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sâmbătă, 12 iulie 2014

The President Is Listening

Saturday, July 12, 2014

The President Is Listening

President Obama was on the road again this week, breaking out of the D.C. bubble to meet with everyday Americans in Colorado and Texas -- many of whom had written to tell him what's going on in their lives.

There's an underlying theme to these trips: The President's listening.

He's listening to the teacher of 26 years who wrote him about the importance of early childhood education -- and he's fighting for the college student whose parents lost their jobs after the Great Recession.

The President is traveling across the country and letting folks know that he hears them, and that he's going to keep fighting for them so that this country can keep making progress.

See some of the highlights from the President's trip to Colorado and Texas.

The President heads to Denver.

President Obama landed in Denver on Tuesday and made his first stop at Wazee Supper Club, where he ate pizza with five Coloradans who wrote him.

President Barack Obama has a pizza dinner with local residents who had written him letters, in Denver, Colorado, July 8, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Later that evening, the President strolled through downtown Denver, shaking hands and chatting with people on the street.

The following day, the President spoke on the economy.

On a beautiful Wednesday afternoon in Denver's Cheesman Park, President Obama delivered remarks on the economy, the progress that his Administration has made, and how Republican obstructionism is making it more difficult for Americans to achieve their full potential.

President Barack Obama makes remarks on the economy at Cheesman Park in Denver, Colorado, July 9, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The President closed his remarks by reminding people that despite the cynicism and obstructionism, he's going to continue to spend every day fighting to restore the American Dream for everybody.

"Every day I receive these thousands of acts of hope from you. I'm listening. It's why I ran for office. It's why I'm fighting for you. I will keep treating your cares and concerns as my own."

And then, he was off to Austin.

The President capped off his three-day tour in Austin, where he grabbed coffee with a letter writer and delivered another speech on the progress this country is making.

In the morning, the President met with Kinsey Button, a student at the University of Texas at Austin. She wrote the President talking about her family's struggles, after both of her parents lost their jobs.

President Barack Obama talks with Kinsey Button at the Magnolia Cafe in Austin, Texas, July 10, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Kinsey then introduced the President at his speech on the economy later in the day. During the President's remarks, he let Republicans in Congress know that he's fighting for middle-class families and wondered when they were going to do the same.

We're going to keep doing this -- because we've still got work to do.

The President is going to continue to travel around the country to meet with working Americans, talking about what their "day in the life" looks like, and highlighting the actions that he's taken this year to benefit them.

Find out more about the President's actions this year to keep moving our country forward.

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Expanding Opportunity -- It's Time for Congressional Republicans to Do Their Part

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Expanding Opportunity -- It's Time for Congressional Republicans to Do Their Part

In this week's address, the President recapped his visits with folks who have written him letters about their own American stories -- their successes and struggles. While congressional Republicans are blocking meaningful measures that would strengthen the middle class, the President continues looking for ways to grow the economy and expand opportunity for more hardworking Americans.

The President again urged Congress to join him, as they were elected to do, in working on behalf of everyday Americans -- including those the President spent time with this week -- by investing in our infrastructure to support American jobs, and ensuring that the Highway Trust Fund does not expire.

Click here to watch this week's Weekly Address.

Seth's Blog : The self-driving reset of just about everything in our cities

The self-driving reset of just about everything in our cities

Self-driving cars are going to be a huge transformational disruption, and they're probably going to happen faster than most people expect.

Starting in cities, starting with car-sharing, the economics and safety implications are too big to avoid:

Few traffic jams--cars will have a slower top speed, but rarely stop
No traffic lights--cars talk to each other
Dramatically less pollution
Pedestrians are far safer, bicycling becomes fun again
No parking issues--the car drives away and comes back when you need it
Lower costs and more access for more people more often
Instant and efficient carpooling, since the car knows who's going where

Most of the physical world around us is organized around traditional cars. Not just roads, but the priority they get, the roadside malls, fast food restaurants, the fact that in many cities, more space is devoted to parking lots than just about anything else. It's pervasive and accepted, so much that we notice with amazement the rare places that aren't built around them.

