Central Perk

luni, 7 octombrie 2013

Mobile Strategy for Small Businesses

Posted: 06 Oct 2013 04:15 PM PDT

Note: This post is based on a presentation I recently gave at BrightonSEO. In writing up the blog post, I've expanded on some of the points and included more statistics. If you're interested in viewing the presentation slides, I've embedded the deck at the end of the post.

-------

Mobile is huge.

I don't think any of us would dispute this, but in case you're not convinced, here's a fun fact:

In 2012, the global Internet usage from mobile devices was 12x the amount of data that was used for the entire internet in the year 2000.

A few more stats:

25% of UK consumers have made a purchase using their mobile device
69% of tablet owners make a purchase on their device every month
77% of smartphone users have researched a product or service on their phone, with about half then purchasing the item in-store
and mobile accounts for 31% of site traffic on average in the UK

I think everyone can agree that businesses need to be mobile-friendly.

The problem

The problem is that people are doing it wrong. Even big brands are making very basic mistakes. For example:

Forbes inflicts an interstitial pop-up ad every time someone visits its site (although to be fair, they do this to desktop users as well, so they're just doing it wrong all around).

The New York Times has a mobile site, but fails to automatically redirect its mobile visitors, forcing you to opt in:

Starbucks took the trouble to design a beautiful responsive website, with lovely big call-to-action buttons:

But when viewed on a smartphone, the CTA disappears below endless reviews (which on the desktop version are collapsed on load):

Worse still, some companies haven't bothered to do anything. Including Apple.

In fact, only 70% of the top 20 UK retailers even have a mobile-friendly website. And when it seems that even the biggest brands are struggling, how can a small business compete?

Small businesses, unsurprisingly, are even less likely to have a mobile-friendly web presence.

Only 60% of small businesses even have a website, and of those that do, only half (so roughly 30% of all small businesses) are mobile-friendly.

Why so few?

Well, I believe there are two reasons:

1) They don't see the value.

But it's easy enough to show the value of mobile marketing and a mobile-friendly web presence. You only have to look at the stats I mentioned earlier, and many, many more which have similar messages. For instance, that 84% of small businesses saw an increase in new business due to mobile marketing efforts.

So the second reason seems more likely:

2) They do see the value, but they don't know where to start.

That's where I come in. In this post, I will cover the three main phases of getting started with mobile:

Creating a mobile-friendly website (or making your existing site mobile-friendly)
Search and discovery: making it easy for mobile users to find you
Reaching your customers where they are so they don't even need to be actively looking

Let's get started.

Phase 1: mobile-friendly website

Your website is the most basic element of your online presence. It's where your customers primarily interact with you. And so it's crucial to make it accessible to all your visitors, not just desktop users.

Quick Stat: 61% of mobile users who land on a non-mobile-friendly site will leave and go to a competitor's site.

There are three main approaches you can take to creating a mobile-friendly website.

Responsive design: keeps a single URL, and all the content/HTML, and simply uses different CSS to rearrange elements on a page to fit different screen sizes.
Dynamic serving (also known asadaptive design or RESS): keeps a single URL, but serves different content (HTML) based on the visitor's user agent.
Separate mobile site (e.g.m.domain.comor www.domain.com/m): a completely separate site, with different URLs.

None of these approaches is always the best, and your decision should be based on three things: your goals, your technical capabilities, and your users' needs.

If you want more guidance on how to choose an approach, you can use the flowchart I created with Kristina Kledzik for Distilled's best practice guide Building Your Mobile-Friendly Website, or check out Aleyda Solis's post on State of Search, and also her resources page.

Each business is different, and you need to carefully consider your options when making this decision.

However, for a small business with a small website (and a small budget), I'd usually recommend using a responsive template with a CMS like WordPress.

This doesn't have to break the bank; you can get all of these themes for under $100:

Designfolio (from PressCoders): free, or $79 with support licence
Standard: $49 or $99 with support licence
Responsive (from CyberChimps): free

For more options, check out these premium WordPress theme providers:

Elegant Themes: ~$40/year with full support.
WooThemes: free-$70.

