Central Perk: 18 iun. 2013

marți, 18 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Brazilian Currency Touches Four-Year Low Prompting Intervention; Currency Intervention Madness Displayed in Chart Form

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 01:08 PM PDT

Bloomberg reports Brazilian Currency Touches Four-Year Low, Prompting Intervention

Brazil's real touched a four-year low, prompting the central bank to intervene for a second straight day as a report showed higher-than-forecast inflation.

"If there's more currency devaluation, there will be more inflation," Jankiel Santos, the chief economist at Banco Espirito Santo de Investimento in Sao Paulo, said in a telephone interview. "On top of that, the IGP-M shows that wholesale prices are under pressure again."

Brazil may use all available instruments to contain the real's volatility including selling dollars in the spot market, central bank president Alexandre Tombini said in an interview with Valor Economico published yesterday.
The currency has fallen more than 5 percent since Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said on May 22 that the central bank may taper its stimulus program if the outlook for employment shows "sustainable improvement."

Real Monthly Chart Shows Intervention Madness

click on chart for sharper image

Flashback March 3, 2012: Brazil Declares New Currency War on US and Europe.

The Financial Times reports Brazil declares new 'currency war'

Brazil has declared a fresh "currency war" on the US and Europe, extending a tax on foreign borrowings and threatening further capital controls in an effort to protect the country's struggling manufacturers.

Guido Mantega, the finance minister who was the first to use the controversial term in 2010, said the government would not "sit by passively" as developed nations continue to pursue expansionary monetary policies at the expense of Brazil.

"When the real appreciates, it reduces our competitiveness. Exports are more expensive, imports are cheaper and it creates unfair competition for businesses in Brazil," he said on Thursday after announcing changes to the so-called IOF tax.

Check out all these recent reports of Brazilian Real Intervention.

Is this madness or what?

By the way, with the huge slowdown in China (and Chinese demand for commodities plunging), Brazil is going to have a damn tough time stopping the slide in the Real and an equally hard time controlling inflation.

What happened to the alleged nirvana "When the real appreciates, it reduces our competitiveness"?

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

Epic Glut of Graduates Depresses Wages; Fake Job Offers Taint Hiring Statistics

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 10:06 AM PDT

In response to Pettis on China, Europe, Japan: Bad News for Those Looking for Growth reader "BC" passed on a series of articles about jobs and wages, and matching up graduates with the skills companies seek.

The articles are all in regards to China. Change the names and faces, and the stories sound to me like things you could easily read here.

The problems are universal: too many graduates, trained in fields where there are no jobs or few openings.

Job Prospects for China's Grads Bleak

Business Times says Job Prospects for China's Grads Bleak.

A record seven million students will graduate from universities and colleges across China in the coming weeks, but their job prospects appear bleak - the latest sign of a troubled Chinese economy.

Businesses say they are swamped with job applications but have few positions to offer as economic growth has begun to falter.

The Chinese government is worried, saying the problem could affect social stability, and it has ordered schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates at least temporarily to help relieve joblessness.

"The only thing that worries them more than an unemployed, low-skilled person is an unemployed, educated person," said Wei Shang-Jin, a Columbia Business School economist.

Lu Mai, secretary- general of the elite, government- backed China Development Research Foundation, acknowledged in a speech this month that fewer than half of this year's graduates had found jobs so far.

China quadrupled the number of students enrolled in universities and colleges over the last decade. But its economy is still driven by manufacturing, with a preponderance of blue-collar jobs.

Premier Li Keqiang himself led the Cabinet meeting on May 16 that produced the directive for schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates, a strategy that has been used with increasing frequency in recent years to absorb jobless but educated youths.

"Any country with an expanding middle class and a rising number of unemployed graduates is in for trouble," said Gerard Postiglione, director of the Wah Ching Center of Research on Education in China at Hong Kong University.

Mish Comment: Well, at least China's middle class is expanding, for now. That's not something we can say here in the US.

Fake Job Offers Taint Statistics

Forbes writes College Grads Are Jobless In China's "High-Growth" Economy

The semi-official Global Times reports that one of China's hottest businesses at the moment is the forging of employment contracts for students. Some universities, concerned about the withdrawal of funding due to high unemployment of their grads, will not hand out diplomas before students supply evidence of imminent employment. The fake contracts, of course, inflate the statistics reported to—and eventually the figures issued by—central educational authorities.

"I just can't figure out why it's so hard to get a job this year," wonders Miranda Zhang, who will graduate from a university in Beijing this spring.

