Central Perk

vineri, 29 iunie 2012

Getting Started with Guest Posting - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 08:05 PM PDT

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, I am going to be walking through how to get started guest blogging. There are plenty of articles all over the web that go into the finer details of guest blogging, but let's step back for a second and really talk about how to get started.

From getting into the guest blogging mindset to building up your list of guest blogging opportunities, we'll cover this topic from a top down approach.

Happy Friday everyone! Please leave your own ideas and advice in the comments below too.

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Eric Enge with Stone Temple Consulting. I'm here at SEOmoz to do a Whiteboard Friday today. We're a 25 person online marketing company that does consulting services for various people through the industry. What I actually want to talk about is how you get started with guest posting. There's a lot that goes into it, and there have been some great articles on SEOmoz that really get into the details of some of the aspects of it. But I want to step back and take you from the top down to help you get started.

The first thing I want you to think about is the mindset. The mindset is really important. There's a lot of stuff out there, guest blogging services that offer you all kinds of "sounds almost too good to be true" type options. The reality is, for the most part, they are too good to be true. Done well and done right, this is hard work, but it can bring really good returns. What I'm going to do today, I'm really going to focus on the high-
end approach to guest posting and how you get posts that are really brand building in nature. So let's dig in a little bit further.

The first thing I want you to do is I want you to tap into your team knowledge. Get your key team members together. Get them in a conference room. Get them brainstorming. Where are the places you'd love to be covered in an article? Great place to start, because after all, some of them it might be possible.

Once you have that kind of list in your mind, the next thing to do is to actually go check and see if they take posts. They may or may not have a policy on their site. If they do, that's a great thing to look for and can be very helpful. But sometimes they take guest posts without actually ever having been quite so overt about it. You can basically take this query here, site:targetdomain.com, whatever it is, and then put "guest post" or
"guest contributor" or "guest author." You can try different phases, and see whether or not they've ever taken those kinds of guest contributions in the past. Great place to start. Hopefully that gets you off to a good start.

If that's not enough, you can actually go to next step, which is you can try some industry search terms. You can try things like, let's say you're in the Tupperware business. Tupperware and then guest post and you search on that in Google. That can be very helpful in potentially bringing targets up.

These kinds of queries tend to be very noisy. You can actually do the same thing with Twitter by the way. There is a tool that somebody posted up on SEOmoz recently which is good at this. But it does tend to be very noisy. You'll have to sift through a lot of stuff to find targets that you'll want to deal with, but it still is worthwhile to get started if you have to go that way.

The point of all this is you're looking for initial targets. Where the big win really comes in is when you start finding other prominent people in your industry space who are doing guest posts, because then you can follow their trails and see all the things they're doing. That's really the next step here that I want to lead you to.

Once you've found authors, first of all you'll want to assess their prominence, because there are probably going to be a lot of spammy operators out there in your space that are doing guest posts, and you really don't want to follow their trails and see everywhere they've posted because you're going to get in the same kind of trouble that they're eventually going to be in. But you can see where these authors have guest posted by taking the author name in double quotes, and then put "guest post" or "guest author" or "guest contributor," those various flavors. You can then see all the places where these people have posted in the past. Wonderful way to get a long list of targets and really get your campaign off to a powerful start. To me this is really the big payoff that you're looking for in terms of developing a good target list.

Once you have this good target list, the next thing you want to do is you want to evaluate the target quality. You want to start thinking about: Are these sites where we want to be seen? Certainly if one of your prominent competitors or a prominent pundit in the industry writes on that site, that's a very good sign. Do they have a good readership? Is there a lot of social activity that happens from what they do at the site?

Also the types of links allowed. It used to be when people did guest posts, it was all about those free, in context links with rich anchor text. I am telling you that strategy, which may still work for some people, is really a Titanic looking for an iceberg. So you really want to focus on how you find targets which are actually a little more restrictive. It's actually good if they allow outbound links in the body of the article. But if they're allowing you to stuff anchor text links to yourself in the body of the article, that's actually not good for you. The main thing you should expect when you're working with the right kinds of targets for guest posting is you're going to be getting attribution, byline level links, and that actually is the safest place to be in the long term for guest posting. It's the kind of policies that you're going to find on the most valuable sites anyway.

