Central Perk

luni, 17 ianuarie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 12:32 PM PST

Using link data, although it can never be perfectly accurate, allows you to take a more scientific approach to your SEO strategies. How can we leverage link data for actionable insights? I recently wrote a post breaking down the Mormon SEO strategy, which is a very well thought out plan of action.. There seemed to be a lot of interest in the tools I used and the insights they provided. It's impossible to cover all scenarios, but my hope is to show how this data can be used.

Tools Used

Excel
SEOmoz API / Open Site Explorer
Free Version of Majestic SEO
Ninja Skills (prerequisite of working at Distilled)

For most of this post, I’m going to look at the SERPS for "nashville real estate", a competitive result from my hometown.

The Data Set

To start, I pulled a wide range of link based metrics from the Top 10.

Link Data

Caveats: Your may want to remove large domains and exact match domains from your analysis. Large domains with solid brands may just add noise to your analysis. Exact match domains may be getting a substantial boost and may skew your analysis as well. I have removed both Trulia and Yahoo Real Estate from this set.

Data

PA – Page Authority, metric from SEOmoz
P LRD – Number of Linking Root Domains to the PAGE
DA – Domain Authority, metric from SEOmoz
R LRD - Number of Linking Root Domains to the DOMAIN
Links – Raw number of links (SEOmoz data)
Deep Links - % of root domains that link to content that isn’t home page
mR – mozRank, SEOmoz’s metric similar to PageRank
DmR – Domain mozRank, similar to mR, but on a DOMAIN level
DmT – Domain mozTrust, SEOmoz metric to measure TrustRank
EA LRD – Number of Linking Root Domains using EXACT match anchor text
EA % - Percentage of anchors with EXACT match anchor

All of this information was acquired from SEOmoz’s data set. Items like deep links %, exact match linking root domains, and percent of anchors with exact match anchor were all obtained with some basic analysis. Now that we have our first data pull, we can dig in and talk about what these mean.

Breakdown the Top 10

If my goal is to break into the top 10, I’ll line my site’s metrics up against the trending of the top 10 and their averages. This will identify areas where I’m over- or under-performing. In addition to comparing against the average, I can look at the distribution of metrics across the top 10. I’ll throw out a few examples in this niche that jump out. The factors I look into may depend on the data pulled for a niche.

Link Root Domains

linking root domains

As we know, the number of linking root domains correlates well with rankings. This why in my link builder tips post I suggested getting a link, or just a few, and moving on from a domain. The majority of the sites in this niche sit around 100 to 200 unique linking domains. This graph gives you a gauge for breaking into the top 10 results. However, the top two results have pulled away from the rest with around 800 unique linking domains, so ranking number one may be difficult.

Exact Match Anchor Linking Root Domains

Exact Match Linking Root Domain

This metric was measured by looking at the Anchor Text Distribution tab on Open Site Explorer. I was a bit surprised by the results. The number one site has managed to receive links from 544 domains with the exact anchor text “Nashville Real Estate.” Regardless of how they managed to do so, this makes it a highly competitive term to rank number one for. However, it also shows that the majority of the Top 10 do not have a large number of domains linking with well-optimized links for this phrase. This graph, and the one before, shows opportunity exists for this keyword between result 3 and 10. This is why it’s important to note the distribution as well as the average.

Percent of Anchors with Exact Match Domains

Anchor Exact Match

Looking at the percentage of anchors using this exact match phrase can provide some interesting insights. First, the top ranking sites are excessively optimizing their link’s anchor text. Second, Google is allowing this significant optimization. Even the third result has nearly 30% of their links using this anchor text. Your link building strategy here could be aggressive without sticking out. Additionally, these sites are overly focused on one golden phrase. I’d have to dig deeper, but this may be indicative of several open opportunities in mid to longtail phrases. I’d likely take advantage of this short-sighted targeting strategy by first focusing on picking up the terms they’re ignoring.

