joi, 29 ianuarie 2015

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


This Is the Real Face of Japanese Cutie

Posted: 29 Jan 2015 10:29 AM PST

This Japanese girl's boyfriend was totally shocked when he saw her without makeup for the first time after three months of dating and he posted the pictures online.
















Hacks You Can Use On Your Body To Enhance Your Life

Posted: 29 Jan 2015 09:27 AM PST

When it comes to life hacks that will come in handy someday, these are the ones you need to remember.


















How To Get Revenge On Your Cheating Ex

Posted: 29 Jan 2015 09:11 AM PST

Sooner or later all cheaters get caught and when they do it's never pretty.























Seth's Blog : Various updates

Various updates

Late in 2014, I invited IOS app developers to submit information for a lightweight list for people seeking professional help. Thanks to Jessica and the generous folks at New York Tech Meetup, it's free and ready for you to use or share. There's a worldwide list and one focused on New York as well. Go make something.

The Your Turn Challenge just finished, and it was a phenomenon. More than 4,500 posts came in from nearly a thousand people getting in the habit of shipping daily. Plus tweets. Well done, Winnie.

What To Do When It's Your Turn continues to spread, inspiring stories like this one

Some recent podcasts... about letting ourselves off the hook and special snowflakes.

And a reminder: You can get a little ping every time I update this blog here: @thisisSethsblog 

       

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Leveraging Panda to Get Out of Product Feed Jail - Moz Blog

Leveraging Panda to Get Out of Product Feed Jail - Moz Blog
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Leveraging Panda to Get Out of Product Feed Jail

Posted on: Thursday 29 January 2015 — 01:15

Posted by MichaelC

This is a story about Panda, customer service, and differentiating your store from others selling the same products.

Many e-commerce websites get the descriptions, specifications, and imagery for products they sell from feeds or databases provided by the manufacturers. The manufacturers might like this, as they control how their product is described and shown. However, it does their retailers no good when they are trying to rank for searches for those products and they've got the exact same content as every other retailer. If the content in the feed is thin, then you'll have pages with...well....thin content. And if there's a lot of content for the products, then you'll have giant blocks of content that Panda might spot as being the same as they've seen on many other sites. To throw salt on the wound, if the content is really crappy, badly written, or downright wrong, then the retailers' sites will look low-quality to Panda and users as well.

Many webmasters see Panda as a type of Google penalty—but it's not, really. Panda is a collection of measurements Google is taking of your web pages to try and give your pages a rating on how happy users are likely to be with those pages. It's not perfect, but then again—neither is your website.

Many SEO folks (including me) tend to focus on the kinds of tactical and structural things you can do to make Panda see your web pages as higher quality: things like adding big, original images, interactive content like videos and maps, and lots and lots and lots and lots of text. These are all good tactics, but let's step back a bit and look at a specific example to see WHY Panda was built to do this, and from that, what we can do as retailers to enrich the content we have for e-commerce products where our hands are a bit tied—we're getting a feed of product info from the manufacturers, the same as every other retailer of those products.

I'm going to use a real-live example that I suffered through about a month ago. I was looking for a replacement sink stopper for a bathroom sink. I knew the brand, but there wasn't a part number on the part I needed to replace. After a few Google searches, I think I've found it on Amazon:

Kohler store, sink stopper, on Amazon.com

Don't you wish online shopping was always this exciting?

What content actually teaches the customer

All righty... my research has shown me that there are standard sizes for plug stoppers. In fact, I initially ordered a "universal fit sink stopper." Which didn't fit. Then I found 3 standard diameters, and 5 or 6 standard lengths. No problem...I possess that marvel of modern tool chests, a tape measure...so I measure the part I have that I need to replace. I get about 1.5" x 5". So let's scroll down to the product details to see if it's a match:

Kohler sink stopper product info from hell

Whoa. 1.2 POUNDS? This sink stopper must be made of Ununoctium. The one in my hand weighs about an ounce. But the dimensions are way off as well: a 2" diameter stopper isn't going to fit, and mine needs to be at least an inch longer.

I scroll down to the product description...maybe there's more detail there, maybe the 2" x 2" is the box or something.

I've always wanted a sink stopper designed for long long

Well, that's less than helpful, with a stupid typo AND incorrect capitalization AND a missing period at the end. Doesn't build confidence in the company's quality control.

