Central Perk

marți, 17 septembrie 2013

The Progress We've Made

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In the early hours of September 15, 2008 Lehman Brothers announced it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and it sent shock waves through the global economy -- ultimately shrinking the economy by more than 10% and costing us more than 800,000 jobs a month with devastating implications for families and businesses.

In the five years since, we've made incredible progress as a country. And so while there's still more work to be done, we've asked senior staff from across the Obama administration to sit down and talk about the moments when key decisions were made -- the factors they weighed, and the results of the actions that President Obama took.

Check out a behind-the-scenes look of the decision-making process that you won't find anywhere else.

Five years

Hello, everyone --

In the early hours of September 15, 2008, five years ago last Sunday, Lehman Brothers announced it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Lehman was a giant of the financial system -- the fourth-largest investment bank in the US, a firm that employed thousands of brokers and analysts, with billions in assets that were suddenly worthless -- and its collapse sent shock waves through the global economy.

Suddenly, it was obvious that the next president of the United States would inherit a staggering economic crisis. But the challenge that President Obama was forced to confront didn't just begin in 2008. Even before Lehman Brothers, middle-class security had been slowly eroding for decades as jobs became obsolete or were shipped overseas.

So as we mark this anniversary, we've asked senior staff from across the Obama administration to sit down and talk about the moment when key decisions were made -- the factors they weighed, the results of the actions that President Obama took. What we've put together is a behind-the-scenes look of the decision-making process that you won't find anywhere else.

Check out the story of America's recovery, then share it with your friends.

By the end of 2008, the economy was shrinking by an annual rate of more than 8 percent, our businesses were shedding 800,000 jobs a month, and credit was frozen for families and small businesses. We were in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. On the day that I first began working in the White House in 2009, the auto industry was on the brink of collapse and the President was wrestling with how to help the millions of families in thousands of communities who would have been devastated if the motor companies died.

That's the lens through which President Obama saw his responsibilities, and it's a consistent theme in all the stories we've collected. Every decision he made was meant to stop the economy from spiraling out of control, put people back to work, and reverse the trends that had buffeted middle class for decades. The task was nothing short of monumental -- to clear away the rubble of the crisis and lay down a new foundation for sustained economic growth in the United States.

There's no diminishing the severity of the challenge we've overcome together, and we’ve got a lot more work to do to rebuild an economy where everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead. But five years after Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, we want to help everyone get the context and see the full picture.

Take a minute to learn more about where we are five years after the start of the financial crisis:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/five-years-later

Thanks!

David

David Simas
Deputy Senior Advisor
The White House
@Simas44

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12 Scalable Link-Building Tactics

Posted: 16 Sep 2013 04:16 PM PDT

Posted by kaiserthesage

Link building/earning is essential in online marketing, and not just because it improves your SEO. It also helps a website be discovered (click-through visitors), generate leads, connect with other publishers (relationships), and build a stronger online brand presence.

Although establishing yourself as an authority to eventually earn links throughout the process is what search engines naturally want websites/brands to do, you still can't disregard artificial link building (link marketing).

Link marketing is an initiative that should also be strongly considered, as this practice makes a brand more well known in its online spaceâ€"and sets it up to genuinely earn links in the future.

The tactics listed in this post are from the 4-part newsletter series that I launched a couple of weeks ago. Below are the guidelines covered by the series, mostly about implementing some of the most scalable link-building tactics today. These can be used by agencies, SMBs and enterprise-level companies.

#1: Create your own database of premium images and cinemagraphs

This can be a good investment for agencies and/or companies who're in for the long-haul (targeting specific niches).

Though this tactic may require a budget (as you'll need to invest in hiring a professional photographer or graphic artist), this can certainly improve your link-building campaign through link attribution from bloggers who'll use your premium images.

Once you have set up your own private gallery of rich images, you can then start making a list of bloggers that you can reach out to (in your specific niche). There are tons of bloggers who are in need of unique images that they can use, so having this as your value proposition (offering the images for free or giving them access to your private gallery) will increase your pitches' conversion rate.

