Central Perk

miercuri, 26 martie 2014

Pandas!

Featured

It's the last day of First Lady Michelle Obama's trip to China, and she couldn't leave without one final stop: the Chengdu Panda Base.

"Panda Diplomacy" dates back to the 7th century, and is part of how China reaches out to other nations -- as goodwill offerings, China has given pandas to countries like the United States, France, and Japan.

Go behind the scenes of the First Lady's panda-filled day, and catch up on the whole trip:

The Science of Great Digital Content Ideas

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 04:13 PM PDT

Posted by SimonPenson

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."
â€" John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck has a point. Outside of being one of America's most celebrated authors he was also a man that understood the life or death importance of ideas in the context of content.

As a lowly magazine journalist I remember routinely being told that "ideas are the lifeblood of content strategy" and that lesson has lived with me ever since.

It's why I have spent thousands of hours since the early 2000s iterating my own process to maximize the output from time spent working on creating them.

Creativity as a process

It seems strange, then, to suggest that the process of creating brilliant ideas consistently should be just that: a "process." After all, isn't creativity best performed in an environment free from constraint and boundaries? There is evidence to suggest that is the case, but in practice structure ensures that those ideas are consistently award-winning and hit-you-between-the-eyes awesome.

But why is this even important in the first place? I'm sure I don't have to convince you, as a learned reader of this blog, that content strategy is now the heartland of any effective digital strategy. Content, after all, is what has been creating audiences for thousands of years, and that will not change anytime soon.

In fact, it's perhaps even more important than you are led to believe, and nobody puts it better than Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang when he said:

"I think that it's always possible to have a great company if you have great ideas."

Great ideas permeate every level of an organization, and so while this is focused squarely on digital content ideation, a similarly structured approach will produce equally consistent results across the board. And given that the biological process behind creating ideas (more on this later) is a real process our best bet is to mimic that as closely as possible in the physical world.

The problem with ideas

By their very nature ideas are subjective. Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, and so without any kind of structure, the ones that make it onto the final to-do list will often come from one or two that "shout loudest" in any open brainstorm scenario.

Before we even get into the actual structure, then, it is worth considering for a moment how you should set up the actual environment in which you plan to execute your ideation strategy.

Before you start

Deciding how often you want, or need, to create new ideas is the first step in the process, and this will be different for every business. If you are agency-side like us at Zazzle Media then the answer will be multiple times per month, but in house it really depends on how "big" your content ambitions are and an understanding of your audience in terms of what they want and expect you to create.

If you are working in-house at a large brand, then with multiple blog and social channels as well as work "off page" around digital PR, the answer may be once or twice per month. If you only have a single blog and do a "bit in social," once every quarter may suffice.

How you answer this comes back to what you know about those you are writing for and also what resources you have to create the content.

The environment

The "where" of content ideation is critical to the success of the process. Working in the same room that is cognitively associated with mundane tasks can inhibit key synapses, or brain connections. What your brain is looking for, in simple terms, is to "loosen up."

This is because our brains look for new experiences and stimulation and will work at their most creative when the three main areas known to be involved in idea creation are at their most relaxed. They are:

The executive attention network

This is the part of the brain used when you are really thinking hard, such as in a conference or client meeting, where concentration is critical. It links to memory, so you "store" those ideas for later and block distractions, allowing you to focus more intently.

The imagination network

This area of the brain is able to process the information and break it down, mixing it with past, present, and future scenarios to create possible new ideas.

The salience network

This monitors what is happening around you and passes the information to the appropriate area of the brain. It is the "switch," if you like.

New surroundings help stimulate all of these key areas, and if you can get those participating in a meeting to go for a walk first, then you'll also tick another key "creativity box" in releasing endorphins, which will serve to boost mental capacity even further.

To this end, we will often choose to run content meetings in the cafÃ© within our offices, at a local bar/pub, or even outside (if the UK weather allows!).

The brainstorm

The key to great content strategy, of course, is variation. I have written previously about how you can check content flow, and it's really important that you first understand the importance, and second are aware of how well you are performing against this critical content metric.

It's important because of the way humans are built. For decades print publishersâ€"especially in the world of magazinesâ€"have worked on improving the "flow" of their titles to ensure that avid readers keep coming back for more.

