vineri, 3 mai 2013

West Wing Week: "Nobody Does It Better"

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Friday, May 3, 2013
 

West Wing Week: "Nobody Does It Better"

This week, President Obama spoke at the Planned Parenthood conference and the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, met with the King of Jordan, made five personnel announcements, celebrated the sciences and the Joining Forces Initiative, and embarked on a trip to Mexico and Costa Rica.

Watch this week's West Wing Week.

West Wing Week: 05/03/13

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog:

President Obama Visits Mexico and Costa Rica
On his trip to Mexico and Costa Rica, the President hopes to highlight and reinforce the deep cultural, familial, and economic ties that so many Americans share with Mexico and Central America, and to promote economic growth across the region.

Ben Rhodes Previews President Obama's Trip to Mexico and Costa Rica
The Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications talks about some of the issues the President will be focusing on in his meetings.

The Employment Situation in April
Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that private sector businesses added 176,000 jobs last month and total non-farm payroll employment rose by 165,000 jobs in April. The economy has now added private sector jobs every month for 38 straight months, and a total of 6.8 million jobs has been added over that period.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

8:30 AM: The Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden host their annual Cinco de Mayo breakfast at the Naval Observatory 

10:15 AM: The President delivers remarks WhiteHouse.gov/live

10:30 AM: The Vice President and Secretary of State John Kerry deliver remarks at the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) Memorial Plaque Ceremony WhiteHouse.gov/live

12:25 PM: The President meets with Mexican entrepreneurs 

1:25 PM: The President departs Mexico City, Mexico en route San Jose, Costa Rica

4:00 PM: The President arrives San Jose, Costa Rica

4:35 PM: The President meets and greets with United States Embassy personnel 

5:40 PM: The President and President Chinchilla hold a restricted bilateral meeting

5:55 PM: The President and President Chinchilla hold an expanded bilateral meeting

6:30 PM: The President and President Chinchilla hold a cultural event with Costa Rican youth

7:15 PM: The President and President Chinchilla hold a press conference WhiteHouse.gov/live

7:30 PM: The Vice President delivers keynote remarks at the South Carolina Democratic Party's 2013 Jefferson-Jackson Dinner

8:35 PM: The President participates in a photo with Central American Integration System leaders

9:00 PM: The President, President Chinchilla and Central American Integration System leaders meet for a working dinner

WhiteHouse.gov/live Indicates that the event will be live-streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live

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Why We Can't Just Be SEOs Anymore - Whiteboard Friday

Why We Can't Just Be SEOs Anymore - Whiteboard Friday


Why We Can't Just Be SEOs Anymore - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 02 May 2013 02:13 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

There's a movement happening in our industry, and many folks are changing their practices and titles from "SEO" to "online marketing, inbound marketing, and/or earned media marketing." Where did this shift originate from, and where is it taking our industry as a whole? Is it enough to just be an SEO in today's game, or are we missing the bigger picture?

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares his take on the shift from "SEO" to "inbound marketing" and what the future holds for our industry at large. 

Have something to add? Leave your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!

For your viewing pleasure, here's a still image of the whiteboard used in this week's video:



Video Transcription

"Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to a special edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to address an elephant in the room. It's a topic that I've talked about quite a bit on my personal blog, a bit on the primary blog, and I know it's a topic that gets discussed all over the marketing world, from Inbound.org to lots of blogs and news sites. It's:  Why is it that there's this movement from some folks in the field to change their titles, their names, their practices, from saying, "We do SEO," to saying, "We do inbound marketing," or, "We do online marketing, we do web marketing, we do earned media marketing"?

I want to try to try and take on that elephant right now. There are some really good reasons that I think we're seeing this shift happen, and I'm actually one of the proponents of this shift. I used to be very against it. I used to be very passionate about building only the brand of SEO. Now, I've revised my stance. I think that, as new data and as the world has changed and I've become less of an obstinate son of a gun, I'm seeing this bigger picture, and I want to try to share that picture that I'm seeing with you.

