News.

Here are the stats for the first week of the site going live:

To give even more transparency, here's a list of some of the sources which sent traffic. Notice that a lot of the tweets sent a surprising amount of people to the page:

There are a lot more but that screenshot was getting long enough as it is. Here are a few other results from this campaign:

The site has between 300-500 backlinks (!) depending on which link checker you use
The domain is now a PR 4
It has been shared on social media over 1,400 times
The entire website was built in less than one day

Some people might argue that I'm fortunate that the article went viral on Hacker News (I didn't submit it, and don't know who did). If you're one of those people, well I'll just say that I'm also "fortunate" to have the idea for the site, to register the domain, to contact people for cat photos, to spend a day in Photoshop and to actually execute my idea.

Of course, not everything you create with the idea of 'going viral' is going to be a hit. But if you keep focusing on creating content that follows this outline (relevant to hot topics, gives people a reason to share, execute the idea properly) then no doubt that something you create is going to get a lot of attention.

Even with this campaign there were a few mistakes I made:

The site looks terrible on mobile devices. Seriously, don't bother opening it in your iPad
I lost the account access to the email used in the graphic so I have no idea if Google responded after the initial buzz (duh!)
Ideally this would have been a campaign I could have linked to other web properties after the traffic burst subsided

Though in recent months I've been a very public advocate on the ViperChill blog that, quite simply, quality content doesn't rank as well as it should, I still believe in it. Every time I've showed terrible websites ranking highly in Google, I've always stated that I would love for the opposite to be the case.

If you would like to hear more about this topic (I wrote 20,000+ words for the book before scrapping the idea) then please let me know in the comments, and I'll see what I can do. There is a lot more to cover, but hopefully this post gave you a bit of inspiration about taking action on those random ideas I'm sure you have from time to time.

As a final plug, I've actually just started a brand new niche site case study (introduction post here) where 3 people will be tackling the same niche from three different angles. One of us is using only SEO, I'm relying purely on creating great content and the third contributor is a total beginner to creating sites who has all options available to him.

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!

Seth's Blog : Victims of the Hollywood Paradox

Victims of the Hollywood Paradox

The studios spend ever more on the blockbusters they make because that demonstrates their power and pays everyone in the chain more money, which creates more (apparent) power for those in charge.

But since they pay so much, they have no choice, they think, but to say, “This must work!” So they polish off the edges, follow the widely-known secret formula and create banality. No glory, it seems, with guts.

Every meeting is about avoiding coming anywhere near the sentence, "this might not work," and instead giving ammunition to the groupthink belief that this must work.

And as soon as you do that, you’ve guaranteed it won’t.

Every bestseller is a surprise bestseller, and in fact, nobody knows anything.

(And of course, it's not just movies, is it?)

• Email to a friend •

marți, 5 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Chris Christie Wins Reelection in Landslide; Election Exit Poll Statistics; Reflections on Christie's Win
In Praise of Pronounced Unhappiness
Non-Manufacturing ISM Beats Expectations Sending Bond Yields Higher

Chris Christie Wins Reelection in Landslide; Election Exit Poll Statistics; Reflections on Christie's Win

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 06:36 PM PST

The New York Times reports Chris Christie Re-elected Governor of New Jersey.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey won re-election by a crushing margin on Tuesday, a victory that vaulted him to the front ranks of Republican presidential contenders and made him his party's foremost proponent of pragmatism over ideology.

In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by over 700,000, Mr. Christie won decisively, making impressive inroads among younger voters, blacks, Hispanics and women — groups that Republicans nationally have struggled to attract.

The governor prevailed, according to exit polls, despite holding positions contrary to those of many New Jersey voters on many issues, including same-sex marriage, abortion rights and the minimum wage, and despite an economic recovery that has trailed the rest of the country. But he attracted a broad coalition by campaigning as a decisive, even swaggering, leader who could reach across the aisle to solve problems, unlike the bickering politicians of Washington.

Republicans panicked by the surge in activist support for the rabble-rousing Tea Party wing represented by Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were cheered by Mr. Christie's success, saying they hope the party will learn not only from the size of Mr. Christie's margin over Barbara Buono, a Democratic state senator, but also from the makeup of his support.

"We'll be led back by our governors, and Chris Christie is now at the forefront of that resurgence," said Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. "He's proved that a conservative Republican can get votes from Hispanics and African-Americans, that a pro-life governor can get votes from women. This means that those voters are available to us, that we're not shut out demographically or geographically — that it's worth the effort."