So those are my thoughts on guest posting for today. I've enjoyed doing this Whiteboard Friday for you. Have a good day.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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A Few Takeaways from the Big Boulder Conference on Social Media Data

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:02 AM PDT

Posted by adamf

Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend the Big Boulder conference put on by GNIP in Boulder, Colorado. Around 200 attendees joined together in the St. Julien Hotel to attend what was billed as the world's first social media data conference. GNIP, a company focused on aggregating and providing social data, assembled a great lineup of speakers, the majority of whom provide or consume social data. I enjoyed the conference and took the opportunity to learn more about social data that is now available to consumers, hear about the creative ways people are using such data, meet some great minds in the social media space, and enjoy the great food, beautiful scenery, sunny weather, and friendly vibes that are hallmarks of Boulder.

View of Flatirons

The Big Boulder presentations were mostly in a Q&A format with a few panels mixed in. I've pulled together some of the key themes that I observed from the sessions to share in this post. GNIP also posted some detailed summaries of the presentations on their blog. If anyone who attended or presented at the conference sees anything that needs to be added, please let me know!

Panel Discussion at Big Boulder

Major social networks continue to invest in sharing their rich data to third parties, though in a measured way

Folks from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook all presented at the conference in some form. All noted that they are continuing to develop their APIs to provide better access to their huge data sets, though there weren't any big announcement of specific new capabilities.

Twitter confirmed its intention to continue sharing data from their firehose through a limited set of partners in all but a small number of cases where customers have unique needs. Their rationale for limiting access is that the vast quantity of data that comes through the firehose is too expensive for most companies to consume, store, and parse. It makes more sense for them to work through third parties who can help provide only the most relevant data to businesses looking for that data. They were asked whether they would be providing a location-based API, but they have no short-term plans to do so. They say that currently only 4% of Tweets are geocoded.

Facebook provides API access to a lot of valuable data, and states that they want to provide realtime insights to businesses. Howeve, they do not yet offer a firehose like Twitter. When asked about making more data from their social graph available, they noted that the biggest challenges they face are with managing privacy and in balancing syndication with standardization. If the language and methods for measurement are all different between sources, it gets hard for everyone to understand what the data means. Facebook said that they are looking for ideas from the community for new data to offer and some great use cases to show how it would be valuable.

LinkedIn didn't talk much about their API specifically, but presented interesting insights and use cases about how they are using that data to drive their business forward. I'll share a few of these insights later on.

Beyond traditional social media, we are now seeing other sources of social data become available

A good percentage of the presentations at Big Boulder were from companies that are providing data that is social, but perhaps not from the traditional companies that come to mind when you think of social media data. Some were blog platforms, like Wordpress.com and Tumblr. Others were blog commenting platforms like Disqus, or forum-based like Vanilla Forums and Get Satisfaction. Formspring provides a forum for general discussions around specific questions, and GetGlue is a rich community and check-in service centered on TV, movies, and books. StockTwits was another, which curates stock data from Twitter and provides a layer of social information to inform investors beyond just the traditional data.

I was seriously impressed by the volume and variety of interesting data that is being collected, curated, and shared via APIs.

One of the biggest challenges with social data tools and platforms is in providing actionable insights

A fascinating panel discussion brought together Zach Hofer-Shall (Forrester Research), Susan Etlinger (Altimeter Group), Nathan Gilliatt (Social Target), and Shawn Rogers (Enterprise Management Associates) to discuss emerging trends in analyzing social data. They discussed the challenges of integrating social data into enterprise organizations.

The four panelists were in agreement on the majority of topics disucssed. The first is that social media data is most frequently brought into organizations by PR folks, but hardly used to its full extent, as PR is usually not focused on detailed quantitative analysis. It's used more at surface level to catch and engage with positive and negative press and to do "damage control".

Another barrier discussed is that social data has not yet been integrated with BI teams at enterprises where the focus is mostly web analytics. At the enterprise level, there are challenges not just with siloed organizations, but siloed data. There a lots of different roles that benefit from social data insights and each has a different context. Integrating that data and offering it in ways that provide the most useful insights to those who need it is a challenge that plenty of companies have yet to surmount.

