Central Perk

joi, 5 iulie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

German Central Bank Head Warns Merkel on Repeated Weakening of Positions; Third Front Against Merkel
Japan Composite PMI Contracts; China Composite PMI Stagnates
Eurozone Composite PMI Signals Steep Rate of Contraction; Germany Contracts at Steepest Rate in 3 Years; German Construction Activity Plummets 3rd Month
Record Number of Homes for Sale in Melbourne; Sub-Prime Collapse; "No End in Sight" for Arrears on Low-Doc Loans
Global Uncoordinated Panic; ECB Cuts Rates to Record Low, Deposit Rate to Zero; Bond Market Response Was "Not Enough"; Words "Heightened Uncertainty" Explained

German Central Bank Head Warns Merkel on Repeated Weakening of Positions; Third Front Against Merkel

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 10:32 PM PDT

Chancellor Angela Merkel is now under pressure from a third front, this time, from Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank (Germany's Central Bank). The Financial Times reports Weidmann warns Merkel over weakening

Germany's top central banker has criticised the decisions of last week's summit to help debt-laden eurozone members, warning that the bloc was "constantly mutualising risks and weakening the agreed rules".

"Fiscal aid should be the last resort of crisis management," said Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank. "This position has by now been recognisably weakened."

In a speech that looks set to increase political pressure on Angela Merkel, the chancellor, Mr Weidmann said strict conditions that had come with emergency aid at the start of the crisis had been "clearly eroded" since then – and possibly again at last week's European summit.

In remarks apparently meant as a warning shot to Berlin, Mr Weidmann signalled any further steps to loosen aid conditions had to come together with eurozone commitments to pool fiscal decision-making. If mutual liability was to be the only path, then "those taking on liability should get the opportunity to exercise oversight."

He lamented that the results of last week's summit allowed for "a broad spectrum of interpretation" – especially over whether the eurozone wanted to stick to Maastricht principles or move towards fiscal integration.

Third Front

This pressure from the central bank represents a third front against Merkel.

The ESM is already on hold waiting challenges from Germany's constitutional court. (see German Supreme Court Delays ESM; Another Setback for Merkel; Creeping Bailouts; Reflections on German Expectations for details)

Moreover, Merkel's Coalition About to Splinter Over Creation of "European Monster State". Simply put, the CSU (Merkel's coalition partner), has threatened to sink the Coalition if Merkel gives any more ground.

In all likelihood, this is close to if not the absolute end of the line for further Merkel concessions.

The irony regarding the latest wave of attacks is Merkel gave nothing to France and next to nothing to Italy and Spain in the 19th eurozone summit. For details, please see EU Summit Winner Was Merkel.

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

Japan Composite PMI Contracts; China Composite PMI Stagnates

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 04:13 PM PDT

The contraction hit parade keeps humming along.

Japan Composite data show first fall in business activity since November 2011

Business activity in Japan's service sector decreased for a second successive month during June, as new order growth remained muted.

Meanwhile, manufacturing PMI™ data showed factory output falling for the first time in six months. Consequently, the Composite Output Index (covering manufacturing and services) dipped below the neutral 50.0 threshold in June, down from 50.1 to 49.1, and indicated the first reduction in private sector activity since November 2011. Behind the latest reduction in service sector activity was a worsening of market conditions.

Some firms also commented on muted new business growth. The rate of expansion in new work was marginal, albeit slightly faster than in May. Composite data pointed to the weakest expansion of new work in the current five-month period of growth.

China Composite PMI Stagnates

Markit China Services PMI Activity Growth Eases to Near-Stagnation in June

Key points

Overall new business down for first time in six months

Composite data showed input prices falling at the fastest rate in 39 months

Service sector optimism remains subdued

The HSBC Composite Output Index posted 50.6, down from 51.9 in May, and was the lowest reading in three months. The slowdown at the composite level reflected a sharper decline in manufacturing output and a moderation of activity growth in the service sector. The latter was highlighted by the HSBC Business Activity Index falling from 54.7 to a ten-month low of 52.3 in June.