Looking at the additional info section, maybe this IS the right part...the weight quoted in there is about right:

Maybe this is my part after all

Where else customers look for answers

Next I looked at the questions and answers bit, which convinced me that it PROBABLY was the right part:

Customers will answer the question if the retailer won't...sometimes.

If I was smart, I would have covered my bets by doing what a bunch of other customers also did: buy a bunch of different parts, and surely one of them will fit. Could there possibly was a clearer signal that the product info was lacking than this?

If you can't tell which one to buy, buy them all!

In this case, that was probably smarter than spending another 1/2 hour of my time snooping around online. But in general, people aren't going to be willing to buy THREE of something just to make sure they get the right one. This cheap part was an exception.

So, surely SOMEONE out there has the correct dimensions of this part on their site—so I searched for the part number I saw on the Amazon listing. But as it turned out, that crappy description and wrong weight and dimensions were on every site I found...because they came from the manufacturer.

Better Homes and Gardens...but not better description.

A few of the sites had edited out the "designed for long long" bit, but apart from that, they were all the same.

What sucks for the customer is an opportunity for you

Many, many retailers are in this same boat—they get their product info from the manufacturer, and if the data sucks in their feed, it'll suck on their site. Your page looks weak to both users and to Panda, and it looks the same as everybody else's page for that product...to both users and to Panda. So (a) you won't rank very well, and (b) if you DO manage to get a customer to that page, it's not as likely to convert to a sale.

What can you do to improve on this? Here's a few tactics to consider.

1. Offer your own additional description and comments

Add a new field to your CMS for your own write-ups on products, and when you discover issues like the above, you can add your own information—and make it VERY clear what's the manufacturer's stock info and what you've added (that's VALUE-ADDED) as well. My client Sports Car Market magazine does this with their collector car auction reports in their printed magazine: they list the auction company's description of the car, then their reporter's assessment of the car. This is why I buy the magazine and not the auction catalog.

2. Solicit questions

Be sure you solicit questions on every product page—your customers will tell you what's wrong or what important information is missing. Sure, you've got millions of products to deal with, but what the customers are asking about (and your sales volume of course) will help you prioritize as well as find the problems opportunities.

Amazon does a great job of enabling this, but in this case, I used the Feedback option to update the product info, and got back a total bull-twaddle email from the seller about how the dimensions are in the product description thank you for shopping with us, bye-bye. I tried to help them, for free, and they shat on me.

3. But I don't get enough traffic to get the questions

Don't have enough site volume to get many customer requests? No problem, the information is out there for you on Amazon :-). Take your most important products, and look them up on Amazon, and see what questions are being asked—then answer those ONLY on your own site.

4. What fits with what?

Create fitment/cross-reference charts for products. You probably have in-house knowledge of what products fit/are compatible with what other products. Just because YOU know a certain accessory fits all makes and models, because it's some industry-standard size, doesn't mean that the customer knows this.

If there's a particular way to measure a product so you get the correct size, explain that (with photos of what you're measuring, if it seems at all complicated). I'm getting a new front door for my house. 

  • How big is the door I need? 
  • Do I measure the width of the door itself, or the width of the opening (probably 1/8" wider)? 
  • Or if it's pre-hung, do I measure the frame too? Is it inswing or outswing?
  • Right or left hinged...am I supposed to look at the door from inside the house or outside to figure this out? 

If you're a door seller, this is all obvious stuff, but it wasn't obvious to me, and NOT having the info on a website means (a) I feel stupid, and (b) I'm going to look at your competitors' sites to see if they will explain it...and maybe I'll find a door on THEIR site I like better anyway.

Again, prioritize based on customer requests.

5. Provide your own photos and measurements

If examples of the physical products are available to you, take your own photos, and take your own measurements.

In fact, take your OWN photo of YOURSELF taking the measurement—so the user can see exactly what part of the product you're measuring. In the photo below, you can see that I'm measuring the diameter of the stopper, NOT the hole in the sink, NOT the stopper plus the rubber gasket. And no, Kohler, it's NOT 2" in diameter...by a long shot.

Don't just give the measurements, SHOW the measurements

Keep in mind, you shouldn't have to tear apart your CMS to do any of this. You can put your additions in a new database table, just tied to the core product content by SKU. In the page template code for the product page, you can check your database to see if you have any of your "extra bits" to display alongside the feed content, and this way keep it separate from the core product catalog code. This will make updates to the CMS/product catalog less painful as well.

