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miercuri, 2 aprilie 2014

Add your name: America deserves a raise

Hey, all --

Last Friday, I spoke at a rally in Cleveland about raising the minimum wage. While I was there, I had the opportunity to talk with 11-year-old Jesseca Hudson, who came out to show her support.

Before I'd even boarded my plane back to D.C., she had already emailed me, telling me how she wanted to help in the fight to give millions of workers the wages they deserve.

Jesseca doesn't think that someone working full-time should struggle to make ends meet. But full-time workers earning the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 only earn about $14,500 a year in wages -- below the poverty line for a family of two.

That's unacceptable. And it's why the President has called on Congress and state governments to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour -- and on businesses to act on their own to increase the pay of their workers.

If you agree, then add your name -- and share why you think we need to raise the wage.

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will benefit about 28 million workers across the country. And it will help businesses, too: Raising the wage will put more money in people's pockets, which they will pump back into the economy by spending it on goods and services in their communities.

The bottom line: America deserves a raise.

And it's not just 11-year-olds that understand why it's a problem that the minimum wage has lost nearly a third of its value since its peak in 1968. Nearly three out of four Americans agree we should raise the wage.

If you agree it's time that we answer the President's call to increase the minimum wage and reward honest work, add your name and share why.

Thanks for your help.

Tom

Secretary Tom Perez
Department of Labor

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Local Landing Pages: A Guide To Great Implementation In Every Situation

Posted: 01 Apr 2014 04:17 PM PDT

Posted by MiriamEllis

Do you keep seeing terms like "city landing pages" and "service area pages" mentioned on Local SEO blogs and find yourself wondering if this form of marketing is a good match for your business? The topic of local landing pages has been super-active in the Moz Q&A Forum recently, and I've written this post to honor all of these great questions we're getting. This guide defines different types of local landing pages and identifies four distinct business models united by the need to earn visibility for local-focused Internet searches. By reading this guide, you will not only become fluent in the subject of local landing pages, but will also be ready to implement the right types of pages for your unique business.

Single-location service area business

This is the plumber working out of his house and traveling to clients in a 30 mile radius, the caretaker who sets out from her office each day to provide in-home services to elders, and the tow truck operator going out from a truck yard to rescue stranded drivers. If you travel from your home or office to serve customers, rather than them coming to you for services, your business is the definition of a single-location service area business (an SAB). You have a dedicated street address and a local phone number, but you don't expect your customers to come to you.

To my recollection, this is the precise business model around which the term "city landing page" first came into common usage in the Local SEO industry, and this form of marketing has evolved, in part, in an effort to counteract some of Google's bias toward physical location. When Google created their local product, it was definitely more geared toward brick-and-mortar businesses than SABs, and it remains so to this day.

Most SABs will be unable to obtain rankings in Google's local pack of results for any city other than the one in which they are physically located, and this leaves business owners wondering how they can accurately represent the fact that they serve in a variety of locations. The answer is to pursue organic rankings, rather than local ones, for these other service cities. Developing landing pages on the company website is one of the key techniques for achieving this desired visibility.

How it works:

Identify the key cities in which you serve, beyond your city of location.
Create a unique page of content on your website for each of these cities.
Link to these pages from a top level menu, perhaps under a heading such as "Cities We Serve."
If possible, earn social mentions and links for these pages.

FAQ:

Q: I serve a huge number of cities. Do I really have to create a page for each one?

A: Without a unique page for each city, you're unlikely to rank organically for relevant queries. That being said, it's not typically reasonable to create 50 city landing pages all at once. Instead, start by identifying your very most important cities (maybe 5 or 10 of them). Develop well-planned, high-quality pages for each of them. You can then continue to build out new pages over time, or, consider the idea of developing an on-site blog to begin publishing ongoing content about your less-important service cities as well as your important ones.

Q: I've put the same content with the city name swapped out on 20 different pages. Is this okay?

A: No! You're putting your website at risk for a duplicate content penalty. The absolute rule of developing local landing pages is that the content is unique on each one. If you can't find something unique to write about, don't create the page.