Understand, for example, that the suburb exists because of the car, as does the big amusement park and the motel. All of them were built by people who saw the changes private mobility would cause.

The self-driving car benefits from Moore's Law, which explains that computers get dramatically cheaper over time, and Metcalfe's Law, which describes the increasing power of networks as they get bigger and more connected. Both of these laws are now at work on one of the biggest expenses and most powerful forces in our world: transportation.

Like all innovations, the death of the non-autonomous vehicle is not all upside. The car industry gets mostly commodified, jobs are shifted and distruptions occur. Privacy for teenagers, ordinary citizens and bank-robbers-making-an-escape disappears. The suburbs become even less attractive to some people. But just as you can't imagine a city scene where just about everyone isn't looking at their smart phone and swarming in the virtual cloud, it's going to be a whole new cityscape once cars retreat from their spot at the top of the attention/command chain.

One way this might happen: Certain models will be labeled as Uber-compatible (or whatever network is in place). Buy that car and with a few clicks, the car starts earning its keep. When you're at work or asleep or otherwise engaged, it moonlights and drives other folks around. The combination of security cameras in your car and rider registration pretty much guarantees that your car isn't going to come back wrecked. It's not hard to imagine organizations building fleets to profit from this (a medallion replacement) but it also becomes economically irresistible to the individual as well.

This is a bigger shift than the smart phone, and it might happen nearly as fast.

Near my house, there's a parkway that was built so that owners of private cars would have a place to go where they could drive them without endangering everyone else. I wonder how long before that's what it will be used for again.

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vineri, 11 iulie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Does the Fed Really Believe What it Says? What About Krugman?

Posted: 11 Jul 2014 01:51 PM PDT

In response to BIS Slams the Fed; Ridiculous Question of the Day: "Is The Fed Going To Attempt A Controlled Collapse?" a number of people commented the Fed cannot be so stupid as to think there is no asset bubble. Here are some examples:

Gordon says " The Fed is not stupid and yet many think they are. They know there is a bubble but what good will it do if they announce it and the bubble bursts?"
JFHogan says "Nobody could be stupid enough to believe that money printing will create wealth."
R2bzjudge says "If I can understand there is an asset bubble, so can the Fed.
Ax123man says "There is no way on earth Paul Krugman could actually believe (deep down) the things he says publicly"

As a huge fan of Occam's Razor, I disagree with all of them. Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation (the one with the fewest assumptions) is likely the best.

Alternatives

Members of the Fed is purposely lie to the public. They are in a conspiracy with other Fed governors, some of whom claim they want the Fed to hike sooner than later because they see potential asset bubbles and inflation problems. The whole thing is a setup to convince the public there is discord when there isn't. They all realize there is an asset bubble, because no one could possibly be so stupid as to not see it. Yet, collectively they choose to ignore those bubbles even after the experience of the housing collapse, and in spite of what the BIS says.
Yellen, Paul Krugman, and others live in academic wonderland, devoid of real world experience, and are incapable of recognizing asset bubbles, income inequality, and other problems caused by QE, low interest rates, and monetary printing.

Door number 2 is overwhelming likely to be correct.

In general, when sheer stupidity is one of the choices, then stupidity is likely the best answer or part of the best answer.

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

BIS Slams the Fed; Ridiculous Question of the Day: "Is The Fed Going To Attempt A Controlled Collapse?"

Posted: 11 Jul 2014 05:39 AM PDT

Earlier today, reader Charles asked me what I thought about an article on ZeroHedge entitled "Is The Fed Going To Attempt A Controlled Collapse?"

The question stems from lengthy (256 page PDF) from the BIS Annual Report (Bank for International Settlements) that stated among other things "The only source of lasting prosperity is a stronger supply side. It is essential to move away from debt as the main engine of growth."

The BIS slammed the Fed in numerous places and in numerous ways, especially regarding the Fed's reliance on QE.

