luni, 5 octombrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Stand!
Tax Plans of Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump: Which do Clinton Supporters Favor?
Milton Friedman Accurately Explains the Immigration Problem in US and Europe, Government, Taxes, and Economic Freedoms in General
Why Are Mules Stubborn? Why Can't Blind Jackasses See?

Posted: 05 Oct 2015 08:24 PM PDT

Reader Dean emailed me today in response to a couple of recent articles I wrote regarding US policy in Syria.

Dean disagreed with the tone of my articles, stating a belief the US needs to "take a stand".

I back his "take a stand" suggestion 100% and offer this specific proposal.

The Stand

Admit the US is largely responsible for the huge mess in the Mideast.
Welcome Russia's help in solving it.
Welcome Iran's help in solving it.

Time to Self-Assess

There are many who believe the US should never apologize for anything. And that is precisely the attitude of the playground bully.

It is the weak-minded fools and the feeble hypocrites who demand everyone else to admit their mistakes while never accepting they own.

The US has one hell of a lot to apologize for in regards to the current Mideast crisis. Admitting that 50 years from now when those who created the crisis are long since dead will do no good. Admitting responsibility now will help.

There is no Chamberlain, nor modern day Hitler involved here. The harder demagogues try to play the Hitler/Chamberlain the sillier they look.

This is not about appeasement in any form. It's about a realistic self-assessment of who created the mess in order to move forward in the best manner.

Sly Stand

Link if video does not play: Stand! Sly and the Family Stone

Signs of Weakness

It's not a sign of weakness to admit mistakes. Rather, it's a sign of weakness to not do so. That's my stand.

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Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Tax Plans of Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump: Which do Clinton Supporters Favor?

Posted: 05 Oct 2015 12:20 PM PDT

Here is an amusing video that reader Curt shared with me moments ago. It's about tax plans of Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump.

Link if video does not play: Hillary Supporters Like Trump's Tax Plan.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Milton Friedman Accurately Explains the Immigration Problem in US and Europe, Government, Taxes, and Economic Freedoms in General

Posted: 05 Oct 2015 10:52 AM PDT

In previous articles I summed up the immigration problems in Europe and the US as the direct result of an "unlimited demand for free services, free shelter, and free food".

Let's tune into what Economist Milton Friedman has to say about Illegal Immigration.

Also consider Milton Friedman Quotes.

Friedman on Governments

Governments never learn. Only people learn.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman on Free Trade

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.
When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions through the free market, when they get raises by firm competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody's expense. They can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. The whole pie is bigger - there's more for the worker, but there's also more for the employer, the investor, the consumer, and even the tax collector. That's the way the free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people. That's the secret of the enormous improvements in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries.

Friedman on Kennedy

In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your country" implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshiped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.

Friedman On Drugs

See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.
Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons.

Mish Comments

The war on drugs, the war on poverty, US drone policy, collective bargaining of public unions, tariffs and protective subsidies, and the war on freedom (perversely labeled as homeland security and NSA anti-terrorism) have all taken huge tolls on the US prosperity.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Why Are Mules Stubborn? Why Can't Blind Jackasses See?

Posted: 04 Oct 2015 11:58 PM PDT

Here's my theoretical question for the day: Why are mules stubborn, and why can't blind jackasses see?

I ask that question in regards to a few recent news articles. One is on Japan, one the US, and one on emerging markets with various overlaps in between.

Let's start with Japan.

Brink of "Technical" Recession

The Financial Times reports Japan on Brink of Technical Recession.

Japan is on the verge of a technical recession after data on industrial production raised the prospect of a second consecutive quarter of negative growth. Industrial production for August — a crucial input into gross domestic product — unexpectedly fell by 0.5 per cent on the previous month after a 0.6 per cent fall in July.

"It's likely we're already in technical recession," said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan in Tokyo, who forecast an annualised contraction of 1 per cent in the third quarter after 1.2 per cent in the second.

In an interview with the Financial Times this week, Mr Abe's economic adviser, Etsuro Honda, said additional fiscal stimulus was an "urgent task", while an increasing number of analysts expect the Bank of Japan to expand its monetary stimulus at the end of October.

Last week Janet Yellen, US Federal Reserve chair, implicitly criticised the BoJ's policy, noting in a speech: "I am somewhat sceptical about the actual effectiveness of any monetary policy that relies primarily on the central bank's theoretical ability to influence the public's inflation expectations."

The BoJ has a wide range of policy options for further easing. It could increase the rate of asset purchases from the current Y80tn ($670bn) a year; expand the range of assets it buys; or use communication tools to signal how long it will keep monetary policy loose.

IMF Warns of New Financial Crisis

The Guardian reports IMF Warns of New Financial Crisis if Interest Rates Rise.