The misery is spread over many fields. English majors are having a hard time finding work, but so are those receiving degrees in law, computer science and technology, accounting, international trade, and industrial and commercial administration. In short, Ms. Zhang and her classmates face a tight employment situation partly because the Chinese economy is in fact not moving fast in the much-discussed up-the-value-chain transformation.

Mish Comments: Are fake job offers in China that much different than the University of Phoenix placing someone with a culinary art degree in a job at McDonalds, while padding statistics as a graduate with a job in their field of study?

As for growth in China, forget about it. See the top link if you need convincing.

Chinese College Graduates Play It Safe and Lose Out

The Wall Street Journal reports Chinese College Graduates Play It Safe and Lose Out.

Xie Chaobo figures he has the credentials to land a job at one of China's big state-owned firms. He is a graduate student at Tsinghua University, one of China's best. His field of study is environmental engineering, one of China's priorities. And he is experimenting with new techniques for identifying water pollutants, which should make him a valuable catch.

But he has applied to 30 companies so far and scored just four interviews, none of which has led to a job.

Over the past decade, the number of new graduates from Chinese universities has increased sixfold to more than six million a year, creating an epic glut that is depressing wages, leaving many recent college graduates without jobs and making students fearful about their future. Two-thirds of Chinese graduates say they want to work either in the government or big state-owned firms, which are seen as recession-proof, rather than at the private companies that have powered China's remarkable economic climb, surveys indicate.

Mish Comment: Graduates want to work for State-Owned-Enterprises (SOEs), but SOEs in China are totally out of control, racking up debts that cannot and will not be paid back. SOE need to be dismantled, and they will be (with much pain).

The US equivalent would be hoping to get in on the public union pension-for-life gravy train just as the US public pension system is about to crash.

Employers and Graduates Mismatched

Marketplace.Org has Tales from a Shanghai job fair: Why China's college grads, employers mismatched.

Hundreds of HR managers carefully eye prospective employees who, resumes in hand, crowd the floor at a Shanghai job fair.

Here's the problem: neither group is interested in each other.

Nicole Li is looking to hire college graduates for her property management company. "We need technicians to fix software problems, but college grads don't have these skills," says Li, frowning. "We need people for exhibitions who can do presentations in English, but they can't do that, either."

Li needs to hire people for 60 high-skilled jobs. She says among the thousands of candidates here today, she'll be lucky if she finds one.

Tong Huiqin comes to this job fair every Friday. He graduated from the Shanghai Finance University six years ago. Since then, he's jumped from one job to the next. "It isn't hard to find a job," says Tong. "It's hard to find the right job."

Tong blames Chinese universities. He says they need to do a better job at preparing people for the country's rapidly changing labor market.

I turn around and ask 22-year-old Wang Qianmin, who's about to graduate from Shanghai Normal University with a teaching degree, what she's looking for at the job fair. "I don't know," she says with a pout. "Most of the jobs here aren't really interesting. I'm looking for a company that'll give me a high salary, money for meals and that'll pay my rent -- a place where the working hours aren't too long."

Wang says she wants to be a teacher. Or maybe a wedding planner. She can't decide.

Mish Comments: These kids have no idea what they want to do, and they blame it on the school for not teaching them.

How is this different than the average liberal arts major in the US expecting the world at their doorstep just because they have a useless degree that prepares them to do nothing more than work as a part-time retail clerk, 25 hours a week, dumped into the Obamacare system?

Yet, we are told education is the answer, without ever addressing the questions "for who? at what cost? in what field?"

These articles were purportedly about China. Change the names and faces and the stories are not much different than you can find right here in the US, in Italy, in France, or anywhere else in a slow-grow global economy.

After growing at an astronomical rate for years, the cost of education is going to plunge. Job statistics will force that outcome.

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

Damn Cool Pics

Romy Beats [Video]
Guys Give Roommate Unwanted Room Remodel
One-armed beauty Nicole Kelly crowned Miss Iowa 2013
Hot Tub Cinema
Driverless Cars: The Future of Motoring [Infographic]

Romy Beats [Video]

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 04:37 PM PDT

That's why i love the human race. We can make miracles!

Guys Give Roommate Unwanted Room Remodel

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 08:39 AM PDT

Redditor twoverend was out of town for two months. This gave his roommates plenty of time to 'renovate' his room.

Before:

After:

One-armed beauty Nicole Kelly crowned Miss Iowa 2013

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 08:22 AM PDT

Nicole Kelly, 23, just became this year's Miss Iowa 2013 despite the obstacle of being born without her left forearm. "A year ago, I certainly didn't see 'pageant titleholder' in my future," Kelly writes on her "Meet Miss Iowa" biography page. "Perhaps I didn't originally envision this path, but I now know that being Miss Iowa is the perfect fit for me, and I feel so blessed to be surrounded by people who have encouraged me every step of the way. Giving a voice to my platform, Overcoming Disabilities, is a tremendous honor, and I am thrilled to continue my adventure by speaking out and touching lives as Miss Iowa 2013."

