marți, 11 iunie 2013

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Philadelphia Orchestra Musicians Perform on Flight Waiting on Beijing Tarmac for 3 Hours [Video]

Posted: 11 Jun 2013 04:41 PM PDT




Thought this was pretty cool. I always like when I see beautiful music being performed in a public setting, but this was especially neat because it wasn't staged like some are and they just wanted to do something cool to keep people happy in a situation where people normally would be anything but happy. It also reminds me that I need to go to the symphony.

Goofy Girls are the Best

Posted: 11 Jun 2013 04:32 PM PDT




























































Michele Kobke - German Girl with 16-Inch Waist

Posted: 11 Jun 2013 01:12 PM PDT

Michelle Kobke is a 24 year old German girl who has been wearing a corset for three years in order to achieve the goal of having the smallest waist in the world. She is now so used to wearing the restrictive garment that she even sleeps in it and has managed to reduce her waist size from 64 centimeters to 40 centimeters (from 25.2 to 15.7 inches). However, doctors warn that this practice can lead to serious ailments like heart problems…
































































Via Facebook

Workout Diagrams You Need To Get In Shape

Posted: 11 Jun 2013 10:27 AM PDT

Thanks to the internet, you don't have to join a gym or subscribe to a billion fitness magazines to get fit.











































 











Every Hot Dog Has It’s Day [Infographic]

Posted: 11 Jun 2013 08:24 AM PDT

The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council – yes there is an official council – estimates that baseball fans will consume more than 20 million hot dogs over the course of the 2013 Major League Baseball season. Hey, we're not here to judge, we can't resist a juicy dog either. Take a look at all the calories, and dollars, that a splurge at the park can cost you.

Click on Image to Enlarge.
Baseball Infographic: Every (Hot) Dog Has Its Day - An Infographic from CouponCabin
Via CouponCabin

He's trained engineers for 55 years

 

Hi, all --

A couple weeks ago, I was in a meeting with a group of community leaders and President Obama here at the White House. Before the discussion kicked off, one of the women in attendance handed me a letter. It was written by her dad, a 90 year old college professor from Cleveland.

He was born in China in 1923, and he came to the United States with $24 in his pocket. Two years later, he'd earned a masters in electrical engineering. Five years after that, he had completed his PhD. In 55 years of teaching, he's trained 180 graduate students.

"I fulfilled my dream," he wrote in that letter. "I light up a spot on the great nation of opportunity."

His letter reminded me of my dad, who came here from Bolivia to study engineering, and lived his American dream in Michigan, where I was born. So many Americans have stories like these, and they're all powerful. Each personal history is an important asset in the fight to reform the immigration system. To win the debate, we need more than statistics in a fact sheet or the rhetoric in a press release. Every time we put a face on the push for reform, we take an abstract concept and makes it real.

Which means your stories are crucial in this effort. Join the conversation now:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/immigration/stories

Thanks so much!

Cecilia

Cecilia Muñoz
Director, Domestic Policy Council
The White House

 

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Meet Your Community-Building Team

Meet Your Community-Building Team


Meet Your Community-Building Team

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 07:21 PM PDT

Posted by Mackenzie Fogelson

Building a community around your brand isn't just about the strength of your social media presence. It’s not about how you manage your social media outlets or whether you’re on Facebook, Google+, or Twitter. It’s not about how many blog posts you write or how often you use video or email marketing.

It’s about building a company.

A thriving community — one that brings visibility, targeted traffic, trust, credibility, conversions, customers, and ultimately revenue — is built upon a solid business that is investing tirelessly in its products, its services, and improving the experience it provides for its customers. 

If you want to build your business and a community around your brand, you've got to provide value. You’ve got to create the right content. You've got to effectively integrate SEO. And, most importantly, you've got to have the right team. 

And I’m not just talking about your marketing team.

 

Time to drop the silos

If you want your team to be successful at building your community and your business, you’ve got to think differently. And you’ve got to drop the silos.