The panelists also agreed that one of the biggest challenges with getting value out of social media software is not necessarily with analytics to understand how the data relates to a business, but rather in existing software's abilities to provide actionable insights. Though there are some pieces of this out there, the panel saw a lot of opportunity for social analytics software to really step up in this space.

You can learn all sorts of interesting stuff from the enormous (and growing) public data set out there

There were a few insights that were shared throughout presentations, including:

From Martin Remy at Automatic (which runs Wordpress.com)

Fashion bloggers are the most "chatty." Baseball, religion, and politics are also high on the chatty list. At the bottom of the list, interestingly, are advertising and social media. Tech falls in the middle
Turkish speakers are most conversational, followed closely by Hebrew. Japanese and Korean speakers are some of the least chatty.

From Yael Garten, Data Scientist at LinkedIn

Yael shared a chart of growing vs. shrinking industries. Unsurprisingly, the newspapers industry shrinking most. The renewable industry was the fastest growing (by a bigger margin than I would have guessed).
She shared a test of a hypotheses that people would be leaving the banking industry after the financial crisis. This turned out not to be the case. Lots of people left the banks at that time, but mostly ended up moving to different banks rather than finding new fields.
We also learned that male CEO names tended to be short (or shortened), approachable, 1-sylable names, while female CEOs tended to have more classic names multi-syllable names. Short names were even more popular in sales, with names like Chip or Trey.

Spam in social data is a big focus for social media data sources

Spam in social data has become even more of an issue with people paying for data feeds. For example, if you are paying by the tweet for your Twitter data, you don't want to pay for the spammy tweets.

Given that notion, Twitter is working hard on combatting spam and noted that their spam team has grown to be one of the biggest teams at the company. Twitter combats spam through initial filtering, which would keep it out of the firehose feed, though they can't catch everything that way without risking pulling legitimate content, too. Therefore, some spam gets through the system initially and is pulled after the fact.

Ken Little, Director of Engineering for Tumblr, also talked about spam being a big priority. They try and shut down spammy looking registrations right out of the gate. Tumblr uses a simple 3rd party content analysis to identify some spam and have been are developing an in-house system that identifies spammy accounts based on behavioral analysis. Some people just don't use their accounts in ways consistent with your average human.

Verification of the sources of social content is a big problem yet to be solved, and critical for social media data use in public service

For most businesses, verification of the content and source of social data is important, but not critical. In one panel discussion, however, we learned about some fascinating uses of social data for the public interest that are providing insights, but struggle with the verification of social data sources.

Moeed Ahmad, Head of New Media at Al Jazeera Media Network, talked a fair bit about the challenges and need for data verification, especially for his news organization. Al Jazeera's charter is to provide voices to the voiceless. This proves a challenge in the regions they traditionally report on most, where media is generally state-run. Social media has proven to be a great way to hear directly from the the people and surface amazing stories and viewpoints that might never have been heard otherwise. The challenge with this, as with in any reporting, is to ensure that the information shared is correct and can be verified. To try and manage this, Al Jazeera Media added procedures to the usage of social data in reporting. This change was largely an issue of verifying as much as possible and setting context in the report itself. Conversely, Moeed talked also about using social channels for verification of information. He spoke of a particularly gruesome video that had been sent to Al Jazeera showing what was reported to be a recent atrocity. Unable to verify the video and story, he posted it on Twitter and quickly found out that the video was 3 years old, and was actually from a totally different country than suggested by the person who had submitted it.

Katie Baucom, Geospatial Analyst at the Geospatial Intelligence Agency, has been working to use social data to aid in disaster response and in assessing the damage done by natural disasters. Her organization is traditionally focused only on satellite imagery, but can receive social data and photos far faster than the satellite images can be processed. Their process seems like an incredibly powerful use of social data, but verification of authenticity and location is critical in their context. They need to ensure that they are providing accurate data to ensure that disaster response is applied first where it is needed most.

Rumi Chunara, instructor at Harvard Medical School, works on a project called Healthmap, which seeks to discover and track the spread of infectious diseases in real-time using as many data sources as possible. Her challenge in this is determining fact from rumor in Tweets. To help solve this issue, they've been comparing information from social sources against trusted data from doctors on the ground. Her team is hoping to compare where the differences lie and model how they might be more accurately predictive using the social data. She also noted that Google Trends has been a great tool in finding outbreaks. For instance, when the flu hits an area, the searches for flu symptoms in certain geos increases noticeably.