Fixing your content doesn't have to be all that difficult, nor expensive

At this point, you're probably thinking "hey, but I've got 1.2 million SKUs, and if I were to do this, it'd take me 20 years to update all of them." FINE. Don't update all of them. Prioritize, based on factors like what you sell the most of, what you make the best margin on, what customers ask questions about the most, etc. Maybe concentrate on your top 5% in terms of sales, and do those first. Take all that money you used to spend buying spammy links every month, and spend it instead on junior employees or interns doing the product measurements, extra photos, etc.

And don't be afraid to spend a little effort on a low value product, if it's one that frequently gets questions from customers. Simple things can make a life-long fan of the customer. I once needed to replace a dishwasher door seal, and didn't know if I needed special glue, special tools, how to cut it to fit with or without overlap, etc. I found a video on how to do the replacement on RepairClinic.com. So easy! They got my business for the $10 seal, of course...but now I order my $50 fridge water filter from them every six months as well.

Benefits to your conversion rate

Certainly the tactics we've talked about will improve your conversion rate from visitors to purchasers. If JUST ONE of those sites I looked at for that damn sink stopper had the right measurement (and maybe some statement about how the manufacturer's specs above are actually incorrect, we measured, etc.), I'd have stopped right there and bought from that site.

What does this have to do with Panda?

But, there's a Panda benefit here too. You've just added a bunch of additional, unique text to your site...and maybe a few new unique photos as well. Not only are you going to convert better, but you'll probably rank better too.

If you're NOT Amazon, or eBay, or Home Depot, etc., then Panda is your secret weapon to help you rank against those other sites whose backlink profiles are stronger than carbon fibre (that's a really cool video, by the way). If you saw my Whiteboard Friday on Panda optimization, you'll know that Panda tuning can overcome incredible backlink profile deficits.

It's go time

We're talking about tactics that are time-consuming, yes—but relatively easy to implement, using relatively inexpensive staff (and in some cases, your customers are doing some of the work for you). And it's something you can roll out a product at a time. You'll be doing things that really DO make your site a better experience for the user...we're not just trying to trick Panda's measurements.

  1. Your pages will rank better, and bring more traffic.
  2. Your pages will convert better, because users won't leave your site, looking elsewhere for answers to their questions.
  3. Your customers will be more loyal, because you were able to help them when nobody else bothered.

Don't be held hostage by other peoples' crappy product feeds. Enhance your product information with your own info and imagery. Like good link-building and outreach, it takes time and effort, but both Panda and your site visitors will reward you for it.


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Learn From Dana Lookadoo, Support Her Medical Fund

Posted on: Wednesday 28 January 2015 — 12:03

Posted by jennita

One aspect of the Moz Community that doesn't get mentioned enough is the individual community members who were here in the early days of SEOmoz. The folks who stuck around when our tools were brand new, when Rand was "just another SEO guy," and when our community was really just a bunch of folks talking about SEO.

One of those early members was Dana Lookadoo. She joined Moz in April 2007, and has been a supporter, trainer, and mentor to many others ever since. Whether it's the blog posts she's written, the thoughtful comments she's left, or the presentations she's given at MozCon and in webinars, she's provided for this community like few others have.

Last year, Dana took a horrible fall when she was on a bike ride (she's an avid cyclist), and broke her neck and back. She's had many ups and downs since the accident, and hasn't been able to work full-time. Dana now suffers intense burning from neuropathy and muscle spacicity that has spread from head to toe, and she has burning and spasms covering approximately 75% of her body. Her mobility and function is greatly limited and she suffers a lot of pain each day.

She splits her time between the wheelchair, the bed, and some in the walker. Unfortunately, over the last few days she's had so much pain and spasms that she isn't walking as much. It is also quite difficult for Dana to deal with bright lights, and she can't spend much time on her phone or computer.

Dana has given so much to the Moz community, and to our industry as a whole. Her knowledge and generosity has helped marketers for many years, and now it's our turn to return the favor. She's in need of part-time caregivers, which cost $4,125 per month. That's almost $50k for a year (...and that's only part-time!). This doesn't include paying for the multiple hospital stays, visits to the ER, physical therapy, occupational therapy, neuropathy treatment, and so on.

I'm asking you to help one of our amazing community members by donating to her medical fund. Every little bit helps, and you can even set up a monthly payment (I'm doing $25 per month). If you don't have the means, please help us spread the word. It's our turn to give back to Dana.

I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some of Dana's amazing work she's done for the Moz Community, as so much of it remains great advice to marketers.