Q: I serve my whole state. Could I just optimize for that?

A: You could take that approach, if keyword research indicates that people search for what you offer by state. Typically, though, users either search for a service + a city, and even if they don't, Google will localize searchers' results based on the location of their device. Hence, if you want to show up for "fence builders in Denver," you've got to have a page on your site that speaks to this need. If your website is simply optimized for "Colorado," it isn't locally optimized and you can't expect Google to consider you as a relevant answer for queries containing or stemming from cities like Denver, Boulder, or Colorado Springs.

Q: Can I build a Google+ Local page for each of my service cities and earn rankings this way?

A: Only if you have real, physical offices there. You are only eligible to build one Google+ Local page per physical location (with the exception of multi-partner practices and large campuses like hospitals). It's forbidden to build them for any city where you aren't physically located.

Q: Can I use virtual offices to create a presence in my service cities?

A: No. Google prohibits the use of P.O. Boxes and virtual offices. Unless you've got a physical, staffed location where someone is answering the telephone during stated business hours, you should not be using such addresses to appear like you're physically located in your service cities. This is not only against Google's rules, but it's misleading to your customers. If you can get a real office and staff it, great. Otherwise, don't do this.

Q: What if I just put a list of my service cities on my homepage?

A: This one's a bit complex. If you serve just a few locations, it's perfectly fine to mention these in a natural manner on your homepage, but you shouldn't count on this to be enough to earn rankings for your business unless you have no competition. It's much better to build a page for each city. Something you should definitely avoid doing is putting a big block of text anywhere on your website listing cities or zip codes. Google's webmaster guidelines cite this as a spammy practice.

Q: How can I meet the challenge of creating unique content for each of my city landing pages?

A: This is where your creativity counts most! Consider the following options for brainstorming and creating unique, terrific content:

Showcase completed projects in each city, using text and photos.
Publish customer testimonials from customers in each city, encoded in Schema review markup.
Interview your service people who serve those cities, introducing them to your customers.
Create and publish city-related videos on each page and offer a transcript.
Offer city-specific specials in rotation from city to city.
Consider creating infographics specific to each city.
Share advice and news regarding laws, codes, weather, terrain or issues that are important to a specific community and relevant to your industry.
Provide unique do-it-yourself tips for things customers can do on their own.
Create opportunities for user-generated content through contests and promotions.
Share details of your involvement in specific cities, such as events you participate in or organizations you sponsor.
Think outside the box; come up with something not on this list that nobody else has thought of doing!

Single location brick-and-mortar business

This is the restaurant, dental office, or retail shop with just one physical location. In this case, the whole website is going to be optimized for the city in which the business exists and local landing pages are typically not going to be a good fit.

That being said, there is a common question surrounding this business model that needs to be addressed; one that often arises when a business is located in a small town near larger cities.

FAQ:

Q: My clients come to me from surrounding cities. I want to rank for these other/bigger locales. Could I publish landing pages for each of these places from which clients come to me?

A: It's understandable that if your business is located just outside of Dallas, Boston, or San Francisco and people come to you from these cities for services, you might want to achieve high rankings there. To my mind, this comes down to a question of relevance and usefulness. Would it be relevant or useful to create pages on your website stating, "Customer Joe comes to us from Dallas?" Probably not. Knowing a detail like this doesn't really help anybody, and if this is your only connection to a neighboring community, you probably shouldn't attempt to create local landing pages.

However, if your business has more of a link than this to surrounding towns or cities, you might have something of value to write about. A legitimate connection might include, but not be limited to, the following hypothetical scenarios:

A physician with privileges at a major city hospital
A therapist who speaks at major city conferences
An attorney who serves at courts in other cities
A sporting goods store that sponsors sports teams in other cities
An organization that hosts events in other cities

You should be able to determine if your business has this type of link to a neighboring community that could generate interesting content. Will writing about these things be enough to make you #1 organically for cities in which you're not physically located? Likely not, but the effort could earn you some visibility. Whether the investment of time and money will be worthwhile depends on the findings of your industry research. If you can identify gaps you can fill in the SERPs or know you've got sluggish competitors, a good effort here could yield exciting results.

