Central Perk

vineri, 9 mai 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Negotiating a Diplomatic Solution in Ukraine: How and Why That Will Happen
Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum Call for Higher Minimum Wage; Tweedle-Dum vs Tweedle-Dee
Canadian Employment Unexpectedly Declines Second Time in Three Months; Low Interest Rates in Canada for Years to Come
25-54 Labor Force vs. Employment; Men vs. Women; Cyclical vs. Structural

Negotiating a Diplomatic Solution in Ukraine: How and Why That Will Happen

Posted: 09 May 2014 07:50 PM PDT

A very close high school friend, Dave Wise, published an article Towards a Diplomatic Solution in Ukraine on a John Hopkins University site.

Dave happens to be friend "F1" who I referred to on Tuesday in Annexation by Force; Three-Part Reality; Actions vs. Words; Paper Legalities.

Dave believes the solution to this involves the UN and international law.

In an email exchange Dave commented ...

"The reality is that the international community overwhelming does not recognize the annexation. Annexation by force is no longer how the world does business and that is what is at stake here. That is why it cannot be allowed to stand."

He repeated that viewpoint in depth, in the link at the top. I maintained (and still do) a Three-Part Reality.

Three-Part-Reality

Crimea is again part of Russia whether the world community likes it or not.
The annexation will stand.
The only thing that can change the above outcome is another major war.

Can You Get There From Here?

Dave states the "internal transfer of Crimea to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954 was essentially an internal transfer within the USSR and should have probably been undone given the long history of Crimea and the fact that Crimea is the location of numerous important Russian military bases, not the least of which being the home port of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopo."

On that we certainly agree.

Yet, under Dave's "diplomatic solution" thesis, Russia is entitled to Crimea only if recognized by international law, including an "orderly secession" in accordance with the Ukrainian constitution, in which "Crimea would be established as a protectorate of the United Nations" before a legitimate vote returned Crimea to Russia.

Quite frankly, that international law solution is laughable.

Once again Dave, F2, and I exchanged emails on the topic.

I chimed in ...

In spite of all the anti-Russian rhetoric, note that Putin still has not invaded Eastern Ukraine even though he has had numerous opportunities.

As far as Dave's proposal goes, he once again bases it on some sort of "international law" thesis even though he admits Crimea should not be part of Ukraine.

As a practical matter, if Russia initially tried to abide by Dave's vision of "international law", Crimea would still be part of Ukraine unless Ukraine agreed to the proposal or the US and Europe imposed Sanctions on Ukraine. The odds of that were essentially zero.

Ironically, Dave's vision of "international law" as the "diplomatic solution" is only possible now because Russia did not pursue an "international law" solution in the first place!

F2, my lawyer friend replied ...

Yep, Mish, on this we agree. There will be a diplomatic solution. Its formulation will have nothing to do with law. After the decision-makers, the decision-makers' top assistants, security, and the really important personal valets are out of the room, the government bureaucrat lawyers will be left with a bare light bulb to write up something that explains what was done in legalese. And the legal document will describe the solution as accurately as Genesis describes the creation of the universe.

The best thing about this mess is Putin did not invade Ukraine and a diplomatic solution is not only possible but a near-certainty.

That said, Ukraine may fester over this internally for years.

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

Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum Call for Higher Minimum Wage; Tweedle-Dum vs Tweedle-Dee

Posted: 09 May 2014 01:41 PM PDT

In the past few days, three candidates who ran for the last Republican presidential nomination, including nominee Mitt Romney, have endorsed a higher minimum wage.

Yahoo!Finance asks Mitt Romney Calls for Higher Minimum Wage. Does it Matter?

Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, called on Republicans Friday to raise the minimum wage, going against the congressional leadership of his own party.
Related Stories

"I think we ought to raise it, because frankly, our party is all about more jobs and better pay, and I think communicating that is important to us," Mr. Romney said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

In recent days, two other Republican presidential hopefuls from 2012 – former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania – have also called for a minimum wage hike. The trend may signal that in presidential politics, some Republicans see the issue as a way to soften the party's image across a broad electorate.