 


 

Your team's specific jobs and designations are important to the day-to-day running of your company's business (otherwise I wouldn't have bothered writing this post). But there is one big overarching truth for each and every person associated with the company: In the broad scope, it doesn't matter what your job title is, what department you’re in, or what your job description is. Your role is to do whatever it takes to make the company thrive.

Everyone who works in your company is on the same team: the team that wants to accomplish the stuff that matters and will make your business a success.

So who’s gonna do the work?

As we’ve worked with companies (in many different industries and all with unique challenges) to build their communities and their businesses, we’ve been asked to help them understand the roles that are involved and also provide guidance as to best structure their team.

 


 

In our experience, what follows are some of the roles that are necessary to have on your community- and business-building team.

But before we get into that, please note:

  1. I’m not suggesting that you hire one person for each of these roles. Depending on the size (and the goals) of your company you may have many people doing many things. This is simply a rundown based on our experience with both small and large companies who have embarked on this community-building extravaganza. My intention is to provide some general guidance that you can then apply to your unique situation.


  2. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that surrounds building your community and your business that goes way beyond defining roles and team infrastructure like earning buy-in, defining goals, developing strategy, execution and testing, and evaluating and adjusting. You can get more information about all that good stuff in my SearchLove slide deck. 



    Today, I’m going to focus specifically on the roles of the team.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. 

Allow me to introduce you to your community building team:

Project management


Who’s responsible

Someone to keep the entire team on schedule and on task. Even if you’re working with an external team (agency or other partners) who will take the lead on this role, you need to have someone inside your company who is responsible for being the internal project manager. 

What’s required

Although this person may not be the one doing the daily nitty-gritty client work, they will interface with all of your internal and external teams on an ongoing basis to ensure that whatever needs to get done actually gets done, and that everyone is working toward the same goals and off of the same creative strategy. 

Ideally, when bringing in an outside agency, you want to work together to clearly define the expectations for this role, how it relates to communication, and who specifically is being held responsible for getting stuff done.


Community management


Who’s responsible

Someone who can represent your brand on social media, as well as monitor and manage the rest of your team's social media activity.

Depending on your goals, your community manager will most likely assume two identities: one as your brand (your logo is their face):



And one for their own individual presence under your brand:

 


 

What’s required

Because this role is so demanding, I would highly recommend (especially for you smaller companies out there) that it’s not filled by your CEO or someone who cannot commit their attention on a daily basis. And, please, for the love of Dr. Pete, don’t assign this role to an intern.

Community management is a lot of hard work (I repeat: A LOT). Especially if you already have a thriving community, managing it requires a great deal of attention, engagement, and consistency on a daily basis. Your community manager is on a podium every day representing your brand, so be sure to choose the person for this role very wisely.

In addition to the normal stuff like sharing value (and not just your own), your community manager will be responsible for communicating what’s going on with your company, like events and products or service stuff. They will take the lead on engaging and answering questions that may arise (with customer or product support). Even more important is facilitating social monitoring and listening (which is imperative) and probably (depending on size) handling some reputation management.

If that’s not enough, there will always be opportunities (things that they observe that could contribute to the growth of your business, or simply to building relationships) that arise in their interaction in and among the community that will require further investigation. That’s a lot of load to carry so your community manager needs to be one amazing (and capable) person.

Hands down, you’ll want to have an excellent communicator in this position as they are the social face of your company. 

If you’re working with an agency to assist with community management, you can share the load, but be sure to work together as a team to develop a plan for how management will work. Be present and involved with strategy, execution, engagement, and ensure whatever is being done is what’s best for your company and is working toward the goals that have been set.


Strategy, creativity, analysis, and direction


Who’s responsible

Someone (or a few someones) who will develop and facilitate the direction of your web marketing and community building efforts. If you’re working with an agency, you can certainly lean on them to lead this piece with your direct involvement. 

What’s required

The most important part of this role is to ensure that all teams (both internal and external) are working together to align all efforts with the goals that have been set for your whole business (not just for SEO, social, and content). Remember all of those departments I talked about above that are part of your whole team? This is where they can play a role and contribute to strategy and direction (and certainly creativity).