Strategy

To rank well in this niche, you’re going to need a large number of links from a diverse set of domains. Google seems to be forgiving of over optimization and has allowed aggressive link building. The first ranked site appears to sufficiently answer the query, so I don't think there is a reason to not allow it. Most of these sites do not have significant content strategies pulling links to subpages and most do not engage heavily in social media. Although an aggressive strategy would not stick out in this market, I'd caution again the aggressiveness of having almost 70% of your link profile with the same anchor text. This type of optimization is dangerous, limiting and ignores many other phrases.

Link Profiling

Dr. Pete wrote a great post on link profiling, which allows you to see the distribution of inbound links to a domain. This will give you insights on the quality of the links a site has acquired. I also use this when reporting the links I’ve built to my clients to visually demonstrate the distribution of links I've acquired. I’m going to briefly show an example of this profiling using Page Authority, but I repeat this with metrics such as Domain Authority, mR, DmR, and DmT. Disparities in these distributions can draw your attention to items you might not have considered.

Radar Graphs

Not a new tool, but I like the radar graphs in SEOmoz Labs. These are great for demonstrating link analysis or providing a quick audit on a phone call or email. Let’s say the #12 ranked site nashvillebuyers.com called up and quickly wanted to know what it’d take to break into the Top 5. This quickly shows they're falling short on several significant ranking factors. This could also show that they’re beating other sites in all metrics. If this is the case, I might start looking at other factors like anchor text, anchor text distribution, link quality, and on-site targeting.

Keyword Tag Cloud

A tag cloud of anchor text is a quick way to visualize the distribution of keyword anchors and pull out the terms being targeted. The most interesting anchor cloud I’ve seen so far is that of the Mormon LDS church.

To get this, I pulled the max number of links from the SEOmoz API, saved the list of anchors to a text file, and uploaded them to Tagxedo. Doing this quickly highlights major targeted terms and visually demonstrates the distribution of anchor text.

Broken Links

Another quick check that can bring you big wins is checking sites for 404 pages by looking at Open Site Explorer’s Top Pages tab. (Hopefully this isn't new to you guys, but worth mentioning.)

Top Pages on Open Site Explorer

Reasons to Find Broken Links

Great way to start a relationship with a webmaster: let them know, people like to reciprocate.
Contact the people who are linking to them and get that link.
Generate content ideas based off that type of content that has acquired links before.
Recreate this content and get websites to switch the link.

Link Growth / Velocity

One more check I like to make is link growth rate. Aaron Wall wrote an article a while back about link velocity and the role link growth rates has on your link profile. MajesticSEO provides these graphs up for free and they can provide some interesting feedback. They provide link discovery and cumulative link graphs.

MajesticSEO

What we might be seeing here are a few strong pushes early on, followed by very little promotion in early 2007. At the start of 2008, the link building ramped up and remained constant. This is indicative of regular on-going link building, which is no surprise considering the optimization of these efforts. It’s also important to note that it ramped up even more during the last half of 2010. If this was your competitor’s profile, this is valuable information to have. This link growth rate makes this site even more competitive.

Now a profile like this is a bit more expected. They seem to have had a strong push at one time, but the link acquisition has faded over time. They have periods of spiky growth and have had minimal link growth in the last part of 2010.. This is a good sign if you’re looking to outrank this site.

Chopping Up The Link Export

One of the last few questions left is how and where are they getting these links. How can you chop up their link export to get actionable insights and link prospects? Let me just cover a few quick ideas.

Export CSV from Open Site Explorer, open it in Excel.

Filters & Sorts

Filter Sites with Exact Match AND Phrase Match Anchor
Filter by Branded Anchors and People's Names
Sort by PA to get strongest PAGES
Sort by DA to get strongest DOMAINS

Questions to Ask

What content is attracting these links?
What types of sites are these links from?
Are they manually building these links? (directories, articles, guest blogging)
Do they appear to be paid?
What's the IP address and WHOIS information on anything fishy?
What strategy is working here? Or is there even a strategy?
Where are they getting the branded and name links?
What communities are they participating in?