On MSNBC, Romney linked his support for a higher minimum wage to the GOP's effort to reach out to working Americans, including Hispanics. Romney lost the Hispanic vote to President Obama, 71 percent to 27 percent.

"I also believe that key for our party is to be able to convince the people who are in the working population, particularly the Hispanic community, that our party will help them get better jobs and better wages," Romney said.

Matter in What Sense?

The senate has blocked debate on the issue. It needs 60 votes to advance but only has 52. The fact that Mitt Romney flip-flopped twice (from for, to against, to for) does not change Senate math.

Nonetheless, Romney's flip-flopping does raise this question once again: From Obamacare to war-mongering to minimum wage, what real differences were there between Obama and Romney?

About all I can come up with is war-mongering and abortion. On the war-mongering front I remain convinced that if Romney had won the US would have attacked Iran and we would be engaged in a hopeless trade war with China.

Non-Differences

There are probably a few other differences, but arguably not on anything the President can directly control. Here are some distinct non-differences.

Obamacare and Romneycare are essentially the same.
Obama promised cuts in military spending but didn't deliver. No essential difference.
Obama promised to get rid of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp but didn't. No essential difference.
Romney called Russia our number one enemy. Obama now acts that way. No essential difference.
Obama considers Snowden a traitor. So does Romney. No essential difference.
Did either Obama or Romney have a realistic plan to eliminate the deficit? No, they didn't.

The 2012 election offered a classic choice of Tweedle-Dum vs. Tweedle-Dee. I said so at the time and numerous Republicans attacked me for that view.

Perhaps Republicans can see the truth now, but I doubt it. Self-assessment by bureaucrats and political parties is about zero.

Hopefully the 2016 election provides a real choice. Don't count on it. However, you can count on bluster, huffing and puffing, finger-pointing, and name calling even if there are few real differences.

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

Canadian Employment Unexpectedly Declines Second Time in Three Months; Low Interest Rates in Canada for Years to Come

Posted: 09 May 2014 10:42 AM PDT

In response to an unexpected weakening in Canadian employment, the Canadian Dollar Weakens.

The Canadian dollar weakened the most in seven weeks after employment unexpectedly declined for the second time in three months in April, boosting bets the Bank of Canada may lower interest rates to support economic growth.

The currency dropped from almost the strongest level against the U.S. dollar in four months as employment fell by 28,900 in April and the participation rate declined to the lowest in more than 12 years, Statistics Canada said in Ottawa. The Canadian currency sank to a 4 1/2 year low of C$1.1279 on March 20, two days after Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said he couldn't rule out interest-rate cuts.

Today's job report "will add to ammunition that Poloz has in his back pocket to remind people that the economy isn't running at full steam and the desire for a weaker currency to help the export sector," Ken Wills, a senior corporate dealer at CanadianForex, said by phone from Toronto. "This number was definitely a big miss. It will weigh on the currency."

Canada's currency plunged after employment dropped last month following a 42,900 gain in March, and compared with a 13,500 job increase forecast by economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Accommodation and food service jobs led the decline by industry, falling by 32,200.

The unemployment rate remained at 6.9 percent, as predicted in a Bloomberg survey, while 25,600 people left the labor force to push the participation rate to 66.1 percent, the lowest since November 2001.

"Exports are still sluggish and not enough to support growth," said Charles St-Arnaud, London-based senior economist at Nomura Securities International Inc., who expects a 10-year yield of 2.95 percent in the fourth quarter. "The sensitivity of U.S. exports to Canadian growth has also decreased, so there is a case there to be cautious."

The loonie has tumbled 4 percent this year against a basket of 10 developed-nation currencies tracked by Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes, the worst performance in the group.

Low Interest Rates in Canada for Years to Come

Like Fed counterparts in the US, Bank of Canada's Stephen Poloz says Interest Rates to Remain Low for Years to Come.