And if you don't want to use WordPress, check out:

SquareSpace: from $8/month(for the most basic service).
Wix: around $10/month.

If this still sounds too expensive, then start saving now; it is easily worth this cost. In the meantime, if you do nothing else, make sure you have a Facebook and Google+ page for your business, because they're mobile-friendly already.

There's one final point to remember:

A mobile-friendly website is NOT a strategy. It's just a starting point. It means you're ready for...

Phase 2: search and discovery

At this stage, you've got a mobile-friendly website, and you want to make sure that people find it. There are three areas/tactics to focus on for this phase:

Mobile SEO
Local search
Social media

Mobile SEO

If you have a responsive design, mobile SEO is easy; you don't have to do anything extra.

That's because the HTML stays the same regardless of what type of device is used.

If you're using dynamic serving, you don't need to do too much; just make sure you've set a Vary HTTP - User Agent header. This will indicate to Google that you serve different content based on a visitor's user agent.

If you have a separate mobile site with different URLs to your desktop site, it's a bit more involved (you're basically doing SEO for another site, as well as indicating to Google that it'sa mobile version and not just duplicate content). I wrote another post here on Moz all about how to optimize a separate mobile site.

Local search

Once you've optimized your mobile site, it's time to think about other types of search results.

If your business has a physical location and/or a location-based service area (for example, a plumber who goes to customers' houses would have a 'service area' which only covers a certain geographical radius), you should be thinking about local search.

Local search is valuable for desktop results, and even more important on a small mobile device because of the very limited screen real estate. You can see highlighted in this screenshot how far below the fold the first non-local result appears:

There are several factors for local search rankings, and I don't have space to delve in too deeply here, but the rapid-fire overview is:

On-page optimization for location (using location-based keywords in your on-page content)
Local business directory listings: Google+ Local is the big one here, but there are several others, including Yahoo! Local, Bing Local, Yelp, Merchant Circle, Angieâ€™s List, Judyâ€™s Book, and Kudzu
- Note: Google+ Local isn't the same as Google+ (yet!): You should have a Google+ Local page and a Google+ profile page which you can then merge
Local link-building: seeking links from local sites (e.g. local news sites, local government sites, local blogs, etc.)
"NAP" citations: like links for local SEO. NAP simply refers to anywhere on the web where your business is mentioned with its Name, Address, and Phone Number. The key with these is consistency; this signals that they all refer to the same business.
- Protip: use Whitespark's Local Citation Finder tool (from $20/month)
images: of your storefront/store interior and your products. By including these images in your Google+ Local profile, they can show up in the Google Maps search results.
Structured data:
- Schema.org: /Place and /LocalBusiness
- hCard markup
- KML file for GoogleMaps
Social profiles:
- Google+
- Facebook
Reviews and recommendations: the most important here are Yelp and Google+ Local. Others include TripAdvisor, Yahoo! Local, Foursquare, and Zagat for restaurants

For a great local SEO resource, check out David Mihm's report on Local Search Ranking Factors 2013. He provides a lot more detail about the factors that go into local rankings. I also wrote a post over on the Distilled blog about optimizing for mobile-local search.

Does it work?

Case Study:

Coffee Corner, a coffee shop in Headcorn, UK, worked with agency Target Local to implement a responsive site and local search optimization. Gareth Brown, the agency's founder, said,

We managed to get them to the top of page 1 within 6 weeks, which took their search traffic from 100 to just under 300 visitors per month. ...They're also seeing visitors coming from their Yelp profile.

Now, 300 visitors/month may not sound like a lot...but effectively, their monthly traffic tripled. That's a pretty good result!

Social media

Now, I've mentioned social media already, as a temporary stopgap for a mobile website and as a factor for local search. But it's also a marketing channel in its own right. And while it's not an exclusively mobile platform, 80% of people who access Facebook daily do so on a mobile device. Twitter has a similar percentage of daily mobile users.

So social media is a great way for mobile users to find and interact with you, if you do it right.