Multi-location brick-and-mortar or service area business

In this scenario, you have more than one office, either from which your staff travels to offer services or to which your customers come to do business. In both cases you will be creating local landing pages for each physical address. Provided that each location has a unique phone number and is staffed during stated open hours, you are allowed to create a Google+ Local page for each office, too.

FAQ:

Q: How should I optimize my website if I've got multiple locations?

A: There are nuances to this situation which I'll do my best to address here. Your scenario might consist of being a local restaurant chain with five branches in a state or a multi-state franchise with 100 or more locations. If you've got a main headquarters and a just a handful of additional locations, you might consider optimizing the homepage and about page for the headquarters and putting the complete NAP of all locations in the footer and on the contact page of the site, in addition to building a local landing page for each office, optimized with its unique NAP in the opening copy.

If you have a handful of locations, but they are all of equal value, I would suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for the brand rather than the physical location, and then putting the complete NAP of all locations in the footer and on the contact page, as well as the unique NAP on each respective local landing page.

If you have a large number of locations (let's say 10 or more), I would suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for the brand, rather than locations. I would not put more than 10 NAPs in the footer. I'd leave that for the contact page and for the individual local landing pages. If it's reasonable, put navigational links to these local landing pages in a menu. If not, make them accessible via a clickable map, ZIP code search or similar feature. Include them all in an on-site sitemap.

Remember that the content must be unique on all of these pages to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Q: I'm having trouble brainstorming ideas for making these local landing pages unique. What can I write about?

A: Consider the following ideas for inspiration:

Showcase your work in each city, writing up great project descriptions.
If different services, products or classes are available at different locations, describe these.
Create city-specific coupons and contests.
Develop infographics and videos, accompanied by text descriptions of their content.
Offer advice that is specifically relevant to a given community.
Offer excellent driving directions.
Introduce the staff at specific locations; interview them if possible.
Add Schema-encoded customer testimonials for each city.

Q: I run an SAB with several physical offices that each serve their own radius. What kinds of landing pages should I be building?

A: You'll build a unique landing page for each office, optimized with its unique NAP. You'll be linking from the Google+ Local page for each office to its respective page on the website. Additionally, you can then set about building up a set of city landing pages (with no NAP) for each of the cities in the service radius of each office. If this ends up looking like way too many pages, consider blogging to begin covering these service cities over time with descriptions of your completed products.

National company desiring a local presence

For national businesses, the increasing presence of local results for important keyword searches has often seemed like encroachment rather than a blessing. You may find that much of the search engine result real estate is now being taken up by local companies. In such a situation, it's natural to wonder if building out some type of local landing page would help you to gain back visibility that may have been lost. As I see it, these are the two options in this scenario:

1. If you have staffed, physical locations in some cities and make in-person contact with your customers, then you are eligible to create a local landing page and attached Google+ Local page for each physical office. You can take advantage of the techniques described above in this article. For cities you serve but where you're not physically located, you should determine whether it is reasonable to create unique content for each city, or if your customers' needs will be better served by something like an interactive map.

2. If you have no physical offices or in-person contact with customers, your business does not qualify for Google+ Local pages, and the development of on-site local landing pages may just not make sense. For example, if you're a virtual services provider supporting all of the US, creating a page for every single city in the country probably isn't a reasonable approach to marketing. After all, if what you offer is the same for everybody, nationwide, what can you find to write about that would be different from page to page across thousands of pages?

In such a scenario, it's likely better to offer excellent content about your services accompanied by a map of your service cities, rather than attempting to rank for every, individual city with the landing page technique. Likely, you will need to rely on PPC to geo-target your advertising and turn to social media to create a presence in important communities.

For national businesses, building a strong brand is critical. Google tends to 'get' brands and if someone is searching for "Whole Foods Market" or "McDonalds," Google is typically going to surface reasonably appropriate results for the searcher, even if the company isn't getting their optimization perfect. Fair or not, this is how I see local search working these days, and the smaller your company is, the harder you'll have to work to combine excellent Local SEO practices with efforts to get your brand name established in your target communities.