Stress-free Website Redesign for Search and Social

Download a PDF of the presentation

In September 2013, just two months before her accident, Dana presented an excellent webinar with us about how to make sure your search and social efforts don't go to waste when you redesign a website. The full webinar is a little over an hour, but believe me, it's worth the watch.


Rock Your SEO with Structured Social Sharing

At MozCon 2012, Dana was one of our very first Community Speakers to rock the stage. After seeing how well these presentations were received, we decided to continue the program each year. We've always been grateful to Dana for helping to make this so successful. In her presentation she discusses how to make your SEO even better by ensuring your social sharing is set up correctly. Give it a watch!

And if you'd like to just check out the slide deck, you can view that below:


I could honestly go on and on, as she's been such an integral piece of the greater online marketing community. 

Donations needed

Please take a few moments and donate what you can. Every little bit helps! If you don't have the means, we understand that as well, and hope you'll share the post and fund using the methods below.

Please help share

Let's get the word out! Here are some easy ways to help make a difference for Dana:

Lazy RT: https://twitter.com/Moz/status/560516906675736578

Embed a widget on your site:

Share this image on Twitter

If you have other ideas on how to get the word out and help our fellow community member, let's hear it. Thank you all for your support and assistance.


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Seth's Blog : The truth about admissions

The truth about admissions

One in five applicants to Harvard and Stanford are completely qualified to attend—perhaps 20% of those that send in their applications have the smarts, guts and work ethic to thrive at these schools and to become respected alumni.

These schools further filter this 20% by admitting only 5% of their applicants, or about one in four of those qualified. And they spend a huge amount of time sorting and ranking and evaluating to get to the final list.

They do this even though there is zero correlation between the students they like the most and any measurable outcomes. The person they let in off the waiting list is just as likely to be a superstar in life as they one they chose first.

Worth saying again: In admissions, just as in casting or most other forced selection processes, once you get past the selection of people who are good enough, there are few selectors who have a track record of super-sorting successfully. False metrics combined with plenty of posturing leading to lots of drama.

It's all a hoax. A fable we're eager to believe, both as the pickers and the picked (and the rejected).

What would happen if we spent more time on carefully assembling the pool of 'good enough' and then randomly picking the 5%? And of course, putting in the time to make sure that the assortment of people works well together...

[For football fans: Tom Brady and Russell Wilson (late picks who win big games) are as likely outcomes as Peyton Manning (super-selected). Super Bowl quarterbacks, as high-revenue a selection choice as one can make, come as often in late rounds as they do in the first one.]

[For baseball fans: As we saw in Moneyball, the traditional scouting process was essentially random, and replacing it by actually correlated signals changed everything.]

What would happen if rejection letters said, "you were good enough, totally good enough to be part of this class, but we randomly chose 25% of the good enough, and alas, you didn't get lucky"? Because, in fact, that's what's actually happening.

What would happen if casting directors and football scouts didn't agonize about their final choice, but instead spent all that time and effort widening the pool to get the right group to randomly choose from instead? (And in fact, the most talented casting directors are in the business of casting wide nets and signing up the good ones, not in agonizing over false differences appearing real--perhaps that's where the word 'casting' comes from).

It's difficult for the picked, for the pickers and for the institutions to admit, but if you don't have proof that picking actually works, then let's announce the randomness and spend our time (and self-esteem) on something worthwhile instead.

       

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miercuri, 28 ianuarie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Slope of Hope vs. Reality: Greek Assets Hammered, 3-Year Yield Near 17%; Worst Day Ever for Greek Bank Stocks

Posted: 28 Jan 2015 02:29 PM PST

Investors who plowed into Greek assets ahead of Mario Draghi's QE €60 billion a month bond-buying spree figuring the ECB could paper over this mess have been pounded almost nonstop recently.

Today alone, Greek bank shares plunged 22-29%, and yield on the 3-year Greek treasury hit 16.97%.

Worst Day in History for Greek Bank Shares

Bloomberg reports Greek Markets Hammered as Fears Grow Over New Government.
Greek bank shares suffered their worst one day loss on record on Wednesday, as anxiety grew over the new government's plan to renegotiate Greece's €240bn bailout.

The country's four biggest lenders saw their stock prices plummet by an average of more than 25 per cent just two days after Alexis Tsipras, leader of leftwing party Syriza, was sworn in as prime minister. It was the third day of double-digit share slides for the banks.

In the space of a few hours, the yield on three-year Greek bonds jumped 2 percentage points to almost 17 per cent, as investors wondered whether Greece would honour its debts in the near term.