Moreover, the pace of new order growth in China's service sector eased since the month before, with the index measuring trends in overall new work at a ten-month low. This, coupled with an accelerated decline in new orders placed at goods producers, meant that overall new work fell for the first time in 2012 so far.

Largely in response to muted growth of new business, backlogs of work in the Chinese service sector decreased for a fifth successive month during June.

The rate of decline in work outstanding remained marginal, however. Goods producers also recorded a slight rate of backlog depletion in June.

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

Eurozone Composite PMI Signals Steep Rate of Contraction; Germany Contracts at Steepest Rate in 3 Years; German Construction Activity Plummets 3rd Month

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 01:07 PM PDT

PMI reports from Europe continue to show severe signs of stress. Yesterday, Markit reported Eurozone PMI rises in June but still signals steep rate of contraction

Key points for June

Final Eurozone Composite Output Index: 46.4 (Flash 46.0, May 46.0)

Final Eurozone Services Business Activity Index: 47.1 (Flash 46.8, May 46.7)

Near-record fall in service sector confidence

The Eurozone economic downturn extended into a fifth consecutive month in June, as the debt and political crises continued to have an adverse impact on both the manufacturing and service sectors.

The spreading of the economic malaise from the periphery of the currency union to its core continued in June. German output contracted at the fastest rate in three years, and France also saw a further decline (albeit slower than in May). Italy and Spain, meanwhile, remained in deep recessions.

Comments:

Chris Williamson, Chief Economist at Markit said:

"The final Eurozone PMI for June picked up slightly on May, but the rise failed to avoid the region seeing the strongest quarterly downturn for three years in the second quarter. The survey points to the economy having contracted by approximately 0.6% in the three months to June.

"Even Germany looks to have fallen into a renewed decline, though only a very modest drop in output is signalled. The pace of downturns in other major euro member states is far more worrying. Output in Italy looks to have fallen by 1% in the second quarter, while declines of 0.6% and 0.5% are signalled for Spain and France respectively.

"Job losses are mounting as a result of falling demand, as companies seek to reduce costs and prepare for the possibility that worse is to come. Service sector companies' expectations for the year ahead showed one of the largest declines in the history of the survey, pointing to a huge drop in confidence due to the worsening political and economic crises."

Key Phrase:

"The survey points to the economy having contracted by approximately 0.6% in the three months to June."

German Construction Activity Plummets 3rd Month

A Markit report out today reveals a solid reduction in German construction activity

The seasonally adjusted Germany Construction Purchasing Managers' Index® (PMI®) – a single-figure snapshot of overall activity in the construction economy – edged up from May's reading of 44.7 to 46.0 in June, signalling a further, albeit slightly slower, decrease in overall building activity across Germany. Construction activity in the Eurozone's largest economy has now fallen for three consecutive months.

In contrast with the overall trend in output, both residential building activity and civil engineering work fell at faster rates during June. The latter posted by far the sharpest contraction of the monitored sub-sectors, with the rate of decline steeper than the series long-run average.

Commercial construction activity meanwhile decreased at a notably slower rate than that registered during the previous month. The decrease in output levels in June reflected a further fall in new order inflows, which were down for the third month running and at the steepest rate since February.

Reports from panel members noted a general decrease in demand, as well as a reduction in intakes of new business from the public sector. Fearing further declines in new orders as a result of uncertain economic conditions in the Eurozone, Germany constructors were on balance pessimistic of a return to growth in the next 12 months in June. This ended a period of optimism in the sector that stretched back to February.

Once again this is as I expected and I still expect things to get much worse, including Germany.

In response to eurozone weakness, the ECB cut rates to .75%, a record low amount, but it will not help one bit.

Please see Global Uncoordinated Panic; Bond Market Response Was "Not Enough"; Words "Heightened Uncertainty" Explained for details.

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

Record Number of Homes for Sale in Melbourne; Sub-Prime Collapse; "No End in Sight" for Arrears on Low-Doc Loans

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 10:50 AM PDT

Record Number of Homes for Sale in Melbourne

Given the alleged housing shortage in Australia, it is interesting to note a Record number of houses for sale in Melbourne

In June, Melbourne's residential listings grew at a monthly rate of 6.1 per cent - almost four times the national average - and recorded a yearly jump of 27.7 per cent, more than 27 times Sydney's annual growth of 1 per cent.