The BIS slam, coupled with a recent stock market selloff, brought up debate on a "controlled collapse".

I will address the absurdity of that notion momentary, but first please consider some snips from the BIS report that caught my attention.

32 BIS Snips

The risk of normalising too late and too gradually should not be underestimated.
Financial fluctuations ("financial cycles") that can end in banking crises such as the recent one last much longer than business cycles. Irregular as they may be, they tend to play out over perhaps 15 to 20 years on average. After all, it takes a lot of tinder to light a big fire. Yet financial cycles can go largely undetected. They are simply too slow-moving for policymakers and observers whose attention is focused on shorter-term output fluctuations.
Globally, the total debt of private non-financial sectors has risen by some 30% since the crisis, pushing up its ratio to GDP. Government debt-to-GDP ratios have risen further; in several cases, they appear to be on an unsustainable path.
Monetary policy is testing its outer limits. Never before have central banks tried to push so hard. The normalisation of the policy stance has hardly started.
In the countries that have been experiencing outsize financial booms, the risk is that these will turn to bust and possibly inflict financial distress. Based on leading indicators that have proved useful in the past, such as the behaviour of credit and property prices, the signs are worrying.
Over the past few years, non-financial corporations in a number of EMEs have borrowed heavily through their foreign affiliates in the capital markets, with the debt denominated mainly in foreign currency. This has been labelled the "second phase of global liquidity", to differentiate it from the pre-crisis phase, which was largely centred on banks expanding their cross-border operations. The corresponding debt may not show up in external debt statistics or, if the funds are repatriated, it may show up as foreign direct investment. It could represent a hidden vulnerability, especially if backed by domestic currency cash flows derived from overextended sectors, such as property, or used for carry trades or other forms of speculative position-taking.
Low funding costs and volatility encouraged the search for yield. Through its impact on risk-taking behaviour, monetary accommodation had an impact on asset prices and quantities that went beyond its effects on major sovereign bond markets. Credit spreads tightened even in economies mired in recession and for borrowers with non-negligible default risk. Global investors absorbed exceptionally large volumes of newly issued corporate debt, especially that of lower-rated borrowers. And, as the search for yield expanded to equity markets, the link between fundamentals and prices weakened amid historically subdued volatility and low risk premia.
Gross issuance in the high-yield bond market alone soared to $90 billion per quarter in 2013 from a pre-crisis quarterly average of $30 billion. Investors absorbed the newly issued corporate debt at progressively narrower spreads.
Increased risk-taking also manifested itself in other credit market segments. In the syndicated loan market, for instance, credit granted to lower-rated leveraged borrowers (leveraged loans) exceeded 40% of new signings for much of 2013. This share was higher than during the pre-crisis period from 2005 to mid-2007. Fewer and fewer of the new loans featured creditor protection in the form of covenants. Investors' attraction to riskier credit also spawned greater issuance in assets such as payment-in-kind notes and mortgage real estate investment trusts (mREITs).
Restoring sustainable global growth poses significant challenges. In crisis-hit countries, it is unrealistic to expect the level of output to return to its pre-crisis trend. This would require the growth rate to exceed the pre-crisis average for several years. Historical evidence shows that this rarely happens following a balance sheet recession. Moreover, even the prospects for restoring trend growth are not bright. Productivity growth in advanced economies has been on a declining trend since well before the onset of the financial crisis, and the workforce is already shrinking in several countries as the population ages. Public debt is also at a record high and may act as an additional drag on growth. In many EMEs, the recent tightening of financial conditions and late-stage financial cycle risks are also clouding growth prospects.
It is unrealistic to expect investment, as a share of GDP, to return to its pre-crisis level in advanced economies. The drop in construction spending is a necessary correction of previous overinvestment and is unlikely to be entirely reversed. Moreover, the investment share had been on a downward trend long before the crisis, suggesting that, as output growth recovers, investment may settle below the pre-crisis average. Moreover, the investment weakness may be overstated. Over the past few decades, the relative prices of investment goods have been trending down: firms have been able to keep their capital stocks constant by spending less in nominal terms. In fact, in real terms, investment spending has fluctuated around a mildly increasing , not decreasing, trend in advanced economies. In addition, official statistics may underestimate intangible investment (spending on research and development, training, etc), which has been gaining importance in serviced-based economies.
Financial cycles differ from business cycles. They encapsulate the self-reinforcing interactions between perceptions of value and risk, risk-taking and financing constraints which translate into financial booms and busts. They tend to be much longer than business cycles, and are best measured by a combination of credit aggregates and property prices. Output and financial variables can move in different directions for long periods of time, but the link tends to re-establish itself with a vengeance when financial booms turn into busts. Such episodes often coincide with banking crises, which in turn tend to go hand in hand with much deeper recessions – balance sheet recessions – than those that characterise the average business cycle.