Light engagements may be the key to building further engagment amongst lurkers

We heard this topic discussed from a good number of people in the blog, forum, and commenting space. One panel focused specifically on how people engage online. A rule of thumb that was generally substantiated was the 90-9-1 rule. 90% of blog or forum readers are passive lurkers, 9% engage lightly, and 1% of the readers create most of the content. Everyone in the panel seemed to agree that making light social engagements, such as likes, or thumbs up, or even smiley faces easy to engage with is the path toward starting to draw in more of that 90%. One of the reasons this is so important, beyond further engaging the readership, is that it further engages the bloggers, who in turn write more content.

If you are looking to build an entrepreneurial community, there are four principles to keep in mind

Brad Feld of Foundry Group led off day 2 of the conference with a quick talk about why Boulder has a thriving startup scene and shared his thoughts about principles to build an entrepreneurial community. His four points for a successful community are:

The community must be lead by entrepreneurs.
The community must take a long-term view. There will be good and bad times for business and entrepreneurship, so you need to take a look at the last 20 years to see the bigger future trends.
Your community must be inclusive of anyone that wants to engage in the startup community in any way.
There must be institutions that engage the entire stack of the startup community. TechStars and Startup Weekend are two great examples of this as they help bring mentorship, investors, and teachers together with entrepreneurs.

Boulder, Colorado is a pretty cool town

Beyond putting on a great conference and pulling together some fascinating people, GNIP sought to show off their hometown of Boulder, Colorado. They definitely succeeded, starting with the conference hotel. We stayed at the St. Julien Hotel and Spa right off of Pearl Street where we enjoyed the great food and drink in the walkable neighborhood, and were amazed at the throngs of students, profs, techies, families, and aging hippies all hanging out late on a school night.

To show how outdoorsy Boulder is, GNIP lined up a bunch of 'healthy' events for us to enjoy while there. Unfortunately I missed the morning yoga sessions at 6AM and a hike planned out at 6:30AM as sleep won out. However, Jamie and I made it out for the biking pub crawl after the close of the conference. GNIP sprung for a bunch of bikes from a local rental service that allows you to pickup bikes from standing bike racks and return them to any of their racks around the city when you are done. We all converged on a row of bikes just outside the hotel and cruised around the area, looking cool with our bright red bikes with big baskets on front. After a few pints and biking in 90+ degree heat, we were all feeling fine. A fun and unique way to close out a fun and uniqe conference.

Jamie and his rental bike

West Wing Week: "The Right Thing to Do"

Your Daily Snapshot for
Friday, June 29, 2012

West Wing Week: "The Right Thing to Do"

This week, the President spoke at the annual NALEO conference, hosted the Congressional Picnic and addressed the nation on the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Care Act, while his administration announced grants for cities hiring veterans as police officers, and spoke with students about college affordability.

Check out this week’s edition of West Wing Week:

Seth's Blog : Do we have to pander?

Do we have to pander?

The road to the bottom is paved with good intentions, or at the very least, clever rationalizations.

National Geographic goes into a cable TV partnership and ends up broadcasting shameless (shameful? same thing) reality shows, then justifies it as a way to make money to pay for the good stuff.

Restaurants serve chicken fingers to their guests' kids, because it's the only thing they'll eat.

Some comedians give up their best work in exchange for jokes that everyone will get.

Brands extend their products or dumb down their offerings or slap their brands on inferior substitutes all in the name of reaching the masses.

And that's the problem with the shortcut. You trade in your reputation (another word for brand) in exchange for a short-term boost of awareness or profit, but then you have neither. Yes, you can have a blog that follows every rule of blogging and seo, but no, it won't be a blog we'll miss if it's gone.

Should Harley Davidson make a scooter?

Yes, you can pander, and if you're a public company and have promised an infinite growth curve, you may very well have to. But if you want to build a reputation that lasts, if you want to be the voice that some (not all!) in the market seek out, this is nothing but a trap, a test to see if you can resist short-term greed long enough to build something that matters.