First, remember: It's about conversation, not broadcast. A small business doing this really well on Twitter is The Dolphin Pub.

Second, use the "dinner party test:" If you wouldn't say it to someone you met at a dinner party, don't say it on social media.

Finally, if you're worried about not knowing what to say, you can make a content plan and an editorial calendar for your social accounts, just like you do for blogging (and you can promote your blog posts via social media!).

Now, all of those tips are just as useful for social media users on desktop as for those on mobile, so here's a mobile-specific tip:

Make sure that the content you share via social media is mobile-friendly. If four out of five people access it on a mobile device and it doesn't show up properly, or crashes their browser, they probably won't share it. Make it look amazing for mobile visitors!

So, now you've got a mobile-friendly website, and you've made it easy for mobile users to find you.

Now what?

Now the fun part.

Phase 3: reaching your customers where they are

In this phase, you can reach out to your customers where they are, instead of waiting for them to come to you.

I'm going to look now at a few ways you can bypass the search process altogether:

Apps
Exclusive mobile content
Email marketing

Apps

Do you need an app? ...probably not. But:

if your business model relies on frequent return visits, it may be worth investing in one. This is because an app sits on the home screen of a mobile device, and therefore enables the user to access it directly without using search engines or needing to type in a URL.

There are 2 types of app:

Native app (iOS, Android, etc)
Web app (HTML5 - effectively a website skinned to look like an app and be accessible from the home screen)

As you can see, there are pros and cons to each. Generally speaking, a native app provides a more tailored, faster experience but is more expensive both to develop and to maintain. A web app is cheaper and easier to maintain, but also less customized to the individual operating system and usually has little or no support available via app stores.

An app is not for everyone, and it's also worth noting here that the Apple app store currently has around 775,000 apps listed. So even with app store support, it's hard to get noticed unless it's a really good product.

But if you think this is something that could work for your business model, here are some fairly inexpensive tools and services to help you build an app:

Bizness Apps: from $59/month (native apps)
ViziApps: starts from Â£29/month (web app) or Â£99/month for (native app)
AppMakr: free native Android app (with ads), or for $9/month native iPhone and Android apps (no ads).
- Premium option: $99 one-time fee for white-label version.
RedFoundry: contact for a quote

Apps can also come in handy for producing content,

Exclusive mobile content

This one's a bit tricky to describe, because really it could be anything. Be creative with it!

Let's imagine a coffee shop that has a loyalty program with a stamp card: buy nine coffees, get the 10th free.

They could create a loyalty app, offering people virtual "stamps" on their mobiles, instead of needing to cart around a paper loyalty card. Then, when people with the loyalty app were nearby, the coffee shop could use geotargeting to send push notifications with a special offer: "We noticed you're nearby! Come in for a coffee and get an extra stamp."

They could also provide exclusive offers more generally to their mobile visitors; for example, "thanks for using our app! To say thank you, here's a code for 20% off your next coffee."

A great real-world example of good exclusive mobile content is Chase Bank, which allows mobile users to take a photo of a check with their smartphone and deposit it into their account electronically. What's great about this example is that it uses mobile device-specific functionalityâ€"in this case, the camera on a smartphone.

If you're not sure you need an app, there's also an easy hack for providing exclusive content to mobile customers: Use check-in and coupon services like Foursquare, Facebook, and Groupon.

Using the example of our coffee shop again: If they wanted to go this route instead of creating an app, they could incentivize checking in with special discounts and offers. "Check in at our coffee shop on Foursquare, and next time we see you we'll give you 10% off your order!"

The added benefit of this approach is that it gives your business online visibility and social proof, as opposed to an app, which is effectively a "walled garden."

Bonus tip: This one's not strictly "mobile-only," but social media competitions are another great way to reach a mobile audience since (as we've seen) the majority of regular social network users access these networks via mobile devices.

Email marketing

This one's pretty basic.

If you do email marketing, make sure you're using mobile-friendly email templates.

79% of smartphone owners use their smartphone for reading email. This is a higher percentage than those who use their phone to make phone calls. Stop and think about that for a minute.

Your emails need to be mobile-friendly.