High private sector debt levels can undermine sustainable economic growth. In many economies currently experiencing financial booms, households and firms are in a vulnerable position, which poses the risk of serious financial distress and macroeconomic strains. And in the countries hardest hit by the crisis, private debt levels are still high relative to output, making households and firms sensitive to increases in interest rates. These countries could find themselves in a debt trap: seeking to stimulate the economy through low interest rates encourages the taking-on of even more debt, ultimately adding to the problem it is meant to solve.
Accommodative monetary policy has had an ambiguous impact on the adjustment to lower debt ratios. It has supported adjustment to the extent that it has succeeded in stimulating output, raising income and hence providing economic agents with the resources to pay back debt and save. But record low interest rates have also allowed borrowers to service debt stocks that would be unsustainable in more normal interest rate conditions, and lenders to evergreen such debt. This tends to delay necessary debt adjustments and result in a high outstanding stock of debt, which in turn can slow growth.
Indicators point to the risk of financial distress.
Early warning indicators in a number of countries are sending worrying signals. In line with the financial cycle analysis developed in the previous section, several early warning indicators signal that vulnerabilities have been building up in the financial systems of several countries. Many years of strong credit and, often, property price growth have left borrowers exposed to increases in interest rates and/or sharp slowdowns in property prices and economic activity. Early warning indicators cannot predict the exact timing of financial distress, but they have proved fairly reliable in identifying unsustainable credit and property price developments in the past. It would be too easy to dismiss these indicator readings as inappropriate because "this time is different".
Financing problems of non-financial corporations in EMEs can also feed into the banking system. Corporate deposits in many EMEs stand at well above 20% of the banking system's total assets in countries as diverse as Chile, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Peru, and are on an upward trend in others. Firms losing access to external debt markets may be forced to withdraw these deposits, leaving banks with significant funding problems. Firms that have been engaging in a sort of carry trade – borrowing at low interest rates abroad and investing at higher rates at home – could be even more sensitive to market conditions.
The sheer volume of assets managed by large asset management companies implies that their asset allocation decisions have significant and systemic implications for EME financial markets. For instance, a relatively small (5 percentage point) reallocation of the $70 trillion in assets managed by large asset management companies from advanced economies to EMEs would result in additional portfolio flows of $3.5 trillion. This is equivalent to 13% of the $27 trillion stock of EME bonds and equities.
Regardless of the risk of serious financial distress, in the years ahead many economies will face headwinds as outstanding debt adjusts to more sustainable long-run levels. Determining the exact level of sustainable debt is difficult, but several indicators suggest that current levels of private sector indebtedness are still too high.
Sustainable debt is aligned with wealth. Sharp drops in property and other asset prices in the wake of the financial crisis have pushed down wealth in many of the countries at the heart of the crisis, although it has been recovering in some. Wealth effects can be long-lasting. For example, real property prices in Japan have decreased by more than 3% on average per year since 1991, thus reducing the collateral available for new borrowing.
Long-run demographic trends could aggravate this [the sustainable debt] problem by putting further pressure on asset prices. An ageing society implies weaker demand for assets, in particular housing. Research on the relationship between house prices and demographic variables suggests that demographic factors could dampen house prices by reducing property price growth considerably over the coming decades. If so, this would partially reverse the effect of demographic tailwinds that pushed up house prices in previous decades.
Debt service ratios also point to current debt levels being on the high side. High debt servicing costs (interest payments plus amortisations) compared with income effectively limit the amount of debt that borrowers can carry. This is clearly true for individuals. Lenders, for example, often refuse to provide new loans to households if future interest payments and amortisations exceed a certain threshold, often around 30–40% of their income. But the relationship also holds in the aggregate.
In all but a handful of countries, bringing debt service ratios back to historical norms would require substantial reductions in credit-to-GDP ratios. Even at the current unusually low interest rates, credit-to-GDP ratios would have to be roughly 15 percentage points lower on average for debt service ratios to be at their historical norms. And if lending rates were to rise by 250 basis points, in line with the 2004 tightening episode, the necessary reductions in credit-to-GDP ratios would swell to over 25 percentage points on average. In China, credit-to-GDP ratios would have to fall by more than 60 percentage points. Even the United Kingdom and the United States would need to reduce credit-to-GDP ratios by around 20 percentage points, despite having debt service ratios in line with long-term averages at current interest rates.