Canadians can expect to enjoy relatively cheap borrowing costs for some time to come — perhaps years — even after the economy returns to full capacity and the Bank of Canada starts hiking interest rates, bank governor Stephen Poloz said Thursday [April 24, 2014].

The central banker told a luncheon in Saskatoon that the economy has room to grow before it can be considered to be firing on all cylinders, but even when it does — likely sometime in early 2016 — Canadians shouldn't expect a sudden increase in interest rates to fight inflation.

Room to Cut

With today's Canadian jobs report you can forget all about rate hikes. Instead start thinking about rate cuts to "boost exports".

Canada did get in three rate hikes, so there is "room" so to speak for three cuts.

The Fed, the ECB, and Bank of Japan already have rock bottom rates. Canada was there for a while and may get there again.

How can every country cut rates to boost exports? Mathematically it's impossible, but it certainly doesn't stop central banks from trying, and at a huge expense to savers and everyone on fixed income.

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

25-54 Labor Force vs. Employment; Men vs. Women; Cyclical vs. Structural

Posted: 09 May 2014 12:52 AM PDT

Recovery talk goes on and on. Assuming there is a genuine recovery as opposed to a financial recovery, where would one most likely find evidence?

I propose evidence should be apparent in those out of school, yet not retired. More specifically, we should see evidence in the age 25-54 demographic.

Let's take a look.

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate 1990-Present

The participation rate is the percentage of people who are either employed or actively seeking work.

Where is the recovery?

Some might accuse me of cherry picking a timeframe on the above chart. OK. Here is a longer-term chart.

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate 1950-Present

Women entered the workforce en masse in the 1960s to 1990s. Leveling off is understandable, but why the decline?

Reader Tim Wallace dives in further, breaking out women vs. men.

25-54 Labor Force and Employment, Men and Women

The cheerleaders will tout the rise in employment. However, the rise in employment is from the depths of recession hell.

In percentage terms, the male participation rate for age group 25-54 is the lowest in history. The female participation rate for age group 25-54 is the lowest in 24 years.

Cyclical vs. Structural

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke stated the unemployment problem is cyclical. I believe unemployment is a demographic-based structural issue.

If anyone has any credible evidence that shows the unemployment problem is cyclical in nature, not structural, please send it.

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

Damn Cool Pics

A Magnificent Collection Of The World's Largest Statues

Posted: 09 May 2014 02:04 PM PDT

These statues are amazing and you won't believe how tall they are. Check out this collection of the world's most magnificent tall statues.

10 Coolest International Borders [Infographic]

Posted: 09 May 2014 09:19 AM PDT

International borders can be fascinating for many different reasons. Sometimes there are amazing natural features that divide two countries, such as Iguazu Falls dividing Brazil and Argentina. Other times, the politics of the nations make for an interesting border, such as the ceremony at the India/Pakistan border. Or maybe it's just the fact that there's a zipline that makes it cool. You win, Spain and Portugal.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Video: A Busy Week at the White House

Featured

Video: A Busy Week at the White House

This week, the First Lady launched her Reach Higher education initiative, while the President hosted two bilateral meetings and a press conference, let loose some humor at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and traveled to Arkansas and California.

Watch the latest edition of West Wing Week:

10 Tactics to Improve Blog Readership - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 08 May 2014 05:18 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

If you're looking to increase traffic to your blog, there are many tactics that can significantly boost your progress. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand lays a roadmap for the journey, offering 10 of the best tactics for you to keep in mind along the way.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

Video transcription

Howdy, Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, we're answering the question, "How can I improve the readership and reach, the interactions, sharing, and of course, the links which will all help me get rankings and traffic to my blog?" So a lot of people start investing in blogging, and I actually think a blog is a wonderful thing to invest in, assuming you meet the criteria for what you're trying to achieve with a blog as opposed to separate content sections. And that means having, you know, a person at least, and potentially, a team of two, three, four people who can contribute content on a regular basis and who have an affinity for and stylistic you know ability to contribute at a very high level because it is tough to blog.

