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luni, 8 aprilie 2013

Ten Letters

Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, April 8, 2013

Watch live at 5:45 p.m. ET: President Obama delivers remarks in Connecticut on common-sense measures to reduce gun violence. Watch on WhiteHouse.gov/Live.

Ten Letters

Every day, President Obama reads ten letters from Americans across the country. In this from-the-archives video, "Letters to the President," we take you behind the scenes to see the process of how those ten letters make it to the President's desk -- from among the thousands of letters, faxes, and e-mails that get sent to the White House each day.

Watch "Letters to the President."

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Seth's Blog : Where are your assets?

Where are your assets?

Do work and get paid once. Build an asset and get paid for as long as it lasts.

A retailer or a restaurant owner might work 18 hours a day--but the landlord makes just as much money from that effort, often more. The cheeseburger gets paid for once, but the rent bill comes every month.

Real estate is an obvious and simple form of asset. In 1928, my great grandfather traded his real estate assets for the sure thing of the stock market. The biggest difference between the rental houses he owned and the worthless stocks he bought was that the houses paid rent every month, while the stocks offered merely the promise of a later payoff.

Some of the assets you can build, not just buy:

Your brand. A brand isn't a logo. It's a promise and an expectation. When you overdeliver, you earn trust, trust that can bring you repeat business, access to new opportunities and the privilege of being able to count on your customers coming back. (Yes, it does hurt to ask).

Permission. The privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get them. People who would miss you if you were gone.

Expertise. You might lose your job, but they can't take away what you've learned. If all you've just done is what you've done before, you might get paid, but you didn't earn an asset.

In just three words, then, there's the huge chasm between the trusted, experienced freelancer, the one you're happy to hear from when she has a new idea, and the newbie or the short-term maximizer. Those guys have to start from scratch, each and every time.

Think about the individual, the entrepreneur or the small organization that has built up trust with a given market, that has permission to talk to that market and that has the expertise to execute on what it promises... Once you have those three, you call the shots. If, on the other hand, you're merely a hard-working employee, doing what you're told, you're never going to get what your effort ought to produce.

Other assets companies can build include processes or machinery and a loyal and talented workforce. Individuals, though, can pay attention to, protect and amplify the first three as they do their work. They don't take care of themselves, because there's always pressure to trade them in for short-term rewards.

One of the biggest shifts the connection economy has brought is that assets are no longer reserved for companies and organizations. Now that everyone has the ability to own a slice of the attention paid to media, now that everyone can build and nurture a network, assets are no longer off limits to people who work for a living.

Your choice: intentionally build and nurture your assets, or ignore them in the pursuit of the next thing...

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duminică, 7 aprilie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

EU Warns Portugal on Austerity Measures; Portugal Faces Fresh Spending Cuts; Second Bailout Coming Up
Portugal Considers Paying Workers in T-Bills to Circumvent Court Ruling that Austerity Measures are Unconstitutional
Netherlands, the Next Chip to Fall?

EU Warns Portugal on Austerity Measures; Portugal Faces Fresh Spending Cuts; Second Bailout Coming Up

Posted: 07 Apr 2013 06:12 PM PDT

As expected, Brussels rejected the Inane Plan "B" Measure to Pay Workers in T-Bills following a Portuguese court ruling that certain austerity measures are unconstitutional.

Reuters reports Portugal must stick to agreed budget targets to get loan extension.

And so Portugal faces fresh cuts to spending.

Portugal's prime minister says the government will have to cut spending on health, education and social security to keep the country's €78bn bailout programme on track.

Mr Passos Coelho said he had no alternative after the court decision but to make extra spending cuts that would have a significant impact on the welfare state. The budgets of state-owned companies would also be cut, he said but the premier ruled out more tax rises on top of record increases introduced in January.

"I have ordered ministries to cut expenditure to compensate for the effects of the court decision," he said.

Mr Passos Coelho also faces a difficult task to convince international lenders that new spending cuts will keep deficit-reduction plans on target.