Inflation can also have an effect. But the extent to which it reduces the real debt burden depends on how much interest rates on outstanding and new debt adjust to higher price increases. More importantly, though, even if successful from this narrow perspective, it also has major side effects. Inflation redistributes wealth arbitrarily between borrowers and savers and risks unanchoring inflation expectations, with unwelcome long-run consequences.
The alternative to growing out of debt is to reduce the outstanding stock of debt. This happens when the amortisation rate exceeds the take-up of new loans. This is a natural and important channel of adjustment, but may not be enough. In some cases, unsustainable debt burdens have to be tackled directly, through writedowns. Admittedly, this means that somebody has to bear the ensuing losses, but experience shows that such an approach may be less painful than the alternatives. For example, the Nordic countries addressed their high and unsustainable debt levels after the banking crises of the early 1990s by forcing banks to recognise losses and deal decisively with bad assets.
The conclusion is simple: low interest rates do not solve the problem of high debt. They may keep service costs low for some time, but by encouraging rather than discouraging the accumulation of debt they amplify the effect of the eventual normalisation. Avoiding the debt trap requires policies that encourage the orderly running-down of debt through balance sheet repair and, above all, raise the long- run growth prospects of the economy.
Central banks played a critical role in containing the fallout from the financial crisis. However, despite the past six years of monetary easing in the major advanced economies, the recovery has been unusually slow. This raises questions about the effectiveness of expansionary monetary policy in the wake of the crisis. For instance, term premia and credit risk spreads in many countries were already very low, they cannot fall much further. In addition, compressed and at times even negative term premia reduce the profits from maturity transformation and so may actually reduce banks' incentives to grant credit. Moreover, the scope for negative nominal interest rates is very limited and their effectiveness uncertain. The impact on lending is doubtful, and the small room for reductions diminishes the effect on the exchange rate, which in turn depends also on the reaction of others. In general, at the zero lower bound, providing additional stimulus becomes increasingly hard.
Unless it is recognised, limited effectiveness implies a fruitless effort to apply the same measures more persistently or forcefully. The consequence is not only inadequate progress but also amplification of unintended side effects, and the aftermath of the crisis has highlighted several such side effects. In particular, prolonged and aggressive easing reduces incentives to repair balance sheets and to implement necessary structural reforms, thereby hindering the needed reallocation of resources. It may also foster too much risk-taking in financial markets. And it may generate unwelcome spillovers in other economies at different points in their financial and business cycles. Put differently, under limited policy effectiveness, the balance between benefits and costs of prolonged monetary accommodation has deteriorated over time.
Unless it is recognised, limited effectiveness implies a fruitless effort to apply the same measures more persistently or forcefully. The consequence is not only inadequate progress but also amplification of unintended side effects, and the aftermath of the crisis has highlighted several such side effects. 2 In particular, prolonged and aggressive easing reduces incentives to repair balance sheets and to implement necessary structural reforms, thereby hindering the needed reallocation of resources. It may also foster too much risk-taking in financial markets. And it may generate unwelcome spillovers in other economies at different points in their financial and business cycles Put differently, under limited policy effectiveness, the balance between benefits and costs of prolonged monetary accommodation has deteriorated over time.
Very accommodative monetary policies in major advanced economies influence risk-taking and therefore the yields on assets denominated in different currencies. As a result, extraordinary accommodation can induce major adjustments in asset prices and financial flows elsewhere.
Policy responses matter too. Central banks find it difficult to operate with policy rates that are considerably different from those prevailing in the key currencies, especially the US dollar. Concerns with exchange rate overshooting and capital inflows make them reluctant to accept large and possibly volatile interest rate differentials, which contributes to highly correlated short-term interest rate movements. Indeed, the evidence is growing that US policy rates significantly influence policy rates elsewhere. Very low interest rates in the major advanced economies thus pose a dilemma for other central banks. On the one hand, tying domestic policy rates to the very low rates abroad helps mitigate currency appreciation and capital inflows. On the other hand, it may also fuel domestic financial booms and hence encourage the build-up of vulnerabilities. Indeed, there is evidence that those countries in which policy rates have been lower relative to traditional benchmarks, which take account of output and inflation developments, have also seen the strongest credit booms.
Disruptive monetary policy spillovers have highlighted shortcomings in the international monetary system. Ostensibly, it has proved hard for major advanced economies to fully take these spillovers into account. Should financial booms turn to bust, the costs for the global economy could prove to be quite large, not least since the economic weight of the countries affected has increased substantially. Capturing these spillovers remains a major challenge: it calls for analytical frameworks in which financial factors have a much greater role than they are accorded in policy institutions nowadays and for a better understanding of global linkages.