In conclusion

"Does it make sense?" is the question I'd suggest as a determining factor for the types of local landing pages you build. If you can build unique, helpful pages, then the effort will likely be worth it. If you're having to stretch to find a rationale for the development of these types of pages, chances are, they're not a good fit.

Do you have inspiring suggestions for the types of content business owners can create to make their local landing pages especially neat or helpful? If so, please share your ideas with the community!

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Parallax Scrolling Websites and SEO - A Collection of Solutions and Examples

Posted: 01 Apr 2014 03:02 AM PDT

Posted by Carla_Dawson

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Parallax Scrolling is one of the latest trends in web design, yet most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO-friendly. I have observed this trend on sites like Awwwards, theFWA and many more. I have also observed that there are many articles that say parallax scrolling is not ideal for search engines. Parallax Scrolling is a design technique and it is ideal for search engines if you know how to apply it. I have collected a list of great tutorials and real SEO-friendly parallax websites to help the community learn how to use both techniques together. There appears to be lots of confusion in the community and I want to clear it up.

Parallax Scrolling â€" its origins and definition

Parallax Scrolling was originally created for the video game industry as a â€œspecial effectsâ€ technique to give the audience an illusion of depth. According to Wikipedia, parallax scrolling is

Parallax scrolling is a special scrolling technique in computer graphics, wherein background images move by the camera slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth

The web design industry defines parallax scrolling as

Creative Bloq

One big web design trend of the moment is parallax scrolling, which involves the background moving at a slower rate to the foreground, creating a 3D effect as you scroll down the page. It can sometimes be overwhelming, but when used sparingly it can provide a nice, subtle element of depth.

Observations

It is defined as a design technique or trend.
The definition of parallax scrolling talks about a technique that tries to accomplish 3D-like effects.
It talks about moving layers at different velocities
It does not talk about one page web design or web structure.

Parallax scrolling and web design - current industry trends

Parallax Scrolling is in style these days. The trend began in 2011 when Ian Coyle created the very first parallax website for Nike "Nike Better World" on 2011. Here are several articles mentioning web design trends for 2014 and they all mention parallax scrolling. Also note that the trend was strong in 2013.

Most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO friendly

I claim above that most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO-friendly. Where do I get the data to make this claim? Note just because most are not SEO-friendly does not mean they cannot be SEO-friendly.

Here are several samples

Most of these examples of parallax scrolling websites have one-page web architectures. Since most web designers apply parallax scrolling to one-page web design, there is a misconception in the industry that parallax scrolling is restricted to one page.

Ok ok....technicalities...so how does one do a parallax scrolling website that is SEO-friendly?

How to create a parallax scrolling website for search engines?

Before designing a website with parallax scrolling and for search engines it is important to keep in mind the following things;

Parallax Scrolling is a design technique that moves different layers of content, images or backgrounds at different speeds.
Regular onsite SEO requirements like schema, address in footer, etc. still apply. Remember, start with an SEO architecture, and then apply the design to the architecture.
Parallax Scrolling is not ideal for mobile version. It makes the website to heavy. Remove parallax scrolling for mobile views.

There are three main techniques. Here are some real examples of parallax scrolling websites that are SEO-friendly or almost SEO-friendly.

Technique #1 â€" "One page" web design with parallax scrolling using Jquery

iProspectâ€™s Senior SEO specialist Kevin Ellen created the following tutorial - Parallax Scrolling and SEO How to use JQuery to SEO your website.

This technique addresses the issue of one page web designs that use parallax scrolling and basically tweaks it for search engines. I am mentioning this technique first since there are so many one page parallax scrolling websites on the market. Please note that Kevinâ€™s sample â€œParallax SEOâ€ site is not really parallax since it does not move different items at different velocities, however I am mentioning it because his technique can easily be applied to most one page parallax scrolling websites on the market.

Google Webmaster recently published this article Infinite Scroll Search Friendly. It addresses the same issue that Kevin did in his article but with more detail. I highly recommend reading both. You should be able to fix any one page parallax scrolling website with both these sources.