So you know, a blog is essentially just content that is put out in a consistent fashion, in a timeline sort of view. Blogs are great because they can help you do things like earn traffic, and build your brand, attract links, and shares, and rankings, grow your addressable audience. And this can also... a blog can also help you create affinity with and a connection with your community, which means a blog can help you and has definitely helped me, and a lot of times, manufacture serendipity. Serendipitous things that wouldn't have otherwise come about; do come about because you have a blog, because you're creating content on a regular basis. And that's touching people who can potentially help you achieve what you're trying to achieve in business.

Now over time, it is absolutely the case that creating a successful blog has become more and more challenging, more and more difficult. So, when people look at the Moz Blog and they say, "Gosh you know how did you achieve this?" One of the things that you have to remember, it's not like I started or we started as blogging geniuses, right? I mean, go back and read some of the posts from 2003, 2004; they kind of suck. They're pretty terrible. But, we were very, very early on, right? If you think about a time frame for blogging, remember that over time, you're getting a different set of the audience. So, I think about this a lot like Clay Christianson's innovator's dilemma. And you have these sort of innovators, and these innovators are much less picky, they're just interested in anyone who's talking about this subject matter. So you know, in those early days, not many people were blogging about SEO; there were probably four to ten other blogs total and not many of those had tremendous readership. And so, starting a new SEO blog was pretty easy. Today, there are tens of thousands. If you're starting a new blog on the topic of SEO today, you're competition is insane, and you have to be massively differentiated and just remarkable in order to compete.

Meanwhile, if you're starting a blog on a topic in a niche that very few people are covering, where there's just not enough—so if you, say, a year ago or two years ago were writing a blog about cryptocurrency—man you could be the dominant force, right, the dominant editorial force in that industry; and that's pretty fascinating. Over time, right, early adopters and early majority, late majority, and then finally your laggards come in. And I would say, Moz is probably somewhere between the early majority and late majority stage in the SEO field. But, this becomes dramatically more difficult to reach this audience once content brands are already established producing great stuff in these spheres. This is why it pays to either be an early adopter and/or differentiate your blog dramatically from what's already out there. And by differentiate, I mean, in terms of content, voice, focus, the user experience—the UI and UX, and the format—the types of content you're sharing. So potentially, you know, video or interactive content, or you know, podcasting, potentially. That was maybe a little bit more a few years ago.

These are some additional tactics that I think can help if you've done these things right. You've sort of chosen wisely, you know that a blog is for you, you have the ability to do these things. And now, you're looking for what's going to move the needle. These are ten tactics that we've found to be especially effective time and time again and I think can be helpful to you.

So, the first one, if you want to earn participation on your site, and by participation, I mean people contributing comments, I mean people sharing on social media, I mean people replying to you, people sending you e-mails about the content that you're putting out, people inviting you to contribute in other places, potentially in-person talks, or do this video, or would you do this webinar for us. Whatever it is, if you want to earn that participation, you need to participate first. And this is something that I did a lot when I started, so I actually I spent my early days in the forums, right, which was kind of like the precursor to the blogosphere in the SEO world. I participated tremendously in probably about six or seven forums all the time. I was on there at least a few of them every day, writing back and forth and contributing, and that helped me to earn my first bits of knowledge and to have something to write about, too. And that participation also extended over to the blogosphere itself. So, I was commenting on, you know, Aaron Wall's blog and Donna Fontano's blog, and you know, Danny Sullivan's blog, all the time. And so, when they came to my site, they'd sort of be like, "Oh yeah, I know this guy, I've heard of him, I recognize him. He's added substantial, thoughtful, you know; he didn't just comment spam me or he didn't just say, "Nice post," he really added something to the conversation. (Don't look this up; I'm not sure if I actually added that much to these conversations. But it was early days, right?) That participation that you perform will be visited back upon your own blog. People will get the idea that you should.