• Email to a friend •

joi, 28 iunie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Germany Blinks After All-Night Fight; Italy and Spain Still Not Happy; For Now, Futures Are
Monti Threatens to Halt the Game of Marbles Unless he Gets the Big Green One; Hollande Threatens to Remove Marbles as Well; EU Summit Deadlocked
Eurozone Retail Sales Drop 8th Month; Italy, France are Down; Germany Retail Sales Up, Outlook Down
Obamacare Upheld; What Should Romney, Republicans Do?
Bankia Valued at EUR -13.635 Billion; Spain Becomes Sole Owner, Shareholders Totally Wiped Out; Entire Bankia Board Resigns

Germany Blinks After All-Night Fight; Italy and Spain Still Not Happy; For Now, Futures Are

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:23 PM PDT

It's a love-fest in Asia futures once again, but will it hold on Friday or through the weekend?

One thing's for sure, sentiment was so sour about this 19th summit, that any bit of good news stood a decent chance of temporarily igniting the market.

You can actually credit German chancellor Angela Merkel for that sour sentiment because she repeatedly stated Germany would not give in. The latest reports suggest Germany did blink, but not enough to please Italy, Spain, and France.

The fact remains that Italy, Spain, and France all want something that is virtually impossible. They demand actions that are against the German constitution. Simply put, it's not going to happen.

Meanwhile, let's tune in to what has the futures all excited.

All Night Fight

Please consider the Financial Times report Eurozone officials in all-night aid fight

German officials gave their clearest indication to date that they were prepared to intervene to shore up Italian and Spanish borrowing costs, saying eurozone leaders should use existing powers with their €440bn rescue fund for short-term help.

After weeks of insisting they would not budge on short-term measures, the sudden German acquiescence led to a flurry of activity in Brussels, where EU leaders gathered for the latest in a series of high-stakes summits intended to solve the crisis.

Unexpectedly, senior officials from all 17 eurozone finance ministries met on the sidelines of the summit to weigh emergency plans for Rome and Madrid which focused on using the rescue fund to buy Italian and Spanish bonds to reverse the recent spike in yields.

That certainly isn't much.
Indeed this next snip seems far more meaningful in a negative sense.

The political stakes for Mr Monti also rose on Thursday. Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian president and a strong Monti backer, said that political support for his technocratic government was slipping – an implicit warning to European leaders that Mr Monti needed to return from Brussels with assistance.

"Conflicts and political polemics among the forces that support this government are increasing," Mr Napolitano said a written statement.

Euro Surges After EU Leaders Renounce Seniority

Since the Financial Times does not have the rest of the story, let's look elsewhere.

In a move that will put still more risk on German taxpayers, and also what likely has the futures market excited (until the next problem hits), Euro Rises After EU Leaders Renounce Spain Loan Seniority reports Bloomberg.

The euro surged the most this year after European leaders agreed to drop the condition that emergency loans to Spanish banks give their governments preferred creditor status.

No Problems Solved

In isolation, renouncing seniority is certainly net positive for bond yields in Spain and Italy. However, it does not solve a single structural problem. Moreover, that move it is certain to raise ire of some in Germany and Finland who will have to bear the risk.

If this is all the summit produces (other then the expected fluff to agree to agree to do something five years from now), expect whatever gains (if any) that come from this maneuver to be fleeting.

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

Monti Threatens to Halt the Game of Marbles Unless he Gets the Big Green One; Hollande Threatens to Remove Marbles as Well; EU Summit Deadlocked

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:35 PM PDT

Conditions at the EU summit are breaking down more than expected thanks to a position taken by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. Acting like a spoiled brat in a game of marbles, Monti refuses to let anyone else play unless he gets the big green marble he wants.

In less colorful terms, Bloomberg explains Monti Withholds EU Growth Pact Approval Unless He Gets Interest Rate Relief.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti may block the 120 billion-euro ($149 billion) growth initiative announced by European Union President Herman Van Rompuy without an effort to reduce its borrowing costs, two Italian officials said.

Italy is withholding its official endorsement as it pushes for collective action at an EU summit in Brussels to push down its bond yields, said the officials who spoke on the condition that they not be named.