The debts of non-financial firms in emerging market economies quadrupled, from $4tn (£2.6tn) in 2004 to well over $18tn in 2014, according to the IMF's twice-yearly Global Financial Stability Report.

This borrowing binge has taken business debt as a share of economic output from less than half, in 2004, to almost 75%.

With the US Federal Reserve expected to raise interest rates in the coming months, the IMF warns that emerging market governments should ready themselves for an increase in corporate failures, as firms struggle to meet sharply higher borrowing costs.

That could create distress among the local banks who have bought much of this new debt, causing them in turn to rein in lending, in a "vicious cycle" reminiscent of the credit crisis of 2008-09.

"Shocks to the corporate sector could quickly spill over to the financial sector and generate a vicious cycle as banks curtail lending. Decreased loan supply would then lower aggregate demand and collateral values, further reducing access to finance and thereby economic activity, and in turn, increasing losses to the financial sector," the IMF warns.

Its economists find that the sharp increase in borrowing has been driven largely by international factors, including the historically low interest rates and quantitative easing unleashed by central banks in the US, Japan and Europe, as they have sought to rekindle growth in the wake of the sub-prime crisis.

Meanwhile, Back in Chicago

In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to hike taxes to counter falling tax revenue thanks to corporate business flight.

Businesses and individuals alike are exiting the region because taxes and the business climate are too unfriendly.

I discussed this setup in Obama's "Model for US" Plant Moves to Canada; Mish's Model vs. Obama's Model.

ZIRPs Make Credit (and Prosperity) Scarce, Not Plentiful

The Capitalist Advisor explains ZIRPs Make Credit (and Prosperity) Scarce, Not Plentiful

After misleading markets for months, with the claim that it would finally raise the near-seven-year-old, near-zero Fed Funds rate in September, the Fed last week reneged, on the grounds that the global economy was too weak for it. A rise of merely 25 basis points can undermine global economic growth? That's silly – and no less so than the claim that the Fed's zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP) has "stimulated" economic (or credit) growth. All major central banks have imposed ZIRPs in recent years; economic growth has been weak not despite ZIRPs but in part because of them.

Credit to Washington now exceeds credit to non-financial business, by $2 trillion. Which one produces wealth?

No wonder the expansion of the past five years hasn't been vigorous; but of course Keynesians applaud deficit-spending booms and national debt buildups, as means of saving and stimulating the economy, when all else fails. Things would have been far worse, they say, had government credit not displaced business credit. Yet economic growth was both steady and more robust in the decade after 1995, when credit for business expanded relative to credit for government.

Why then are so many other monetary central planners taking this ruinous road and staying on it, exit after exit after exit? Because they're central planners; it's what they do. Stupid, stubborn things.

Consider: Japan already has had a ZIRP for fifteen years, amid prolonged stagnation; the U.S. has had a ZIRP for "only" seven years; if the Fed were to match the duration of the Bank of Japan's idiocy and stubbornness, it would persist with a ZIRP until at least 2023. That's a lot of U.S. economic stagnation to (not) look forward to.

Questions of the Day

Why does the IMF support the very low rates that brought about the conditions it now seeks to fight?
Why does Chicago Rahm Emanuel propose tax hikes when tax hikes are the problem?
Why can't president Obama, like Rahm Emanuel understand why businesses move out of countries and out of states?
Why do economists in general, central banks in general, and the Bank of Japan specifically, all support policies that have been a proven failure in Japan for decades?
Why cannot any of the above see that debt is the problem and more debt and measures that foster more debt cannot possibly be the solution?

Because They're Mules or Blind Jackasses

The circuitous answer to all the above question is "Mules are stubborn because they are mules, and blind jackasses cannot see by definition."

A Point About Credit

By the way, I would like to point out one aspect of that excellent article by the Capitalist Advisor they failed to mention but I am confident they understand.

Although credit liabilities of the federal government have risen above non-financial businesses, the latter is expanding sharply for precisely the wrong reason: Corporations have gone on a debt binge, not for business expansion, but rather to buy back their own shares at obscenely overvalued prices.

It is impossible for this to work out well, so it won't. ... Except of course for the CEOs and executives who cash out all their stock options every month and park the money in US treasuries.

Reflections on Income Inequality

Those who whine about income inequality, notably Janet Yellen and various Fed members, ought to take this into consideration. But they won't. In fact, they can't for three reasons.

The Fed consists of a group of central planners.
Central planners do stupid things.
They won't change because central planners are more stubborn than mules, and as blind as blind jackasses.

The central planners and blind jackasses are in firm control. Those in academic wonderland as well as most mainstream media are aligned with the mules and jackasses to strengthen that trend.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Damn Cool Pics

Dear Japan, Please Never Change
Sylvester Stallone And Fan Get Photobombed By Arnold Schwarzenegger
Jessica Alba Shows Off Her Sexy Body While Stretching

Dear Japan, Please Never Change

Posted: 05 Oct 2015 06:23 PM PDT

Japan continues to be one of the weirdest and coolest places on Earth. Hopefully it stays that way forever.