His national profile will only increase later this month as he takes over as head of the Republican Governors Association. That position gives him sway over which state races the party chooses to spend money on, allowing him to rack up favors with other Republican politicians and create relationships with local leaders in key presidential states.

On Tuesday morning, well before polls closed on his re-election, Mr. Christie said he would be appearing frequently in "places like Ohio and Michigan and Florida," all states with incumbent Republican governors up for re-election next year, and he offered that he was also willing to help Republican incumbents in Iowa and South Carolina, states that appear early on the presidential campaign calendar.

Democrats in New Jersey who supported his re-election would not go so far as to say they would support him for president. Still, even they praised his potential for his party.

"For the sake of the nation, somebody needs to rebuke the crazies," said former Gov. Jim McGreevey, a Democrat who now works with prisoner re-entry and praises Mr. Christie's commitment to rehabilitation programs. "This is the party of Lincoln, of Eisenhower, this is one of the great political parties in the history of democracy. What Christie has done speaks to the notion that Republicans can win if there is an adherence to principle that is guided by a healthy pragmatism."

Exit Polls

The NYT has some interesting exit polls. I put them in table form.

Gender	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
Male 46% of voters	61%	+8 pct. pts.	37%	-3 pct. pts.
Female 54%	55%	+10 pct. pts.	43%	-7 pct. pts.
Race and Ethnicity	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
White 72% of voters	68%	+9 pct. pts.	31%	-3 pct. pts.
Black 15%	20%	+11 pct. pts.	79%	-9 pct. pts.
Hispanic 9%	48%	+16 pct. pts.	48%	-17 pct. pts.
Asian 3%	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.
Age	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
18-29 10% of voters	47%	+11 pct. pts.	53%	-4 pct. pts.
30-44 21%	52%	+2 pct. pts.	46%	+2 pct. pts.
45-64 46%	60%	+12 pct. pts.	38%	-8 pct. pts.
65+ 23%	64%	+9 pct. pts.	35%	-5 pct. pts.
Education	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
No H.S. diploma 3% of voters	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.
High school grad 21%	62%	+14 pct. pts.	37%	-9 pct. pts.
Some college 24%	61%	+12 pct. pts.	37%	-7 pct. pts.
College 29%	61%	+7 pct. pts.	37%	-2 pct. pts.
Postgrad 24%	48%	+4 pct. pts.	50%	0 pct. pts.
Religion	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
Protestant 34% of voters	59%	N.A.	40%	N.A.
Catholic 42%	72%	N.A.	27%	N.A.
Jewish 5%	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.
All other 9%	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.
Party	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
Democrat 42% of voters	31%	+23 pct. pts.	67%	-19 pct. pts.
Republican 27%	92%	+1 pct. pts.	7%	+1 pct. pts.
Independent or something else 31%	64%	+4 pct. pts.	33%	+3 pct. pts.
Income	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
Under $50,000 28% of voters	51%	+11 pct. pts.	46%	-9 pct. pts.
$50,000-$99,999 33%	57%	+11 pct. pts.	41%	-6 pct. pts.
$100,000 or more 39%	62%	+7 pct. pts.	36%	-4 pct. pts.
Ideology	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
Liberal 26% of voters	29%	+20 pct. pts.	68%	-15 pct. pts.
Moderate 49%	60%	+12 pct. pts.	39%	-6 pct. pts.
Conservative 25%	85%	+3 pct. pts.	14%	-1 pct. pts.
Sex, Race and Ethnicity	Chris Christie		Barbara Buono
	Share of vote	Change from 2009	Share of vote	Change from 2009
White men 34%	69%	+6 pct. pts.	29%	0 pct. pts.
White women 38%	67%	+11 pct. pts.	32%	-6 pct. pts.
Black men 6%	23%	+12 pct. pts.	77%	-8 pct. pts.
Black women 9%	18%	+11 pct. pts.	80%	-10 pct. pts.
Hispanic men 4%	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.
Hispanic women 5%	42%	+14 pct. pts.	54%	-16 pct. pts.
All other races 4%	47%	N.A.	46%	N.A.

Those exit poll results are from 7:57 p.m. E.S.T. Please check back in with the New York Times for updated returns.

Reflections on Christie's Win

Without a doubt Christie is now a national frontrunner for the 2016 election.

Is that a good thing?

Here is my answer in context. Readers know I preferred Christie over Mitt Romney in 2012. It was a case of the unknown vs. the known. Romney wanted a war with Iran and a trade war with China. That coupled with his stance on abortion made him unelectable.

Why?
Independents would not and did not vote for him.

Where Christie stands on unions is known and welcome. However, we still do not know much else about Christie.