Shares in Piraeus, Greece's largest bank by assets, whose stock price has halved over the past month, plunged 29 per cent. National Bank of Greece and Eurobank each fell 25 per cent and Alpha Bank 26 per cent.

Greek banks have been tapping the European Central Bank's "emergency liquidity assistance" facility to replenish funds in the face of withdrawals by depositors and foreign banks' reluctance to lend.
A few charts will confirm the above picture.

Greek 3-Year Bond



Greek 3-Month Bond Yield



Greek Yield Curve

  • 3-Month: 4.530%
  • 3-Year: 16.970%
  • 5-Year: 13.666%
  • 10-Year: 10.865%
  • 15-Year: 10.342%
  • 30-Year: 8.635%

The yield curve may look strange to some, but here's the three-part explanation:

  1. Mid-range bonds will be hammered the most in any haircut deal. 
  2. Yield on the 3-month bond spiked since the end of December. 
  3. The market is pricing in the possibility of a default, but not within 3 months.

National Bank of Greece 15-Minute Chart



Shares of National Bank of Greece closed about 22% lower today. At one point they were down about 28%. Let's investigate the broader picture for this fine company.

National Bank of Greece Monthly Chart



NBG has plunged from 67.60 in September of 2007 to 1.03 today. That's a plunge of 98.5% 

Greece FTSE 20 Index



Slope of Hope vs. Slope of Reality

In June of 2012 the Greek-20 hit a low of 8.77. It hit a high of 25.76 in March of 2014. It was downhill from there, much faster than it went up. Today's decline was a modest 11.61%.

Run on the Banks

From Bloomberg (link above):

Deposits have declined by an estimated €12bn since December from a private-sector deposit base of about €164bn in November, according to Moody's.

Those deposit declines looks like the start of a run on Greek banks. If so, it is necessary to get out before Greece imposes capital controls or the ECB shuts down the ELA (Emergency Liquidity Assistance) program for Greece.

Repeat Warning

Once again I repeat my January 9 warning regarding Greece: Another Run on Greek Banks Begins; Get Out While You Still Can; Buy Gold

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

MarketWatch Infomercial: Can Millennials Finally Afford a Home?

Posted: 28 Jan 2015 11:25 AM PST

The Outside the Box MarketWatch Opinion of Damian Maldonado is Millennials Can Finally Afford Homes with New Mortgage Rules.

Let's start with a look the new rules.

New Rules

  1. The administration earlier this month cut the premium that borrowers with a Federal Housing Administration loan must pay for mortgage insurance to 0.85% from 1.35%. The half a percentage point reduction will reduce the cost of the average FHA loan by about $1,000 per year.
  2. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last month dropped the minimum down payment to 3% from 5% on some of its mortgages. FHA requires a 3.5% down payment.
  3. Grant programs, such as CHFA in Colorado, allow home buyers to purchase a home with as low as a $1,000 down payment.

Hoop Jumping

Maldonado jumps through all sorts of hoops to justify the new rules, pretending that "new regulations, should stop the problems that led to the subprime mortgage crisis".

He concludes "Perhaps this will be the year this generation will leave their expensive rentals, or their parents' basements, and move into their own homes and live the American Dream."

I propose that after this relentless rally in home prices, the above "new rules" are too risky. Low down payments would have made more sense actually at the bottom of the market, when standards tightened.

This is typical regulatory BS, lowering lending standards when they should be tightened, and tightening them when arguably they could be lowered.

The cure in this case is to get rid of Fannnie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA, all useless organizations that have done nothing but raise the cost of housing by promoting houses as the "American Dream".

Nonetheless, I offer this musical tribute.


Link if above video does not play: Andy Williams - The Impossible Dream (The Quest)

Questions

Before you get too teary-eyed over the American dream, let's investigate two questions.

Question Number 1: Who is Damian Maldonado?

Answer Number 1: Damian Maldonado is CEO and co-founder of national mortgage lender American Financing.

Question Number 2: Why the hell is MarketWatch running infomercials for American Financing?

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

Clash Over Sanctions: Syriza Opposes Sanctions on Russia, Calls Them "Neocolonial Bulimia"; Negotiation Rules

Posted: 28 Jan 2015 12:16 AM PST

The Blowout Victory of Syriza has taken on some new meaning outside of Grexit possibilities.

