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marți, 30 august 2011
Photo: President Obama Appoints New Chair of Council of Economic Advisers
SEOptimise
SEOptimise |
| More Than 30 Google+ Tools, Extensions, Tutorials and Other Resources Posted: 26 Aug 2011 07:32 AM PDT
The Google+ honeymoon might be over but many people are still active on the site. As Google+ has some shortcomings, lacking features and usability flaws, there are now numerous tools to deal with these issues. I’ve compiled a list of the most promising ones. I haven’t tested all the tools, just a few, so please report issues in the comments. I have chosen only those that seemed to make sense and have been recommended by other publishers or social media friends of mine. Web Tools and Resources
Firefox and Chrome Extensions There are lots of Chrome and Firefox extensions for Google+ now. Many of them just work on the Chrome browser, but some work on Firefox by way of being a script for the Greasemonkey extension. Most of the Firefox extensions require one of the latest Firefox versions, and one needs even Firefox 9. I don’t update my FF that often for backwards compatibility reasons, thus I couldn’t test most of them.
Tutorials and Solutions
Tools Lists
Misc. Google+ Tools
Do you already use these or other Google+ tools? Do you like them? Do they work? Do you know better ones than those I have mentioned? Please add your comments and suggestions below in the comment section!
* CC image by Toby Bochan. © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. More Than 30 Google+ Tools, Extensions, Tutorials and Other Resources Related posts:
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Seth's Blog : Waving to myself
Waving to myself
When I'm on the bike path riding my truly weird recumbent bicycle, sometimes I pass someone else similarly outfitted. And I wave.
Same thing happens when a pregnant mom meets another at the airport, or when two backpackers encounter each other in a strange city.
Of course, we're not waving at the other person. We're waving at ourselves.
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luni, 29 august 2011
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
- Battle Brews Over Texas Public Pensions, Group Seeks End of Defined benefit Plans
- Value Restoration Project: Stock Market Valuations and Trends Over Time
- US In Recession Right Here, Right Now
| Battle Brews Over Texas Public Pensions, Group Seeks End of Defined benefit Plans Posted: 29 Aug 2011 01:14 PM PDT In a prelude for what will eventually happen in every state, a Battle brews over Texas public pensions. Texas could be gearing up for its own Wisconsin-style grudge match over public employee benefits.Pension Haircuts Mandatory Merely doing away with public defined benefit pension plans is insufficient. The article notes ... In 2010, eight governors made pension reform a key campaign promise with the aim of cutting government spending and appealing to tea party supporters.The first step is to stop the bleeding. The way to do that is to immediately kill defined benefit pension plans for all public employees. The second step is to admit what has been promised cannot possibly be paid. Legislation that would allow public pension plans to go bankrupt may be needed. Like it or not, one way or another, haircuts are coming. The sooner this is recognized and acted on, the smaller (and more equitable) the haircuts would be. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. 
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| Value Restoration Project: Stock Market Valuations and Trends Over Time Posted: 29 Aug 2011 10:59 AM PDT I have written much about valuations of stocks recently, the bear market in stocks compression of PE ratios, and normalized earnings. An associate, JJ Abodeely has been doing the same thing. His blog "Value Restoration Project" is dedicated to valuations and trends in valuations over time. What follows is a JJ's most recent post in entirety, Are We There Yet? The Value Restoration Project Resumes For readability purposes, I will not follow my normal "blockquote" process of quotes. What follows is from JJ, except where he quotes another source. click on any chart in this post for sharper image Are We There Yet? by JJ Abodeely The declines in the stock market over the last three weeks have done a lot of damage to most investors' portfolios. This would merely be an inconvenience if it meant that future returns could be expected to be robust enough to compensate for the losses. In a July 22nd post which coincidentally, was the most recent top in the stock market, I suggested that "the conditions present in the market suggest that the Value Restoration Project in stocks, underway in fits and starts since 2000, will eventually resume." Investors in the stock market may rightly be viewing this recent decline of about 12% over the last 16 trading days as a painful, but necessary, correction in prices which will once again bring value back to the market. After all, as I wrote in two recent missives, Expensive Markets Mean Low or Negative Prospective Returns and Denominators Matter The fact is that what you pay matters and expensive markets today mean low or even negative prospective returns going forward. The value restoration project, which began with the peak of the stock market in 2000, is ongoing despite a 2 year cyclical rebound on