Melbourne now has 55,293 unsold homes and apartments, according to today's report, published by independent property researcher, SQM Research.

The city had a rental vacancy rate of 3.1 per cent in May, the highest among capital cities and an increase from 2.4 per cent a year earlier, SQM said in a release last month.

Permits granted to build or renovate homes soared 27.3 per cent in May from the prior month after the central bank cut interest rates, a report this week showed.

The number of homes approved in Victoria climbed 31.8 per cent from April, the biggest increase among all states, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed.

Nothing like building more houses to add to record supply.

Sub-Prime Collapse

The Australian reports Provident implosion exposes low-doc risks

THE $130 million collapse of subprime lender Provident Capital has highlighted the emerging problems in the nation's low-doc and no-doc lending markets, which flourished during the years of the last property boom.

Provident Capital provided home-loan products but specialised in writing subprime "low-doc" and "no-doc"loans to people with impaired credit histories.

Provident Capital's Fixed Term Investments offering, which holds about $130 million on behalf of 3500 investors, was frozen after the group wrote down its loans receivable by $13.8m.

Provident Capital's trustee, concerned that writedown should have been higher and that Provident Capital was not in a position to fully repay its noteholders, took the group to the Federal Court.

Judge Steven Rares agreed with the trustee, leading to the debenture holder funds being frozen and more writedowns booked.

PPB Advisory partner Marcus Ayres said the receiver planned to hold a meeting for investors in about a month.

He said the receiver would seek to recover funds by repossessing houses of defaulting borrowers and slowly releasing them into the market or by selling the defaulting loans if an investor could be found.

"This won't be a fire sale and we won't be putting all these properties out on to the market at the same time," Mr Ayres said.

According to ratings agency Standard & Poor's, 6.62 per cent of "prime" low-doc loans are more than 30 days in arrears.

That figure is double the level of two years ago and more than four times higher than prime loans.

Fitch Ratings has said it expects there is "no end in sight" for arrears rates on low-doc loans.

What "Can't" Happen, Is Happening

We have been told countless times that such scenarios could not happen in Australia. Well, clearly they could, because they are happening right now.

Moreover, this is just the tip of the debtberg. Expect conditions to get much worse.

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

Global Uncoordinated Panic; ECB Cuts Rates to Record Low, Deposit Rate to Zero; Bond Market Response Was "Not Enough"; Words "Heightened Uncertainty" Explained

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 08:25 AM PDT

Global Uncoordinated Panic

In a 45-Minute Salvo today, the ECB cuts rates to a record low 0.75 percent and reduced the deposit rate to zero. Meanwhile, the People's Bank of China cut their benchmark borrowing costs (the second time in a month), and the Bank of England raised the size of its asset-purchase program.

Also note the central banks of Australia, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and Israel cut rates in June, while the Swiss National Bank is buying euros to defend its franc ceiling.

ECB president Mario Draghi said these events were not global coordinated easing.

I am willing to take him for his word. Thus, it's safe to assume that what has transpired was more akin to global uncoordinated panic.

European Bond Market Response Was "Not Enough"

The market response to this 45-minute volley of coordinated easing was "not enough". One look at the bond market in Italy and Spain makes that point crystal clear.

Spain 10-Year Government Bond Yield

Italy 10-Year Government Bond Yield

Certainty vs. Uncertainty

Bloomberg reports ECB President Mario Draghi said "heightened uncertainty" was weighing on confidence. Draghi also said the council didn't discuss other non-standard tools.

Clearly the market wanted "non-standard" tools such as more direct bond purchases. However, bond purchases are viewed by Germany as "monetary financing of government". Nonetheless, the ECB has done them before, over strenuous objections from the German central bank.

It is 100% certain Europe is in a recession and that recession will strengthen. It is also 100% certain the 19th summit solved nothing. So what is with all this talk about "heightened uncertainty"?