Sylvester Stallone And Fan Get Photobombed By Arnold Schwarzenegger

Posted: 05 Oct 2015 05:50 PM PDT

This fan was just trying to take a picture with Sylvester Stallone and their photo got rudely interrupted by a familiar face.

Jessica Alba Shows Off Her Sexy Body While Stretching

Posted: 05 Oct 2015 01:37 PM PDT

Jessica Alba was recently getting ready to shoot some commercials in LA when she decided to do a little stretching. She showed off her body and it's a good thing she did because it's never looked better.

Importing Cost, Click, & Impression Data to GA Using GA’s Data Import Feature - Moz Blog

Importing Cost, Click, & Impression Data to GA Using GA's Data Import Feature

Posted by TrentonGreener

Google Analytics (GA) is a phenomenal tool that most of us, including myself, use in a very limited capacity. It's not that we don't want to use all of the functionality of this great product, but that we're unaware of the potential opportunities available to us as marketers. Often times, when we do find that new and exciting feature, it astounds and astonishes us; I often find myself consumed by the possibilities. That's how it felt when I first found GA's "Data Import" feature. I had no idea that I could load not only my AdWords data into GA, but also all of my other paid efforts as well—from social, to search, to display, and even direct mail. I could import the cost data of each campaign into Google Analytics and do an ROI analysis using functionalities such as the Model Comparison Tool. In this post, I'm going to walk you through how to do exactly that.

We'll be diving into GA's ability to import relevant campaign data such as cost, clicks, and impressions using the built-in Google Analytics "Data Import" functionality. This feature is useful for not only importing your non-AdWords paid marketing channels—such as Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Twitter, AdRoll, Outbrain, and so on—but can also be used to import refund data, customer data, and much more. To see the full scope of use, see this support documentation.

For this guide, you'll need to have Universal Analytics installed. You can check that you indeed do have Universal Analytics under the "Admin" section of the GA interface, within the "Property" column. Under "Property Settings," if your Tracking ID begins with UA, then you likely do.

If you're not yet upgraded to Universal Analytics, here's the Google documentation on getting started and here's a great resource from Kissmetrics to help get you on the right track.

All righty, let's get started on this. For our example today, we'll be importing cost, click, and impression data from a sample Bing Ads account to sync up with our existing session-based data at the campaign and keyword level. There are five major steps to importing this data into Google Analytics. We'll go through each step and ensure you have a deep understanding of the process required to make this all go off without a hitch.

Step One: Custom Campaign URLs

While it's not technically an action step, since we're adding Bing data at the campaign and keyword levels, the first thing to note is that we can only add data to a custom campaign that has already been defined within GA through UTM parameters. This means that we cannot add cost, click, or impression data to traffic that's being incorrectly tracked within GA. If you don't currently have auto-tagging or manual tags within your (in this case) Bing account, then the traffic will likely come through as organic, referral, or possibly even direct. Here's a link to Bing's support article on how to implement these tags if you haven't already. However, this same principle applies to any type of import you'd be trying to do here, no matter whether that be Bing, Facebook, etc.

Step Two: Creating the Data Set

Now that we have our Custom Campaign ducks in a row, it's time to create the actual data set. We'll need to establish which data set type you want to use (full list here). In our case, we'll be using the "Cost Data Set" type. To do this, we're going to go into the Admin panel of the GA account that we're trying to upload the data to. Under the "Property" column, we're going to select "Data Import" (see image below). Don't fret about this being property level; we'll select the views within this property that we wish to affect later.

We're then going to select the "New Data Set" option, select the "Cost Data" radial option, and continue. This can be seen in the following two slides:

Now that we've selected our type, the next action for us to take is to properly name our data set and select the views within this property that are to be affected. You can choose to select no views and edit this at a later time, but I'd recommend adding these changes to a copied view that you have created.

Next we select which columns are to be added to our schema. "Medium" and "Source" are required in our case as we're doing a Cost Data Set, but then we're given the option to choose at least one of "Clicks," "Cost," and "Impressions," and finally we are given the option to add as any additional columns as we'd like. I've added all the possible selections for a Cost Data Set in the below image. Note that we won't actually be using all of these, as many of them aren't able to be used outside of AdWords campaigns. This just serves as a demonstration.

You'll also notice the option to either overwrite or sum the data. We're selecting overwrite, but if you wanted to add additional data to specific days, you might select the summation option.