Where does he stand on war-mongering, military spending in general, security, Obamacare, the NSA, the Fed, and trade policy?

Those are all unknowns.

But we do know his strong right to life message is not going to play well with most pro-choice independents, including this one. Republicans really need to throw that issue into the trashcan where it belongs. It can (and did) contribute to national election defeats.

Here's the deal. Voters, in general, can live with some restrictions on abortion. A huge majority cannot accept the viewpoint that abortion should be totally outlawed.

Republicans would be smart to adopt a middle of the road approach, as opposed to the religious-wrong approach of overturning Rove vs. Wade.

Similarly (right, wrong, or otherwise), the majority of Americans are in favor of "some" gun control measures. I can debate this form either side. But debate is pointless. The simple fact of the matter is that Republicans do not do themselves any favors by nominating extreme candidates on these issues.

In contrast to Christie, we know where Rand Paul stands on all of those issues. And while I do not agree with Paul on everything, this time I will take the known (Rand Paul) as opposed to the unknown (Chris Christie).

Given they seem to agree on my one key dispute with Paul, my position is highly unlikely to change. Still, Republicans can do far worse than Christie.

Mitt Romney was a complete disaster. Hopefully the Republican leadership learned a lesson. If they didn't, and if Republicans nominate another extreme right basket-case, Republicans can expect to lose the election to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Don't blame me, I am only the messenger.

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

In Praise of Pronounced Unhappiness

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 12:28 PM PST

Today, I sing in glorious praise of unhappiness. Lest you think I lost my mind, first consider an Op-Ed in The Hill by life-long friend David Wise. He writes on Ending the Budget Wars.

For the second time in two years the U.S. has stepped back from the precipice of default.

In January, absent agreement to the contrary, a second sequestration will go in effect and on February 7, 2014 the nation would face yet another debt ceiling crisis. The inability of the so-called supercommittee to reach a compromise when given a similar task in 2011 is enough reason for pessimism.

A long-term solution requires that no one come into the talks with preconditions and that everything be on the table. One sign that a successful accord has been reached is that no one walk away from the table completely happy. It is necessary. The time has come.

Common and Uncommon Ground

I am not in complete agreement with everything my life-long friend says. For starters, I disagree with his stance that a default would have been catastrophic.

That's a moot point however, and cannot be proven either way because the precipice was essentially an illusion. We may have been on the edge, but there was approximately a zero percent chance of falling off.

Those small differences aside, I wholeheartedly agree with the three key ideas in Wise's article.

We need to fix the budget problem
Everything should be on the table
No one should walk away completely happy

Compromise Misery Needed

In regards to point number 3, Wise did not go far enough. I propose what's needed is for Democrats and Republicans alike to both walk away from the table, not only unhappy, but downright miserable. Here are my proposals for mutual misery.

Democrat Misery

Huge reductions in entitlement spending
End collective bargaining of public unions
Scrap Davis Bacon and all prevailing wage laws
Increase Social Security Retirement Age
Food Stamp Reform along the lines I suggested in Treasury Secretary Pleads for Higher Taxes, More Government Spending, Big Farm Bill, No Cuts in Food Stamps
Stop disability fraud&

In return for the above much needed Democrat misery, I would be willing to accept a modest increase in taxes. Of course that would make Republicans unhappy. But unhappiness is not what we need, we need outright misery as follows.

Republican Misery

Modest tax hikes
Huge decreases in military spending
All US troops on foreign soil come home within three years
Huge reductions in military spending

Some issues are non-partisan. For example food crop supports are promoted by farm-state Republicans and Democrats. Drug imports fall along similar lines. Thus we need to spread the misery.

Non-Partisan Misery

Elimination of all tariffs
Elimination of all crop supports
Drug imports from Canada and foreign countries

Food Stamp Misery

To get people off welfare and on to workfare, we need to reduce the incentives to collect welfare. This is what I suggested earlier.

Prohibit food stamp purchases of potato chips, snacks, soft drinks, candy, pizza, frozen foods of any kind except juice.
Limit food stamp users to generic (store brand vs. name brand) dried beans, rice, peanut butter, pasta, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, frozen (not bottled) juice, canned vegetables, canned soup, soda crackers, poultry, ground beef, bread, cheese, powdered milk, eggs, margarine, and general baking goods (flour, sugar, spices).
Calculate a healthy diet based on current prices, number in the family, ages of recipients, and base food stamps allotments on that diet.
In the interest of health and cleanliness, expand the food stamp program to include generic soap and laundry products.

My proposal would do something positive for food stamp recipients' health and the budget.

And what better way to make people miserable than to make them eat healthy? Hopefully, miserable enough to seek a job.