Please consider Greeks Rebuff EU Call for More Russia Sanctions.
A spokesman for the ruling coalition of Alexis Tsipras, prime minister, said Greece had not approved a statement from EU heads of government that asked their foreign ministers to review further sanctions in response to the latest flare-up of violence in eastern Ukraine, blamed by the US and most European nations on Russian-backed separatists.

The Greek statement raised questions over whether the new government, led by the radical leftist Syriza party, would support a continuation of existing EU sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials and Moscow-supported separatists, when they come up for renewal in March.

German chancellor Angela Merkel warned last month that Moscow was trying to make some Balkan states "politically and economically dependent".

[Mish comment: But hey - political and economic dependence on Germany and the Troika is of course perfectly acceptable]

Nikolai Fyodorov, Russia's agriculture minister, suggested on January 16 that, if Greece's debt woes forced it to leave the EU, the Kremlin would help Athens by lifting a ban on Greek food exports that forms part of the measures adopted by Moscow in retaliation for western sanctions.

Syriza has already given a taste of its foreign policy outlook in the European Parliament, where, since last May's elections, its MEPs have adopted a number of pro-Russian positions, including voting against a EU-Ukrainian association agreement.

Costas Isychos, a Syriza foreign affairs spokesman, last year derided western sanctions on Russia as "neocolonial bulimia" and praised the military efforts of the Kremlin-backed separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine.

Syriza's 2013 party manifesto demanded Greece's exit from Nato and the closure of a US navy base on the island of Crete.

Though a Nato member, Greece in modern times has often enjoyed warm relations with Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, no matter what the political complexion of the government in Athens. The two countries are culturally close, with a shared Orthodox religion, and leftwing Greeks in the cold war used to have an anti-US, anti-imperialist outlook very close to the views of Moscow.
"Neocolonial Bulimia"

That's a good term. It applies to the Troika as well. The IMF is not out to save Greece, it's out to loot Greece for the benefit of external bondholders.

Greece's Coming Clash in Europe Starts With Russia Sanctions

Bloomberg reports Greece's Coming Clash in Europe Starts With Russia Sanctions.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's Syriza-led coalition said it opposed a European Union statement issued in Brussels Tuesday paving the way to additional curbs on the Kremlin over the conflict in Ukraine, and complained it hadn't been consulted.

"Greece doesn't consent," the government said in a statement. It added that the announcement violated "proper procedure" by not first securing Greece's agreement.

Greece's new foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, has the opportunity to block further sanctions at an EU meeting in Brussels on Thursday. 

Sanctions require unanimity among the 28 governments. A Greek veto would shatter the fragile European consensus over dealing with Russia, potentially robbing Syriza of early goodwill as it lobbies for easier terms for Greece's bailout.

"Anyone who thinks that in the name of the debt, Greece will resign its sovereignty and its active counsel in European politics is mistaken," Kotzias said at the ceremony to take over the Foreign Ministry. "We want to be Greeks, patriots, Europeanists, internationalists." 

The new government also includes Yanis Varoufakis, an economist who has called Greece's bailout agreement a destructive "trap," as finance minister. He advocates defaulting on the country's debt while remaining in the euro.

"Tsipras's initial decisions, especially his coalition with a nationalist-hooligan party, point toward an exit from the euro," Luis Garicano, an economics professor at the London School of Economics, said on Twitter. "If he wanted to negotiate, he'd have teamed up with To Potami, he wouldn't have opposed sanctions against Russia."
Negotiation Rules

The position of Economics professor Luis Garicano is laughable.

In regards to EU sanctions, 1 vote out of 28 can kill the deal. That's a lot of leverage, especially when 27 on the other side want something from you. What are they willing to offer in return?

In contrast, when it comes to bailouts, Greece is outvoted by a huge margin, perhaps 18-1 within the Eurozone block. In this case, Greece desperately wants something from the other 18 instead of the other 27 wanting something from Greece.
 
The only way to negotiate when it's 18-1 against you (and you are the one who needs something) is to have some leverage. If Syriza teamed up with To Potami and agreed to sanctions, Tsipras may as well put all his cards on the table saying "here, take the ones you like".

Brick in the Face

The way to get things serious in a hurry is to figuratively hit the Brussels nannycrats smack in the face with a brick. Letting Brussels know you will kill sanctions if you do not get what you want would do just that.

Of course, sanctions are pure idiocy in the first place. So hitting the nannycrats with a brick in the face is precisely what needs to happen. That brick will set the tone for better negotiations on other matters as well.

This is likely to get very interesting in a hurry.

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