It’s important that this role has worked with all of your teams to break those goals down into measurable KPIs that inform the creative campaigns that will accomplish these objectives.

Of course, your efforts don’t mean much if you’re not measuring and analyzing what’s working and what’s not. The person (or people) who are in the strategy/creativity/analysis/direction role need to provide strategic guidance based on actual data so that you can have confidence that you’re moving in the right direction. 

Many of our clients also work with additional partnering agencies that drive offline or PR efforts (more on this below). If that’s the case for you, make sure that all teams and partners are on the same page, working toward the same goals and being extra careful to maintain the consistency and integrity of the brand.


Design


Who’s responsible

Someone who can create any graphic assets that you need (and make you look really, really good). This can be an internal designer or your partnering agency. If you’re working with an external team, again, ensure that you’re maintaining the consistency and integrity of the brand. 

What’s required

Your designer is going to be responsible for designing and styling things like blog posts and infographics, social media assets, email marketing templates, banners and headers, and probably even landing pages.

The deal with the design role is just like every other role on this team. Don’t silo. Your designer is more of a production person who would probably rather be doing the work than dictating strategy, but they still have creative ideas and valuable feedback that would be worth hearing in the initial planning stages. Don’t be lame. Make them a part of the entire process.


Content

Who’s responsible

Someone who can write a variety of content like their life depended on it, because as you know, content is not just blog posts. We’ll just call this genius the content strategist.

What’s required

Your content strategist needs to be able to adapt to the context that’s necessitating the content. And above all, the content they develop needs to be driven by the overarching goals and strategy set forth for the business.

You want a content strategist who can be creative and, well, strategic. It’s important that this person is thoughtful not only about audience but also about how to balance creativity and conversion.

Outreach is going to be a big part of your content strategist’s job, both pre- and post-launch (more on this below). The person who’s creating your content needs to think about who’s going to care about that content before they even write it (Paddy Moogan’s rule. If you haven’t, you should read his book). They also need to be connecting with the SEO in the early planning stages in order to determine how this piece of content will be optimized, as well as determining if it’s been done before (and, in that case, how it can be done different/better).

If you don’t have the resources in-house to develop the content you need, you can outsource this role to an agency. And yes, they can assist you in creating strong, quality content that effectively represents your brand, but this takes a lot of work and collaboration; you need to be present and a part of the process.

You will want that agency to understand your business, so let them ask a lot of questions. If you’re too busy to answer their questions in an email, grant them a phone interview or allow them to sit in front of the CEO (or whoever else they need information from who may not be readily available) so they can extract exactly what they need to produce stellar content on your behalf. Then, of course, provide your input and revisions once you’ve seen a draft.

Like any member of your team, your content strategist can’t work in a silo. Content plays an enormous role in accomplishing the goals you have set for your business, so make your content strategist a part of the entire process from the very beginning (starting with goals and strategy development) so that they fully understand the bigger picture of why this content needs to exist.

After the content they've created has been released into the world, be sure to provide them with access to the data so that they can determine how well it performed and what could be done differently the next time around.


SEO

Who’s responsible

Someone who loves research, analysis, keywords, and probably Google so that they can properly and effectively manage and lead the optimization of all the stuff. Ideally, you also want this person to have more than a passing knowledge of strategy.

What’s required

The most important thing to note with the SEO role (I've said it before, and I'll say it again) is that no man is an island. You need an advanced SEO who will contribute as one of the most powerful players on your team. 

Like all the other roles on your community building team, the SEO needs to be involved right from the beginning. If you have the right SEO on your team, their ginormous analytical brain will be contributing to strategy. Not just SEO strategy, but the strategy you’re using to drive your whole business. They can be relied upon to provide some left-brain steadiness to your presumably right-brained creatives.

And don’t forget content, outreach, creativity, and direction, too. 

The best thing about your SEO is that they can provide you with the information you need to make data driven decisions about your business, but they can’t do that if they’re sitting in the corner building links all day long. Whoever ends up playing this role for you, give them the credit they deserve and know they’re capable of a whole lot more than keywords.