The solution's use the help of jQuery's 'pushState's' functionality. This allows a parallax scrolling page to be 'cut' into various sections which can be identified in the SERPs, each with their unique URL and meta data. As a result, one single page to be indexed multiple times, for different content.

Pros â€" It is a good fix for an existing one page parallax scrolling website that needs to SEOed. It is a good technique for small websites that are not interested in hard core analytics.

Cons â€" Bad for analytics. I suspect bounce rates may be higher on these kinds of sites as scrolling through the website may occur rather quickly and to a software program it would appear as a quick enter-exit per URL.

Flower Beauty

Woj Kwas mentioned this website in this Mozâ€™s Q&A. This website does not fit the technical definition of parallax scrolling but it does use the JQuery /Infinite scrolling technique. FlowerBeaty.com allows the user to scroll through the entire website and through multiple URLâ€™s. It doesn't classify as parallax scrolling since it does not play with layers and velocities. I am mentioning it because it has received some visibility. It is not a parallax scrolling website since it does not have multiple layers that move at different velocities.

Technique #2 â€" Multipage parallax scrolling website on SEO architecture

This technique is very simple and easy to understand. You start with a SEO web architecture and then place the parallax scrolling design effects on each SEO URL. Wanda Anglin wrote a tutorial on this technique here. I have not been able to find any other tutorials that mention this technique, if you do, please let me know.

xDawson (Yes this is my website, but I have yet to find a perfectly SEOed parallax scrolling website. If you do, please pin it here).

This website accomplished a very strict SEO architecture (definitely over optimized) and placed parallax scrolling on almost every internal URL.

It did accomplish the movement of layers at different velocities however it did not accomplish the â€œillusion of depthâ€ or the â€œtelling of a storyâ€. Although it does qualify as parallax scrolling, it does not use parallax scrolling as the trend is today.

Pros â€" Good for analytics in that each URL has its own content, easy to implement

Cons â€" Loading times can be a problem with this technique as too much parallax scrolling may make browser loading time longer than it should be. It may be a bit too â€œinteractiveâ€. Designing each for each URL can be expensive and keeps the design rigid.

Recommendations - Use parallax scrolling sparingly throughout the website instead of on every URL. Reduces loading time and makes the website more natural. It also will reduce design expenses and lets the website be a bit more flexible.

Kickpoint

This website placed parallax scrolling on its homepage and on one internal page. Notice the homepage and the services page have parallax scrolling.

Pros â€" Good for analytics and easy to design and implement

Cons - Does not have a 100% SEO Architecture. Notice the Services page did not divide up the topics of SEO, PPC, SMM, and Content Marketing onto unique URLâ€™s with unique title and meta descriptions.

Recommendations â€" Divide up the content on the services page or use Jquery fix (see technique #2). Add unique titles and meta descriptions.

Technique #3 â€" Parallax Scrolling on homepage and regular SEO architecture

Spotify

Another technique is to place parallax scrolling on the homepage and then include other URLâ€™s that are SEO-friendly, but do not have parallax scrolling.

Pros â€" Keeps the website light and flexible. It is easy to design and more affordable than technique #1.

Cons â€" Not maximizing creativity or making the website super â€œinteractiveâ€

Do the solutions above solve the parallax scrolling SEO conflict?

I obviously believe they do, but I am interested in hearing the communityâ€™s opinion on this issue. I love the parallax scrolling design technique and am a strong believer in making websites beautiful and creative but also SEO-friendly. I hope this collection of SEO parallax websites and tutorials help you learn how to apply both techniques together. And remember, parallax scrolling is just a design technique that can be used on different kinds of web architectures.

This article was co-authored with Kevin Ellen from iProspect UK. You can find more information about Kevin here. https://twitter.com/Kevin_Ellen and uk.linkedin.com/in/kevinellen

Watch: President Obama from the Rose Garden

Featured

Watch: President Obama from the Rose Garden

Yesterday, President Obama announced that 7.1 million Americans signed up for private health coverage during the Affordable Care Act's first open enrollment period, which ended on Monday.