Please read that list again. It's quite a bit of snips, but it's from a massive number of pages, and the ideas are very important.

My short take is that numerous points above politely (too politely) accuse the Fed of incompetence. Unfortunately, many other central banks followed.

The BIS is particularly concerned about risk taking, something hardly on the radar at the Fed at all.

Let's now return to the question of today (yesterday to be more precise).

From ZeroHedge ...

So what's going on?

We could take all of this at face value if we chose: The BIS playing hawk, and the Fed playing dove. And that might well be the case — as to some extent Yellen is still something of an unknown entity.

But there is one more twist to the puzzle: Yellen has openly stated that she would not be offering clear guidance to the market as her predecessor had advocated. The age of Fed-glastnost is apparently coming to an end.

So indulge us for a moment as we present another possibility:

Yellen is going to orchestrate a controlled collapse. Or, at least one which we hope is controlled.

So just maybe the Fed fully intends on heeding the advice of the BIS, and is strategically positioning itself as a stalwart dove to shield itself from the public fallout of it's orchestrated financial calamity.

Complete Silliness

To be completely fair, ZeroHedge did not write that. The original article was posted at NotQuant.

That said, ZH does get to choose what guest-posts he syndicates.

And unless ZH has lost his mind, there is no way he remotely agrees with the silliness of that post.

My first three thoughts when asked by reader Charles what I thought were as follows:

Does the Fed know the difference between an asset bubble and my mom's tuna casserole?
Does the Fed know the difference between an asset bubble and a moon of Jupiter?
Does the Fed care about asset bubbles even if it could detect them?

The idea the Fed understands there is an asset bubble is ridiculous. How many times did Bernanke deny the existence of a housing bubble until it exploded in his face?

Is Yellen any different?

Fortunately I had to spend zero time researching the preceding question.

As I was writing this article, Pater Tenebrarum at Acting Man pinged me with Janet Yellen Chimes in on the Bubble Question.

Risk? What Risk?

