duminică, 2 iunie 2013

Seth's Blog : Tried and false

 

Tried and false

The tried and true is beyond reproach. It's been tried, and of course, it's true. True because it worked.

In times of change, though, most of the tried is in fact, false. False because what used to work, doesn't, at least not any longer.

Sure, it might be what you've always done. But that doesn't make it true, or right, or best. It just means that you already tried it.

The nature of revolutions is that they destroy the perfect and enable the impossible. Seeking out the tried and true is the wrong direction for crazy times.

     

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sâmbătă, 1 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Sweden Housing Crash Coming Up; Average Swede to Repay Mortgage in 140 Years; Swedish Central Bank Ponders New Rules

Posted: 01 Jun 2013 10:01 PM PDT

Average Swede to Repay Mortgage in 140 Years

Swedish repay their mortgages so slowly that it will take 140 years on average, according to the IMF.
The International Monetary Fund lamented Friday that Swedish households pay their mortgages so slowly that they are planning to do an average of 140 years.

"Financial stability is [...] reinforced by a steady reduction in repayment schedules - that exceed an average of 140 years," the IMF said in a statement after a mission in Sweden.

This statistic was revealed in March by a government agency, the inspection of the financial sector. It covers loans considered relatively safe, those where the real estate buyer had an initial contribution equal to or greater than 25% of the value of the property and pay the higher monthly interest alone.

According to the Washington-based institution, the Swedish real estate market is a major risk to the economy, along with the eurozone crisis.

"With household debt rising beyond 1.7 times disposable income, a sudden and significant drop in property prices could have an effect on consumption and banks, raising unemployment and further reduce the inflation, and increased the number of non-performing loans and financing costs for banks, "said the IMF.
Why bother paying anything at all? Yet think of the consequences of underwater mortgages on the banking system when an estate does not have enough money to repay loans. A housing bust will have enormous consequences in such a setup.

Swedish Central Bank Ponders New Rules

Sweden is in the midst of a property bubble and a debt bubble, so much so that the risk mentioned above was noticed by the Swedish central bank.

And central banks are always at the tail end of noticing risks of the policies they sponsor.

Please consider Swedes' high debts spark housing bubble fears.
Martin Andersson, the head of Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen), expressed his concern about Swedes' mounting debts. "Swedish households today are among the most indebted in Europe and we cannot have household lending that spirals out of control," Andersson said.

One tool already in place to dampen the growth of Swedish household debt is a mortgage lending ceiling introduced in 2010 which caps the amount home buyers can borrow at 85 percent of the value of the property.

Riksbank head Stefan Ingves has also suggested new rules that would require Swedes to pay down the principal on their mortgages, although Andersson refused to say whether his agency would consider such a rule.

Last year, Swedes' household debt hit a record 173 percent of disposable income, well above the 135 percent level during the height of Sweden's banking crisis in the early 1990s.
Sweden Housing Crash Coming Up

By the time central banks notice bubbles and begin to discuss ways to alleviate them, it is far, far too late to do anything about them. A housing crash with huge consequences is 100% certain.

The longer it takes before the crash begins, the worse the crash.

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

Lowest Core PCE in History; "Flation" Perspective

Posted: 01 Jun 2013 09:53 AM PDT

Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives has a pair of interesting reports on price inflation as measured by the PCE and PCI.

Please consider PCE Price Index Update: Sorry Fed, The Disinflationary Trend Continues.
The latest Headline PCE price index year-over-year (YoY) rate of 0.74% is a decrease from last month's adjusted 1.01%. The Core PCE index of 1.05% is decrease from the previous month's adjusted 1.17%. It is the lowest Core PCE ever recorded; the previous all-time low was 1.06% in March 1963, fifty years ago.

The continuing disinflationary trend in core PCE (the blue line in the charts below) must be troubling to the Fed. After years of ZIRP and waves of QE, this closely watched indicator has been consistently moving in the wrong direction for over a year. It has contracted month-over-month for ten of the last 13 months since its interim high of 1.96% in March of 2012 and is now approaching half that YoY rate.

The first chart shows the monthly year-over-year change in the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index since 2000. I've also included an overlay of the Core PCE (less Food and Energy) price index, which is Fed's preferred indicator for gauging inflation. I've highlighted 2 to 2.5 percent range. Two percent had generally been understood to be the Fed's target for core inflation. However, the December 12 FOMC meeting raised the inflation ceiling to 2.5% for the next year or two while their accommodative measures (low FFR and quantitative easing) are in place.



click on chart for sharper image

For a long-term perspective, here are the same two metrics spanning five decades.



click on chart for sharper image
Inquiring minds may also wish to consider Two Measures of Inflation: Core PCE at Its All-Time Low

"Flation" Perspective

Inflation, deflation, and disinflation are all in the eyes of the beholder, and all depend on the definition. Still I expect another round of deflation possibly with prices but more importantly with credit, my preferred measure of "flation".