Perform a search against page title and URL

How many links come from pages about same keyword?
How many links include mentions like directory, links, resource, article, forum, etc?

Export into Google Custom Search

Yahoo use to allow you to perform search queries against a link profile's content. However, with the death of the Yahoo! linkdomain, this is not longer possible. Luckily, you can use Open Site Explorer and GCSE to do the same thing.

Search Ideas

Sponsorships queries
Paid link footprints
Blogging footprints
Person’s name
Brand name
Forum footprints
Embed footprints

There a lot of different queries you can run, these may depend on what information you’re looking to get.

Although this is not an exhaustive look at analysis techniques, I hope it helps give insights into how link data can be used to create a strategy or understand your competition's. Feel free to find me on Twitter if you ever want to chat more about link analysis.

Learn More:

If you’d like to learn more about link building, we’re hosting two Linkbuilding Seminars in London and New Orleans this year.

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Honoring Dr. King

Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, Jan. 17, 2011

Honoring Dr. King

Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Find opportunities in your community to honor Dr. King and mark the 25th anniversary of the holiday by volunteering with a service project near you.

Learn more.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia (hidden behind other parishioners) sing during church services at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : Cashing the check

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Cashing the check

A check in your wallet does you very little good. It represents opportunity, sure, but not action.

Most of us are carrying around a check, an opportunity to make an impact, to do the work we're capapble of, to ship the art that would make a difference.

No, the world isn't fair, and most people don't get all the chances they deserve. There are barriers due to income, to race, to social standing and to education, and they are inexcusable and must fall. But the check remains, now more than ever. The opportunity to step up and to fail (and then to fail again, and to fail again) and to continue failing until we succeed is greater now than it has ever been.

As Martin Luther King Junior spoke about a half a lifetime ago,

"We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late."

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duminică, 16 ianuarie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Shanghai Prepares for Property Tax to Curb ‘Speculative’ Buying; China Addresses Symptom NOT Problem
MP3 of My WLS AM Saturday Evening Session on Quinn and Illinois Taxes
Baby Steps or Simply Mush from Christina Romer Regarding "What Obama Should Say About the Deficit"

Shanghai Prepares for Property Tax to Curb ‘Speculative’ Buying; China Addresses Symptom NOT Problem

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 06:08 PM PST

China's problem is rampant growth in money supply. Instead of curbing the problem, China prepares to address the symptoms, city by city it appears.

Please consider Shanghai Prepares for Property Tax to Curb 'Speculative' Buying

Shanghai, China's financial center, will this year prepare for a trial property tax, becoming one of the first cities in the nation to introduce the measure aimed at curbing "speculative" investment.

Mayor Han Zheng announced the move in a speech to the Municipal People's Congress yesterday, without giving details of how much the tax would be or when it would be implemented. Shanghai and southwestern Chongqing are the two cities that will begin trials of a property tax, according to a Jan. 10 report by Nomura Holdings Inc., which expects China to selectively introduce a tax rate of about 0.8 percent.

"We will step up macro-control measures, prioritize the supply of non-luxury residential units to be owned and occupied by ordinary citizens, and prepare for the trial reform on property tax as required by the central government," Han said.

China has pledged to speed up property tax trials to rein in surging prices that have made housing too expensive for an increasing proportion of the population. Premier Wen Jiabao said on Dec. 26 that measures control housing costs weren't well implemented and that he would introduce more policies to crack down on speculation. China has tightened rules on down payments, suspended mortgages for third homes last year.

Shanghai will begin building 220,000 units of subsidized housing as it pushes plans to create affordable homes, Han said in a report to the congress in Shanghai. The municipality aims to add 1 million units of subsidized housing from this year to 2015, he said.

