Central Perk

luni, 4 februarie 2013

Live interaction still matters. Teachers, meetings, presentations, one on one brainstorms--they can lead to real change. The listener has nearly as big a responsibility as the speaker does, though. And yet, Google reports four times as many matches for "how to speak" as "how to listen." It's not a passive act, not if you want to do it right.

If listening better leads to better speaking, then it becomes a competitive advantage.

Ask an entrepreneur leaving the office of a great VC like Fred Wilson. She'll tell you that she gave the best pitch of her career--largely because of the audience. The hardest step in better listening is the first one: do it on purpose. Make the effort to actually be good at it.

Don't worry so much about taking notes. Notes can be summarized in a memo (or a book) later.

Pay the person who's speaking back with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm shown by the expression on your face, in your posture, in your questions.

Play back what you hear but in your own words, using your own situation. Don't ask questions as much as make statements, building on what you just heard but making it your own. Take what you heard and make it the foundation for what you are trying on as your next idea.

If you disagree, wait a few beats, let the thought finish, and then explain why. Don't challenge the speaker, challenge the idea.

The best way to honor someone who has said something smart and useful is to say something back that is smart and useful. The other way to honor them is to go do something with what you learned.

Good listeners get what they deserve--better speakers.

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duminică, 3 februarie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Rajoy Further Implicated in Scandal; Support Drops to 23.9% in Record Plunge

Posted: 03 Feb 2013 06:24 PM PST

Prime minister Mariano Rajoy is now personally implicated in the slush fund scandal in Spain. Via Google translate, please consider Rajoy and his family were paid with money from Gürtel travel

The front page of Monday's newspaper "La Gaceta" promises new revelations about political scandals that are playing close to the popular government of Mariano Rajoy.

The fore mentioned entitled 'A Rajoy also paid travel, "about a picture of the back of the highest representative of the Spanish.

"His wife, his son and personal assistant flew business class to Las Palmas with money Gürtel", added the subtitle, attaching notes as evidence under seal 'exclusive'.

That should not be a surprise, but what choices do voters have?

Please consider this choppy translation from El Pais: crisis and corruption lead to PP to lower expectations

At this time, there is a ruling party with almost hegemonic majority, allowing it to act with little parliamentary scrutiny and yet have an estimate of the single vote of 23.9%, the lowest of democracy, only one year after having swept the polls. In a month and has lost six points from more than 20 points overall, without stating whether touched and thoroughly. And in theory are almost three years to allow citizens to speak at the polls. Your vote expectancy is now almost three points below the result of the AP of Manuel Fraga , 1982, when the PSOE of Felipe González swept him with 202 deputies.

Political Party Descriptions

From Wikipedia, here is a description of the top political parties in Spain.

Who do voters trust?

No one. Worse yet, Rajoy and the EU have threatened journalists that do not toe the party line. It's 1984 in spades. For details, please see Big Brother in Action: EU Wants Power to Sack Journalists; Prime Minister Rajoy Threatens Newspapers Following Corruption Articles

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

Extreme Sentiment: Barron's Cover "Get Ready for Record Dow - We Told You So"; Top Call

Posted: 03 Feb 2013 10:44 AM PST

Looking for extreme sentiment?
Look no further than the cover of Barron's magazine.

The cover speaks for itself, but check out some of the commentary in New Highs in Sight

The party is far from over. The early-year rally that on Friday took the Dow Jones Industrial Average to within 1% of its record high, set in 2007, could have a lot further to run. For starters, stocks aren't expensive. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is valued at about 14 times estimated 2013 profits and the Dow fetches less than 13 times projected 2013 earnings. At the market peak in 2007, the Dow traded for 16 times forward earnings. Given ultralow interest rates, the market multiple has room to expand even if earnings growth remains modest.

There's a huge amount of money that could shift into stocks because individuals until recently have favored bonds over equities, based on mutual-fund flow data. "If there is a great rotation going on from bonds to stocks, we may be only in the top of the first inning," says Jason Trennert, chief investment strategist at Strategas Research Partners in New York. Trennert cites the TINA -- or "there is no alternative" -- factor, as yield-starved investors move into stocks.

First Inning?

For starters, are the forward earnings estimates any better now than they were in 2007?

Second, let me point out that money does not flow from stocks to bonds or vice versa. For every buyer of stocks there is a seller, so the statement on rotation from bonds to stocks is point blank absurd. There can be a repricing of bonds, a repricing of stocks, a repricing of both, or a repricing of neither, but there is no flow.