Here are a couple of fairly inexpensive email providers with mobile-friendly templates:

MailChimp: from ~$10/month
Campaign Monitor: from $10/month or $5/campaign

If you don't want to use their full service, sign up anyway. You can use them to build your email and then export the HTML to your preferred provider (of course, if that provider already has mobile-friendly templates, so much the better!).

Finally, a bonus tip: provide in-store wifi and you can collect customer data such as email addresses, or (quick!) survey answers.

This isn't as intimidating to set up as it sounds.

MyPlaceConnect in the UK (mostly) and LessNetworks in the US are two providers that I've come across who offer this service to small businesses.

Wrap up

Now, whether or not you decide to do ALL these things, there are a few important things to remember:

Mobile is HUGE, and you need a mobile strategy.

So start with a mobile-friendly website, and build up from there. It's easier than you think!

Here's the slide deck from the BrightonSEO presentation:

Do you own or work with a small business? Got any mobile tips, tactics, or resources to add to the list?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

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!

Seth's Blog : The Show Me State (of the art)

The Show Me State (of the art)

I could ask you to bear with me through this urgent and important post, but I'm not optimistic that many people will.

The punchline matters more than it ever has before.

"Show me what this is about before I commit to it."

And the follow up: "Now that I know what it's about, I don't need to commit."

It started with the coming attractions for upcoming movies. By packing more and more of the punchline into the TV commercial or the theater preview, producers felt like they were satisfying the needs of the audience to know what they were going to see before they bought their ticket. Instead, they trained us to be satisfied by merely watching the attractions. No need to see the movie, you've already seen the best part.

SportsCenter piled on by showing fans a supercut of every great or heroic play of the weekend--a sports fix without investing the time or living through the drama of the game itself.

Record albums used to require not only listening to the entire side (no fast forward on an LP) but actually getting up and flipping it over. The radio wasn't going to play anything but the A side of the single, so if you liked an artist, you surrendered yourself to 45 minutes of her journey, the way she had it in mind.

A performance artist was on the local public radio station the other day. He didn't want to talk about the specifics of his show, because giving away the tactics was clearly going to lessen the impact of his work. No matter. The host revealed one surprise after another, outlining the entire show, because, after all, that's his job--to tell us what we're going to see so we don't have to see it ourselves.

We don't want to organize the course or go to the lecture or read the book until we know precisely what it's going to be about.

College wasn't like this. You committed to four years, you moved somewhere, and then you saw the curriculum. That's part of why it works. A huge part.

We hesitate to surrender our commitment so easily today. It's easier to read the 140 character summary or see the highlights or read the live blog, so we can check the box and then move on.

But move on to where?

To another box to be checked? We become like the tester in the ice cream factory, surrounded by thousands of flavors, but savoring none of them.

We each have a fixed amount of time. One thing you can do is invest it in knowing the summary of what 23 people said. The other thing you can do is to commit to living and breathing and learning from one of those people. Perhaps you will get more by being exposed more deeply to fewer.

One reason an audiobook can change your life is that you can't skip ahead. And the other reason is that you might listen to it five or six times, at the pace of the reader, not at your pace.

My full-day live seminars have impact on people partly because I don't announce the specific agenda or the talking points in advance. It's live and it's alive. I have no certainty what's about to happen, and neither do the others in the room. A morphing, changing commitment by all involved, one that grows over time.

Yes, I get that there's never again going to be a need to buy an album or to listen to all the songs in order, that you can get the quick summary of any book you're expected to have read, that your time is so valuable that perhaps the only economic choice is to live a Cliffs Notes version of your life.

[Oh, that's right, Cliffs Notes' sales are way down because they're too long.]

In fact, you could do that, but when you do, you've surrendered to efficiency and lost some life, some surprise and a lot of growth.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 6 octombrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Reader Question on Robots: What are People Supposed To Do For Their Livelihoods?

Posted: 06 Oct 2013 07:27 PM PDT

In response to my post France Vows to "Save the Bookstores", Fixes Price of Books, Bans Free Shipping by Amazon, reader David writes ...