the heels of unprecedented stimulus.So, in the spirit of Summer driving season and family road trips, the recent market decline begs the question, "Are we there yet"? Unfortunately, checking in with some important valuation indicators suggests the decline of the last several weeks has not accomplished enough to merit a more aggressive long-term portfolio stance. Normalized P/E Ratio  For most of the Spring, the S&P 500 traded between 1300 and 1350 and sported a normalized P/E ratio of around 23x trailing 10 year earnings. In Expensive Markets Mean Low or Negative Prospective Returns I noted that when the cyclically adjusted P/E ratio is between 22 and 24 the average annual real returns (after inflation) for the subsequent 10 years is -2.2%, the median is-3.1% and the distribution looked like this  With the S&P's recent decline to 1178, the Cyclically-Adjusted or "Shiller" P/E has decline from a recent high of 23.6 to a somewhat more palatable 20.4. This begs the question of what sort of long-term returns have investors historically seen when the market P/E stood at similar levels as today? There have been 125 monthly occurrences since 1881 when the normalized P/E ratio was between 19 and 21. The average annual real return with dividends reinvested over the subsequent 10 year period is about 1.6%, with roughly a third of the 10 year periods resulting in negative returns. While somewhat more encouraging, these are hardly the returns that dreams are made of-- or financial planning assumptions, for that matter. For those who prefer to see their probable outcomes expressed in nominal returns, the average is about 4.5%.  A thorough understanding of history suggests that today's P/E level is still not low enough to warrant a buy and hold or passive approach to U.S. stocks broadly. As Ed Easterling of Crestmont Research is fond of saying, "secular market cycles are not driven by time, but rather they are dependent upon distance—as measured by the decline in P/E to a low enough level to then enable a significant increase." Considering that the most recent secular market is starting from a spectacularly overvalued normalized P/E of 43.8x in 2000, we have quite a bit farther to travel.  Stocks Priced in Gold Like a normalized earnings measure, adjusting stock market prices for the effects of a nearly constantly depreciating currency, allows us to assign deeper meaning to price. Please consider my recent post Denominators Matter! What the Price of Gold Tells Us About the Value of Other Assets. The good news is the stocks prices have become even cheaper when adjusted for gold. Amazingly, the nominal price gains since the market low in March of 2009 have now been completely lost, when adjusted for gold. While this is mainly good news for those who own gold, it also gives us insight into the process by which the market is returning to a level where real, long-lasting value can be seen.  Fellow contrarians or disciples of mean reversion may think that this trend is poised to reverse, however a longer-term perspective is in order. We can easily see the secular bull and bear cycles from this chart which shows the Dow Jones Industrials Stock Index adjusted for gold since 1969. The 7x rise in gold since 1999, coupled with the nominal price decline in the Dow or S&P 500, has gone along way towards rectifying the imbalances in the valuation of the two asset classes. However, history suggests that durable, decade long, market bottoms are made at much lower levels.  No, we are not there yet The recent sell off in the markets have been fast and furious and it would not be surprising to see stocks recover some of the recent losses in the weeks and months ahead. However, as John Hussman wrote in Two One-Way Lanes on the Road to Ruin It is important to recognize that the S&P 500 is presently only about 13% below its April peak, and the word "only" deserves emphasis...The main problem here is that we essentially have nowhere constructive to go on the upside - advisory sentiment is already overbullish, and despite the recent decline, our 10-year total return projection for the S&P 500 has still only climbed to 5.1% annually. The ensemble of evidence remains steeply negative here.This evidence most certainly includes the long-term valuation measure discussed here. Investors who take steps to protect their portfolios from the inexorable value restoration project will be in position to benefit from the next real bull market in stocks. End Value Restoration Post Everything from "Are We There Yet?" to "End Post" is from JJ Abodeely's Value Restoration Project. If you wish to contact him, you can do so with a button on his blog. Here are my posts regarding valuations, value traps, and earnings. February 07, 2011: Negative Annualized Stock Market Returns for the Next 10 Years or Longer? It's Far More Likely Than You Think March 15, 2011: Anatomy of Bubbles; Negative Returns for a Decade Revisited; Is Gold in a Bubble? June 20, 2011: Value Traps Galore (Including Financials and Berkshire); Dead Money for a Decade August 17, 2011: Earnings Collapse Coming Up; Don't Worry Companies Will Still "Beat the Street"; Value Traps and Road to Ruin August 23, 2011: Another "Lost Decade" Coming Up; Boomer Retirement Headwinds; P/E Expansion and Contraction Demographic Model; Negative Returns for a Decade Revisited Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. 