Regardless of how one measures "flation", the hyperinflationists missed the boat by a mile.

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

Mozscape's Third May 2013 Index Is Now Live

Mozscape's Third May 2013 Index Is Now Live


Mozscape's Third May 2013 Index Is Now Live

Posted: 31 May 2013 06:04 AM PDT

Posted by bradfriedman

It has been an amazing month at Moz, and for the first time, we have served up three indexes in one month - holy fresh data, Batman! This index is also our second index release from our Virginia data center.

As we've become so regular with our index releases, it seems that a blog post announcing each release may not be the best way to inform our customers on releases as they happen. This will be the last index update announced on the blog, but index release readers, have no fear! There's a new, more digestible way to get all of the information about the index updates you know and love.

Going forward, we invite you subscribe to the Mozscape RSS feed found on the lower right-hand corner of the http://moz.com/products/api/updates page so that you will know when we have released a new index. Simply click on the RSS feed icon... 

...and you'll be directed to our Feedburner Mozscape updates page. This page makes it easy to enter your information to subscribe to our index updates: 


Just enter your email address, choose your reader, and let the Mozscape index data flow in! 

As our index releases continue to become more frequent, you can expect the number of updates received through the RSS to mount. We hope you enjoy this new way to consume fresh update info as much as we do.


Here are the metrics for this index:

  • 85,870,573,626 (86 billion) URLs
  •   5,524,096,501 (5.5 billion) Subdomains
  • 155,443,706 (155 million) Root Domains
  • 902,845,046,889  (903 billion) Links
  • Followed vs. Nofollowed
    •   2.17 % of all links found were nofollowed
    • 57.32 % of nofollowed links are internal
    • 42.68 % are external
  • Rel Canonical -  14.44 % of all pages now employ a rel=canonical tag
  • The average page has 79 links on it
    •  678.36 internal links on average
    •  11.13 external links on average

And the correlations with Google's US search results:

  • Page Authority - 0.36
  • Domain Authority - 0.19
  • MozRank - 0.24
  • Linking Root Domains - 0.30
  • Total Links - 0.25
  • External Links - 0.29
This histogram shows the crawl date and freshness of results in this index:


This index spans 38 days with crawl starting April 1st and finishing on May 8th.  

We always love to hear your thoughts! And remember, if you're ever curious about when Mozscape next index release is planned, check out http://moz.com/products/api/updates.

Thanks for reading, and have a Mozzy weekend!


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Weekly Address: Congress Should Take Action to Continue Growing the Economy

Here's What's Happening Here at the White House
 
 
 
 
 
 
  Featured 

Weekly Address: Congress Should Take Action to Continue Growing the Economy

In this week’s address, President Obama says that the economy is moving in the right direction, but there is still more work to do. He calls on Congress to act to give every responsible homeowner the chance to save money on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low interest rates, put more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and fix our broken immigration system -- so that we can continue to grow our economy and create good middle class jobs.

Watch this week's Weekly Address.

Watch this week's Weekly Address

 
 
  Top Stories

“You’ve met the mission”: President Obama spoke in Annapolis, Maryland last Friday to deliver the commencement address to the U.S. Naval Academy’s class of 2013. In his address, the President congratulated the graduates for taking their oath, and praised them for meeting the mission of the Academy and proving themselves morally, mentally, and physically.

“So, Class of 2013, in your four years by the Bay, you’ve met every test before you. And today is the day that you’ve been counting down to for so long. You will take your oath. Those boards and gold bars will be placed on your shoulders. And as your Commander-in-Chief, I congratulate each of you on becoming our newest officers -- ensigns in the United States Navy, second lieutenants in the United States Marine Corps.  

The Savoy School: Actress Kerry Washington joined First Lady Michelle Obama at the Savoy School in Washington, D.C. on Friday. The school was selected for the Turnaround Arts Initiative at the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities last year. While visiting, the First Lady played freeze dance and checked out art projects created by a fifth grade class.

"When you work hard and you invest thousands of hours in anything, you get better.  And that’s what you guys are learning here at Savoy.  Hopefully you are learning that with your math, with your reading, with your dancing, with your singing, it's about the amount of effort that you want to put into anything."