Another strategy that you can integrate to scale this type of link building approach is using reverse image searchâ€"in case other bloggers start using your images without permission/attribution. You can use tools such as Google's image search and Tineye to track blogs/websites that have used your images.

Other helpful resources:

#2: Outdated content acquisition

There are millions of pieces of content on the web, and many of them aren't timelessâ€"and many are also under-maintained.

This clearly brings a lot of opportunities for link building, wherein you can search through hundreds of outdated pieces of content in your industry that have managed to get natural links in the past (or successful link bait with time-sensitive information) and try acquiring the content.

You can use Greenlane SEO's Outdated Content Finder tool to find under-maintained content that you can still repurpose or recreate.

Contact the blog owner(s) and see if you can purchase the old page, and have it redirected to your new version of the page hosted within your domain (with updated information about the topic).

Pro tip: Tell them that you'll still give them credit as the original creator (w/ brand mention), to enhance your chances of acquiring the content.

In choosing outdated web documents that you can revive:

Use tools like Ahrefs or Open Site Explorer to check for links pointing to the old content.
Assess if it's possible to add more valuable and up-to-date information to the topic covered by the content.

Another option that you can take, aside from buying the content, is helping the webmaster update the contentâ€"this can also lead to getting a link from that very same content.

Other helpful resources:

#3: Massive interviews

Doing interviews of popular personalities in a certain field has been one of the oldest tricks in link building, particularly for websites that are just starting up.

Doing it on a massive scale can drive a ton of natural links to a website, and can certainly get your name out in the open (like launching an interview series or designating a section for expert interviews).

I've seen many sites that have been successful using this tactic (like Mixergy, Under 30 CEO and Max Minzer's Max Impact to name a few).

And just recently, I've seen Media Shower's interview with me get a natural in-content link from Page One Power's weekly roundup.

Imagine the number of links you can naturally acquire if you're consistently sharing valuable insights from influential people in your industryâ€"and imagine the relationships you can build with influencers by using this tactic.

#4: Reverse guest-blogging campaign

Guest blogging has been the go-to tactic for the past couple of years in the world of link building. But it seems that only a few have realized the value of being on the receiving end, acquiring content from other great authors.

There are a lot of advantages to inviting guest bloggers who really know their stuff to contribute to your site:

Getting free expertly made content that can rank for keywords (long tails) that you are also targeting.
Absorbing the guest author's followers once they start sharing the content they've contributed to your site (more unique traffic and potential leads).
Seasoned content publishers will almost always reference/link back to their previous works, and their contributions on other websites are not an exemption.

Find and reach out to bloggers who write exceptionally in their respective fields (and who can cover topics that are in your audience's interests as well). You can use tools like Followerwonk to identify authors in your niche that have a strong social following.

You can also do a simple Google Search to determine if they've been active in guest blogging (inpostauthor:"Author's Name").

A few tips on implementing this tactic:

Start with those who you've seen to be active in their own guest-blogging campaign. Doing a Google search to find active guest bloggers in your industry (use queries like: "real estate guest post by") can make it easier to find them.
Make sure you have a value proposition once you start contacting your prospects. Let them know what's in it for them (ex: mentioning that you have bunch of readers/subscribers/followers, promoting their content, or offering to pay them for the content).
Build relationships. It's easier to invite people to write for your site when you're already friends with them.
Read their content. Make sure that you like it.

Other helpful resources:

#5: Online billboards through long-tail content distribution

Building more brand visibility is one of link building's vital roles in online marketing. There are many ways to get this done, but there's one tactic that will seem to continue to be effective despite the constantly changing/evolving search landscape.

The method: distributing content (targeting long-tail search terms) on user-generated content sites that have high search share.

Pages hosted on UGC sites like Youtube, Slideshare, Pinterest and Scribd (there are a lot more, actually) obviously have better search-ranking power, especially for long-tail keywords.