We'll be adding "Clicks," "Cost," and "Impressions" in the first section, and "Campaign" and "Keyword" in the second section. You can see what this looks like below:

Once you select the "Save" option at the bottom of the page, the Data Set has been created. You'll notice that "Save" becomes "Done," and an additional section appears. We want to select "Get schema," which will create an additional popup window which allows you to download the Excel template to use for this upload.

When the dialog box shown below appears, select the "Download schema template" option and an Excel file will be downloaded with the required headers already inserted for you. You can set this aside for now, as we'll need it at the end of the next step.

Below is the Schema CSV template for our example.

Step Three: Generate the Upload Data as a CSV file

Now all that's left is to download the data from the relevant source, do some minor formatting, and upload our data.

Since we're trying to add clicks, cost, and impression data at the campaign and keyword levels, we need to ensure that our downloads include all of this data. We also need to ensure that our data is defined at the day level. I won't dive into how to download the data from each individual source, as each platform is a little different and each has sufficient documentation of these steps, but there are a few important formatting items to remember (here's a link to documentation). Line breaks and commas will break the data set and force it to fail to upload correctly, or worse, upload incorrect data. Because of this, you'll want to remove any commas from your data. Date formatting has to be in YYYYMMDD format. When you export data from most of these sources, they'll be in another format. Below is a quick and easy way to fix that. I prefer to do this before transferring the data from our data export to our data schema template, but there's no one correct way to do it.

First, select the first cell you want to edit, and then choose "More Number Formats" under the number formatting section.

Then, choose a custom category and type "yyyymmdd" in the "Type:" field. This should change the "sample" to look similar to my own—just likely with different dates.

Finally, select the cell that you changed, and then use the format painter to copy this format down through all of your dates. Voilà, your date formatting is now Google approved!

The last part of step three is to copy the data over to our Excel schema template and match up the columns. It's usually easier to reorganize this first so it's a simple matter of copy and paste, but that's up to you. Save this file and head back into the Google Analytics Admin interface.

Step Four: Upload the Data as a CSV

We're returning back to the Data Import section within the Admin panel and clicking through to the "Manage uploads" button that has appeared next to the Data Set we created in step two.

We're going to select "Upload a file":

Upload the file. Note that data can take up to 24 hours to actually appear in the GA interface. Even if the upload has been successful, it will likely still take additional time to sync the data throughout GA. In my experience, it usually takes about four to six hours, but Google's documentation says up to 24 hours.

Remember in the last step where I mentioned date formatting? You don't want to be like me. Here's why: If you try to upload the data without using YYYYMMDD formatting, you get an error and have to re-upload the data—but the real kicker is that there's no way to delete your failure! =\ It's a cruel reminder every time you go back to upload again.

Now that we've successfully imported the data, all that's left to do is wait until it's synced.

Step Five: Reporting

Once the cost, clicks, and impressions data has been imported and has finished syncing with the existing traffic data at the source/medium, campaign, and keyword levels, you have the ability to see this data in two important places within GA. Firstly, the "Cost Analysis" section of "Acquisition" under the "Campaigns" parent tab displays campaign and ecommerce information similar to what you'd see under the "AdWords" section of "Acquisition." This will display all source/mediums and campaigns, not just CPC campaigns—viewing the data can be a little funky, as you're unlikely to have cost, click, or impression data for your organic traffic. Adding some filters to narrow down your point of view can really help make this easier to digest.

Secondly, and in my opinion much more excitingly, we have the Model Comparison Tool. If you haven't discovered this majestic beast, you should set aside an hour, grab a cup of coffee, and just play—particularly if you run paid marketing campaigns and have revenue or ecommerce data in GA. But while having the ability to do attribution-based ROI analysis is an amazing way to get a better read on the effect your marketing campaigns are having on the business's bottom line, there's the added benefit of being able to analyze the effectiveness of campaigns and keywords in aggregate across multiple sources.

I hope this walkthrough helped to guide you during your first GA data import and gives you the confidence to continue to utilize this extremely powerful feature for more than just cost data imports. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below, and if you have any questions, feel free to drop them there as well.

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luni, 5 octombrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Importing Cost, Click, & Impression Data to GA Using GA’s Data Import Feature - Moz Blog

Importing Cost, Click, & Impression Data to GA Using GA's Data Import Feature

Step One: Custom Campaign URLs

Step Two: Creating the Data Set

Step Three: Generate the Upload Data as a CSV file

Step Four: Upload the Data as a CSV

Step Five: Reporting

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 5 octombrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Importing Cost, Click, & Impression Data to GA Using GA’s Data Import Feature - Moz Blog

Importing Cost, Click, & Impression Data to GA Using GA's Data Import Feature

Step One: Custom Campaign URLs

Step Two: Creating the Data Set

Step Three: Generate the Upload Data as a CSV file

Step Four: Upload the Data as a CSV

Step Five: Reporting

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

Subscribe to