Fed chair Janet Yellen recently uttered what sounded to us like a stunningly clueless assessment of the potential danger the echo bubble represents. She indicated on the occasion that she was certainly in no hurry to raise the administered interest rate from its current near-zero level.

"I do not presently see a need for monetary policy to deviate from a primary focus on attaining price stability and maximum employment, in order to address financial stability concerns," said Ms Yellen.

"That said, I do see pockets of increased risk-taking across the financial system, and an acceleration or broadening of these concerns could necessitate a more robust macro-prudential approach."

[...]

"Because a resilient financial system can withstand unexpected developments, identification of bubbles is less critical," said Ms Yellen.

Of course no Fed chair of recent memory has displayed even the slightest ability to recognize bubbles or to realize that they might pose a danger.

As to the remark about the "resilient financial system", this is surely a joke. Does anyone remember how Fed officials and politicians (such as then treasury secretary Hank Paulson) were going on and on about the supposed ruddy health of the US banking system in 2007? Never had they seen the system in better shape than in 2007! By late 2008 it was close to complete collapse, but as they say, errare humanum est.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Does ZH really give Janet Yellen enough credit to recognize an asset bubble, then do something sensible about it?

I am 99.99% positive he doesn't, yet that is precisely what the article suggests.

I propose Yellen is clueless. If she had any sense, she would have acted in advance to prevent an asset bubble or at least stall the one Bernanke had started.

The Fed is not going to attempt a controlled collapse. Yet, a collapse is coming. It will be anything but controlled.

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

Yesterday in Austin:

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Yesterday in Austin:

As you might know, President Obama's been traveling around the country meeting with everyday Americans, some who have written the President about what's going on with them and their families.

Over the past few days, the President met with folks in Colorado and Texas, capping off his three-day tour with a visit to Austin, Texas, where he sat down for coffee with a letter writer, delivered a speech on the economy, and grabbed some lunch at a local BBQ joint.

Relive the President's day in Austin here.

Does SEO Boil Down to Site Crawlability and Content Quality? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 10 Jul 2014 05:17 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

We all know that keywords and links alone no longer cut it as a holistic SEO strategy. But there's still plenty outside our field who try to "boil SEO down" to a naively simplistic practice - one that isn't representative of what SEOs need to do to succeed. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand champions the art and science of SEO and offers insight into how very broad the field really is.

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 I'm going to try and tackle a question that, if you're in the SEO world, you probably have heard many, many times from those outside of the SEO world.

I thought a recent question on Quora phrased it perfectly. This question actually had quite a few people who'd seen it. Does SEO boil down to making a site easily crawlable and consistently creating good, relevant content?

Oh, well, yeah, that's basically all there is to it. I mean why do we even film hundreds of Whiteboard Fridays?

In all seriousness, this is a fair question, and I can empathize with the people asking it, because when I look at a new practice, I think when all of us do, we try and boil it down to its basic parts. We say, "Well, I suppose that the field of advertising is just about finding the right audience and then finding the ads that you can afford that are going to reach that target audience, and then making ads that people actually pay attention to."

Well, yes and no. The advertising field is, in fact, incredibly complex. There are dramatic numbers of inputs that go into it.

You could do this with field after field after field. Oh, well, building a car must just mean X. Or being a photographer must just mean Y.

These things are never true. There's always complexity underneath there. But I understand why this happens.

We have these two things. In fact, more often, I at least hear the addition of keyword research in there, that being a crawl-friendly website, having good, relevant content, and doing your keyword research and targeting, that's all SEO is. Right? The answer is no.

This is table stakes. This is what you have to do in order to even attempt to do SEO, in order to attempt to be in the rankings to potentially get search traffic that will drive valuable visits to your website. Table stakes is very different from the art and science of the practice. That comes because good, relevant content is rarely, if ever, good enough to rank competitively, because crawl friendly is necessary, but it's not going to help you improve any rankings. It's not going to help you in the competitive sense. You could be extremely crawl friendly and rank on page ten for many, many search terms. That would do nothing for your SEO and drive no traffic whatsoever.