The probable reasons why these domains show more often on SERPs lie in the level of trust search engines see from these domains (domain authority) and the amount of traffic, as well as interactions that these pages are getting.

Implementing this strategy on a larger scale can help generate constant traffic and brand impressions for your site (which you can consider as robust links/assets).

Steps for implementing this tactic:

Create content based on your campaign's targeted long-tail keywords. Repurpose them into several content formats (videos, slide presentations, infographics, comics or whitepaper/PDF).
Upload them where it's appropriate (content platforms like Youtube, Slidshare, etcâ€¦).
Promote these through social and/or build links to them (including them on your blog posts or linking to them through your other off-site marketing efforts).

#6: Getting more Google+ shares

As Cyrus Shepard mentioned on his recent (controversial) post here on Moz, Google+ posts pass link equity (because the links within Google+ posts are followed).

This means the more your Google+ posts are being shared within their social platform, the more high-value links you are able to get (if you've included a link to one of your site's pages within the Google+ post).

For instance, a few months back, I did a weekly roundup of the blog posts I've read each week on Google+. My first one was shared 40 times within the network, which means 40 Google+ profiles have just linked to the URLs I've shared.

Google+ is a microblogging platform that can offer ton of opportunities for marketing a brand/website if maximized.

Tips on getting more Google+ Shares:

Start building a strong follower base (to enhance the chances of getting your posts shared). You can start by integrating Google+ with your content marketing efforts (let people know that you're active on Google+).
It's a microblogging platform, so start blogging on Google+! Lengthy posts (that are useful and valuable) have higher potential for getting shared.
Add relevant links to external pages (your website) within your Google+ posts, so that you can build links when people start sharing your posts. Link to other people's works as well, to build relationships (and to get them to share your post too).

Other helpful resources:

#7: Republishing viral posts from Tumblr and Facebook

Tumblr and Facebook are definitely two of the best places to get inspiration for content creation, and are sometimes the best channels from which to get linkable content assets.

This tactic has been running around my head for weeks now (and we're already in the process of testing it on one of the test sites I've been managing).

Republishing/reposting has been a norm in the social spaceâ€"and is always ethical if you're giving attribution to the original source of the content.

Basically, this tactic is about finding the most successful pieces of content posted on Facebook and Tumblr (based on the amount of likes and shares) that are related to your nicheâ€"and having them republished on your site's blog (or if you have microsites, then that could work, too).

Given that these pieces of content have already proven themselves as interesting on social platforms, they'll have better chances of getting natural links.

For instance, I saw the Facebook post I've shared above get republished on a small WordPress blog:

The republished post did well in terms of social shares, as it got 2,000+ retweets:

And the Wordpress version of the FB post also got 288 links (from 81 linking domains)â€"knowing that a lot of people got to see the content:

How to find viral posts in your niche from Facebook and Tumblr:

You can use Google search to find successful posts on Facebook and Tumblr (by using the queries I've used below).

A few tips on republishing viral posts from Facebook/Tumblr:

Always give attribution to the original creator of the content!
Include your own insights or personal takeaways in your republished content.

#8: Reverse engineering

Knowing where your main competitors are getting their links from, as well as the entities they've built relationships with, has been one of the most important methodologies in search marketing.

Aside from helping smaller brands compete in search using this tactic, analyzing your competitors' link sources also allows you to determine partnerships and understand methods that will most likely work for you.

Tools you can use to extract your top competitors' link data:

List the top domains linking to your competitors in a spreadsheet and segment them by difficulty of acquisition (how hard or easy will it be for you to get a link from them).

Another thing that you also have to consider is identifying the sites/domains that your competitors are linking out to.

You can use ScreamingFrog to generate a list of URLs that your competitors have linked out to the most.

Once you're done assessing and sorting the list of domains linking to your competitors, and the list of domains that your competitors are linking out to, you can then start listing each website's contact details.

You can use tools like Citation Labs (Contact Finder Tool) and/or Link Research Tools' Contact Finder to easily generate the list of emails.