The first one is I can't argue that SEO is bigger than the way people define or have defined SEO for the last decade. That's not really true of the 2010 to 2013 period, but it is very true of the decade before that, from the late '90s into the late 2000, the "aughts." What I mean is there are these old-school tactics. "Oh, you're going to do SEO? Well, that means you do links, you make my content relevant, you put the good keywords in there, you do work on your markup, your snippets, and your site architecture, your structure. You are done. You have done SEO. That is SEO. Don't try to tell me that it's more than that."

This becomes very, very challenging when, as an SEO or as a marketer who's trying to achieve good results with SEO, you say, "But wait a minute. This only works when the ranking factors were things like link graph data, keyword data, domain data, and topic analysis." Now, we have a lot more ranking factors, right? Engines are looking at user and usage data. They're definitely looking at brand signals. They're looking at offline data potential. Potentially there are patent applications, thinking about offline data. They're looking at social graph signals.

What's an SEO to do? If I want to influence these, I've got to be able to work on everything that's marketing. That's everything from social media to community building, positioning, branding, emails, CRO, product, the unique value of the content. What am I going to do if I'm tasked with SEO, but I'm only given responsibility over these things? It's just not going to work. In order to influence just the very part of SEO that we touch on, which is moving up rankings in major search engines like Google and Bing, just to do that, we have to be able to control and influence a lot more than we ever had to in the past. It's an untenable kind of situation.

Thus, what we'd really like to do and what we've been working hard at as an industry is to try to change and broaden the definition of SEO. I can tell you one of the things that I feel very passionately about is changing that branding and working really hard to not have the word "SEO" be associated with scumminess and bad companies and irresponsible behavior. But that perception of SEO is so hard to change. It's been established for such a long time now, and the small efforts of quite a few of us in the field to try and change that perception have not been successful, at least not outside of the online marketing world. Inside that world and with a small portion of the developers and designers who get SEO and get marketing, it's true.

I love those of you who are watching Whiteboard Friday and who are in that world, who understand that SEO is this bigger thing. But I know that you've felt the same pain that I'm talking about. People say, "Oh, SEO. So you're a spammer. You manipulate things. You're unethical. You're breaking the search engine's rules. What does Google think of you?"

These are questions we have to answer every single time, and it's pretty clear to me why this happens. I think the reason is actually very obvious. The primary and first association that most people have with SEO is what? It's comment spam on their blogs. It's a spammy, scummy email that's trying to get them to sign up for something. It's someone wanting to trade a PageRank 6 link with them. It's a forum, or a bulletin board, or an online community saying, "Oh, are you wondering why this malware happened? That's the SEOs doing that." That's why all these bad things happen on the Internet. They blame SEOs.

To be fair, early on in the days of SEO, there were plenty of us, myself included, who would do some of these spammy and manipulative things. I'm not innocent, by any means. But that perception, that fight is one that I don't think we're winning. That's another reason why I think it's really hard to do SEO well and just call yourself an SEO. I think when you change the title, you change the perception. You change the frame of reference, and you say, "I do web marketing. I help people grow their companies. I help attract visitors, and that leads to more conversions on their site." They're like, "Oh, okay. I get it. Web marketing. Understood." SEO is one of the channels, one of the main channels, but one of the channels they focus on.

The third one, we are selling ourselves short. When you say, "I'm an SEO," your boss, your client, your management says, "Why are you meddling with our design, UX, social, and ad campaigns? Why are you trying to get into this?" You are supposed to focus on SEO. Yet, the answer is well, we can't do great even at just SEO without influencing all these other fields that we talked about above.

By the way, we're selling ourselves short even more than just this, because when we do work on all these channels, when we improve all of these channels, that obviously helps our search rankings too, we are also driving a lot of traffic from them. Social is sending us good traffic. The blogosphere and PR efforts are sending us good links that are driving visits, good customer service practices, community building practices, culture practices. All of these things that influence SEO that we're trying to move the needle on to get better results, they also drive traffic of their own. That traffic converts, and that traffic is valuable. That traffic is measurable, and we are often the ones who are measuring it and quantifying it and trying to gauge the impact it has on search. Yet, we're not getting rewarded for it or treated as though we were responsible for it. Again, we're selling ourselves short.