The decision by Mr Passos to cut spending on the welfare state is likely to intensify opposition pressure on the government to resign, potentially opening the way to an early general election.

"We have to do everything possible to avoid a second bailout," the prime minister said.

Read that last line carefully. It is an admission Portugal is in need of a second bailout. One is coming up.

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

Portugal Considers Paying Workers in T-Bills to Circumvent Court Ruling that Austerity Measures are Unconstitutional

Posted: 07 Apr 2013 12:33 PM PDT

Last week, ahead of a ruling by the Portuguese Constitutional Court on whether or not the austerity measures it approved were legal, Portugal's PSI stock market took a dive.

PSI Stock Index

On March 25 the index was at 6023. It closed at 5637 on April 5 a decline of 6.4%

Court Rejects Budget

On April 5, Portugal constitutional court rejects budget articles

Portugal's Constitutional Court has ruled several key articles of the 2013 state budget unconstitutional.

It rejected four out of nine contested austerity measures from the budget.

It will deprive the state of some 1.5bn euros (£1.3bn) in savings the government had said were necessary to meet the terms of a eurozone bailout.

The court rejected a measure to scrap summer holiday bonuses for public sector workers and pensioners, as well as cuts to unemployment and sickness benefits.

Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho did not react to the decision immediately but called an extraordinary cabinet meeting for Saturday.

For most Portuguese workers, the annual tax rises are equivalent to more than a month's wages. The standard income tax rate is rising from 24.5% to 28.5%.

The savings are Portugal's toughest in living memory, aimed at meeting the terms of a 78bn-euro (£64bn) bailout.

Portugal Considers Paying Workers in T-Bills

One might think the Portuguese government would have gotten the message or at least the spirit of the message but one would be wrong.

The Wall Street Journal reports Portugal Mulls Paying Workers in T-Bills as a means to circumvent the court ruling.

The Portuguese government is considering a plan to pay public workers and pensioners one month of their salary in treasury bills rather than cash after a high court ruled out wage cuts, a person familiar with the situation said Sunday.

The Portuguese government warned Saturday that the court's decision will put into question the country's ability to fulfill its €78 billion ($101 billion) international bailout program.

Specifically, the court rejected plans to cut one of the 14 paychecks that public workers usually get each year and to slash 6.4% from pensions for retirees.

By paying one month of salary in T-bills to public workers and pensioners, the government would save an estimated €1.1 billion in expenses, narrowing the budget gap significantly

Plan "C" Coming Up

The idea that paying workers in T-Bills (debt) can fulfill austerity agreements is of course preposterous. I highly doubt Brussels will go along with this scheme, and if so Portugal will soon be back at the drawing board. Plan "C" is coming up.

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

Netherlands, the Next Chip to Fall?

Posted: 07 Apr 2013 07:36 AM PDT

Most attention lately has been on Cyprus, Spain, and Italy. Long-time troubles have been brewing in Portugal and I have an update coming up shortly.

First consider Underwater: The Netherlands Falls Prey to Economic Crisis.

The Netherlands, Berlin's most important ally in pushing for greater budgetary discipline in Europe, has fallen into an economic crisis itself. The once exemplary economy is suffering from huge debts and a burst real estate bubble, which has stalled growth and endangered jobs.

"Underwater" is a good description of the crisis in a country where large parts of the territory are below sea level. Ironically, the Netherlands, widely viewed as a model economy, is facing the kind of real estate crisis that has only affected the United States and Spain until now. Banks in the Netherlands have also pumped billions upon billions in loans into the private and commercial real estate market since the 1990s, without ensuring that borrowers had sufficient collateral.

Private homebuyers, for example, could easily find banks to finance more than 100 percent of a property's price. "You could readily obtain a loan for five times your annual salary," says Scheepens, "and all that without a cent of equity." This was only possible because property owners were able to fully deduct mortgage interest from their taxes.

Instead of paying off the loans, borrowers normally put some of the money into an investment fund, month after month, hoping for a profit. The money was to be used eventually to pay off the loan, at least in part. But it quickly became customary to expect the value of a given property to increase substantially. Many Dutch savers expected that the resale of their homes would generate enough money to pay off the loans, along with a healthy profit.