Though you must also remember that it's not about the amount of data you have, it's about how you can use your data to your advantage. Making use of your list of link prospects:

Pitch them for guest-blogging opportunities.
Do an interview of the influential ones on your list.
Letting them know about your content(s) that their readers/followers are most likely interested in.
Collaborate with them in content creation (getting insights from them and including them on your upcoming blog posts).
Connecting and engaging them through interactions (through social or their already-existing communities).

Other helpful resources:

Guide to competitive backlink analysis

#9: Improving content discovery through targeted content promotion

If you're already investing in developing content assets on your website, then up-sizing your efforts to make them more visible to your target audience is a surefire way to enhance the ability of your website/brand to continuously attract natural links.

Because the more people who are able to see your content assets, the higher your chances to force multiply the results (more traffic, more social shares, more links, better rankings, and more leads).

There are many ways to promote your site's great content, and below are some of the most efficient ways to build traffic that will result to more traffic:

Linker outreach

Start with those who're really into the topic/subject that you've covered on your contentâ€"and have a history of sharing/linking to similar content.

The easiest way to find them is by mining your competitors' similar content. Tools that you can use to find linkers in your industry:

Ahrefs or Open Site Explorerâ€"to find blogs/websites that have linked to your competitors' content
Topsyâ€"to identify Twitter users who have shared your competitors' content
Google Searchâ€"to find people who have shared your competitors' content on Facebook, Google+ and other social networks (using search operators)

Pro tip: You can also mine your competitors' most-linked content assets (pages with high # of LRDs) using Open Site Explorer, as this will reveal the linkers in your industry.

It'll be easier to reach out to them, seeing that they're genuinely interested in the topic of your content.

Pro tip: Don't ask them to share your content, since they are linkers, and they already know what to do next after seeing your content.

Paid social ads

Another great way to put more eyeballs on your content is through paid Social Adsâ€"from Facebook's sponsored stories or Stumbleupon's paid discovery.

The best thing about these services is that you can configure your ads to only be displayed to specifically targeted users (those that are highly interested in what your content is providing).

Simon Penson wrote a great case study on how to make Facebook your primary traffic source that you might also want to read.

Related discussions

This is probably the easiest way to promote and build links to your site's content assets. Participate in already existing discussions that are thematically related to your content (forum threads, Q&As, other blogs, and online communities like Facebook groups, etc.).

Using your content as a reference to your contributions on these discussions will make it more enticing for other people to click on your link.

Linking through your content distribution efforts

Use your other content marketing effortsâ€"like your guest blogs, columns, slideshows on Slideshare, or videos uploaded on Youtubeâ€"to promote your site's linkable assets.

Internal linking

I've always been a firm believer that internal links are the most valuable ones to have in a link building campaign, because you have full control of them.

Create more content that can stand to support your site's content assets. This way you'll be able to distribute Page Authority to your site's key pages and you'll be also able to build continuous traffic to them.

You can also utilize your site's high-traffic pages (based on your analytics) to make your other low-performing content assets be more visible (and more inclined to receive inbound links).

Other helpful resources:

#10: Find specific questions and answer them (long-tail link building)

People will never run out of questions to ask, especially now that the information age makes it easier for people to solve their problems almost instantly with the help of the web.

Find online discussions that pertain to the product(s) you or your client provides (from forums, Q&A sites like Quora, and blog comments). It's best to genuinely add value to the discussion, by contributing only relevant information (and not make it too promotional).

The best thing about how the link-building space is evolving is that it's also giving marketers new ways to build signals that search crawlers can use.

In using this tactic, you won't necessarily need to use hyperlinks to promote or build signals to your website. Given that search engines are also using phrase-based indexing, even an unlinked brand mention will now count as a vote that's as good as a link (based on the concepts of co-occurrence and sentiment analysis).

With this approach (building unlinked brand mentions on related discussions), you lessen the chances of getting flagged as a spammer by forum/community moderators. But always remember that you have to ensure that people will get value from what you're contributing (think marketing!).