But I want to end on a positive note. This stuff is okay. It is okay. This is something that we are used to. We are used to change. If there's anything that SEOs can be assured of, it's that things will change tomorrow, that things will change next week. No one is better prepared to handle change than we are. This kind of change is actually positive. Every field matures. My checkmark practices don't mature. I'm clearly getting worse at them. But every field matures. You can see the early seeds of programming, of video, of accounting, any type of field, right? Journalism, for sure. Any time there's massive shift or a new industry, we have these years of immaturity, and then we get to a better stage.

I think the stage for us is deciding:  Do we want to keep committing to a brand that frankly has been put through the wringer? One that I still use and will always use. As long as I am doing SEO work, I will use that brand. But do we want to also take hold of and recognize that, as marketers, we want to do good branding and good marketing? That means potentially calling ourselves something different, taking on these other titles, expressing ourselves in other ways in order to get more influence, and by the way, bigger paychecks too.

An SEO consultant, there are people who charge between $50 and a few hundred dollars an hour. Then you look at business strategy consultants from Accenture, or something like that, and you're talking about a thousand plus dollars an hour. The more influence you have, the greater your billing is and, by the way, the more you can effect change and have a positive influence.

I hope this Whiteboard Friday is valuable to you. I'm sure there will be good comments and good discussion about this naming convention. I look forward to reading them and participating too. Take care, everyone. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday."

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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A New Version of GetListed.org

Posted: 02 May 2013 02:02 AM PDT

Posted by David Mihm

Today, I am excited to announce the release of a new version of GetListed.org. While no new functionality is included in this update, the team and I hope it provides a dramatically improved user experience on several fronts.

The best way to get a sense of what's changed is to run a business search for yourself, but I'll run through a few brief highlights here.


Faster business lookups

GetListed is now waaayyyy faster (that's the technical term used by our engineers) than it used to be. Previously, lookups averaged around 20 seconds. We've cut the average response time in half to about 10 seconds, and we'll be working to make it even faster as we analyze usage of the app and further optimize our response times. We hope this increased speed provides a big value-add for those of you who use GetListed in your on-the-spot client meetings.

More consistent results

Previously, GetListed's Listing Snapshot displayed a composite listing based on the data points returned by several search engines in our list. This led to unnecessary confusion among business owners, and made it difficult for some of our agency users to identify which search engines were returning incorrect information about clients' listings. It also made tracking Listing Score progress over time more difficult, since this score was dependent on the order of results returned by our search engine partners, and this order sometimes varied week-to-week and month-to-month.

The new version of the site asks users to establish their canonical NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information prior to running a full query for a given business, so that the new Snapshot page and Listing Score are no longer based on "best guess" composite listings.

Please note: this update means you may see changes in your listing scores, including for those businesses saved to your Dashboard. We suggest re-establishing these scores by running your listings through the new site. When you do, you'll have a fixed data point against which you can measure your progress over time.

Cleaner Listing Snapshot interface 

When we started GetListed back in January 2009, only four search engines were displayed on the snapshot page. As our app grew in popularity and we established new relationships with data providers and other search engines, that list grew ever-longer and the formerly-simple interface grew clunky and overwhelming. The goal of the site (to get business owners to update erroneous information and add missing information) became muddied.

We hope the new interface makes these calls-to-action much clearer--to create listings on search engines where they don't exist, and to update information that doesn't match reality. The new app consolidates the old Snapshot, Accuracy, and Details pages, bringing accuracy front-and-center, and makes it easy to see listing details inline without jumping from page-to-page.

Cleaner Dashboard interface

The new Dashboard removes the clutter of favicon-style search engine logos (another problem created by our gradual expansion to include more listing providers over the last four years). The new Dashboard provides a quick way to assess listing scores at a glance, and easy access to the details page for your listings from clickable business titles.

U.S. version only

Over the past couple of months, we've noticed GetListed UK and GetListed CA returning an unacceptably high number of errors on business queries. As part of this release, we've decided to temporarily suspend these versions in order to focus on the backend and interface for our U.S. audience, which accounted for 98% of all queries run in April. After we've had a chance to analyze our domestic audience usage on this new system, we plan to re-release UK- and CA-specific versions (along with more international sites) later in the year.


Looking ahead

Well, that takes care of most of the major changes for this release.  Feedback, as always, is welcome.  We've even added a handy-dandy tab where you can submit feedback directly within the app; you can also feel free to email me at davidm@seomoz.org.