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| US In Recession Right Here, Right Now Posted: 29 Aug 2011 12:54 AM PDT I am amused by those who think a US recession will come within a year. Even more amusing are those who think a recession will not come at all. The US is in a recession now. I am not the only one who thinks so. Last Friday, I received an email from Rick Davis at Consumer Metrics, complete with an Excel spreadsheet that shows that had the GDP deflator been based on the consumer price index (CPI) rather than the BEA's measure of price inflation, the US would already be in the second quarter of contraction. My friend Tim Wallace noted Davis' explanation would be consistent with Petroleum Distillates Demand Shows "Definite Economic Downturn Starting April/May 2011". Thus Wallace was not surprised at all. In the meantime, I received a set of emails from Doug Short. He had already charted what I was about to graph. Let's take a look. The Deflator Makes Big a Difference Please consider Will the "Real" GDP Please Stand Up? by Doug Short. How do you get from Nominal GDP to Real GDP? You subtract inflation. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) uses its own GDP deflator for this purpose, which is somewhat different from the BEA's deflator for Personal Consumption Expenditures and quite a bit different from the better-known Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation gauge, the Consumer Price Index.The following charts are courtesy of from Doug Short. Real GDP With GDP Deflator  Real GDP With CPI Deflator  Recession It Is There you have it. That is what Tim Wallace spotted, that is what Rick Davis spotted, that is what Doug Short spotted. No one really needed a chart for this. I have been talking about a global slowdown for a long time. My only concern was if and when the NBER would agree to admit the obvious. I still do not know, but as I have stated before, I expect the NBER to backdate the recession to this quarter or next. That is a guess, not a certainty. Permanent Recession Since 1988? Doug Short also produced a chart using the CPI as calculated by John Williams at ShadowStats. Here is that chart.  As much as I think GDP is nonsense (and I really do think it is nonsense, figuring the first 2% is hedonics and imputations), Williams carries the idea to ridiculous extremes. Doug Short politely comments "I find this 'alternate Real' GDP to be interesting (in a freakish sort of way), but I personally see no credibility in the hyper-negative GDP is produces." "Freakish" Hyperinflation Report Please consider Williams' Hyperinflation Special Report (Update 2010) Risks are high for the hyperinflation beginning to break in the year ahead; it likely cannot be avoided beyond 2014.Hyperinflation When? That was written in 2009 with an update in 2010. Amusingly in the Hyperinflation Special Report (2011) William comments on his timeline for hyperinflation. Outside timing on the hyperinflation remains 2014, but there is strong risk of the currency catastrophe beginning to unfold in the months ahead. It may be starting to unfold as we go to press in March 2011, but moving into a full blown hyperinflation could take months to a year, beyond the onset, depending on the developing global view of the dollar and reactions of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve. ...Williams Fails to Understand
Breathtaking Ignorance That is a heck of a lot of things to not understand, but let's focus on one critical error namely Williams' statement "the rest of the world effectively moving to dump the U.S. currency and dollar-denominated paper assets". I have commented on the invalid nature of such statements at least a dozen times. Here is one from a week ago in Michael Pettis: Long-Term Outlook for China, Europe, and the World; 12 Global Predictions Via email, Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets shared his outlook for China, Europe, and the world. The overall outlook is not pretty, and includes a breakup of the Eurozone, a major slowdown for China, and a smack-down of the much beloved BRICs.Emphasis in red added. Just the Math Ma'am What Pettis states, and I have reiterated at least a dozens time is that as long as the US runs a trade deficit, US treasuries will have a bid. This is not speculation, the statement is a near mathematical certainty. Moreover, the US Would Welcome China Not Buying US Treasuries! exactly the opposite of what hyperinflationists would have you believe. Please read the link for a detailed explanation. Yield Curve as of 2011-08-28 As the silly calls for near-term hyperinflation mount, I point out a chart of the yield curve.  click on chart for sharper image Does that look like hyperinflation or does it look like deflation? Back to the Real World In the real world, Doug Short comments on Real GDP Per Capita, Year-over-Year Change, and the Next Recession The next chart shows the YoY change in real GDP from the earliest quarterly data in 1947. I've again highlighted recessions. The red dots show the YoY real GDP for the quarter in which the recession began. The blue dot shows the latest YoY real GDP. Note: Unlike the previous chart, this one does not include a per-capita adjustment.Unless there is an immediate pickup in GDP, highly doubtful given Hurricane Irene, the NBER will backdate the recession to the second quarter, just as Tim Wallace stated. Some analysts will blame Irene. If so, it will be just another "bullshill" excuse by analysts to avoid admitting they blew it. Bernanke may try the same ploy. If so, it will be an attempt to buy time, hoping for a miracle. No miracles are on the horizon. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. 
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