Another advantage of using this tactic is that you're also building brand awareness, which can eventually cultivate branded searches (seeing that you didn't provide a link).

#11: Link reclamation

This method is probably the oldest trick in the book of white-hat link building. Despite that fact, as well as all the changes that have been made in the search game, link reclamation is still considered one of the most effective tactics to use out there.

Reclaiming linksâ€"from links to your site that are broken, linking to the wrong version of the URL, or from unlinked brand mentionsâ€"are very much applicable to brands/websites that are active in online branding, content marketing, and offline marketing (print ads, events, etcâ€¦).

The best thing about this method is that it has a very high conversion rate for link acquisition. The main reason is that you've already earned the mention/citation, which makes it much easier for you to request to have the mention optimized (like your preferred anchor texts and/or the link's destination).

Common practices that you should integrate with your link-building campaign to find better link opportunities:

Set up Google Alerts for your brand name (and resident authors)â€"to track blogs/websites mentioning your brand or your site's content.
Use Topsy to track people mentioning your brand (or your site's homepage) on Twitter. It's easier to request links from them, since they're already vouching for you.
Make it a habit to search for mentions about your brand, author(s), product(s) or events through Google's blog search (consider it a monthly task).
Look for sites linking back to you that use the wrong version of the URL.
Check incoming links pointing to your site's broken pages (404s) using Google Webmaster Tools. They are the easiest ones to reclaim.

#12: Static marketing

Consistency is a common factor that you'll mostly notice from successful brands on the web.

And this is something that even smaller brands can apply, especially in performing off-site marketing activities.

As perfectly described by Ross Hudgens, static marketing acts a force multiplier of future active marketing efforts through a series of branding initiatives (from naming conventions, persona, aesthetic impression, and overall brand identity).

Interactions with other people in your industry, particularly with content publishers, have been vital in today's age of link building.

And as most of us know, to be really able to compete in online marketing these days, we need to be almost everywhere. Static marketing makes that approach much easier, as you tend to be more consistent, which enables you to become more recognizable to people active in your industry's online space.

When your targets recognize you, you become linkable.

A few tips on how to be remarkable in your target communities:

Use a username that's easy to recall.
Stick to your personal brand's unique selling point and identity (establish expertise in a single niche first, before expanding on the others).
Be consistent with the avatars you use in different social platforms or online communities you're actively participating in.

How about guest blogging?

Many link builders are abusing the tactic. Google is already on to it.

The method is very effective, when done right. But here's my personal take on it:

I don't do guest blogging that much anymore. But when I do, I do it on Moz.

If you're looking for more tips on link building, you can check out my blog Kaiserthesage and you can also follow me on Twitter @jasonacidre.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Seth's Blog : The conservation of drama

The conservation of drama

Everyone has a set point, a need/tolerance for a certain amount of drama in a life. I'm not talking about important work, I'm highlighting the excitment and tension that surrounds the things that happen to us (or might happen).

The newspaper is always just about the same length, regardless of what's happening in the world.

Politicians seem to have the capacity to deal with a given amount of tough stuff. When the urgent wanes, they make up something new. When there's too much, they decrease their perception of its urgency.

Last example: a restaurant kitchen has a very narrow range indeed. The amount of terror or urgency in a particular kitchen doesn't actually vary that much between a reasonably slow night and one where there are two or three VIPs out front or if its a banquet for a thousand people. We adapt and adjust and most of all, we shift our perception of precisely how important that particular emergency actually is.

It's easy to persuade yourself that this time it's different, that this time the drama is real, and that, in fact, it's all (truly) going to fall apart. In fact, though, it's all imagined. Drama isn't the work, it's our take on the work. Drama doesn't have to exist, certainly not in the way we're living it, not right now. A few days or weeks or years from now, this work will be so commonplace to you, you won't blink.

If drama was an actual external force, how could emergency room doctors, dictators and short order cooks ever survive? They're dealing with so much incoming, they'd melt.