You can easily reverse engineer this and check it for yourself to see what I mean, but take my word for it; the more you are able to vary the type of content you produce, the better your return visitor stats will look and the larger your audience will grow.

This means that your brainstorm needs to be built to extract as many different ideas as possible, giving you the ammunition necessary to create such a strategy.

Here's how. The chart below may look relatively simple, but it is the result of 12 years of trial and error, testing, blood, sweat, and tears to define the most effective roadmap for eking out the right mix of content, irrespective of niche.

The version you see here is a static version of the animated process you can play with by clicking on the image or right here (a version on our own site, which then links through to the various tools we use to make the process as effective as possible).

The idea is that you split each brainstorm into eight constituent parts. Let's run through each stage in turn nowâ€¦

1. The brief overall strategy

A critical component of any content process is to ensure there is a clear, shared understanding of the overall aim or strategy of the campaign. Like a company vision statement, it should permeate every level of the business and everyone working on the campaign should be able to recite personas and align everything to the overall aim of the work they are doing.

Sounds simple, but the number of times we see businesses without this kind of alignment has made this a very important first-port-of-call in the process.

It is a relatively easy entry into the overall ideation process and requires a simple conversation and initial centering of all ideas around the objective.

For instance, that may be "to grow an audience of 30-40-year-old white-collar workers who are into skiing." Centering all ideation on that will keep ideas focused and in line with overall objectives.

An example idea: A series of image-based "how to" guides covering ski techniques (this site does a good job of this), distributed via targeted social amplification to our target demographic.

2. Data/personas

This then ties into a deeper conversation around what key data we have, or can create, to improve existing or "reach" audience insight.

A previous post of mine on the Moz Blog detailed a way in which we leverage data from social to help inform audience understanding, and often we will run this process beforehand to give us an initial swathe of audience profiling data.

This is also where existing persona detail will be shared so we can ensure that we are coming up with ideas fit for the different "types" of audience being targeted.

A 35-year-old married father of two working in insurance will be intrigued by very different content than a 60-year-old widower looking to invest cautiously for retirement when they are considering financial services businesses, for instance.

This is where we create those audience-centric ideas, and this section can often be one with the greatest depth.

Based on insight into our skiing business example, we may discover that there is a high correlation between our audience and those that also like surfing. If that is the case, an example idea may be a list-based feature looking at X ways in which surfing techniques can help you become a better skier.

3. Long-tail opportunity

Long tail is an increasingly major opportunity, especially for those leading their digital marketing charge with content creation. Google's Hummingbird update is also designed to better surface more precise answers to queries, and that should mean more traffic for what traditionally we had traditionally known as the long tail.

Creating content that is based squarely on existing search volume as opposed to simply guessing and hoping it may attract visits is a critical component of any strategy.

The research for this can be carried out beforehand, but often we find it more useful to run tools such as Ubersuggest and Grepwords during the session to make it inclusive and more interesting. More people suggesting input phrases can also mean you end up with a wider selection of potential terms to run through.

The idea then is to prioritize those phrases either on potential search volume or 'fit' with the mix of the overall content plan.

Here is a snippet of what the former tool has surfaced for our skiing example; clearly there is opportunity to utilize this information in the formation of a daily article creation strategy:

4. Semantic phrases

The marketing world is awash with talk of entity search and semantic association. For those that haven't the time or inclination to go away and read awesome guides on this area by the likes of Aaron Bradley or Moz's own Matthew Brown, in simple terms it is the concept of organizing information by understanding individual "things" (entities) and their relationships with other "things," without there already being an explicit link between them.

Semantic search understands those relationships, and therefore (in theory) the implicit part of any query, and can thus deliver a richer list of results.

Understanding what other phrases, or words, may be semantically linked can be useful in ensuring that you are "whole-of-market" going forwards, and can expand laterally into relevant content areas.

Few tools really help with this at present, well but one we do use is LSI Keywords, which provides a very simple way of exporting other similar or relevant keywords. Google's own database of entities, Freebase, is also quite useful, and its search functionality will list other associated entries, giving you a simple map of subjects you could still cover while staying relevant. If you type the word into the top search bar, you are presented with a list of themes relevant to the topic:

You can further expand the list by clicking on the "view more" link at the bottom of the drop-down. This list can give you an amazing framework from which you can work on wider topic areas.