Hello Mish,

I enjoy your columns, and agree with most of your economic analyses, but I do have a question about this morning's entry regarding France and bookstores: namely, what are people supposed to do for their livelihoods if nearly everything is going to be done by computer and robotics?

This is the issue that Hollande, in his outdated, ham-fisted way--is getting at, and for the record, I don't have the answer, either. The economy needs middle class consumers, but they in turn need money, which they can't earn without quality jobs. In the past, technological development led to more businesses being created than destroyed. The same was true for quality jobs. I believe the experience of the last five years, however, has demonstrated that this linkage is impaired, if not completely broken.

Businesses and quality jobs - livelihoods - constitute the economic foundation upon which a community rests. Socialist remedies to the problem posed by hyper-automation will fail (as have socialist agendas to any problem), but raising the issue does not make one a Luddite.

David

Plight of Bookstore Owners

First let's discuss the plight of bookstore owners. Is it really a bad thing if they go out of business?

For numerous reasons (unless you are a bookstore owner), it's a good thing, just as is was when buggy-whip manufacturers went out of business as autos replaced horses.

For every job lost by small bookstores, additional jobs are created at Amazon and online bookstores. Is the ratio 1-1? Probably not, but it does not matter.

The easily seen (alleged problem) is bookstores go out of business. The unseen benefit is people have more money to spend on other things that they used to spend on books.

Perhaps people take in an extra movie, go out to lunch one more time, pay down debts, or simply save the money for a "rainy day".

All things considered, there is a huge overall economic benefit of lower prices. Yet the Fed, the unions, Keynesian clowns, banks, and various bureaucrats want prices to go up.

Quality Jobs

Let's define a "quality job" as a job that provides sufficient income for standards of living to go up over time.

Note that standards of living go up when prices go down (assuming pay stays constant). Standards of living decline with price inflation, unless wages rise more than inflation.

And that is the crux of the problem.

As I have stated countless times, the problem is not low wages, the problem is rising prices.

And we would have falling prices were it not for the inflationary policies of the Fed (central bankers in general).

Yet, misguided fools in the state of Washington are currently pushing for a $15 minimum wage. More people will lose than gain by such a move, because prices will rise to make up the difference.

Where Will The Jobs Come From?

People ask me all the time: where will the quality jobs come from? Unfortunately, I don't know, nor does anyone else. But just because no one knows, does not imply that no jobs are coming.

One could have asked the same question right before the railroad boom-bust, right before the great depression, right before the internet boom-bust, and right before the housing boom-bust.

So here we are. Unless it's different this time, there will be another advance of some kind that is highly likely to create jobs. I cannot say what or when.

In the meantime, government and Fed policies seriously exacerbate the problem. Higher minimum wages, together with cheap money at low interest rates, and coupled with increased business costs of Obamacare all encourage businesses to shed workers as fast as they can.

Further Reading

For further inflation reading and who benefits from it, please see ...

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

Boehner on Shutdown: "This Isn't Some Damn Game"; Several Tea Party Republicans Cave-In

Posted: 06 Oct 2013 10:18 AM PDT

Here is an amusing Bloomberg TV video of House Speaker John Boehner complaining about the negotiation process with President Obama.

Link if video does not play: 'This Isn't Some Damn Game'

Video Transcript

When we have a crisis like we are in the middle of this week, the American people expect their leaders to sit down and try and resolve their difference. I was at the WhiteHouse the other night and listened to the president some 20 times explain to me why he isn't going to negotiate.

I sat there and listened to the majority leader in the United States Senate describe to me that he is not going to talk to me until we surrender. And then this morning, I get the Wall Street Journal out and it says we don't care how long this lasts because we're winning.

This isn't some damn game.

The American people don't want their government shut down and neither do I. All we're asking for is to sit down and have a discussion and to bring fairness, reopen the government, and bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare. It's as simple as that. But it all has to begin with a simple discussion.

Translation

This is some damn game, and I am frustrated as hell to be losing it.