I hope I've laid out a compelling case above for the rationale behind this release from a user's perspective. From a development perspective, the goal of this iteration of GetListed was to create a foundation for more frequent feature releases and better integration with SEOmoz tools moving forward. It paves the way for a number of new features we will be rolling out over the course of the summer and fall, which all of us on the GetListed team are even more excited about. Looking forward to sharing those with you soon!


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Seth's Blog : Blueberry pancakes and battleships

 

Blueberry pancakes and battleships

The typical industrial-era organization is like a battleship. Hundreds or thousands of people onboard, and most of them are essential--but most of them aren't actually directly responsible for the work that we hired the battleship to do. Without the fuel people, the navigation team, the folks in the med corps and on and on, it doesn't work.

The battleship can go far, with impact, and change the course of history. While it has exactly one captain, it's the synchronized work of more than a million people (when you think about all the machinists and support folks back home) and it works. It does what we ask it to do.

One more thing about the people on the battleship: just about everyone has a punchlist, an itemized inventory of what they need to get done. And many of them are rewarded for doing that set of tasks more efficiently, more elegantly and with better quality than expected. Great people means the system works even better, but it's designed to survive with people who are merely good at what they do.

The typical professional services company, on the other hand, is a lot like a blueberry pancake. While there's an essential support team, the firm is all about blueberries working in parallel. Each blueberry can work independently, and sometimes they even work on projects that might have conflicting outcomes or views of the world. I don't care how many people report to you. I care about how connected and how brave you are.

As the firm gets bigger, it doesn't get thicker. You don't make a better pancake by making a thicker one. You make a better pancake by hiring ever better blueberries.

And, as you've guessed, most of the blueberries don't know exactly what they'll be doing in six weeks, and most don't work from a manual about the industry's best practices on how to do what they do. It's hard to measure blueberries, but a talented and motivated one can also change the world.

Apple is now a battleship. Most of the tens of thousands of people who work there have a line job, selling, building, fixing or interacting. Only a few are dreaming up something that you can't even imagine.

Your favorite record label, though, ought to be a blueberry pancake. Each musical group is mostly alone, figuring out something that just might work. The goal isn't to lock and repeat and scale. It's to go wide and stay interesting. Great record labels have both better blueberries and the support staff to launch them into the world.

I remember the day we transformed Yoyodyne from a pancake to a battleship. We hired 17 salespeople in 24 hours (increasing the size of the company by 25%) and for the first time, I didn't know every employee well. People had their orders, and we were ready to scale.

If you want to make your battleship work better, be really clear about defining the mission, the tactics, the chain of command and most of all, precisely what you measure from each person on the team.

Your pancake, on the other hand, gives up swing weight and firepower and instead gets flexibility and the possiblity of non-fatal failure (and game-changing magic).

Both work. The problem kicks in when a successful pancake thinks its future is in the battleship business. Or when battleships are asked to dance.


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joi, 2 mai 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Australia Manufacturing Collapses as Commodity Supercycle Stalls; Labor and Unions Wrecked Australia

Posted: 02 May 2013 02:26 PM PDT

Australia fundamentals deteriorate rapidly as evidenced by a collapse in the PMI Manufacturing Index in April.
Key Findings

  • Manufacturing activity contracted significantly in April as conditions weakened amid a strong Australian dollar, intense import competition, high energy costs and weak local confidence.
  • The Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Manufacturing Index (Australian PMI®) fell 7.7 points to 36.7 on a seasonally adjusted basis. (Readings below 50 indicate a contraction in activity with the distance from 50 indicative of the strength of the decrease.)
  • This is the lowest level the Australian PMI® has recorded since May 2009, with many of the key sub-indexes also dropping to levels not seen since 2009. The three-month moving average in April fell to 42.2 points from 43.4 points in March.
  • Contractions in activity were recorded in seven out of the eight manufacturing sub-sectors. Significant contractions were recorded in food, beverage & tobacco products; printing & recorded media; non-metallic mineral products; metal products; and machinery & equipment.
  • Sharp declines in production, new orders and employment were recorded in April, while finished stocks and deliveries declined as well, albeit at a more moderate pace.
  • Capacity utilization in the manufacturing sector fell 2.4 points to 68.6 (the lowest level since June 2009), consistent with the overall drop in activity in the sector.
  • Exports continued to contract for the ninth consecutive month, as the exports sub-index fell to 24.5 in April. This was the lowest reading in the history of this sub-index (commencing in 2004).
  • Significant contractions in manufacturing activity were recorded across most States, especially in Victoria where the record of activity fell 8.4 points to 29.1 in April, the lowest level on record.