Beijing won't join the property tax trial, the Beijing News reported today, citing Deputy Mayor Ji Lin. The Chinese capital will try to finish 100,000 units of subsidized housing this year, acting "firmly" to curb rising property prices, Xinhua said, citing Mayor Guo Jinlong.

Home prices in Shanghai jumped 26.1 percent in 2010 and those in Chongqing surged 29.4 percent, according to Soufun Holdings Ltd., the country's biggest real estate website owner.

Unworkable Measures

1. Offering subsidies to control housing prices adds to the demand for houses.

2. Taxing houses to curb prices is complete silliness if you are just going to turn around and subsidize the tax.

3. Even without the subsidy, the problem is not prices. Rapidly rising home prices are a symptom of too much credit.

In case you missed it, please see Chinese Bank Lending Spree Continues; $75 Billion New Loans First Week in January Alone; Inflation Gone Amuck

China's official inflation is 5%. Unofficially, estimates are 10% as noted in China's Foreign Exchange Reserves Jump by Record $199 Billion; Cost Push Inflation from China? Don't Count On It!

However, that does not count increases in home prices. It is an enormous mistake to ignore property bubbles, as the US found out, and as China, Australia, Canada, and the UK are going to find out.

Vacant China City Stories

Implosion of the China "Fabric City" Frenzy

10 Signs of Speculative Mania in China

Email from a Chinese on China's Real Estate Bubble

China property bubble will overheat until it implodes. In the meantime, regardless of what China reports on the CPI, inflation remains a huge problem. Once again, those looking for inflation can find it in China, not the US, where consumer credit is contracting.

You cannot fight problems by attacking the symptom. It is tantamount to putting a person in a meat cooler to fight a fever.

In this case, excess credit will go somewhere else. Perhaps more commodity speculation.

Chinese Pig Farmers Speculate In Copper

This story is a little dated as it is from September 17, 2009, but it exemplifies the problem with fighting symptoms. Please consider China's Pig Farmers Amass Copper, Nickel

Pig farmers and other speculators may have amassed more than 50,000 metric tons, Jeremy Goldwyn, who oversees business development in Asia for London-based Sucden, wrote in an e- mailed report after a visit to China. That's about half the level of inventories tallied by the Shanghai Futures Exchange, which stood last week at a two-year high of 97,396 tons.

Sucden's estimate underscores the difficulty analysts face in gauging metals demand in China amid increased speculation by retail investors, whose holdings remain outside the reporting framework undertaken by exchanges. Private investors in China also had as much as 20,000 tons of nickel, Goldwyn wrote.

Also see Pig Farmers are Making Brent Nervous, from November 11, 2009.

Before getting into to the relationship between copper and pork products, I want to draw your attention to what makes me nervous, have a look at these photos from China. They are excerpted from a China Central Television Channel (CCTV) program documenting private speculation and hoarding of metals throughout the country. According to an associate of mine at an Asia-focused hedge fund who was just in China, "It's pervasive; people are piling this stuff up in their backyards."

Michael Pettis on Lending Quotas

Inquiring minds are reading China's lending quota? by Michael Pettis.

It seems to me that if Beijing wants GDP growth in 2011 to come in at the expected 9%, the amount of new investment in China – which is determined in large part by the banking system – is really not something they can decide today. It is going to be whatever it needs to be given developments in household consumption growth and the trade surplus.

This is why I argued a few weeks ago that at whatever level the new loan quota was set, I was not going to think of it as constraining new lending in any way. Either the loan quota would be adjusted (upwards, almost inevitably) or more new lending would occur outside the banks' balance sheets, as it did in 2009 and 2010.

Investment this year I suspect is going to be extremely high, as high as in 2009 and 2010, because it is only with very high levels of investment that we are likely to manage GDP growth rates high enough to keep Beijing happy.

So my guess is that 2011 will be yet another year in this increasingly strained investment-driven party. Chinese GDP growth will continue to be the envy of the world, while those of us who worry about the sustainability and quality of the growth will worry more than ever. The banks will probably rush to expand lending in the first quarter, out of fear that they may be restricted later in the year. And of course we will all be watching the trade account very closely.