No nation in the euro zone is as deeply in debt as the Netherlands, where banks have a total of about €650 billion in mortgage loans on their books.

Consumer debt amounts to about 250 percent of available income. By comparison, in 2011 even the Spaniards only reached a debt ratio of 125 percent.

The Netherlands is still one of the most competitive countries in the European Union, but now that the real estate bubble has burst, it threatens to take down the entire economy with it. Unemployment is on the rise, consumption is down and growth has come to a standstill. Despite tough austerity measures, this year the government in The Hague will violate the EU deficit criterion, which forbid new borrowing of more than 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

It's a heavy burden, especially for Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who is also the new head of the Euro Group, and now finds himself in the unexpected role of being both a watchdog for the monetary union and a crisis candidate.

Even €46 billion in austerity measures are apparently not enough to remain within the EU debt limit. Although Dijsselbloem has announced another €4.3 billion in cuts in public service and healthcare, they will only take effect in 2014.

Today is a flight day. Will be back to more normal posting Sunday evening.

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

SEO Blog

Ways To Monetize Your Blogs

Posted: 07 Apr 2013 11:46 AM PDT

The advent of internet technology has opened various ways that people make money online. The most important thing required to ensure you get the money desired is to use the most effective strategy. One of the most popular money making method on the web is use of blogs. Blogging is...
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Seth's Blog : Degrees of freedom

Degrees of freedom

The more choices, the more freedom, the more freedom, the harder it is to decide what to do next.

When parachute jumping, at the key point, there are only two degrees of freedom: jump or not.

When marketing, of course, there are more degrees of freedom than in any other endeavor an organization does. It's almost never A or B. You need several alphabets just to list the available options.

If you don't view that as a good thing, it's probably worth doing something else instead.

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sâmbătă, 6 aprilie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Incentivized to Cheat

Posted: 06 Apr 2013 10:21 AM PDT

On Wednesday, Salon interviewed Jim Chanos, an early detector of Enron's fraudulent practices, on our dysfunctional banking system.

I met Jim at the Wine County Conference on Friday. Everyone who attended had a great time. Rather than excerpt the interview, I simply suggest you read We're Incentivized to Cheat.

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

Thoughts From "Wine Country"

Posted: 06 Apr 2013 10:04 AM PDT

The Wine County Conference was a big success. We had about 90 attendees counting speakers and guests. All of the speakers gave excellent talks and presentations.

Conference Speakers

John P. Hussman
Michael Pettis
James Chanos
John Mauldin
Chris Martenson
Mish

It was certainly a heroic effort for Michael Pettis to fly in from China for the event. People came from Sweden, Brazil, Canada, and of course China. So this was an international event.

Speaker interviews with Lauren Lyster will appear on Yahoo! Finance Daily Ticker starting next week. Those interview segments may not overlap the speeches.

Some speaker presentations, typically PowerPoint, will also be available in perhaps a week or so.

We may make this an annual event. If so, next year's proceeds will go to support autism. John Hussman has a son with severe autism.

I will have an exact accounting later, but the conference, the raffle, the Chase Facebook contest, and donations, and the Hussman Foundation's generous matching $100,000 grant all totaled brought in close to $500,000 for the Les Turner ALS Foundation.

You can still make a donation of any size. If you do, just specify "Mish Campaign" on the donation, and your donation will go to research.

Thanks to everyone who attended, bought raffle tickets, or made a donation. Special thanks to all the speakers and those who helped organize the conference.

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

luni, 8 aprilie 2013

Ten Letters

Your website on Google (this month for $1)

Seth's Blog : Where are your assets?

Where are your assets?

More Recent Articles

duminică, 7 aprilie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

SEO Blog

SEO Blog

Seth's Blog : Degrees of freedom

Degrees of freedom

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 6 aprilie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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luni, 8 aprilie 2013

More Recent Articles

duminică, 7 aprilie 2013

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 6 aprilie 2013

Pagini

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Arhivă blog

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