Moore, Oklahoma: President Obama traveled to Oklahoma on Sunday to join Governor Mary Fallin and Mayor Glen Lewis in Moore, a town devastated by the previous week’s tornadoes. While in Moore, the President met with first responders at the Moore Fire Department Station #1, which has served as a command center for search and rescue and survivors. President Obama also visited the badly damaged Plaza Towers Elementary School, where he offered condolences and promised that the people of Moore would have all the resources they needed to help rebuild. He used the progress made by relief efforts in Joplin and New Jersey as examples.

“When we say that we’ve got your back, I promise you, we keep our word.  If you talk to folks in Alabama who have been affected over the last couple of years; you talk to the folks at Joplin, who I know have actually sent volunteers down here to Moore; if you talk to folks in New Jersey and New York, they’ll tell you that when we say we’re going to be there until you completely rebuild, we mean it.” 

Honoring the Armed Forces: President Obama and the First Lady headed to Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to celebrate Memorial Day with members of the armed forces and veterans. While at Arlington, the President laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, honored fallen heroes, and thanked the men and women for their service and commitment to the United States.

“Today, just steps from where these brave Americans lie in eternal peace, we declare, as a proud and grateful nation, that their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

“The Jersey Shore is back”: On Tuesday, the President visited the Jersey Shore to see firsthand the extensive rebuilding efforts since Hurricane Sandy struck last November. While he recognized there is still work to be done, President Obama praised families and business owners for their hard work as they rebuilt for the summer season.

“You are stronger than the storm. After all you’ve dealt with, after all you’ve been through, the Jersey Shore is back and it is open for business, and they want all Americans to know that they’re ready to welcome you here.”  

 
 

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Best Practice for Winning Enterprise SEO Clients: 3 Marketing Procurement Professionals Share Their Advice

Best Practice for Winning Enterprise SEO Clients: 3 Marketing Procurement Professionals Share Their Advice

Link to SEOptimise » blog

Best Practice for Winning Enterprise SEO Clients: 3 Marketing Procurement Professionals Share Their Advice

Posted: 30 May 2013 03:46 AM PDT

For those readers who are unaware, procurement in the marketing industry is a services profiling and selection process that many larger organisations must go through when considering new suppliers. There are professionals out there whose job it is to develop processes that create the greatest chance of selecting the most suitable supplier for the company.

In my experience, it will usually consist of:

  • An initial questionnaire, which attempts to immediately identify tell-tale signs of the qualities the company is looking for in an agency/supplier. If you get through this stage,
  • The pitch: a face-to-face response to a brief, usually by way of presentation. And then,
  • Negotiations, if you're lucky enough to get this far.

The difficult thing for suppliers throughout this process (speaking from personal experience once again) is that it is usually very closed-off. By this I mean that you aren't really allowed any direct communication with anyone involved on the company side. Those in charge of procurement have to be very careful to make sure that this process is as fair as possible, and spending time speaking to a particular supplier could be perceived as giving them an unfair advantage. Needless to say, in some instances when procurement teams are looking at upwards of 40 suppliers for a single service, it would also be very difficult to spend time speaking to everyone. There are usually Q&A windows throughout the earlier stages in which you can submit written questions, but I believe that written questions and responses can sometimes be misunderstood (as I have found through email on a number of occasions).

Taking all this into consideration, I thought it would be useful if we could make contact with some people in the procurement industry and, bearing in mind that these conversations happened outside any procurement process, I asked them to contribute some advice. I believe that these people, having to deal with supplier selection on a day-to-day basis, would have the most experience in appointing suppliers, and therefore be able to contribute advice that would help me/us be successful in any selection process, whatever the size of the organisation.

I asked a number of people the same question: "What is the one piece of advice you would give to an individual/agency to give them the best chance of success when you are looking at them as a potential supplier?"

I intentionally left this as open as possible because I wanted people to respond with what they believed to be the most important aspects of the selection process.

To illustrate how closed procurement can be, I spoke to roughly 16 organisations, the majority of which were either unwilling or unable to respond. But three individuals have kindly submitted their responses.

Disclaimers:

  1. The opinions expressed below are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the organisations they represent.
  2. We have kept the responses anonymous unless requested by the individual.

CrossCountry Trains

Philip Brown – Head of Purchasing at CrossCountry Trains and Public Speaker at Sans Souci Speakers

Philip's response relates to the earlier stages of the procurement process.

"A single piece of advice is a tall order as I genuinely feel there are several principle guidelines I would advocate to support a successful outcome. However, couple this with a very BIG caveat (this is my personal view as a Purchaser and not a Marketer), I would advocate my single piece of advice as:

Answer the Questions (and no more) – I spend a lot of time with my marketing colleagues assessing our own needs and thinking through the type of agency we might need. A good proportion of this time is spent determining the questions, which includes writing out potential responses, and the assessment criteria to be used to help short list the agencies. This is particularly important during the early stages given there can be quite a number of initial interested agencies invited and it takes a great deal of time and concentration to work through these.