5. Trending content

One of the easiest ways to capture large amounts of new visitor traffic is to jump on existing conversations around trending content themes.

Again, it can pay to get everyone involved in the brainstorm to spend five minutes before the meeting researching news-related blogs, news sites, and social channels for ideas to expedite the process, but it is not impossible to do this live, either. Google Trends, Social listening tools, Fresh Web Explorer, and other tools can be great to get the latest angles on relevant themes.

These will obviously be time-sensitive, so it is important that you brainstorm for this content on a regular basis and leave placeholders within your content calendar for what you find. So, for instance, once a week (say every Wednesday) you'll enter [news-led article], and the subject matter will be decided based upon the maximum possible impact.

The idea, also, is that you move the debate forward. Don't simply rewrite what has already been said. Look for exclusive, interesting angles to throw in the mix.

For instance, if I use Social Mention to look at the latest skiing chatter, I soon discover that there is some cool content being shared via Facebook (use the search filtering options in the left column to drill down to specific platforms, sort by sentiment, and look for top users, etc.). Perhaps you can come up with Part Two to the epic "Star Wars Meets The Winter Olympics?"

6. Evergreen content

And then we come to one of the most important areas of all: evergreen content. Why is it so important? Quite simply, it's the content you will put the most effort into perfecting, that will attract the most traffic, and that will have the most longevity.

It is imperative that you really understand the core concerns, frustrations and gaps in knowledge your audience has so you can fill those gaps in great detail and build trust, association, and engagement with your brand.

So, how do you go about working out what kind of content you should be producing here? The answer lies in keyword analysis, competitor analysis and audience data insight once again.

Tools like Searchmetrics can also help here; its long-tail opportunity tool can help you see what some of the most successful sites rank for alongside their traffic volumes and value. This makes finding the opportunities you don't have and ranking them in order of priority that much easier. Sort by either volume or opportunity, and you have a list of content creation to-dos right there!

For this section to run smoothly, you should prepare a spreadsheet of keywords with search volumes for your target country. This will help validate any ideas that come out of the brainstorm. Ensuring that what you think is a good idea for a lengthy evergreen piece actually matches real-world search demand. If you're putting in a heap of effort then this is crucial in ensuring positive ROI from the activity.

You should end up with a list of five to 20 ideas to go away and begin work on.

7. Content types

By now you should have a long list of possible ideas. The key at this point is to start classifying them into "content type" piles. To do this, create a spreadsheet with all the relevant content types for the brand along the top, and then drop in your ideas below. That way you can see which content types may be a little light on the ideas front, and you can further brainstorm around that specific area, filling in the gaps. Here's an example of such a table:

8. Purchase funnel

The final discussion centres squarely on ensuring that the range of content covers the entire purchase funnel. For those that do not have the classic funnel engrained, you can see the various stages to the right here in the widely accepted classic purchase funnel, based on the AIDA principles first set out by marketer E. St Elmo Lewis.

AIDA stands for:

A - attention (or awareness): Attract the attention of the customer.
I - interest: Raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits (instead of focusing on features, as in traditional advertising).
D - desire: Convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs.
A - action: Lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.

Classic Conversion Funnel

What regularly happens with ideation is a team will end up with lots of content that sits at the top of that funnel, helping with brand discovery and touching on consideration.

It is critical, however, to brainstorm content ideas that help people through that buying process and also help turn them into evangelists and long-term clients/customers.

This is where in-depth, unbiased buying guides and looking after your posts comes in. You can also improve retention with work to build a community around your offering (Moz is the perfect example!), offers and competitions, "exclusive" member clubs and offers, and so on.

We had this missing from the mix until around six months ago, but since introducing it we have managed to add a powerful new dimension to the overall content plan, and it works really well.

So, you now have your list of ideas. The next phase is then what we class as content planning, which is a subject all of its own. In short, you then need to distill those ideas into realistic, deliverable, concepts, and once you have that editing process complete you then place those ideas into an editorial calendar that can be delivered with the resources you have available.