Several Tea Party Republicans Cave-In

In spite of Boehner's frustrated bluff in the video above, he has already signaled the game is over. See Boehner Prepared to Cave-In to Obama; Reflections on the Waiting Game

And not only is Boehner prepared to cave, several tea party Republicans are prepared to concede as well. Nonetheless, Boehner insists he does not have the votes.

Bloomberg reports Some Tea Party-Backed Lawmakers Yield in Obamacare Fight.

The first cracks are appearing in the Tea Party's push to dismantle the nation's health law as three House lawmakers with ties to the movement said they'd back a U.S. spending bill that doesn't center on Obamacare.

Republican Representatives Blake Farenthold of Texas, Doug Lamborn of Colorado and Dennis Ross of Florida, all of whom identify with the Tea Party, said they'd back an agreement to end the government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling if it included major revisions to U.S. tax law, significant changes to Medicare and Social Security and other policy shifts.

Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner said he doesn't have the votes to pass an increase to the debt ceiling without packaging it with other provisions. There isn't enough support to pass a "clean debt limit" provision, Boehner said in an interview on ABC's "This Week" program today.

"We've tried a lot of things and used just about every arrow in our quiver against Obamacare," Lamborn, 59, said yesterday. "It has not been successful, so I think we do have to move on to the larger issues of the debt ceiling and the overall budget."

Lamborn said he would back a debt-limit increase if the agreement included an equal amount of spending cuts. He said he's also seeking a deal that includes instructions for major tax-code revisions.

"I recognize the writing on the wall," he said.

Farenthold, 51, was a conservative radio talk-show host when he won election in 2010, defeating 28-year incumbent Democrat Solomon Ortiz.

The Obamacare battle, he said, was for "another day."

"It will collapse under its own weight, especially when the young people -- who are going to be under the individual mandate -- start screaming at what they're having to pay for," he said.

Position Shift

Ross, ranked among the House's most conservative members by both the Club for Growth and the American Conservative Union, said he shifted his position because the shutdown hasn't resulted in changes to the Affordable Care Act. The shutdown also could hurt the party, he said.

"We've lost the CR battle," Ross, referring to the continuing resolution to authorize government spending, said in an interview. "We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit."

Ross, 53, is pushing for other changes, such as basing Medicare premiums on income and switching to a formula that may make Social Security beneficiaries' cost-of-living increases rise more slowly. Those would be "major reforms" that should win Republican votes.

"I'm not questioning my leadership," Ross said. "I'm just suggesting that we need to take stock of where we've come and realize what it's going to take for where we want to go," he said, adding that he still favors changing the health-care law.

Ross Translated

I'm questioning my leadership on this issue, because this game is over.

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

Seth's Blog : Looking a gift card in the mouth

Looking a gift card in the mouth

"You qualified."

I'd just purchased $102 worth of stuff at the sporting goods store, and the clerk happily handed me my ten dollar gift card. What a nice surprise. I turned around to the stuff next to the checkout, searching for a $6 item I could now purchase, for free.

"Oh, sorry, you can't use it today. It becomes valid tomorrow."

Not only that, but I noted that it expires in four months.

Not so much of a gift. A manipulation. I better hurry back, the thinking goes, or that thing of value in my wallet will disappear.

Just as insightful is the recent promotion that they did at Staples. Pay $15 to buy the ability to save 10% on most things in the store (not online) for the next sixty days. It turns out that most people spend about $50 on a visit, which means that part of the card pays for itself in that first visit. But, and it's a big but, you've now purchased something that feels like a debt, one that you can only profit from if you head back, and soon.

These, of course, are not gift cards at all. They are motivational cards. And they work.

People are not machines, and purchasing just about anything is as much about emotion and the story we tell ourselves as it is about economic calculation. Charging you for the chance to save money one day is one more step in a dance about feelings.

• Email to a friend •

sâmbătă, 5 octombrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pragmatic Look at the Debt Ceiling Debate; Who Broke Washington?

Posted: 05 Oct 2013 11:20 AM PDT

My best friend in high school, David Wise, wrote an interesting OpEd for the Baltimore Sun two days ago. I do not agree with all of it, but he does hit the nail on the head of the critical issue as to who is to blame for the default impasse.