Kelly will now advance to compete for the Miss America title on Sept. 15 in Atlantic City, N. J., where she will be speaking about the importance of overcoming disabilities. She describes growing up with an abnormal arm "As I grew older, I learned to offset the initial stares I received … with an outgoing personality that would not give in to 'No,' she writes. "This meant that I tried everything! From baseball, to dance to diving, there was nothing I would not try. I found my passion within a world where I was giving people permission to stare … the stage." Kelly graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2012 with a degree in directing and theater management. In September 2012, she had an internship on Broadway with the Manhattan Theatre Club. She is the 72nd woman to hold the title of Miss Iowa.

Hot Tub Cinema

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 07:46 AM PDT

The Hot Tub Cinema concept combines relaxing hot tubs with good movies and cool places. You can book a hot tub together with your friends to bathe in while watching a movie! There are also individual tickets available to share a hot tub. The hot tubs are obviously cleaned, refilled and heated for every performance. The "jacuzzi cinema" appears in different places in London and other places in England, but the organizers have plans to tour in the near future internationally. The baths are located on roof terraces in central London giving you a bonus view of the beautiful city skyline.

Driverless Cars: The Future of Motoring [Infographic]

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 07:17 AM PDT

Driverless cars have often been talked about as the future of motoring, but it seems that they are now far closer to becoming reality than is generally realized. MoneySupermarket has created an infographic giving a bit of background about the market and discussing who is currently leading the race to dominate this industry which promises to revolutionise the motoring landscape.

Despite all the hype around the Google solution, it is Mercedes who are currently leading the race to be first to market with a driverless S-Class which is due to be released later this year. However, it is General Motors who are likely to be the real winner as they are working on a car which is capable of parking itself and pick up its owner from location specified using a smart phone application.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Image source: MoneySupermarket Car Insurance

President Obama Discusses the National Security Agency

Featured

President Obama Discusses the National Security Agency

President Obama discussed a range of issues in his interview with Charlie Rose last night on PBS, but the National Security Agency was the topic for an extended part of the conversation.

"My job is both to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life, which includes our privacy," he said. "So every program that we engage in, what I've said is let's examine and make sure that we're making the right tradeoffs."

Click here to find out what else the President had to say about the NSA, Syria and more.

How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects

Posted: 17 Jun 2013 07:13 PM PDT

Posted by Cyrus Shepard

Have you ever redirected a page hoping to see a boost in rankings, but nothing happened? Or worse, traffic actually went down?

When done right, 301 redirects have awesome power to clean up messy architecture, solve outdated content problems and improve user experience â€" all while preserving link equity and your ranking power.

When done wrong, the results can be disastrous.

In the past year, because Google cracked down hard on low quality links, the potential damage from 301 mistakes increased dramatically. There's also evidence that Google has slightly changed how they handle non-relevant redirects, which makes proper implementation more important than ever.

From Dr. Pete's post - An SEO's Guide to HTTP Status Codes

Semantic relevance 101: anatomy of a "perfect" redirect

A perfect 301 redirect works as a simple â€œchange of addressâ€ for your content. Ideally, this means everything about the page except the URL stays the same including content, title tag, images, and layout.

When done properly, we know from testing and statements from Google that a 301 redirect passes somewhere around 85% of its original link equity.

The new page doesnâ€™t have to be a perfect match for the 301 to pass equity, but problems arise when webmasters use the 301 to redirect visitors to non-relevant pages. The further away you get from semantically relevant content, the less likely your redirect will pass maximum link juice.

For example, if you have a page about â€œlabrador,â€ then redirecting to a page about â€œdogsâ€ makes sense, but redirecting to a page about â€œtacosâ€ does not.

301 redirecting everything to the home page

Savvy SEOs have known for a long time that redirecting a huge number of pages to a home page isnâ€™t the best policy, even when using a 301. Recent statements by Google representatives suggest that Google may go a step further and treat bulk redirects to the home page of a website as 404s, or soft 404s at best.

This means that instead of passing link equity through the 301, Google may simply drop the old URLs from its index without passing any link equity at all.

While itâ€™s difficult to prove exactly how search engines handle mass home page redirects, itâ€™s fair to say that any time you 301 a large number of pages to a single questionably relevant URL, you shouldnâ€™t expect those redirects to significantly boost your SEO efforts.