New Orders

The new orders sub-index decreased by 7.0 points to 32.4 points in April (seasonally adjusted). This was the lowest level recorded for this sub-index since May 2009.

Employment

The seasonally adjusted employment sub-index decreased by 9.4 points to 39.3 in April, the lowest level since May 2009.

Inventories

Manufacturing inventories contracted again in April, with the sub-index falling 4.8 points to 46.4 (seasonally adjusted). The deliveries sub-index declined 7.3 points to 41.1, indicating that deliveries have been contracting since March 2012.
Australia PMI at a Glance

Series DataApr IndexMar IndexPercentage Point ChangeDirectionRate of ChangeTrend (Months)
PMI™44.436.7-7.7ContractingFaster22
Production41.733.1-8.6ContractingFaster13
Employment48.739.3-9.4ContractingFaster18
New Orders39.432.4-7.0ContractingFaster8
Inventories51.246.4-4.8ContractingFrom Expanding1
Supplier Deliveries48.441.1-7.3ContractingFaster14
Input Prices65.557.0-8.5ExpandingSlower131
Exports27.424.5-2.9ContractingFaster9
Selling Prices43.040.3-2.7ContractingFaster25
Average Wages57.757.0-0.7ExpandingSlower48
Capacity Utilization71.068.6-2.4Decrease



Macro Alert From Steen Jakobsen

Via email, Steen Jakobsen at Saxo Bank sent these comments ...
Macro Alert: Australia is seeing significant slow-down.

  1. Australia's benefit from the Super Cycle in commodities is petering out in 2013. Mining investment to GDP will peak at 8%. This concept is supported by the RBA. 
  2. There are significant reductions in pipeline projects due to lower general level of commodity prices and cancellations. 
  3. The non-mining economy is weaker and getting weaker
  4. China slow-down hits Australia
Massive Imbalances

Please note the massive imbalances in the PMI report. Input prices have been expanding for 131 straight months. Wages have been expanding for 48 months. Selling prices have been contracting for 25 months.

New orders and exports tell the story. Wages are too high. Margin pressures mount. Employment must drop and it did. The employment index was down a monstrous 9.4 points.

Labor and Unions Wrecked Australia

The labor party and unions wrecked Australia. This was invisible for years because a housing boom and China-fueled commodity boom masked the untenable nature of wage and property bubble growth.

Now, it's payback time.

On September 14, prime minister Julia Gillard, leader of the Australian Labor Party will be thrown out of office in a landslide. Unfortunately, it will take years for Australia to recover from the damage caused by Labor.

Addendum - Comments from Steve Keen

Steve Keen blames both parties.

Via email, Keen says "The damage began under Labor with Hawke and Keating, was turbocharged by the Liberals under Howard, and simply maintained by Rudd/Gillard Labor. And unions have lost significant power all the way through--they've been bystanders, not active participants. It's instead been a series of distortions caused by a neoliberal philosophy that is shared by both parties."

Hmm. Parties talk differently but act the same. Where have we seen that before?

In the US, it's on war, bailouts, and spending that always goes up. Romneycare and Obamacare were the same. For political purposes people pretend differences exist when they don't, except on some social issues.

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

Global Manufacturing Stagnates; Global Recession Will Follow

Posted: 02 May 2013 10:49 AM PDT

The JPMorgan Global Manufacturing PMI shows Global manufacturing growth slows to near-stagnation.
At 50.5 in April, the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing PMI™ – a composite index* produced by JPMorgan and Markit in association with ISM and IFPSM – signalled expansion for the fourth straight month. The rate of expansion decelerated slightly during April, meaning that growth so far in 2013 has remained, at best, only marginal.

Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam were the only nations to report a faster rate of improvement in operating conditions during April. Europe remained the main drag on the global aggregate, with the euro area contracting at the sharpest pace in the year-to-date and the UK stagnating.