Third let me ask "Does it get any more extreme than someone calling this the first inning after stocks have had more than a 100% rally in a few years?

Nonetheless, sentiment alone cannot time a top. Perhaps the DOW or the S&P do make new record highs. Regardless, this Barron's cover reminds me of a post I did back in 2005.

Home $weet Home

Back on June 7th, 2005 I put in a top call with help from Time Magazine. That top call was based on this cover.

Time Magazine went gaga over real estate on the June 12th issue, right at the very peak of the bubble. Congratulations must go out to Time Magazine for that fine achievement.

On March 26, 2005, in It's a Totally New Paradigm I posted this chart

Then when the cover of Time hit, I moved the arrow to the top. Check out the comments at the time.

Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors says that "South Florida is working off of a totally new economic model than any of us have ever experienced in the past." He predicts that a limited supply of land coupled with demand from baby boomers and foreigners will prolong the boom indefinitely.

"I just don't think we have what it takes to prick the bubble," said Diane C. Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, who was an optimist during the 90's. "I don't think prices are going to fall, and I don't think they're even going to be flat."

"I look at this as a short-term investment," said Mr. Farquharson, 36, who works for a venture capital firm, "and plan to unload it as soon as things look dangerous."

Top Call

Supposedly we are only in "the first inning" of a rally. Hmm. Are stocks supposed to rise 900% more? This may not be "the top" but it's close enough for me. I'm calling it.

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

SEO Blog

Why Is Your Website Not Performing?
Best Four iPhone Application for Business People
Top 5 Windows 8 Antiviruses

Why Is Your Website Not Performing?

Posted: 03 Feb 2013 02:26 AM PST

Fewer things have the potential to be more demoralising than a website that is not performing to your expectations. After spending a lot of time and money on developing your site, realising that it isn't good enough can be a blow both to yourself as an individual as well as...
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Best Four iPhone Application for Business People

Posted: 02 Feb 2013 08:53 PM PST

Wherever you may be in the world today you need one thing and that is technology, whatever you may be, either young or old you need technology. The age we are today is the age of technology and because of this in our daily lives we need tech apps and...
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Top 5 Windows 8 Antiviruses

Posted: 02 Feb 2013 08:42 PM PST

Windows 8 comes with slightly different interface then previous versions. It is the main reason why you need a different virus for your Windows 8 operated systems. Here in this article I am with details about Top 5 free Antiviruses for Windows 8 systems. One thing which I would like...
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Seth's Blog : Why do we care about football?

Why do we care about football?

For someone outside the US, the visceral connection with football seems mysterious. You can understand a lot about the future (and past) of marketing once you understand how the sport turned into a cultural touchstone.

Tribes -> TV -> Money -> Mass -> TV -> Tribes

Football as we know it started in colleges. It was an epic muddy battle, pitting one alma mater against another, a war-like, non-balletic battle that united (at a pretty elemental level) the tribes on each side. As it grew as a college sport, it became as much of a social event as a sporting one, with alumni and students finding connection around a game.

But if that's all it was, today wouldn't be the biggest day of the year for several industries. If that's all it was, you wouldn't be able to pick a fight merely by challenging the hegemony of football or the local team. We'd be spending as much time and energy on soccer or lacrosse or basketball, but we don't.

No, it turns out that, quite accidentally, football, more than any other sport, is made for television. It's better on TV than it is live. The combination of the play clock, the angles, the repetition and the opportunity for analysis all make it perfect to watch on TV. And perfect to run commercials on. TV and football grew up together, side by side. Instant replay and the thirty-second commercial, supporting each other.

It's not an accident that the commercials are as much a part of the Super Bowl as the game. The commercials represent both the cash component of football as well as the cultural souvenirs that go with our consumption of the game.

Fifty years ago, a coat salesman paid $4,000 for the rights to film a game, and NFL Films was born. The decisions Ed and Steve Sobel made over the years turned the sport cinematic, amplifying the tribal origins but taking them much further. They used sound editing and shot on film, all to transform a game into a spectacle.

Then, the second great accident occurred: As football became the official sport of television, it generated billions of dollars in revenue. This revenue led advertisers to push for more football, which led to more television, which led to colleges transforming football from a small sideline into a cash cow of some focus, despite the fact that it has very little to do with the core mission of the institution.

People justify the unpaid (and dangerous) labor of college football players by pointing to all the scholarships. But the scholarships aren't for playing football, they are for appearing on TV. That's what pays for the system.