Email marketing
 (and other stuff, too)

Who’s responsible

Someone who can design, develop, and coordinate email marketing campaigns to deliver the value your team is creating in relationship to your strategy (in other words, someone who will know how to effectively use email marketing to build relationships and grow your business). 

What’s required

Email marketing is a great way to build community with the people who want to be a part of it as well as those who already are. Your existing customers are your best brand advocates, so you’ll want to make sure that you’ve got email marketing covered somewhere among the members of your team.

And — wait for it — don’t silo this role either. Because email marketing can be used to accomplish many goals, this role requires big-picture thinking right from the beginning, so don’t leave this person out.

Certainly there will be other tools that you’ll need your team to use besides email marketing (I’m sure Phil Nottingham is wondering when the heck I’m going to talk about video). Whatever vehicles you’ll be using to execute your strategy, make sure you’ve designated someone on your team to fully embrace this responsibility so it can be used to build your community and reach the goals you’ve set for your business.


Reading and learning


Who’s responsible

Several people who are continually reading and learning about your industry, looking for the good stuff to send along to your community and any innovative or creative ideas that might just grow your business.

This role is up to everyone who’s on your team.

But that’s not to say that everyone on your team needs to be on social media. You can involve everyone in the company in the knowledge seeking and soaking portion, and then select specific people (like your community manager and others who want to work with social media) to be the face of your brand and share that information on your social media outlets.

What’s required

A whole lot of reading, learning, and sharing. Internally at Mack Web we use a Google Spreadsheet that allows everyone on the team to contribute to the knowledge that is shared with our community. This not only builds the strength of our team, but also provides our community with a lot of variety.

 


 

We each focus on a specific subject about which we’re passionate (content, operations, design, business, marketing, etc.) so that we’re not all reading the same stuff. Each day we put at least one post into the queue for our community manager to use.

I don’t have to tell you that reading and learning is imperative to the success of your business and the development of your team. It’s also integral to the growth of your community. When you’re sharing other people’s useful content, you’re providing your followers with something of value and also opening the door to a relationship with the people generating the content.

If you’re working with an agency, they can help you identify what you can read and share (as well as who you can follow) in order to build your community.

Ideally, your agency partners should be reading all of these things, too, and bringing opportunities to your attention. If you’ve got everyone on your entire team contributing with knowledge, your company will be unstoppable.

Reading and learning is probably the most important of all the roles, and can dramatically accelerate the growth of your business and your community.


Outreach


Who’s responsible

Several people who are developing relationships and helping to keep those people and the rest of your community involved in what you’re doing, so that they can partake in it and benefit from it. Call it link building or relationship building, outreach is something that your entire team can do.

 

What’s required

Outreach is so much more than getting a link, and it needs to be done all the time, not just online or via email, (and not just when you want to ask someone for a favor).

Everyone can do parts of outreach. Sales can work the in-person and the online relationships. Marketing can do its part to determine where the team is going to earn links with the amazing creative content they're developing. The best people on your team for outreach are the ones that love combining the digital world with the face-to-face, because that’s where the magic happens.

Because the role of outreach really falls on everyone, find the people who are passionate about people, and teach them authentic ways to make it part of their natural routine at work and throughout each day.

Website stuff


Who’s responsible

Someone who is committed to executing changes on the website. Like everyone on your team, make sure whoever is responsible for this role understands the goals of the company and is part of strategy execution so that they’re able to prioritize. There are always a lot of shiny things (new plugins, new applications, other fancy new doodads) that come in the form of tiny little emergencies. Involving your webmaster with goals and creative strategy will keep things running smoothly.

What’s required

Website work could be anything from revamping the navigation and implementing user experience changes to integrating a blog and executing on-page SEO.

If you’re working with an agency to lead your community building and web marketing efforts, they will most likely provide your internal team or another partnering agency with all of the instructions for what needs to be implemented.


Offline stuff


Who’s responsible

The people who are handling all of the offline stuff like print collateral, events, and maybe PR.