The second really critical thing here is the first, people who contribute, the first people who participate; you want to be building personal connections with those folks right away. So, the first few people who are commenting on your blog, go check them out if they've left an email address, or a Twitter profile, or they've connected to their Disqus profile... whatever kind of commenting system you've got, make sure that you are going and figuring them out and at least at the very least, sending them a thank you over email or over Twitter, and potentially, even doing more than that, saying like, "Hey, I checked out your site, I thought this was great. I really liked this and I appreciate the comment," those kinds of things. That will reinforce this idea of them coming back. I can't tell you how many times our community team here at Moz has seen someone tweet something nice about us and as soon as they get that first response, it builds that engagement and respect and fandom for life. It's very, very powerful; you can see this with a lot of brands across the social media sphere. When Alaska Airlines tweets at me or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival tweets at me, I suddenly feel that personal connection. That's much more powerful than just, "I know their brand and I like their product."

Number three, so many people make this mistake; never, ever, ever use a subdomain or a separate root domain to host your blog. Reason being, your ability to generate domain authority and the potential rankings boost that comes from the rising tide of domain authority, sort of lifting all the ships on the domain, will be split if you put it on a sub domain; and of course, will be completely split if you put it on a separate root domain. Keeping it all in a sub folder is the best thing that you can do for your SEO.

Number four, mention, quote, include, and reference influencers. I see this advice a lot actually. This, sort of like, "Oh, you know, if someone's influential in this sphere, yeah, you should talk about them and mention them, and you know, potentially cite articles of theirs because then, they might see you and share it, and those kinds of things. That can be wise but even better advice is segment your influencers, right? They're sort of what I'd call hyper-influential influencers; people who get things, you know, talking about them many, many times a day. And therefore, your blog mentioning them or saying nice things about them is nice, it's meaningful, but it may not attract their attention nearly as well as if you choose those mid-range or early-stage influencers. Those folks are tremendously excited to be mentioned even once somewhere; and they are much likely, much more likely to become proponents and advocates of the content you produced if you're mentioning them. This can be a very, very powerful tip. I like going after the not big influencers, but niche influencers. I think that's a much more powerful way to do this.

Number five, this is just becoming universal truth and in the past, it was not this way; which is, better content is outweighing more content. This might seem surprising, right, because you, a lot of the advice you've likely heard about blogs and blogging is be consistent, write every day, produce something of value at least three times a week or something like this. I have actually found that those blogs today that are earning outsized influence, outsized voices can often be those that are only producing content once a week, once every month, couple times a month. You don't want to go like a whole quarter without producing something. But in can be the case that if you know that you only have a certain amount of time to invest and you would rather produce the most remarkable thing that you can once every thirty days, rather than try and write every day or every night, I would bias to make that decision today.

Number six, experiment with home grown or self-created visuals, and in addition to visuals, data. Reason being, visuals and data are the two things that I find most in the content world, the blogosphere included, but the entire content world that get referenced and reused. This is kind of the way that I've found most effectively to earn links in what I'd say are link saturated and content saturated fields, is you want to have that stuff that other people are citing, other people are including in their work, visuals and data. Especially by visuals, what I do not mean is go onto, you know, Meme Generator or Cheezburger or something and, you know, take an image and then edit it a little bit; I mean, truly creating your own visuals even if they suck. I have seen really sucky, seen, never mind that; I have made really sucky visuals. Tell me, is this beautiful whiteboard artwork? It's not. This is kind of crappy, like, look that's a curve that is clearly not done by an artist. But, these visuals get repurposed and these visuals get cited far more so than just text alone and far more so than visuals that I'm embedding from other sources or ones that I've just, you know, screenshot and edited. It's that home grown nature even if it's amateurish, that gets you the citations. The same thing is true for data.