The media-football complex drives deep into childhood, with many kids fast-tracked from a very young age into the game (not soccer, not baseball, not physics) at some level because of TV and because of money and because of tribes. If football is part of what we stand for, then of course we're happy to have our kid be part of that. But what does it mean for football to be part of what you stand for?

No one stands for movies, or ice cream or double-entry bookkeeping. No, a sport has become a pillar of our worldview, a tribal and economic connection to our past and our future. We don't want to understand the history and the money and the happy accidents. We just assume that this is as it was and as it will be.

Going forward, no other sport will ever have a run like this, because the TV-cash part of the connection can't be recreated. Mass TV built many elements of our culture, but mass TV (except for tonight) is basically over.

The new media giants of our age (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) don't point everyone to one bit of content, don't trade in mass. Instead, they splinter, connecting many to many, not many to one.

The cultural touchstones we're building today are mostly not mass, mostly not for everyone. Instead, the process is Tribes -> Connections/communities -> Diverse impact. Without the mass engine of TV, it's difficult to imagine it happening again. So instead we build our lives around cultural pockets, not cultural mass. Our job as marketers and leaders is to create vibrant pockets, not to hunt for mass.

But for next season... Go Bills!

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sâmbătă, 2 februarie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Obamacare in Action: Retail Workweek Hits 3-Year Low

Posted: 02 Feb 2013 05:26 PM PST

Hooray! The economy is adding jobs (supposedly). However, few look at the quality of the jobs, and whether or not they are part-time.

Jed Graham has a nice post on Investor's Business Daily that describes what I have been saying for months: Obamacare has accelerated the trend towards part-time jobs. There are more jobs, but fewer hours in them.

Please consider Retail Workweek Hits 3-Year Low In ObamaCare Shift by Jed Graham.

The fly in the ointment of January's jobs report was the apparent shift to part-time work ahead of a key ObamaCare deadline.

Although retail payrolls grew by 32,600, total hours worked in the industry dipped, Labor Department data out Friday showed.

The explanation? Rank-and-file retail workers logged the shortest workweek since early 2010: just 30.1 hours, on average, vs. 30.4 in December.

Remarkably, aggregate hours worked in the retail sector fell below their January 2012 level, even though industry payrolls are up 200,000 over that period. A similar trend showed up in leisure and hospitality: January payrolls rose by 23,000 even as aggregate hours dipped 0.3%.

Not Unexpected

This Obamacare-sponsored shift toward part-time jobs is certainly not unexpected, at least in this corner.

Last Hurrah?

I challenge the notion the economy added 157,000 jobs last month. I also challenge 23,000 leisure and hospitality jobs, and I challenge the claim that retail payrolls grew by 32,600.

For three straight months the household survey is way out of line with the payroll survey. This past month the household survey showed a net gain of only 17,000 jobs (please see Last Hurrah for Jobs? for details)

Yes, many prior months were revised up. But where are we now, going forward?

If the economy really did add 157,000 jobs on the "strength" of part-time hiring, then this was the last hurrah. If not, then I expect those BLS revisions to be re-revised away and October or November was the last hurrah.

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

Yum! The McRib is Back, Get Yours Today (After You Find Out What's In It); The Secret's in the Sauce!

Posted: 02 Feb 2013 07:48 AM PST

McDonald's does an excellent job at promoting sandwiches on its menu.

Top on the list is the "McRib" which comes and goes in "limited time" offers. You can even use a McRib Locator to find out which chains have the delicacy.

Before you rush out of your house to get one, you may be wondering "What's in a McRib".

That's a good question and the Natural Society has the answer in McDonald's McRib Sandwich a Franken Creation of GMOs, Toxic Ingredients, Banned Ingredients.

The McRib is the result of intensive marketing by McDonald's. Utilizing the basics of supply and demand through creating scarcity over the McRib by only unleashing the culinary abomination for a fraction of the year that is only known once it is released, McDonald's fans have been known to 'hoard' McRib sandwiches and eat them in extreme excess.

But what's really inside the McRib specifically that makes it such a food abomination? Containing over 70 ingredients, the McRib is full of surprises — including 'restructured meat' technology that includes traditionally-discarded animal parts brought together to create a rib-like substance. Here's some of the disturbing substances found within the McDonald's McRib sandwich:

A flour-bleaching agent used in yoga mats

Out of the 70 ingredients that make up the 'pork' sandwich, a little-known flour-bleaching agent known as azodicarbonamide lies among them. At first glance, this strange ingredient sounds concerning enough to look into. After a little research, you will find that even mainstream media outlets have generated content revealing how azodicarbonamide is actually used in the production of foamed plastics. Foamed plastics like yoga mats and more.