Click here to watch President Obama's remarks.

Unnatural link detection at its best ...

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Seth's Blog : Cracking the pottery

Cracking the pottery

For every post that makes it to this blog, I write at least three, sometimes more.

That means that on a regular basis, I delete some of my favorite (almost good) writing.

It turns out that this is an incredibly useful exercise. I know that there's going to be a post, every morning, right here. What I don't know, what I'm never sure of, is which post.

I find that it's almost essential to fall in love with an idea to invest the time it takes to make it good and worth sharing. And then, the hard part: deleting that idea when it's just not what it could be. Too often, organizations are good at the first part, but struggle with the second. And so we defend expired business models, support the status quo and have a knee-jerk inclination to preserve what we've got.

When you get in the habit of breaking your own pottery, it's a lot easier to ask, "what if?" If you know that it's okay to break it later, it's a lot easier to fall in love with it now.

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marți, 1 aprilie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Virtu Delays IPO Amid "Flash Boys" Furor; FBI Investigates Legality of High Frequency Trading; Reader HFT Anecdotes
Gazprom Raises Price of Gas for Ukraine 44%, Rationing Coming Up
France Criticizes European Commission as "Totally Useless", Wants More Time on Budget Deficits

Virtu Delays IPO Amid "Flash Boys" Furor; FBI Investigates Legality of High Frequency Trading; Reader HFT Anecdotes

Posted: 01 Apr 2014 06:13 PM PDT

The bloom is about to come off the High Frequency Trading bloom, but only after billions and billions of dollars were skimmed off trades.

With everyone now looking the same direction and seeing the same thing, HFT trading firm Virtu Will Delay IPO, amid furor spurred by Michael Lewis Book "Flash Boys".

Virtu Financial Inc., the high-frequency trader that announced plans last month to sell shares, has delayed the deal, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Virtu's bankers won't start marketing the initial public offering until after April 20, delaying the process from this week, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the decision is private.

The delay comes amid unprecedented scrutiny of high-frequency traders. "Flash Boys," the Michael Lewis book released yesterday, argues that high-speed traders, Wall Street brokerages and exchanges have rigged the $23 trillion U.S. stock market. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is examining privileges such as enhanced data feeds marketed to high-speed firms, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether those traders are breaking U.S. laws by acting on nonpublic information.

Virtu said it doesn't believe it broke the law, "but we cannot predict the outcome of the inquiry."

Reader Anecdotes

In response to High Frequency Trading Hits 60-Minutes Scrutiny; Trading or Skimming? Reader Sam writes ...

Hey Mish,

We don't have regular TV anymore but enjoy many other types of programming for much less than the cost of cable TV etc. So I appreciate the link to 60 Minutes as it was fantastic. High Frequency Trading is something I watch and experience daily.

On Friday I was selling a sizable quantity of shares in a small company and from the seller side I watch a million shares trade above my sell price. My shares were being picked off bit by bit and only a partial fill by the end of the day. It was unreal and very obviously being manipulated. The exchanges were ignoring my order to sell and matching orders at higher prices. I've also had the same buy side happen as in the 60 Minutes video with my buy price ignored as well.

This is most frustrating. I didn't get my buy price even though it was in the money and with lots of shares trading. I also see data on the screen that's in conflict with other similar data which seems to be hang-ups in the threads of information.

Thanks
Sam

Something Stinks

Reader PTB with whom I shared the above email responded ...

I have experienced the same thing your correspondent mentions. For example, I put in a limit sell order for a thinly traded micro-cap, and saw 100ds of thousands of shares trade ABOVE my limit sell price, and still got no execution. The broker explained that since my price was above the official bid, I had no right to an execution, which is of course technically correct.

But why were those trades ABOVE my limit about? Shouldn't the buyers have been interested in buying my lower priced shares? Something clearly stinks.

Looks Like Fraud, Smells Like Fraud

If it smells like fraud, it's because it is fraud. Trades should go to the best execution price. It's clear they don't and HFT firms are in the middle of it, skimming billions of dollars in the process. That is the only way these companies can go for years with no trading losses.