What's required

Offline stuff often affects the online stuff. Things like events, conferences, and product launches. It’s imperative that internal and external teams work together (and with the direction of the project manager) in order to ensure that everyone is effectively leveraging all efforts and working toward the same goals. 


Now go on, you — go build your team

I’m sure there’s a role I’ve missed, perhaps one imperative to the specific goals of your business. This is just a start. It may be what what works for a little while until your business undergoes a change. At that point, you’ll need to reassess and reconfigure the roles of your team into what works for you.

The biggest thing I can leave you with is this: Think differently about your team and the roles everyone plays. Expand your understanding of what each and every person and department can contribute to your digital marketing. There’s a lot more involved in building your community than managing your social media. By now you know that’s because it’s not just a community you’re building. It’s your business.

If you want all of the benefits that a thriving community brings, focus on building the best company you can possibly build. Move beyond marketing initiatives and focus on your vision. Understand your customers better, and learn what they need to make their lives better. Let the passion and drive for what you do transform your company and your community, and put the right team in place to do it.

Looking forward to your thoughts below.



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The President's Pick

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

The President's Pick

Yesterday, President Obama nominated Jason Furman to replace Alan Krueger as the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Furman, who joined the Obama administration in 2009, brings a vast amount of economic experience to the role -- and a track record of work for America's middle class.

Find out more about Jason Furman, President Obama's pick to chair the CEA.

President Barack Obama announces his intent to nominate Jason Furman, Principal Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, left, as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to succeed current CEA Chairman Alan Krueger, right, in the State Dining Room of the White House, June 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

President Barack Obama announces his intent to nominate Jason Furman, Principal Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, left, as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to succeed current CEA Chairman Alan Krueger, right, in the State Dining Room of the White House, June 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

 
 
  Top Stories

It's Been 50 Years Since the Equal Pay Act

It's been 50 years since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, but its goals today stand unrealized. In 2013, full-time working women still make less than men on average. Yesterday, President Obama spoke at an event to mark the anniversary.

READ MORE

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Yesterday, we marked the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Equal Pay Act with an event at the White House hosted by President Obama, the release of an important report from the National Equal Pay Task Force on the last fifty years since the Act was signed, a new web page with resources and information for women to make sure they’re paid equally, and a new video that gives an overview of our progress in equal pay.

READ MORE

 
 
  Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST)

9:30AM: President Obama and Vice President Biden receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:20AM: President Obama delivers remarks on Immigration Reform WATCH LIVE

11:10AM: President Obama and President Ollanta Humala of Peru hold a bilateral meeting; Vice President Biden also attends

12:30 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney WATCH LIVE

4:30PM: President Obama meets with Secretary of Defense Hagel; Vice President Biden also attends

5:20PM: President Obama hosts a screening of The President’s Gatekeepers at the White House

 

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Seth's Blog : Polishing perfect

 

Polishing perfect

Perfect doesn't mean flawless. Perfect means it does exactly what I need it to do. A vacation can be perfect even if the nuts on the plane weren't warmed before serving.

Any project that's held up in revisions and meetings and general fear-based polishing is the victim of a crime. It's a crime because you're stealing that perfect work from a customer who will benefit from it. You're holding back the good stuff from the people who need it, afraid of what the people who don't will say.

Stop polishing and ship instead. Polished perfect isn't better than perfect, it's merely shinier. And late.

 
     

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luni, 10 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Australian Dollar Plunges as Home Loans Dive; Australia Insolvencies Hit Record; Worst is Yet to Come

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 08:32 PM PDT

Curve Watchers Anonymous has its eye on the Australian dollar. As expected, it has taken a big dive in conjunction with a housing bust and a slowdown in China that impacts the demand for commodities.



click on chart for sharper image

The only thing surprising to me about this plunge is how long it took, but here we are.

Aussie Falls to Lowest in More Than Two Years

Bloomberg reports Aussie Falls to Lowest in More Than Two Years as Home Loans Slow
Australia's dollar fell to the lowest in more than two years versus the greenback after home-loan approvals grew at the slowest pace in three months, boosting the case for further cuts to borrowing costs.