What's more? In Australia and Europe, the use of azodicarbonamide as a food additive is banned. In Singapore specifically, use of this substance in food can result in a $450,000 fine and 15 years in jail. Thank you McDonald's for supplying the nation with such healthful ingredients.

'Restructured Meat' from Pig Heart, Tongue, Stomach

McDonald's McRib is famous in some circles for utilizing what's known as 'restructured meat' technology. Since McDonald's knows you'd never eat a pig heart, tongue, or stomach on your plate, they decided instead to grind up these ingredients and put them into the form of a typical rib. That way, consumers won't know what they're putting into their mouths. As the Chicago Mag reported, the innovator of this technology back in 1995 said it best:

"Most people would be extremely unhappy if they were served heart or tongue on a plate… but flaked into a restructured product it loses its identity. Such products as tripe, heart, and scalded stomachs…"

So in other words, it's not actually a rib. Instead, it's a combination of unwanted animal scraps processed down in major facilities and 'restructured' into the form of a rib. Then, 70 additives, chemicals, fillers, and GMO ingredients later, you have a 'meat' product that tastes like ribs.

Whopper Horsemeat

Surely Burger King is not tainted with such tactics. Or is it? For the answer, let's take a look at another report from the Natural Society: Burger King Admits Burgers Contain Horsemeat

In a piece of highly disturbing news, Burger King has now admitted after continuous denial that it has actually been selling UK customers both burgers and Whoppers that contain horsemeat. This admission comes just after The Guardian reports that Burger King reps offered a round of 'absolute assurances' to customers that it did not ever use horsemeat in its products.

A series of tests done on the burger products now reveal that Burger King has been issuing completely phony statements, with burgers made for the fast food chain from the Irish company Silvercrest containing measurable levels of horsemeat. It's important to note this is the same company that processes meat for Tesco, Asda, and the Co-op. The managers at Silvercrest have been revealed to be utilizing non-approved ingredients within their burger assortment – even for 'household brands'.

Burger King Admits Error

The Guardian reports Burger King reveals its burgers were contaminated in horsemeat scandal.

Burger King has revealed that some of its burgers were contaminated in the horsemeat scare, as the tainted food crisis threatened to undermine the confidence of consumers, and major retailers tried to protect their reputations.

As governments in Ireland, the UK and Poland, where a supplier used by Silvercrest for a year is thought be the source of the contamination, continued their investigations, Burger King admitted that, contrary to previous assurances made to it by Silvercrest, it too had now been linked to the scandal. Authorities insist there is no health danger to consumers.

Meanwhile Aldi UK became the first major retailer to suspend its contract with a British plant, Dalepak Hambleton in North Yorkshire, which, like Silvercrest, is part of the ABP Food Group, pending further investigations into why three of nine newly tested burger samples had traces of horse and pork DNA. The products were from stock withdrawn in recent weeks as a precaution but made since October, the company said.

Burger King said: "Our independent DNA test results on product taken from restaurants were negative for any equine DNA. However, four samples recently taken from the Silvercrest plant have shown the presence of very small trace levels of equine DNA. Within the last 36 hours, we have established that Silvercrest used a small percentage of beef imported from a non-approved supplier in Poland. They promised to deliver 100% British and Irish beef patties and have not done so. This is a clear violation of our specifications, and we have terminated our relationship with them."

Diego Beamonte, vice-president for global quality at Burger King, said the company was "deeply troubled by the findings of our investigation and apologise to our guests, who trust us to source only the highest quality 100% beef burgers. Our supplier has failed us and in turn we have failed you".

Surprise? What Surprise?

Is anyone surprised by this? I certainly am not.

Indeed, after reporting on the "Extra-Value" Horse-Burger at grocery chains in the UK and Ireland, I would have been surprised to find out that burger chains were not contaminated as well.

Heck, even before reading articles on contamination I would have been surprised.

The Secret's in the Sauce!

Inquiring minds might wonder "Just how does McDonald's get the McRib to taste so yummy?" That's a good question too, and I have two answers.

Some simply like azodicarbonamide, bleaching agents, tripe, heart, scalded stomachs, tongues, and other unwanted animal scraps restructured into the form of a rib.

For everyone else, "The secret's in the sauce!" (Just don't ask what's in it).

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

luni, 4 februarie 2013

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