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

Gazprom Raises Price of Gas for Ukraine 44%, Rationing Coming Up

Posted: 01 Apr 2014 10:51 AM PDT

In an obvious move to pressure Ukraine, Gazprom Raises Gas Export Price.

Russia's natural-gas export monopoly raised prices for Ukraine 44 percent after a discount deal expired, heaping financial pressure on the government in Kiev as it negotiates international bailouts.

OAO Gazprom (GAZP) said Ukraine is losing its right to pay less because it has piled up a debt of more than $1.7 billion since 2013. Ousted President Viktor Yanukovych won a lower price at the end of last year as he grappled with protests after ditching an association agreement with the European Union, on top of a previous discount in April 2010. That may also be overturned, according to Russia's government.

The move raises the prospect that state-run Gazprom may threaten to halt sales to Ukraine, which relies on Russia for about half its gas.

Ukraine has a "very low" 7.2 billion cubic meters of gas in underground storage, Andriy Kobolyev, chief executive officer of state-owned NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy, told reporters in Kiev today. Naftogaz has asked regional governors to limit utilities' gas consumption this month, he said.

Notice how talk of sanctions is winding down. They didn't work and won't work. Russia has the upper hand.

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

France Criticizes European Commission as "Totally Useless", Wants More Time on Budget Deficits

Posted: 01 Apr 2014 10:11 AM PDT

The latest numbers from Insee, the national statistics institute show France missed its deficit target of 4.2% in 2013 by 0.1 percentage points. Public spending is also up. Spending now amounts to over 57% of GDP with debt reaching 93.5% of GDP.

The debt and deficit numbers are despite the fact that France's overall tax burden is 46% among the highest in Europe. France is collecting money, but what is it doing with it? The answer of course is wasting it on socialist dreams.

François Hollande's Deficit Plea Sets up Clash with Brussels

Today, France is pleading for more time to hit its deficit targets. Amusingly, Interior Minster Arnaud Montebourg, claims the European Commission is "totally useless on the question of growth".

This puts president François Hollande on a Major Clash Path with Brussels.

President François Hollande has made clear he wants Brussels to give his new French government more time to hit its already delayed budget deficit targets, setting up a potential clash with the European Commission and hardline partners such as Germany and Finland.

Announcing the appointment of Manuel Valls as prime minister on Monday night following a heavy local election defeat for his ruling Socialist party, Mr Hollande said the new government "will have to convince" Brussels that its plans to boost growth "must be taken into account" in terms of its budget targets.

Arnaud Montebourg, the leftist industry minister who is expected to continue to occupy a key role in the new government, weighed in on Tuesday, saying the commission was "totally useless on the question of growth".

He added: "With the choice of Manuel Valls and a fighting government, we have the chance of reorienting Europe. At the moment it is Europe that reorients us towards austerity and dogma when what we need is pragmatism."

The line from Paris echoes the stance taken by Matteo Renzi, Italy's prime minister, whose government has also set growth and jobs as its top priority. Both France and Italy are currently under a Brussels regime of "specific monitoring" of their public finances because of slippage in their efforts to cut their budget deficits and reduce public debt.

Germany and Finland recently issued a strong rebuke to the commission for giving France and Spain more time to meet the EU's deficit limit of 3 per cent of gross domestic product.

France was last year granted an extra two years to 2015 to meet the 3 per cent target. But the commission has already estimated that Paris will not achieve this.

In Rare Agreement with Montebourg

For the first time ever, I find myself in agreement with Montebourg. Yet, I propose a truncation of his statement to make it more accurate. The EC is not just "totally useless on the question of growth" but rather, the EC is "totally useless" period.

Of course Montebourg is totally useless as well, and so is Hollande's entire administration. Actually, they are worse than useless, and proof is in the negative results.

Finally, please note the irony in Montebourg's praise of Manuel Valls.

Manuel Valls stands on the right of the party and his appointment comes despite strong leftwing pressure for Valls to abandon his recent pro-business policy shift according to the Financial Times.

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

miercuri, 2 aprilie 2014

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