EU Summit Gridlocked

Euroskeptics will be pleased to note the summit is gridlocked, at least for the moment. How do we know this? Easy. EU President Herman Van Rompuy said "talks weren't gridlocked" and will continue through the night and later today.

Moreover, Hollande threatened to temporarily remove his marbles from the game as well.

Please consider this snip from Demands for Bond-Buying Agreement Roil European Summit

French President Francois Hollande said Italy and Spain ought to receive support from the euro area's firewall funds and that their yields are still too high after the efforts they've made to reform their economies. Spain's 10-year yields breached 7 percent and Italy auctioned 10-year securities at the highest yields since December yesterday.

Hollande said the growth remarks "aren't enough" and that he'll withhold endorsement of an EU fiscal pact, which was endorsed by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy in December, at least until the end of the two-day summit.

"The euro zone cannot stay in the current circumstance, without a budgetary union and even more without a banking union," Hollande told reporters.

Since German chancellor Angela Merkel will not agree to a banking union or a budgetary union, the EU summit is for sure deadlocked. It will remain deadlocked until Monti and Hollande change their opinions, effectively putting their marbles back in the game.

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

Eurozone Retail Sales Drop 8th Month; Italy, France are Down; Germany Retail Sales Up, Outlook Down

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 01:25 PM PDT

German retail sales bounced back for the second month, but not enough to prevent the aggregate eurozone sales from falling for the eighth consecutive month.

Summary of June findings:

The Eurozone retail sector remained in contraction mid-way through 2012, according to PMI® data from Markit. Sales fell on a month-on-month basis for the eighth successive month – the third-longest sequence in the survey history – and purchases of new goods by retailers declined at the second-fastest pace on record. That said, the rate of decline in sales slowed sharply during the month.

Germany, France, Italy Sales

The key sentence is "purchases of new goods by retailers declined at the second-fastest pace on record."

Will inventory liquidation continue or will retail sales rebound? Liquidation can only go so far, but that does not mean sales will rebound in a meaningful way. There is certainly no reason to expect a rebound in sales, but data seldom runs in a straight line.

Much depends on Germany. Yet, in spite of a two month rebound in sales, Germany alone could not pull aggregate sales up to even.

Italy Remains a Disaster Zone

Individually, Italy Retail Sales remain a disaster zone.

June sales were down sharply on levels seen in the corresponding month one year ago, which firms linked to lower consumer purchasing power and greater uncertainty over the economic outlook. The annual rate of contraction was, however, slower than May's series record.

Targets set for June were missed by the majority of firms, with a lack of confidence among clients and unfavourable weather conditions among the reasons cited by those that registered lower-thanexpected sales. Although the narrowest for three months, the gap between actual and planned sales remained considerable.

As was the case in each of the previous two survey periods, retailers were downbeat with regards to the prospects of achieving July targets. In fact, the overall degree of sentiment in June was one of the most negative in the series history, matching that recorded last December.

Markets turn on extreme sentiment, yet sentiment can remain extreme for long periods of time. Here is an accurate assessment by Markit economist Phil Smith.

"Retail PMI data for June continue to underline the effects that decreasing real wages, rising tax burdens and greater job insecurity are each having on Italian households' willingness and ability to spend. High street sales were again down markedly on the month, leading to further reductions in profitability and employment in the sector. Rates of decline were slower in June, though, given that this came on the back of some of the worst months trading in the series history, this was by no means a cause for celebration."

Retailer Purchasing Falls at Record Rate in France

Inventory reduction is underway in France as Purchasing Falls at Record Rate

French retailers reported a slower decrease in sales during June. The latest drop was only modest and much weaker than in the preceding two months. However, the performance over Q2 as a whole has been the worst since the inception of the survey in 2004, as trading has suffered in the face of difficult economic conditions. With retailers attempting to prevent an unwanted build-up of inventories, the value of goods purchased for resale fell at a series-record rate. Meanwhile, intense competitive pressures led to another marked drop in gross margins, while retail sector employment decreased at an accelerated pace.