The Aussie slid against all but one of its 16 most-traded peers amid speculation the U.S. central bank will reduce stimulus this year, narrowing Australia's interest-rate advantage. Standard & Poor's lifted the U.S. credit outlook to stable from negative, supporting the view that the Federal Reserve could taper asset purchases under its program of quantitative easing. New Zealand's kiwi dollar fell.

"Housing is the one area most likely to make up for the mining investment downturn, and it's disappointed," said Joseph Capurso, a Sydney-based foreign-exchange strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Australian Insolvencies Hit Record

Why anyone would think housing would make up for a downturn in mining is certainly a mystery given Australian insolvencies hit record for month of April.
A new April record has been set for Australian companies becoming insolvent. Some 941 firms were put under administration, marking the highest tally for that month since records were first made public in 1999.

Some 941 firms were put under administration, according to an FTI Consulting analysis of Australian Securities and Investments Commission records.

Almost 3450 companies have gone into administration so far this year, compared with 3524 during the same period in 2012.

But the number is higher than the opening four months of 2008 to 2011, which included the global financial crisis.

Worst Yet to Come

For Australia, the worst is yet to come. Australia escaped a big economic bust in 2008 because of high demand for housing and commodity demand from China, but both sectors are in the tank now, and will stay there.

China is slowing and will continue to slow, Australia labor costs are ridiculous, the Australian housing bubble has burst, and commercial real estate has only one way to go: down.

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

Fear of Missing Out Sparks Covenant Light Lending; "Return of the Silly Season"

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 10:28 AM PDT

With the Fed forcing interest rates low, commercial and industrial lending has picked up. That may sound like a good thing, but is it?

I suggest it's not. Competition is such that "covenant light" lending has returned in full force. "Cov-lite is financial jargon for loan agreements which do not contain the usual protective covenants for the benefit of the lending party."

Flood of Cheap Money Sparks Covenant Light Lending

Please consider Covenant-light lending making its presence felt again
Competition is feral at the institutional end of the banking industry, where quantitative easing is creating a flood of cheap money, and in the big banks a recent development has everyone talking: covenant-light lending appears to be making a comeback.

Covenant-light loans were a phenomenon of the boom that ushered in the global financial crisis. Bankers who say covenant-light lending is on the rise again say loans that are being proposed now are not as radical as the ones created ahead of the crisis, but say they are watching closely.

Covenants are designed to protect lenders from corporate implosions. They impose financial limits on the borrower, maximum gearing levels, for example, and if they are breached, the lenders can take steps to protect their position.

Bankers say now that US banks and investment banks are leading the revival of covenant-light lending. They are surprised it has returned so quickly, but acknowledge that quantitative easing has created enormous pressure.

Their best guess is that covenant-light lending is back to where it was around the middle of 2006, before the final, frenetic stage of the boom. It is lighter-covenant rather than covenant-free lending, and it is only being offered to top-rated corporations where survival and debt servicing capacity is not in question.

The local bankers wonder, nevertheless, whether the return of covenant-light lending is a sign of QE seeding another unsustainable debt boom, but they still need to work out how to respond: if the trend continues and they don't join it, their share of the institutional lending market will fall.

J.C. Penney Loan Arranged by Goldman Sachs Is Covenant-Light

On April 29, Bloomberg reported J.C. Penney Loan Arranged by Goldman Sachs to Be Covenant-Light
J.C. Penney Co. (JCP), the retailer that's working to rebound from its worst sales year, will offer fewer safeguards to lenders on its $1.75 billion financing.

The five-year covenant-light deal, which is being arranged by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., won't include financial maintenance requirements that typically prevent borrowers from loading up on debt, according to a regulatory filing today.
Surge in Commercial lending Raises Bubble Worries

Yahoo! Finance reports Surge in commercial lending raises bubble worries.
There was a time when robust growth in U.S. commercial loans was seen as a good sign for the economy, but this year a double-digit surge is being seen as a red flag.