It is therefore a real struggle, coupled with frustration, when an agency decides to respond with far more detail than is reasonably required and includes additional details that were unrequested.

Picking an agency is an important and risky prospect. Should you (the Agency) receive a poorly written and confusing pitch invite from a new prospect then I suggest you think twice. If you can't respond with a succinct and professional delivery at this stage then what makes you think it will be any better if you win them as your client."

HTC

"Looking at this question in the context of procurement, any answer needs be somewhat qualified.

"Procurement should be totally agnostic when it comes to supplier preference and the suggestion here seems to be, that by giving an agency a key piece of advice could well position them to win business. This is something that (I at least) would not be in favour of. Procurement might – and sometimes do – give all respondents in a RFP situation, some overall guidance or hint as to what the client might be looking for in their responses, however that advice should be given to all participants not just one, otherwise that would suggest a "pre-made" preference towards one supplier to the detriment of others. Also, in my experience, it's not procurement alone that makes the final decision. The process normally involves a number of stakeholders reviewing submissions, fee models, responses and "beauty parades" upon which any final decision should be based.

As you know the marketing category is both complex and wide ranging, so whilst not wishing to appear pedantic in any away, it would also depend upon what area of marketing services we're talking about. Any advice that might be given to a lead strategic/creative agency would doubtless be quite different to advice given to a production/implementation agency. One you can't commoditise – the other you could i.e. the former might well be around adding value or P4P, the latter would likely be around about efficiencies and cost."

This respondent needed a bit of clarification on such an open question, but after briefly explaining that we wanted advice for people outside the process, they submitted the following answer:

"I suppose that outside of the formal process, I would advise that prospective suppliers should thoroughly research the client organisation as deeply and thoroughly as they can – demonstrate their knowledge of the client's history, products and past successes and failures. They should demonstrate clear sector experience and align this to clear, proven case studies. At the end of the day, the perceived cultural "fit" is an undeniably critical factor along with market insight, innovation and depending on the service, a willingness to potentially share risk."

Npower

"A very simple piece of advice to help give the best chance of success to a potential supplier, is to start creating a basic relationship with your procurement contact. A lot of time is invested on the business relationship side, but a lot can be gained by being flexible, listening and willing to work with your procurement contact so you reach a win / win position. This helps all aspects run smoothly. We have targets just as you do – do you know what they are? We have all heard the sales pitch many times before – I am sure I am not alone when I say we would prefer a simple, quick chat on the phone – we get so many calls there would not be enough time in the day to see you all.. So please don’t ask."

Some interesting opinions! I would like to thank everyone who took the time to contribute to this post and share their advice.

What's your impression of these responses?

© SEOptimise Best Practice for Winning Enterprise SEO Clients: 3 Marketing Procurement Professionals Share Their Advice

Seth's Blog : Measuring without measuring

 

Measuring without measuring

As an organization grows and industrializes, it's tempting to simplify things for the troops. Find a goal, make it a number and measure it until it gets better. In most organizations, the thing you measure is the thing that will improve.

Colleges decided that the SAT were a useful shortcut, a way to measure future performance in college. And nervous parents and competitive kids everywhere embraced the metric, and stick with it, even after seeing (again and again) that all the SAT measures is how well you do on the SAT. It's easier to focus on one number than it is to focus on a life.

Paypal and Chase and countless other organizations do precisely this: they figure out a metric, decide it's important and then create a department to improve that metric.

Consider the Chase Fraud Prevention department. It costs a credit card company a lot of money when fraudulent charges are made, because they often have to eat the cost. So this department of thousands of people works to make the number of fraudulent charges go down at the same time they keep expenses low. Which sounds great until you realize that the easiest way to do this is to flag false positives, annoy honest customers and provide little or no fallback when a mistake is made.

Simple example: I regularly get an automated phone call from the bank with an urgent warning. But even when I answer the phone, the system doesn't let me ring through to an operator. Instead, I have to write every detail down, then call, wait on hold, prove it's me, type in all the information, and THEN explain to them that in fact, the charge was mine.

And this department has no incentive to fix this interaction, because 'annoying' is not a metric that the bosses have decided to measure. Someone is busy watching one number, but it's the wrong one.

Or consider the similar problem at Paypal. Stories of good (or great) customers being totally shut down, sometimes to the point of bankruptcy, are legion. There may be people at Paypal who care about this, but the security people don't. That's because they're not measuring the right thing.

Measurement is fabulous. Unless you're busy measuring what's easy to measure as opposed to what's important.

     

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