The US PMI fell sharply to signal the slowest growth for six months. There was further stagnation in neighbouring Canada, while Mexico expanded at the weakest pace in 20 months in Mexico. Growth of manufacturing also slowed to near-stagnation in China, Russia, India and Brazil.
Global PMI April vs. March



Every facet of global manufacturing is slowing and global growth will follow. A global recession is certainly baked in the cake, if indeed a recession is not already in progress.

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

Shock and Awe: ECB Prepared to "Cope With Consequences of Negative Deposit Rates"; Dancing in the Dark Experiment

Posted: 02 May 2013 09:09 AM PDT

As expected the ECB, cut its lending rate 25 basis points to 0.50%.

Yesterday, I suggested the ECB may try a "shock and awe" move. They did, just not the move anyone expected.

Instead, Mario Draghi said the ECB was Prepared to "Cope With Consequences of Negative Deposit Rates".

Shock and Awe

Bloomberg reports Euro Falls as Draghi Open to Negative Rates; Dollar Strengthens
The euro fell for the first time in five days against the dollar after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said policy makers may take the unprecedented step of charging banks to hold excess reserves.

"The euro was quite upbeat until Draghi made his comment that the ECB would be able to cope with any consequences of negative deposit rates," said Daragh Maher, a currency strategist at HSBC Holdings Plc in London. "Previously, the language of the ECB on this front has characterized it as uncharted waters. Today, it seems the ECB is more open to the idea. The euro was clearly spooked by the mere concept of negative deposit rates in the euro zone."
For an analysis of what this means, with a tip of the hat to Steen Jakobsen at Saxo Bank for the link, let's flashback to a decision to cut the deposit rate to zero in July of 2012.

Dancing in the Dark Experiment

The Financial Times says ECB Dances in the Dark
It's clear the ECB has gone into experimental mode.

A positive deposit rate was the last thing anchoring money market rates to zero — or vague profitability. This is because banks could arbitrage the difference between the rates they received at the ECB and the rates money market funds were able to invest at.

By cutting the deposit rate, the ECB is killing this arbitrage. There will not be any profit associated with taking money from non-banks and parking it at the ECB for a small profit. Non-banks won't even be able to get zero.

This will leave real-rates exposed to further deterioration.

The ECB, of course, is hoping that non-banks will choose to channel that money into risky assets instead.
Death of Banking

FT Alphaville makes the case Negative rates as a precursor to the death of banking.
What we believe is that rather than stimulating the lending market — and the economy along with it — such a rate policy could have a disastrous impact on collateral markets and money market funds, not to mention the net interest income of lending institutions. All of which could unleash a protracted deflationary spiral.

The move could also presage the death of banks and lending institutions completely.
FT Alphaville cites Morgan Stanley Research as follows:
Our rates team expects short end German yields to follow financing rates into negative territory and some investors to extend along duration and credit curves to achieve positive yields to maturity.

But we do not think negative ECB deposit rates would drive any increase in cross-border interbank lending. Rather, we see a risk of greater Balkanisation of European banking markets from funding pressures.

Today, a fall in rates would hit NII and reduce banks confidence in their earnings build and capital plan – making them wish to delever more not less, although time should heal. Market liquidity is likely to fall; Bank and insurers earnings under further pressure.

In Japan, JGB trading volumes fell by 2/3 over the coming 12 years as ZIRP was adopted, particularly at the short end – one reason why the Japan Central Bank does not want front end rates to be negative. Negative rates would likely be a negative for earnings and could thus impact solvency of banks and insurers.

The greatest risk our rates colleagues see would be for negative rates 2-3 years down the curve, in which case banks would need to re-price credit further.

Morgan Stanley European Insurance analyst Jon Hocking writes: "Earnings and solvency margins for European insurers are already under severe pressure from very low long-term bond yields."
Deposit Rate of Zero Did Not Work

It's clear that cutting the deposit rate to zero did not work. So why will cutting them to less than zero work?

A negative deposit rate will not stimulate lending because it does not fix any structural problems, it does not fix any liquidity issues, and it makes solvency problems worse by turning guaranteed arbitrage gains into guaranteed losses on excess reserves.

Should this actually succeed in stimulating lending, expect it to also succeed at stimulating losses on that lending.

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