Better alternative: When necessary, redirect relevant pages to closely related URLs. Category pages are better than a general homepage.

If the page is no longer relevant, receives little traffic, and a better page does not exist, itâ€™s often perfectly okay to serve a 404 or 410 status code.

Danger: 301 redirects and bad backlinks

Before Penguin, SEOs widely believed that bad links couldnâ€™t hurt you, and redirecting entire domains with bad links wasnâ€™t likely to have much of an effect.

Then Google dropped the hammer on low-quality links.

If the Penguin update and developments of the past year have taught us anything, itâ€™s this:

When you redirect a domain, its bad backlinks go with it.

Webmasters often roll up several older domains into a single website, not realizing that bad backlinks may harbor poison that sickens the entire effort. If youâ€™ve been penalized or suffered from low-quality backlinks, itâ€™s often easier and more effective to simply stop the redirect than to try and clean up individual links.

Individual URLs with bad links

The same concept works at the individual URL level. If you redirect a single URL with bad backlinks attached to it, those bad links will then point to your new URL.

In this case, itâ€™s often better to simply drop the page with a 404 or 410, and let those links drop from the index.

Infinite loops and long chains

If you perform an SEO audit on a site, youâ€™ll hopefully discover any potentially harmful redirect loops or crawling errors caused by overly-complex redirect patterns.

While itâ€™s generally believed that Google will follow many, many redirects, each step has the potential to diminish link equity, dilute anchor text relevance, and lead to crawling and indexing errors.

One or two steps is generally the most you want out of any redirect chain.

New changes for 302s

SEOs typically hate 302s, but recent evidence suggests search engines may now be changing how they handle them â€" at least a little.

Google knows that webmasters make mistakes, and recent tests by Geoff Kenyon showed that 302 redirects have potential to pass link equity. The theory is that 302s (meant to be temporary) are so often implemented incorrectly, that Google treats them as â€œsoftâ€ 301s.

So, not only do search engines limit us when we try to get too clever, but they also help to keep us from shooting ourselves in the foot.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

#MozCon Speaker Interview: Aleyda Solis

Posted: 17 Jun 2013 03:27 AM PDT

Posted by Lindsay

Today Iâ€™m pleased to bring you Aleyda Solis, Madrid-based International SEO at SEER Interactive, a Moz Associate, and State of Search blogger. Weâ€™re excited that sheâ€™s bringing her international perspective to MozCon, where sheâ€™ll lay out how to make the bold but lucrative move into the international market. You definitely donâ€™t want to miss her talk, â€œInternational SEO and the Future of Your ROI,â€ if youâ€™re interested in growing your online business.

Tell us about the presentation you have planned for MozCon.

Itâ€™s going to be an exciting adventure, guiding the audience to discover their international SEO potential and what could be the future of their ROI.

It will be beyond the "ccTLDs vs. subdirectories for country targeting" type of session (although best practices with examples and tactics will be also shared). Itâ€™s meant to answer frequent questions I get from strategic, operations, and business perspectives, like: â€œHow do I connect with international audiences and develop an attractive offer and assets when I donâ€™t even speak the language or know anything about the country?â€ Or, â€œHow can I develop original, localized content for all of these non-English websites if I donâ€™t have enough resources?â€

If this is an issue for your business, then itâ€™s highly likely that your international SEO strategy wasn't planned and established well enough from the beginning, allowing your investment to become cost-effective and scalable in foreign organic search markets.

I started to cover international SEO from this perspective in a SEER post I wrote about establishing an international SEO strategy.

Why would it be unwise for someone to miss your presentation?

Because I will be giving away delicious Iberian ham that I will be bringing from Spain to selected audience members in my session! :D (Iâ€™m kidding!)

I really wish I could do that, but unfortunately it is forbidden by US Customs. (Nonetheless, you might want to ask for a change in customs law to make it friendlier to Spanish gastronomy so I can do that in the future.)

Seriously, though, it would be really unwise to skip my session because I will be sharing what could be the next step to grow your online business. You definitely donâ€™t want to miss that.

What types of businesses should be thinking about international SEO, and why?

All businesses that might have an audience in other countries or that speaks other languages should be thinking about it.

Sometimes people think that only huge businesses that already have a multinational physical presence should be thinking about an international web presence and search marketing activity. But this is far from true and is just myopic. For more, take a look at this Moz post I wrote about discovering your international online potential.

Regarding international SEO, what is the most unexpected thing you've learned along the way?

Maybe not unexpected, but unfortunately usually overlooked: The characteristics of audience behavior in each country.