I am open to still more misery, as much as it takes, on each side, to balance the budget and lay a foundation for growth.

Make All the Politicians and Lobbyists Miserable

I nearly missed this key point: We need to make all of the politicians, public union advocates, and lobbyists on both sides of the aisle completely miserable. The way to do that is institute serious campaign finance reform.

Vote buying and political pandering on both sides of the aisle are key reasons we are in this fiscal mess in the first place.

To date, the word "compromise" means both sides get all the spending they want, deficit be damned. Worse yet, politicians are all too happy to let lobbyists write the legislation in return for donations. The result is the worst legislation money can buy.

Footnote

I revised the ending paragraphs with some small changes regarding food stamps, and more importantly to include campaign finance reform, vote buying, and the current meaning of compromise.

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

Non-Manufacturing ISM Beats Expectations Sending Bond Yields Higher

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 10:46 AM PST

The October 2013 Non-Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®, released today, came in at 55.4.

This was above the bloomberg consensus estimate of 54.5

ISM at a Glance

Non-Manufacturing							Manufacturing
Index	Oct	Sep	Percentage Point Change	Direction	Rate of Change	Trend in Months	Oct	Sep	Percentage Point Change
NMI™/PMI™	55.4	55.4	+1.0	Growing	Faster	46	56.4	56.2	+0.2
Business Activity/Production	59.7	55.1	+4.6	Growing	Faster	51	60.8	62.6	-1.8
New Orders	56.8	59.6	-2.8	Growing	Slower	51	60.6	60.5	+0/1
Employment	56.2	52.7	+3.5	Growing	Faster	15	53.2	55.4	-2.2
Supplier Deliveries	49.0	50.0	-1.0	Faster	From Unchanged	1	54.7	52.6	+2.1
Inventories	54.5	54.5	+0.0	Growing	Same	9	52.5	50.0	+2.5
Prices	56.1	57.2	-1.1	Increasing	Slower	49	55.5	56.5	-1.0
Backlog of Orders	50.0	50.5	-0.5	Unchanged	From Growing	1	51.5	49.5	+2.0
New Export Orders	53.0	57.5	-4.5	Growing	Slower	3	57.0	52.0	+5.0
Imports	55.0	51.5	+3.5	Growing	Faster	5	55.5	55.0	+0.5
Inventory Sentiment	62.5	62.0	+0.5	Too High	Faster	197	N/A	NA	N/A
Customers' Inventories	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	47	43.0	+4.0

Treasury Yields Rise

Treasury yields are up a bit in response to the numbers.
Here are a couple of charts.

$TNX: 10-Year Yield

Yield: 2.653%
+0.51 Percentage Points

$TYX: 30-Year Yield

Yield: 3.737%
+0.46 Percentage Points

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

Damn Cool Pics

Return of the LEGO Zombies: The Plane Crash
8 Remarkable Artists Who Create Art with Nails
Meanwhile in India…
Beautiful Cabin in the Woods Built for $500
$48m Las Vegas Mansion with Its Own Airport

Return of the LEGO Zombies: The Plane Crash

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 02:26 PM PST

It's that time of year again, so to celebrate Halloween 2013 our creative team dug out the LEGO and have produced the second scene in our LEGO Zombie series; the plane crash:

View Entire List >>

8 Remarkable Artists Who Create Art with Nails

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 02:22 PM PST

If you thought nail art was all about talon-based diamanté and acrylic, take a look at these metallic masterpieces. Innovative artists and designers have used the humble household nail to make these remarkable visual creations. Some have been hammered by hand, some have been made using a trusty nail gun. Either way, we can't take our eyes off these stunners. The overall effect is magnificent, but the work and vision that has gone into them is simply spellbinding.

Traditional Chinese Art

Hangman

Big Bird

View Entire List >>

Meanwhile in India…

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 12:11 PM PST

Beautiful Cabin in the Woods Built for $500

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 11:37 AM PST

Photographer Nick Olson and designer Lilah Horwitz have built their own cabin in the woods from discarded windows, and it's located in the mountains of West Virginia. Most of the building materials were salvaged from a nearby abandoned barn, allowing them to construct the incredible glass cabin on a budget of $500.

$48m Las Vegas Mansion with Its Own Airport

Posted: 05 Nov 2013 11:23 AM PST

This is the mansion of 'King of Las Vegas' Wayne Newton that is up for sale. The 40-acre mansion has a car museum, personal zoo, 'equestrian pool' and jet with its own terminal. The outrageously massive property, which is located in Las Vegas, is on sale for $48million. More pics after the cut...