If the drama is helping you and your organization do your work and enjoy it, then by all means, have fun. But understand that drama is a choice.

• Email to a friend •

luni, 16 septembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Kenosha Teachers' Union Decertified in 63-37% Vote; Elimination of Collective Bargaining is the Single Best Thing one Can do for School Kids

Posted: 16 Sep 2013 01:29 PM PDT

Common sense won out twice in Wisconsin in the past two weeks. On September 11, Wisconsin Act 10 upheld in another federal court challenge.

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed one of the lawsuits challenging Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill in 2011 that eliminated most collective bargaining powers held by Wisconsin public unions.

U.S. District Court Judge William Conley dismissed the constitutional challenges in Laborers Local 236, et al. v. Walker, et al. Conley ruled that the plaintiffs "failed to state a claim for relief under either the First or Fourteenth Amendments."

The unions claimed that Act 10's collective bargaining restrictions interfered with municipal employees' rights to association, assembly and speech under the First Amendment, and that it violates the Equal Protection Clause "by treating individuals represented by a collective bargaining unit different than unrepresented individuals."

"Under Act 10, general employees remain free to associate and represented employees and their unions remain free to speak; municipal employers are simply not allowed to listen," Conley wrote.

Conley also ruled that governments can treat represented employees differently than unrepresented employees in regards to bargaining over wages and employment conditions.

It goes to reason that if government does not have to listen to the union, then the union is useless. Acting in advance of the ruling, Wisconsin's Third Largest Teachers Union Decertified on August 31st.

Vincent Vernuccio, Director of Labor Policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told the MacIver News Service, "recertification is needed to keep unions responsible to their members and to allow the change necessary to remove ineffectual representation. It is simply democracy and majority rule."

Vernuccio pointed out that most workers do not have this option across the nation and is thankful that public workers in Wisconsin have this opportunity.

"The teachers simply did not see the value in the representation the union was offering," Vernuccio said.

Now that the union has been decertified, it can no longer represent Kenosha Unified School District teachers during any negotiations. It also ends the automatic deduction of union dues on teachers' paychecks.

Brett Healy, President of the MacIver Institute agrees that taxpayers continue to benefit from Act 10.

"Act 10 has truly changed everything here in Wisconsin. The fact that teachers, in what once was one of the largest and most partisan local unions in the state, would voluntarily choose not to join the union is astounding. Act 10 gave these hard-working men and women the freedom to choose and they are telling big labor just exactly how they feel about forced-participation and the unions' boorish behavior," Healy said.

Bingo.

No one should be forced to join a union to get a job. And no one should have to pay union dues either. People can still join unions if they want. So there are no legitimate rights lost.

I commend Governor Scott Walker. And the school children of Wisconsin as well as taxpayers are already benefiting. Teachers can now teach, educators do not have to bargain with bullies, and teachers can put more money in their pockets instead of contributing to unions.

Actual Results

Actual results speak for themselves as Union curbs rescue a Wisconsin school district.

The Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it's all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.

In the past, Kaukauna's agreement with the teachers union required the school district to purchase health insurance coverage from something called WEA Trust -- a company created by the Wisconsin teachers union. "It was in the collective bargaining agreement that we could only negotiate with them," says Arnoldussen. "Well, you know what happens when you can only negotiate with one vendor." This year, WEA Trust told Kaukauna that it would face a significant increase in premiums.

Now, the collective bargaining agreement is gone, and the school district is free to shop around for coverage. And all of a sudden, WEA Trust has changed its position. "With these changes, the schools could go out for bids, and lo and behold, WEA Trust said, 'We can match the lowest bid,'" says Republican state Rep. Jim Steineke.

Elimination of Collective Bargaining is the Single Best Thing one Can do for School Kids

As I said on July 2, 2011 Union-Busting is a "Godsend"; Elimination of Collective Bargaining is the Single Best Thing one Can do for School Kids

Also consider Collective Bargaining neither a Privilege nor a Right.