Beyond language differences, there are many cultural, economic and sociological factors that can affect the success of many aspects of your SEO process, like the level of response from a link-building campaign, for example. At the end, beyond search engines that serve as a bridge, SEO is about the people.

You can have a better understanding of what Iâ€™m talking about in this post I published at State of Search about different aspects that drive an international SEO industry and audience research.

What do you do at SEER Interactive?

My activities at SEER are quite diverse: On one hand, Iâ€™m helping to grow the international SEO business, giving SEER more visibility by speaking at diverse events in Europe, identifying and validating leads, giving pre-sales support, and establishing and coordinating the best organization and processes for international SEO. On the other, Iâ€™m also developing and helping to implement international SEO processes for current clients.

Tell us about the places you've lived.

Iâ€™m from Nicaragua, a small, tropical country with a lot of volcanoes, lakes, and beaches on both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts in Central America. Nicaragua's natural landscape is breathtaking; hereâ€™s a photo of Momotombo Volcano (one of the 12 volcanoes on the Pacific coast of the country):

Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettziegler/7355295166/

I grew up, studied, and worked there until I left to study in Salamanca, Spain in 2006. Itâ€™s a beautiful student town full of history, with students from all over the world (a lot of people go there to learn Spanish). Itâ€™s also home to the University of Salamanca, the oldest university in Spain (where I went to study), which was founded in 1218. Its front building looks like this:

Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/3855579280/

I ended up staying in Salamanca after finishing my studies, and got my first SEO job at an online marketing company. I lived in Salamanca for a bit more than 4 years â€" until I came to Madrid, the city where I live now.

I came to Madrid after accepting an SEO manager position at a company here at the end of 2010. Madrid is an amazing place, since it has the great alternatives that big cities offer, and at the same time allows you to have a good quality of life. Hereâ€™s a view of Gran Via, one of the main streets in Madrid:

Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/nico_/6887000482/

What is it about Madrid that keeps you there?

Madrid (followed by Barcelona) is where most of the bigger types of business activity happen in Spain, from trade shows and professional networking events to a wide range of cultural activities. Thereâ€™s also good weather (thereâ€™s always sun, although it might be a bit cold during winter) and great culinary offerings (delicious tapas everywhere!), so Iâ€™m happy here at the moment. Although, of course, Iâ€™m quite open to experiencing new places to live in the future. I love to travel and experience new cultures.

Are you doing what you thought youâ€™d be doing when you were growing up?

I had the somewhat common â€œdreamsâ€ among children of being an astronaut (I really just wanted to go to space, it wasn't necessarily because I knew what an astronaut actually did). So thatâ€™s really a pending point in my life: going to space! I definitely need to start saving more for that.

What is the last thing that you have seen/heard/experienced that has inspired you?

Iâ€™ve recently had two experiences that have been inspiring in different ways.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to go to Israel to speak at KahenaCon and had the great opportunity to spend a Saturday walking around Jerusalem Old City. It was a truly inspiring experience, seeing places with such a rich historical and also religious background, like the Western Wall, the Holy Sepulchre and Dome of the Rock. Even if Iâ€™m not religious myself, it was a somewhat magical experience.

Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Zucpg1N8yT/

Another (and totally different) inspiring moment happened a week ago when I had the chance to try Google Glass. I felt like I was already living in the future, interacting with that small, translucent movie theater-like interface in my glasses with just my voice. Truly amazing.

Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Z8tuxJt8yd/

What is the best piece of advice youâ€™ve ever been given?

To ask myself â€œWhatâ€™s the worst that could happen?â€ when Iâ€™m making an important or scary decision. This question allows me to get my risk-averse considerations under control, and gives me a great opportunity to start assessing a new situation with more balanced criteria. By asking this, Iâ€™ve been able to go out of my comfort zone more frequently and live new experiences.

Thank you, Aleyda! It was great to learn a bit about your background and how international SEO matters for all types of businesses, not just the big multinationals.

If, like us, you just can't get enough of Alyeda, you can find her as @aleyda on Twitter (where she juggles Spanish and English).

Still don't have your #MozCon ticket yet? Reserve your spot now!

marți, 18 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

President Obama Discusses the National Security Agency

How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects

How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects

Semantic relevance 101: anatomy of a "perfect" redirect

301 redirecting everything to the home page

Danger: 301 redirects and bad backlinks

Individual URLs with bad links

Infinite loops and long chains

New changes for 302s

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

marți, 18 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

President Obama Discusses the National Security Agency

How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects

How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects

Semantic relevance 101: anatomy of a "perfect" redirect

301 redirecting everything to the home page

Danger: 301 redirects and bad backlinks

Individual URLs with bad links

Infinite loops and long chains

New changes for 302s

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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