Jack Kennedy, Senior Economist at Markit and author of the France Retail PMI, said: "The French retail sector continued to struggle in June, as the tough economic climate led to another drop in sales. The failure to rebound from May's severe weakness, when trading was impacted by a run of public holidays and the presidential election, underlines the strong headwinds facing retailers amid depressed consumer purchasing power and high unemployment. The overall sales performance over the second quarter has been the weakest since the survey began in 2004, and it was therefore no surprise to see accelerated falls in both purchasing and employment during June as retailers went into retrenchment mode."

Germany Retail Sales Up, Outlook Down

Markit reports Stronger increase in German retail sales, but outlook is reported as weakest for 2½ years

German retailers indicated a further rebound in monthly sales in June, with the pace of expansion reaching a three-month high. At 52.4, up from 50.7 in May, the seasonally adjusted Germany Retail PMI was above the neutral 50.0 value for the second month running. The latest reading pointed was above the long-run survey average (49.9) and indicated to a moderate increase in month-on-month retail sales in Germany. Some firms linked the improvement to better weather conditions and higher consumer spending as a result of the European Football Championship in June.

First drop in goods ordered for resale in nine months

Retailers in Germany responded to worries about the outlook for sales by reducing the value of goods ordered for resale at their stores in June. This was the first reduction since September 2011 and in turn contributed to the slowest accumulation of stocks of goods for resale so far in 2012.

In spite of highly unusual reports of higher sales due to "better weather" as well as higher sales because of football (soccer) championships, Markit reports ...

Actual sales in June were generally lower than expected, as has been the case in each of the past three months. Moreover, German retailers signalled a marked degree of pessimism about the outlook for their sales in one month's time. The balance of firms expecting to reach their targets in July is the lowest for two-and-a-half years. Anecdotal evidence widely cited concerns about the impact of weakening domestic economic conditions, alongside uncertainty related to the euro area crisis, as the main factors leading to downbeat sentiment in the retail sector.

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

Obamacare Upheld; What Should Romney, Republicans Do?

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 10:53 AM PDT

Today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Obamacare by a 5-4 margin. Here is the Full Text of the Supreme Court Ruling.

Romney has promised to overturn the ruling, saying "ObamaCare was bad policy yesterday, it's bad policy today."

That statement makes Romney a hypocrite as the Financial Times notes.

"Obamacare places the government between you and your doctor," said Mr Romney, who championed a similar plan while governor of Massachusetts but says he opposes its expansion at a federal level.

Why wasn't it bad policy in Massachusetts?

Obama Chimes In

Here are some quotes from a press conference of President Obama as reported by The Guardian.

"Whatever the politics, today's decision was a victory for people all over this country"
"It should be pretty clear by now that I didn't do this because it would be good politics."
"Today I am as confidence as ever, that when we look back five years from now, or 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, we will be better off because we had the courage to pass this law and keep moving forward."

Clearly, Obamacare was not good politics.

The president took no questions to which the Guardian commented "What was interesting is that Obama – for the first time in a while – offered an unapologetic defense of the healthcare reforms. That's going to make for a different approach in the presidential campaign."

Small Likelihood of Overturning Obamacare

Even if Romney were to win, he would be extremely challenged to overturn Obamacare outright.

Senate filibuster rules are such that Democrats will easily be able to block it. Besides, Democrats have a majority in the Senate and do not even need a Filibuster move to block changes.

Given the Supreme Court ruled Obamacare is a tax, there would be some scope for Republicans to trash it in the once a year Reconciliation Process that limits Congressional debate. After all, that is how the bill passed in the first place.

Still, to use reconciliation, Republicans will have to elect Romney, hold the House and take control of the Senate. Is that likely?

Justice Robert's Opinion

Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation's elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

Pragmatically Speaking

We can debate all day whether or not the Supreme Court made the correct ruling. However, such debate is useless. It will not change a thing.

Like it or not, the Supreme Court ruled that we are stuck with Obamacare unless Congress changes it.

Pragmatically speaking, it would be more beneficial to have discussions on how to improve healthcare rather than howling at the moon against it.

However, I suspect Romney will keep howling at the moon even though he was in favor of essentially the same moon when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Bankia Valued at EUR -13.635 Billion; Spain Becomes Sole Owner, Shareholders Totally Wiped Out; Entire Bankia Board Resigns

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:34 AM PDT

Five days ago we heard from the Bank of Spain that Spanish banks only need between €16bn and €62bn in new capital.