I commend Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for his brave stand to end slavery in Wisconsin. I also commend Senator Rand Paul's effort in pursuing a national "right-to-work" law.

It is time to abolish collective-bargaining slavery once and for all. A properly written national "right-to-work" law would help do just that.

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

CSU Receives 49% in Bavaria State Election; Assessing the National Impact for Merkel on September 22

Posted: 16 Sep 2013 09:27 AM PDT

CSU soared to an absolute majority in the Bavaria state election. The results look like this +- 0.2% or so.

CSU: 48.7%
SPD: 20.5%
Freie Waehler: 8.7%
Die Grünen: 8.5%
FDP: 3.2%
Others: 10.4%

Majority for CSU

Freie Waehler is the Bavaria Eurosceptic party and Die Grünen is the Green Party.

Inquiring minds may be wondering how 48.7% constitutes a majority. It does because majorities are based on the percentage in government, not the percentage of voters.

Recall that the threshold for participation is 5%.

For determining parliamentary majorities, CSU received over 50% of the votes that count (the first four groups above).

The National Election Outlook

Assessing FDP Chances of Making Parliament

If these results hold for the national elections on September 22, FDP may very well be out, as I have suggested on numerous occasions.

Assessing AfD Chances of Making Parliament

AdP did not run in the Bavaria election. However, the vote looks good for AfD because most of the Freie Waehler voters will likely support AfD in the national elections.

Assessing CDU/CSU Chances Alone

It is possible CDU/CSU does not need any coalition (grand or otherwise). The math would look something like this

CDU/CSU: 43%
SPD: 22%
Die Grünen: 9%
Die Linke: 9%
AfD: 4.5%
FDP: 4.5%
Others: 8%

In that scenario, it would be 43:40 (again discarding everything below the 5% threshold), with no need to form a coalition.

Assessing the Red-Green Chances

The odds of SPD + Die Grünen without Die Linke are zero.

The odds of SPD + Die Grünen + Die Linke are shrinking. The Green Party once had 15% of the vote but may not get 10%. Combine that with the fact that SPD did worse than expected in Bavaria.

If neither FDP nor AfD makes it into parliament, and if SPD can get 26-28% of the vote, and if both the Greens and the Left get 9% or more, then the Red-Green coalition with Die Linke can achieve a majority.

That seems like a long shot now, but it is not impossible. Much will depend on voter turnout combined with complacency setting in for CDU/CSU combined with apathy for the smaller parties.

Even IF SPD + Die Grünen + Die Linke can form a mathematical majority, both SPD and the Greens would have to be willing to form a coalition with Die Linke. That is not out of the question, but party leaders have said they won't. Are such statements believable or not?

Assessing a Non-Grand Coalition

If AfD makes it into parliament without FDP (a very good chance now), then CDU/CSU + AfD could form a coalition.
If AfD makes it into parliament with FDP (but at the expense of CDU/CSU), then things get more complicated depending on exact percentages. Some combinations of CDU/CSU +- FDP +- AfD would be in play.
If FDP makes it into parliament without AfD then the same Yellow-Black coalition as now will rule (CDU/CSU + FDP) . This scenario has diminishing chances.

Assessing the Grand Coalition

If none of the above happens, a "Grand Coalition" of CDU/CSU + SPD will happen.

So what has changed since before the Bavaria election? Not much. There are still many scenarios in which there is no "Grand Coalition".

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

marți, 17 septembrie 2013

The Progress We've Made

Five years

12 Scalable Link-Building Tactics

12 Scalable Link-Building Tactics

#1: Create your own database of premium images and cinemagraphs

#2: Outdated content acquisition

#3: Massive interviews

#4: Reverse guest-blogging campaign

#5: Online billboards through long-tail content distribution

#6: Getting more Google+ shares

#7: Republishing viral posts from Tumblr and Facebook

How to find viral posts in your niche from Facebook and Tumblr:

#8: Reverse engineering