Meaning of Heightened Uncertainty

The words "heightened uncertainty" can be reasonably translated as "The economy is going to hell in a hand basket and we have no idea what to do about it".

Since the ECB and government officials cannot say that, nor can they says they are out of policy tools, they simply moan about "heightened uncertainty". Certainly they are uncertain about what to do, primarily because the problem at hand is not fixable.

Fed Uncertainty Principle

Now would be a good time to review the Fed Uncertainty Principle, especially corollaries one and two.

Corollary Number One:
The Fed has no idea where interest rates should be. Only a free market does. The Fed will be disingenuous about what it knows (nothing of use) and doesn't know (much more than it wants to admit), particularly in times of economic stress.

Corollary Number Two:
The government/quasi-government body most responsible for creating this mess (the Fed), will attempt a big power grab, purportedly to fix whatever problems it creates. The bigger the mess it creates, the more power it will attempt to grab. Over time this leads to dangerously concentrated power into the hands of those who have already proven they do not know what they are doing.

What I said about the Fed apples to central banks in general.

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

Damn Cool Pics

135 People Jumped Off A Bridge in Russia

Posted: 04 Jul 2012 09:34 PM PDT

135 People Jumped off A Bridge in Russia in attempt to make a world record by harnessing everyone of them and jumping off the bridge and swing on the bridge.

Rocks That Look Like Food

Posted: 04 Jul 2012 09:24 PM PDT

This may look like an ordinary table but something is missing. Can you guess what it is? Look closely..

There is actually no real, edible food on this table! This table is actually made up entirely of rocks that look like food. ome of these rocks had me fooled.

Via Rock Food Table

Photo: Fireworks at the White House

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, July 5, 2012

Photo: Fireworks at the White House

Last night, President Obama welcomed more than 1,200 military service members and their families to the White House to celebrate the Fourth of July.

The event, organized by the USO, featured a performance by country music star Brad Paisley. As Paisley and his band finished their final song ("Welcome to the Future"), fireworks began over the National Mall.

Watch a video of the fireworks from the White House South Lawn

A crowd watches the end of Brad Paisley's performance on the South Lawn of the White House as fireworks erupt over the National Mall, July 4, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

How Twitter's Bad SEO Affects your Brand Reputation Management

Posted: 04 Jul 2012 05:08 PM PDT

Posted by zen2seo

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

I'll start with a simple question: have you ever thought that linking to your Twitter profile can be very difficult? Probably your answer is "not really!", and in this case maybe you could find what I'm going to show you useful.

But let's start from the beginning...

A while ago I was re-reading a post by Kristi Hines on SEOgadget about using your Twitter profile for your link building: I had bookmarked it since it contained good and immediate tips to build links just having a Twitter Profile, but in all this months I had forgotten to put them into practice. However, working on it, I also thought that while building links to your website, with those resources you indirectly build links to your Twitter Profile, so you would aspect an important impact on your personal branding management too, particularly for you name/nickname SERP. Is it so? Yes, in most cases it is, but the are some problems. Twitter's bad search engine optimization, third-party links, and our own mistakes, in fact often make our link building less effective than it could be.

Let's search on Google [Kristi Hines], for example. Kristi is a very well know professional and there are a lot of reference for her name, however her Twitter profile ranks well and helps her personal branding:

I'm not as important as her, but if I search for my name on Google.it (I'm Italian) there's no trace of my Twitter profile (@zen2seo), even if it's linked in several articles and in my Google+ profile. It only appears in the fourth page of results.

I asked myself why, and found something interesting. Just look at the two screenshots and you can find one of the issues I was talking about: my URL contains the escaped fragment (#!), Kristi's doesn't. So, simply, Twitter is duplicating its pages, with a dilution of their strength, and Google is indexing different versions of the same content.

How many times? I've spotted a lot of variations and only a few certain conclusions. To better understand this confusing situation, let's check the most common causes of duplication of a website.

1) www vs. non-www

If you search for a www version of you profile, you won't find any results:

This is because www URLs are 301-redirected to the non-www ones:

So, our first conclusion, for now, is that you should link to the non-www version.