For details, see Laugh of the Day: Stress Tests Show Spanish Banks Only Need Between €16bn and €62bn in New Capital; ECB to Accept BBB- Rated Debt (One Step Above Junk) as Collateral

In the same report we also heard that the three largest bank groups do not need any capital at all. Bear in mind that was allegedly in a "stress" scenario.

Today we learned that Bankia is Valued at EUR -13.635 Billion

The seven banks that founded Bankia be left out of the shareholders of the entity and the State will be made with one hundred percent of the group's parent, Bank Savings Financial (BFA), the latter having a negative value of 13.635 million euros According to the assessment commissioned by the state.

After the assessment, the FROB becomes the sole owner of BFA.

Thus, the seven savings banks that created the group, Caja Madrid, Bancaja, La Caja de Canarias, Caja de Avila, Laietana Caixa, Caja Segovia and Caja Rioja, stay out of the shareholders.

Finally, BFA proceed to recapitalize its subsidiary, Bankia, with an injection of 12,000 million euros. He will do through a capital increase in which existing shareholders will have preferential subscription rights. It is expected that the capital increase in Bankia be completed during October.

The European Commission today gave its approval temporary nationalization and recapitalization of the matrix BFA waiting for Spain to send to Brussels a restructuring plan of the institution in the next six months.

I strongly suspect that a valuation of -13.635 billion euros is on the wildly optimistic side.

Entire Bankia Board Resigns

Here is an amusing picture from the El Pais article The assessment shows a group of Bankia 13.635 billion hole

El Pais reports ...

The group Bankia worthless. Worse, his assessment is negative, -13.635 billion euros. That is the appraisal on the face of nationalization has been presented today to the board of the entity, sources of such advice. That means that the conversion of the 4.465 million of preferred shares of Bank Savings Financial (BFA) results in 100% nationalization of the matrix and, indirectly, 45% of Bankia, but the assessment does not directly affect the bank quoted. The BFA board of directors resigned en bloc.

The seven savings banks that are BPA was created without any equity in the state, leaving them no future dividends to be used for social work . The entities concerned are Caja Madrid, Bancaja, La Caja de Canarias, Caja de Avila, Laietana Caixa, Caja Segovia and Caja Rioja. The seven contributed to its financial business BFA and are now nothing more than the assets of the work were marginalized social integration.

Did they all retire with full pensions?

Looking back, Bankia has provided more laughs than I remembered.

May 7, 2012: Spain to Spend €7bn-€10bn (It Doesn't Have), Bailing Out Bankia, the Nation's 3rd Largest Bank; Liar, Liar Pants on Fire

May 9, 2012: Audit Shows Spain's Bankia Short 3.5 Billion Euros; PP says "We Must Help Bankia, It Has Deposits for 10% of GDP"

May 10, 2012: Spain Nationalizes BFA and 45% of Bankia; No Bid for CatalunyaCaixa, Bank Worth Less Than Zero; Der Spiegel: Germany Fears "Bottomless Pit"

The implosion in Spanish banks continues. On Wednesday, Spain nationalized BFA, the 8th nationalization since the start of the crisis.

After sinking 3 billion into CatalunyaCaixa, Spain tried to privatize the mess but there were no offers at zero euros. Clearly CatalunyaCaixa bank is worth less than zero.

Meanwhile Der Spiegel reports "Bundesbank has no idea of what is happening in Spanish banks". Mish readers do. The Spanish banking system is without a doubt bankrupt.

Emphasis added.
Today we see that Bankia and the entire group is worth less than zero.

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

vineri, 29 iunie 2012

Getting Started with Guest Posting - Whiteboard Friday

Getting Started with Guest Posting - Whiteboard Friday

Video Transcription

Major social networks continue to invest in sharing their rich data to third parties, though in a measured way

Beyond traditional social media, we are now seeing other sources of social data become available

One of the biggest challenges with social data tools and platforms is in providing actionable insights

You can learn all sorts of interesting stuff from the enormous (and growing) public data set out there

Spam in social data is a big focus for social media data sources

Verification of the sources of social content is a big problem yet to be solved, and critical for social media data use in public service

Light engagements may be the key to building further engagment amongst lurkers