On the topic of trade I am going to put on my broken-record hat and say what I have been saying for two years. Forget about momentary thaws, feel-good speeches, and pious posturing. The global trade environment is not about to get better. All of the distortions and strains remain, and the crisis in Europe is putting more pressure than ever on a resolution. ....

China is overheating, it needs to slow the growth of credit. Instead, it is hell-bent on idiotic measures that cannot possibly work. So, China is going to overheat until it implodes.

In the meantime everyone is going gaga over China's growth and growth targets that are not possibly sustainable.

How do we know that? Easy, China's property bubble and inflation problem (massively understated at that), tells us all this "growth" is nothing but malinvestment, quite similar to the "growth" the US saw in its property bubble.

We know how that ended, and it will end the same way in China, Australia, Canada, the UK, and India as well.

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

MP3 of My WLS AM Saturday Evening Session on Quinn and Illinois Taxes

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 04:00 PM PST

Saturday Evening I was on "The Eddie & JoBo Show" WLS 890 AM talking about the Quinn recall and Illinois taxes. I have an MP3 of the session.

Click here to Download and Listen.

The segment is about 14 minutes long and was a lot of fun. Play it to the end. It goes on for about a minute after the stated cutoff. They took one ad-hoc call that's pretty funny.

For more on the Quinn Recall please see

Campaign To Recall Illinois Governor Pat Quinn Is Underway

Business Owners Blast IL Tax Hikes;Quinn's Blatant Lies;Neighboring States Gleeful, Mayor Daley Whines;Escape to Wisconsin; Arrogance,Greed,Corruption

Hello Mayor Daley ... About Your Plan to Poach Business from Oregon and Other States: No Business Owners in Their Right Mind Would Move to Illinois

Please click on the first link in the above list to volunteer help. Also pass a link to this post to your friends and have them do the same.

Illinois Pension Funding Worst In Entire U.S.

To gain an understanding of the sorry state of Illinois pension funds please see Interactive Map of Public Pension Plans; How Badly Underfunded are the Plans in Your State?

Once the map pops up, click on Illinois.

Taxpayers ought to be scared to death by Illinois pension plan funding with governor Quinn at the helm.

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

Baby Steps or Simply Mush from Christina Romer Regarding "What Obama Should Say About the Deficit"

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 01:41 PM PST

Christina Romer is the out-going Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration. She is now member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

She has an Op-Ed economic view in the New York Times, What Obama Should Say About the Deficit.

This year, instead of being on the floor of Congress with the rest of the cabinet, I will be watching on television with the rest of the country. Instead of knowing what is coming, I can write about what I hope the president will say. My hope is that the centerpiece of the speech will be a comprehensive plan for dealing with the long-run budget deficit.

I am not talking about two paragraphs lamenting the problem and vowing to fix it. I am looking for pages and pages of concrete proposals that the administration is ready to fight for. The recommendations of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that the president created are a very good place to start.

The need for such a bold plan is urgent — both politically and economically. Voters made it clear last November that they were fed up with red ink. President Obama should embrace the reality that his re-election may depend on facing up to the budget problem.

The economic need is also pressing. The extreme deficits of the last few years are largely a consequence of the terrible state of the economy and the actions needed to stem the downturn. But even with a strong recovery, under current policy the deficit is projected to be more than 6 percent of gross domestic product in 2020. By 2035, if the twin tsunami of rising health care costs and the retirement of the baby boomers hits with full force, we will be looking at deficits of at least 15 percent of G.D.P.

Such deficits are not sustainable. At some point — likely well before 2035 — investors would revolt and the United States would be unable to borrow. We would become the Argentina of the 21st century.

So far so good. Romer is saying all the right things. That is the Romer we knew and loved. However, watch the article morph into compete mush in a matter of sentences.