Wise says Obama must not allow a default.

I happen to think that a default would not be catastrophic. However, that debate is moot because the odds of a default are a million-to-one, if not higher. So let's get down to the critical paragraph.

Congress has the power of the purse and the power to tax under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. If Congress authorizes too much spending or permits inadequate revenue generation, it hardly makes sense that it can override the results of the exercise of these Constitutional powers by a mere statute, any more than a person who runs up credit cards purchases could try to avoid responsibility for debts by telling the credit card company that the amount exceeded some artificial total amount of debt that he has vowed not to exceed. Alan Greenspan once said in an interview: "Why do we have a debt limit in the first place? We appropriate funds, we have tax law, and one reasonably adept at arithmetic can calculate what the debt change is going to be."

Ultimate Irony

Please note the irony. Congress has full and complete constitutional power to enact spending, and it does that "too well".

Congress then attempts to enforce a ceiling on the national debt (debt that is 100% caused by Congressional overspending).

Obamacare vs. the Debt Ceiling

Obamacare is a bad bill, and I welcome attempts to modify or delay it, but given that Boehner is Prepared to Cave-In to Obama, and given that Obama is not going to sign any bill he does not like, political grandstanding is going to do nothing except make Republicans look foolish.

Tax Cuts and the Deficit

One can praise Republicans for cutting taxes. But one cannot praise Republicans for failing to cut expenses at the same time.

Wise writes ...

In 2001 the Republicans took control of the White House and both houses of Congress. At that time the U.S. budget was in surplus and the entire national debt was projected to be paid off. The Republicans proceeded to run eight straight deficits — gutting revenue collection while increasing spending — on the way to generating the first trillion-dollar budget deficit under President George W. Bush and leading the economy into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression — all factors with which the U.S. economy is still contending.

Who Broke Washington?

It is debatable whether the U.S. budget was really in a surplus state when Bush took office. I suggest the surplus was an accounting gimmick that ignored unfunded liabilities.

Regardless, the first trillion dollar deficit did indeed occur on George Bush's watch.

And Bush wasted trillions of dollars on military spending and wars. The country is still paying the price for Bush's war-mongering stupidity.

We also pay the price for a preposterous Medicare bill passed under president Bush that added $500 billion in debt to the books. And the way that law was passed offers insight into what is truly wrong with Congress.

"The Hammer"

Please consider Who Broke Washington? 'The Hammer' Checked Every Sleazy Box

Zero-sum gain: DeLay represents a my-way-or-the-highway mind-set that is so common and corrosive in politics today. Nicknamed "The Hammer," he nurtured a reputation for enforcing party discipline and retribution against anybody who defied George W. Bush's White House. He was known to threaten disloyal Republican lawmakers: Cross him and he'd find and support GOP primary foes. To win, there seemed to be no lever that DeLay wouldn't pull. Even bribery. The House ethics committee unanimously admonished DeLay in 2004 because he "offered to endorse Representative [Nick] Smith's son in exchange for Representative Smith's vote in favor of the Medicare bill."

Runaway entitlements: That Medicare bill extended prescription drug coverage, adding more than $500 billion to the nation's debt-ridden books. President Bush thought that was a small price to pay for a reelection issue. The administration suppressed a report on the costs, an act the Government Accounting Office later called illegal. When the House voted on the bill, Democrats seemed to have defeated it after the 15-minute voting period. But DeLay froze the legislative clock for three hours while his team strong-armed lawmakers, an extraordinary breach of protocol.

Both Parties to Blame

The above article started off with "Tom DeLay didn't break Washington, but he's a living symbol of what broke it."

And that is precisely correct. Yet, Republicans blame everything on Obama and Democrats blame everything on Bush.

If you expect partisan politics out of me, you expect the wrong thing.

I suggest Obama and Bush are among the worst presidents in history. I also suggest the congressional approval rating of 19% is that low for a reason: Spending is out of control, and both political parties are to blame.

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