2) http vs. https

Using few advanced search operators, the first duplication I've found comes from http/https URLs versions.

As you can see, Google is indexing both http and https versions of the site. Which one would be better to link to? It's too early to answer to this question, but I'll try to give you some suggestions in this post.

3) The @ sign

Since we commonly refer to our Twitter Profile using the @ sign (es. @Zen2Seo), I wondered if I was able to find URLs containing it. I haven't found this duplication for me, but it exists in other cases.

4) Slash vs. non-slash

As for the previous case, I've found some duplicated URLs ending with the slash ("/")

5) Capital letters

My nickname is Zen2Seo, with a capital Z and S, but in the first screenshot you can see only lowercase letters. Does Twitter handle this difference properly? Not so much. A little deeper query shows you can have also capital letters indexed.

6) Third level subdomains

It's quite easy to notice that Twitter duplicates its pages (at least statuses) on several subdomains. I stopped checking after I found EN, IT, ES, DE, FR, and each of them is affected by the same problems we've already exposed.

7) IP Address

As you've seen there are several causes of duplication (and you can combine them too as you want), but moreover I've found Twitter is duplicating its content also via IP address:

What's your "canonical" Twitter Profile?

In this huge URL confusion, you should be a (good?) SEO to understand what is the right URL to link to. But the majority of the people that use Twitter are not aware of this kind of issues. And Twitter doesn't help them at all.

Remember Kristi's URL and mine: Twitter use AJAX and URLs with the escaped fragment, so the average webmaster has another choice (better, another combination parameter) and since the actual URL of the browser shows the /#!/ part, many people link to it.

In this case, things are far more complex than the previous situations. Vanessa Fox's interesting post about Twitter infrastructure issues shows how Twitter redirects the "normal" URL to the escaped one with a 302 redirect; here search engines crawl twitter.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/YOURNICKNAME and receive a 301 redirect to http://twitter.com/YOURNICKNAME.

I bet this is confusing for some SEOs too, but - without investigating more - we can conclude that Twitter needs AJAX URLs but probably they want the HTML URL to be indexed, so we should link to it. This consideration becomes quite a certainty since they've recently announced they're getting rid of the hashbang (but just because they want to give users more speed not because of SEO issues...)

Another hint comes from Twitter trying to canonicalize URLs via canonical link tag

As you can see, they choose as canonical URL the one with:

https
non-www
no "at" sign (@)
minuscule letters
no slash at the end
no hashbang (/#!/)

The previous screenshots, however, demonstrate Twitter isn't succeeding with canonicalization, so if we link to a wrong profile URL we can aspect that link won't help us in our personal (or brand) reputation management.

Of course if you are as known as Rand Fishkin, you don't have to worry about your Twitter profile appearing in the SERPs for your name/brand. But if you aren't, something like this could pretty well be a problem:

So, how must we link? You could link to your canonical URL but at the moment, with Twitter unable to solve its duplications, maybe this is not a universal suggestion. I think it could make sense to choose looking at what Google prefers in its SERPs and it can be different from case to case.

So, check your ranking URL and link well!

Now, before you go, just a final note: if you've appreciated my SEOMoz post, feel free to follow my Twitter profile (zen2seo) or visit my SEO blog. Clearly, I expect a lot of new followers now than I'm linking to my "right" Twitter profile URL! ;)

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joi, 5 iulie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Photo: Fireworks at the White House

How Twitter's Bad SEO Affects your Brand Reputation Management

How Twitter's Bad SEO Affects your Brand Reputation Management

1) www vs. non-www

2) http vs. https

3) The @ sign

4) Slash vs. non-slash

5) Capital letters

6) Third level subdomains

7) IP Address

What's your "canonical" Twitter Profile?

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

joi, 5 iulie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Photo: Fireworks at the White House

How Twitter's Bad SEO Affects your Brand Reputation Management

How Twitter's Bad SEO Affects your Brand Reputation Management

1) www vs. non-www

2) http vs. https

3) The @ sign

4) Slash vs. non-slash

5) Capital letters

6) Third level subdomains

7) IP Address

What's your "canonical" Twitter Profile?

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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