She continues...

So what should the president say and do? First, he should make clear that the issue is spending and taxes over the coming decades, not spending in 2011. Republicans in Congress have pledged to cut nonmilitary, non-entitlement spending in 2011 by $100 billion (less if recent reports are correct). Such a step would do nothing to address the fundamental drivers of the budget problem, and would weaken the economy when we are only beginning to recover.

Instead, the president should outline major cuts in spending that would go into effect over the next few decades, and that he wants to sign into law in 2011.

Respected analysts across the ideological spectrum agree that rising health care spending is the biggest source of the frightening long-run deficit projections. That is why the president made cost control central to health reform legislation. He should vow not just to veto a repeal of the legislation, but to fight to strengthen its cost-containment mechanisms.

One important provision of the law was the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which must propose reforms if Medicare spending exceeds the target rate of growth. But the legislation exempted some providers and much government health spending from the board's purview. The president should work to give the board a broader mandate for cost control.

The fiscal commission recommended that military spending — which has risen by more than 50 percent in real terms since 2001 — grow much more slowly in the future. It also proposed thoughtful ways to slow the growth of Social Security spending while protecting the disabled and the poor. And it recommended caps on nonmilitary, non-entitlement spending.

President Obama needs to explain that while these cuts will be painful, there is no way to solve our budget problem without shared sacrifice.

Did you catch that? Romer did not name one cut! Instead she called for ...

Cost-containment mechanisms in healthcare
An Independent Payment Advisory Board, which must propose reforms if Medicare spending exceeds the target rate of growth.
Slower growth in military spending
Thoughtful ways to slow the growth of Social Security spending while protecting the disabled and the poor.
Caps on nonmilitary, non-entitlement spending

Complete Mush

For starters, the Independent Payment Advisory Board would be another totally useless board that will cost taxpayers money because the study would be tossed in the gutter by Congress before anyone even reads it. We know that simply from the title of it (see word #3).

Sadly, Romer tells the President what he needs to do in plain simple English then drafts a proposal for a speech that calls for nothing of the kind.

Since when is a slowing of growth called a "cut". Since when is a "cap" a cut? Worse yet, note the proposed cap is on "nonmilitary, non-entitlement spending".

It is mandatory we CUT military spending and she cannot even mention cap except for piddly nonmilitary, non-entitlement spending.

Budgetary Delusions: Federal Deficit Charts from CBO Budget Projections

Let's review Budgetary Delusions: Federal Deficit Charts from CBO Budget Projections

Can the budget deficit be solved by cutting earmarks? How about cutting 100% of all federal non-defense discretionary expenditures?

US Federal Revenues and Expenditures 2000-2020

click on chart for sharper image

That chart is from reader "David" and is based on budget projections from the CBO. The main point is from now until 2020, we could eliminate 100% of all federal non-defense discretionary expenditures and still run a deficit.

Romer's proposed "cut" is to cap it. Meanwhile check out the following chart.

Entitlement Spending Growth

click on chart for sharper image

Both charts are from David who posts on the No Money No Worries blog.

Mind To Mush

Romer's mind has clearly gone to mush. Let's see if we can figure out when that happened.

In 2007 her mind appeared to be in working order.

I make that claim based on a review of The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes, an article regarding "Exogenous Tax Changes" classified as "any tax change not motivated by a desire to return output growth to normal". Here are a few select quotes.

Exogenous Tax Change Effects

"We find that exogenous tax increases have a large, rapid, and highly statistically significant negative effect on output."
"Among exogenous tax changes, we find that tax increases motivated by a desire to reduce an inherited deficit appear to have much smaller effects on output than tax changes taken for long-run reasons."
"Our baseline specification suggests that an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly three percent."
"We examine how exogenous tax changes affect the components of real GDP, such as consumption, investment, and imports. The most striking finding is that tax increases have a large negative effect on investment."
"The estimated maximum effect of an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP is a fall in output of 3.9 percent."
"The response to a long-run tax increase is negative, large, and highly statistically significant. In contrast, the response to a deficit-driven tax increase is positive, though not significant."
"For all legislated tax changes, controlling for spending has a larger effect."