U.S. banks reported $1.53 trillion in commercial and industrial loans in the first quarter, a 12 percent year-over-year gain.

Bankers and analysts say this big gain in C&I lending looks more like an early asset bubble than an economic breakout. The banks reported double-digit gains in 2011 and 2012, too.

Mid-size companies and publicly traded corporations are not using the loans to grease the skids of the economy for expansion. Instead, they're mostly getting cheaper credit lines or refinancing the replacement of obsolete factory equipment by dictating easy terms to banks clamoring for their business.

"With so much liquidity, banks feel a lot of pressure to make loans," said Mariner Kemper, chairman of UMB Financial Corp, a Kansas City, Missouri-based bank with $3.2 billion in outstanding C&I loans.

"There's deterioration in covenant terms and pricing and that's potentially the kind of behavior that drives a crisis."

Douglas Bryant, a senior lender for Wells Fargo in New England, calls the C&I lending shift the "return of the silly season."

"Any well-known company with a credit need is called on by a half a dozen or so banks," Bryant said. "These companies are offering very aggressive term sheets on price and loan covenants."

Bryant said banks today are lucky to get one or two strong covenants on a loan. Covenants allow banks to restructure loans if a company fails to meet projections on leverage, cash flow and debt service, for example. But with more leeway on those financial metrics, a company can get deeper into trouble before it breaks a covenant, exposing banks to greater losses.

"A company can deteriorate a significant amount before you get back to the table to restructure the loan," Bryant said. "We used to get as many as five strong covenants."
Return of the Silly Season

The Fed wants corporations to hire workers and expand their businesses. Instead, the Fed has ushered in "silly season" lending competition that is good for corporate profits, but bad for banks should some of these companies get into trouble.

And with a slowing global economy it's a sure thing that yet another credit bubble is brewing.

Fear of Missing Out

Banks fear "If the trend continues and they don't join it, their share of the institutional lending market will fall".

This sounds similar to a statement by former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince: "When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing".

Prince made that statement on July 10, 2007. Recall that on November 2, 2007 the Music Stopped for Chuck Prince and he did a two-step out the door.

It's hard to say when the music stops this time, but it will, with similar results.

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

Chinese Economy Grows at Slowest Pace in 13 Years; What's Next for China?

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 02:41 AM PDT

Inquiring minds note the growth slowdown in China: China's economy stumbles in May, growth seen sliding in Q2.
China's economy grew at its slowest pace for 13 years in 2012 and so far this year economic data has surprised on the downside, bringing warnings from some analysts that the country could miss its growth target of 7.5 percent for this year.

"Growth remains unconvincing and the momentum seems to have lost pace in May," Louis Kuijs, an economist at RBS, said in a note. "The short-term growth outlook remains subject to risks and we may well end up revising down our growth forecast for 2013 further."

May exports to both the United States and the European Union - China's top two markets - both fell from a year earlier for the third month running.

Imports fell 0.3 percent against expectations for a 6 percent rise as the volume of many commodity shipments fell from a year earlier.

The volume of major metals imports, including copper and alumina, fell at double-digit rates. Coal imports fell sharply.

Economic growth slipped to 7.7 percent in the first quarter, down from 7.9 percent in the previous quarter. Both the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development cut their forecasts for China's economic 2013 economic growth in May, to 7.75 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively.

But the further loss of momentum in the April and May could prompt the central bank to try to give the economy a lift, said Jian Chang, China economist for Barclays in Hong Kong.

"We had expected an L-shaped economic recovery in China and that the growth would stabilize at around 7.9 percent," Chang said.

"We now think China's growth will stabilize at around 7.6 percent (this year). The possibility for the central bank to cut interest rates is now rising," Chang said.
Pollyanna View

I certainly have no difficulty believing reports that China would slow dramatically given I have been calling for exactly that. Rather, my problem is the Pollyanna view that China is going to stabilize anywhere near 7 percent. 2 percent is more like it.

Given declines in energy usage, I rather doubt China is actually growing fast as claimed right now. For more on the China growth debate, please see ...



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