Number seven, please invest in email subscriptions. If you're building a blog, one of the best ways to get repeat engagement and consistently have your voice out there is to have people who are subscribing to your blog via email. This used to be the case that RSS was kind of very powerful for this. With the death of Google Reader a few, a couple years ago now, and the death of kind of blog readers in general, and more and more people switching to social for finding, you know, the things that they do read, email has actually re-emerged in my opinion as a very, very powerful way to get people. I think it never actually stopped as a powerful way to get people to your blog but it has certainly reentered the consciousness. And, it can be a great way to make sure that your content is consistently in front of the people you want to be in front of.

Number eight, create a self-service method for two of the most common ways your blog is likely to earn interactions that lead to links. And, those are translation and repurposing rights. If you have something in your footer on your sidebar that says, "Want to repurpose, reuse, or translate our content? Get information here about how to do that, or we're under a creative commons license," whatever it is. That can actually nudge more people. You sort of have a higher conversion rate with that, than if people go, "Gosh, this is really cool content. I wonder if they'd let me use it. Well, I'd have to dig around for their email address and try and figure that out. You know what, I'm not going to bother. Let me go somewhere else." This is why having it somewhere right on the page, sidebar, you know, footer, bottom of the post, that kind of thing, can be helpful.

Number nine, I don't always urge people to create controversy, especially not for the sake of creating controversy, but having disparate opinions and challenging the status quo is a very powerful way to build up a unique voice and a unique audience. Therefore, what I would encourage you to do is to challenge thought leaders and challenge conventional ideas but do so in a very respectful way. When I see people who've said, "Hey, Rand you are dead wrong about this and here's why and here's the evidence, and they've done so in a very thoughtful and respectful way. There extremely likely to earn a link or a citation from me at least, at the very least, a social share, and often times, even a relationship. And I see this happening with many, many people in many fields. I think this is a great way to go. It's a way that I've actually built some audience over the years, challenging notions and theories from, you know, venture capitalists, and technologists, and other bloggers, people like Fred Wilson, or Robert Scoble, whom I have argued with over the years; those kinds of things.

Number Ten, my last one. When you're using social, a lot of the time people think of social media as a fire-and-forget way to get their content out so they blog, they produce something, they share it across their networks, and they're done; that's the end of the engagement. I saw a graphic that I really liked, tremendously simple graphic but a great graphic none the less. This came via Kissmetrics, I think Cyrus Shepard had retweeted it, and I retweeted him. And it shows basically, you know, different networks; Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and in this case, Tumblr, and when to share on each of them. So it's says, you know, on publish, share across all five, all four of those networks. Two hours later, you might want to share again on Twitter because you're likely reaching a new and different audience. And the next day, you do want to share on Twitter and probably, on Tumblr again. And the next week, you share on three of those. And the next month, you share on a different three. And, you know, two months from now, you might share again on all four of them.

This is the right way to think about social sharing. It is not fire and forget; it's being thoughtful about messaging in a timely fashion to different audiences because remember that time delta means that you're capturing different people via social and creating unique messages, unique formats. So you might see that my Twitter account will, on occasion, reference a blog post I wrote months or even years ago and say, "I have a reminder about this," or "Don't forget, this still matters," or "Hey, I'm going to share this graphic via Facebook or Google plus or Twitter that is taken from this post, and I just want to remind folks of it," those kinds of things. This can earn a lot of extra traffic and a lot of extra engagement to posts that you've already put a tremendous amount of effort into, and that's why it's so valuable. All right, everyone, hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We'll see you again next week! Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Seth's Blog : Speedometer confusion

Speedometer confusion

The number on the speedometer isn't always an indication of how fast you're getting to where you're going.

You might, after all, be driving in circles, really quickly.

Campbell's Law tells us that as soon as a number is used as the measurement for something, someone will get confused and start gaming the number, believing that they're also improving the underlying metric, when, in actuallity, they're merely making the number go up.

Here are a few numbers that often the result of speedometer confusion:

Book sales vs. Impact

Money vs. Happiness

Twitter followers vs. Anything

Money raised vs. Votes earned

Weight vs. Health

Income vs. Skill

Facebook likes vs. Liked

Tenure vs. Competence

Length vs. Quality

Faster? How about better?