Romer's Conclusion

Our baseline specification suggests that an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly three percent. Our many robustness checks for the most part point to a slightly smaller decline, but one that is still well over two percent. Second, these estimated effects are substantially larger than those obtained using broader measures of tax changes, such as the change in cyclically adjusted revenues or all legislated tax changes. This suggests that failing to account for the reasons for tax changes can lead to substantially biased estimates of the macroeconomic effects of fiscal actions. Third, investment falls sharply in response to exogenous tax increases. Indeed, the strong response of investment helps to explain why the output consequences of tax changes are so large. Fourth, the output effects of tax changes are highly persistent. The behavior of inflation and unemployment suggests that this persistence reflects long-lasting departures of output from its flexible-price level, not large effects of tax changes on the flexible-price level of output.

Romer on the Unemployment Rate

Please consider Figure 1 from The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan by Christina Romer, January, 9, 2009.

As Figure 1 shows, even with the large prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.

Mind Mush Disease

Romer's mind appears to have turned to mush sometime slightly before or slightly after she was appointed as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Either way, we can see that Romer's mind is still mush after she left that position. Proof if the New York Times column she just wrote.

Then again, it's fair to point out she is now member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Perhaps that explains the continued progression of MMD "Mind Mush Disease".

Regardless, somehow, somewhere along the way, she started thinking that slowing growth was the same thing as a cut. Somehow, somewhere along the way, she started thinking that "capping" nonmilitary, non-entitlement spending" would make a difference.

For the sake of macroeconomists everywhere, we must answer the crucial question "Did Romer's mind turn to mush slightly before she was appointed (explaining why she was appointed), or did her mind turn to mush after she was appointed?

Either way, the safe thing for economists to do is refuse such appointments. Then again, if all economists acted on that simple principle, only those whose minds are already mush would accept such appointments.

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

Seth's Blog : Self-destructive instructions

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Self-destructive instructions

If you ever have to say 'lighten up' to someone, you've failed twice. The first time, when you misjudged an interaction and the other person reacted in a way you're unhappy with, and the second time, when you issue this instruction, one that is guaranteed to evoke precisely the opposite reaction you're intending.

I'll add "I was joking," to this list, because it's an incredibly lame excuse for a failed interaction.

One more: Raising your voice while you say, "You're just going to have to calm down!" (And I'll add librarians yelling at kids to be quiet...)

It's completely valid to come to the conclusion that someone else can't be a worthy audience, conversation partner or otherwise interact with you. You can quietly say to yourself, "this guy is a stiff, I'm never going to be able to please him." But the minute you throw back instructions designed to 'cure' the other person, I fear you're going to get precisely the opposite of what you were hoping for.

(Generally speaking, the word "oh" is so neutral, it's a helpful go to pause while you wait for things to calm down.)

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luni, 17 ianuarie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Tools Used

The Data Set

Data

Breakdown the Top 10

Link Profiling

Radar Graphs

Top Content

Keyword Tag Cloud

Broken Links

Link Growth / Velocity

Chopping Up The Link Export

Filters & Sorts

Perform a search against page title and URL

Export into Google Custom Search

Honoring Dr. King

Seth's Blog : Cashing the check

Cashing the check

More Recent Articles

duminică, 16 ianuarie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : Self-destructive instructions

Self-destructive instructions

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 17 ianuarie 2011

Tools Used

The Data Set

Data

Breakdown the Top 10

Link Profiling

Radar Graphs

Top Content

Keyword Tag Cloud

Broken Links

Link Growth / Velocity

Chopping Up The Link Export

Filters & Sorts

Perform a search against page title and URL

Export into Google Custom Search

More Recent Articles

duminică, 16 ianuarie 2011

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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