Keyword research and targeting are also required certainly, but so too is ongoing maintenance of these things. This is not a fire and forget strategy in any sense of the word. You need to be tracking those rankings and knowing which search terms and which pages, now that "not provided" exists, are actually driving valuable visits to your site. You've got to be identifying new terms as those come out, seeing where your competition is beating you out and what they've done. This is an ongoing practice.

It's the case that you might say, "Okay, all right. So I really need to create remarkable content." Well, okay, yes, content that's remarkable helps. It does help you in SEO, but only if that remarkability also yields a high likelihood of engagement and sharing.

If your remarkability is that you've produced something wonderful that is incredibly fascinating, but no one particularly cares about, they don't find it especially more useful, or they do find it more useful, but they're not interested in sharing it, no one is going to help amplify that content in any way—privately, one to one, through email, or directing people to your website, or linking to you, or sharing socially. There's no amplification. The media won't pick it up. Now you've kind of lost. You may have remarkable content, but it is not the kind of remarkable that performs well for SEO.

The reason is that links are still a massive, massive input into rankings. So anything—this word is going to be important, I'm going to revisit it—anything that promotes or inhibits link growth helps or hurts SEO. This makes good sense when you think about it.

But SEO, of course, is a competitive practice. You can't fire and forget as we talked about. Your competition is always going to be seeking to catch up to you or to one up you. If you're not racing ahead at the right trajectory, someone will catch you. This is the law of SEO, and it's been seen over and over and over again by thousands and thousands of companies who've entered the field.

Okay, I realize this is hard to read. We talked about SEO being anything that impacts potential links. But SEO is really any input that engines use to rank pages. Any input that engines use to rank pages goes into the SEO bucket, and anything that people or technology does to influence those ranking elements is what the practice of SEO is about.

That's why this field is so huge. That's why SEO is neuropsychology. SEO is conversion rate optimization. SEO is social media. SEO is user experience and design. SEO is branding. SEO is analytics. SEO is product. SEO is advertising. SEO is public relations. The fill-in-the-blank is SEO if that blank is anything that affects any input directly or indirectly.

This is why this is a huge field. This is why SEO is so complex and so challenging. This is also why, unfortunately, when people try to boil SEO down and put us into a little bucket, it doesn't work. It doesn't work, and it defeats the practice. It defeats the investments, and it works against all the things that we are working toward in order to help SEO.

When someone says to you on your team or from your client, they say, "Hey, you're doing SEO. Why are you telling us how to manage our Facebook page?

Why are you telling us who to talk to in the media? Why are you telling us what changes to make to our branding campaigns or our advertising?" This is why. I hope maybe you'll send them this video, maybe you'll draw them this diagram, maybe you'll be able to explain it a little more clearly and quickly.

With that, I hope we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

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Seth's Blog : LTL as a strategy

LTL as a strategy

I confess I had to look it up.

A truck passed me on the highway and on the side, it said that they did both LTL and FTL shipments.

FTL means "full truckload." For the longest time, a full truckload was the only efficient way to ship goods around. A company would expand operations (not just trucking, but just about everything) so that it could use all of an available resource. No sense having half a shipping clerk or half a secretary or half a truck shipment--the rest was going to go to waste, so might as well use it all.

As Lisa Gansky wrote about in her seminal book the Mesh, the massive shift in data (and knowledge) produced by the net means that FTL isn't nearly the advantage over less than a truckload it used to be. Since it's so cheap and effective to coordinate activity, that extra space isn't wasted, not at all. It's shared.

Since we can share resources, expanding to use all of something (a car, a boat, a vacation home) isn't just inefficient, it's wasteful.

Now that it's cheaper and faster to share, an enormous number of new opportunities exist. Short runs, focused projects, marketing to the weird--mass is dead in more ways than we can count.

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Does SEO Boil Down to Site Crawlability and Content Quality? - Whiteboard Friday

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Seth's Blog : LTL as a strategy

LTL as a strategy

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