Example for each stage of this funnel may include:

Exposure/awareness: The "Star Wars Meets the Winter Olympics" idea mentioned above.
Discovery: A thought-leadership piece on why the brand believes a new country is the next big "skiing Mecca"
Consideration: An expert buyer guide on the products and wider choices, such as the "best skiing holiday for under $1,000"
Conversion: Trust-building content, such as an honest comparison table comparing our brand with other competitors, proving why we are best.
Customer relationship: An amazing editorial email concept introducing them to the brand initially, with offers, etc.
Retention: Exclusive offers for those "in-the-club/VIPs" (existing customers).

That's the process; here are the tools to help

There are a number of tools we use on a regular basis to make this entire process more efficient and effective. I have listed the best of them below to help you through the ideation process:

1. Ubersuggest â€" a popular long tail opportunity finder based on Google's suggest feature of previously searched for phrases.

2. Grepwords â€" The Instant Keyword Tool provides downloadable 'csvs' of related keywords along with search volumes and CPCs.

3. Google Trends â€" This is generally a very useful tool to find trending content and check for demand but it's especially useful when you use the 2013 round up of top searches. The how to guides could be gold dust for the right businesses?

4. Magazines â€" A less obvious "tool," but certainly a great resource for great content ideas. Choose a specialist title for your niche.

5. Bottlenose â€" A great content-curation engine built to aggregate content based on social "noise" and sharing.

6. Content Idea Generator â€" not the best tool on the list here but it can help with idea structuring.

7. Topsy â€" An awesome Twitter-based analytics and analysis tool that can be used to see most shared content.

8. Inboxq â€" A great tool for surfacing key questions being asked so you can answer them and create content based on them.

9. Murally â€" This is a useful tool for helping to curate related concepts and ideas in one place

10. Flickr â€" A fantastic resource for visual content cues. Stick those you like on a Mural.ly board and you soon have a look and feel understanding.

11. Followerwonk â€" Useful for finding influencers around specific subject matter to see what's being shared and engaged with in a space.

12. Trello â€" This is a great tool for organizing more complex ideas.

13. Quora â€" A fantastic resource for discovering longer-tail content opportunities to answer questions being asked.

14. Google+ circles â€" Follow the right groups, and they can be fantastic idea resources.

15. Ifttt â€" Not an idea tool in its own right, but the automation of certain tasks can make collating ideas so much easier.

16. Alltop â€" An easy one-stop-shop for latest subject matter articles and other content to 'borrow' ideas from!

17. Google Alerts â€" A must-have for the latest on your niche to help with trending content.

18. Zanran â€" A brilliant "search engine" for stats and facts, which helps with content based on compelling data.

19. Moz Alerts â€" Another useful tool for keeping an eye on trending content ideas and competitor activity.

20. LinkedIn Groups â€" Like Google+ Circles, these are fantastic for finding questions to answer.

21. Link Bait Title Generator â€" We love this simple tool. It may be limited in terms of ideas but it's quick and simple to use.

22. Delicious â€"The original shareable content aggregator and still a great place to discover fantastic content ideas.

23. Trapit â€" A clever content curation tool that gets the right content to you efficiently

Pulling it together

The next stage of the process, as explained, is to then edit your final list of ideas down into a realistic list of concepts that you CAN deliver with the time and resources you have available, and that can be a significant amount of work in its own right.

Get it right though and you will end up with a content calendar filled to the brim with ideas that grow and engage your audience across every digital channel. That plan becomes the heartbeat of your entire digital marketing strategy.

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!

Ian Neate sent you a message: You received a video: "M&G Home Business"!

Ian Neate has sent you a message

You can reply to this message by visiting your inbox.

I have gotten 2000 Leads in the last 5 days on
Autopilot... Going into an Autoresponder for me
to build a Relationship with them - then Promote
my Primary Business to....

This is Powerful !! You can have this same Opportunity...

Watch this Video then Decide how Badly you want
to grow Your Business... then Get in on it !!!

M&G Home Business

by Ian Neate

http://www.leadswithian.com - M&G Home Business is a company that provides 300 leads a day to the customer. This company can be used to help grown any business or product. M&G Home Business is currently one of the fastest growing home businesses on the internet as of 2014. I'm getting results with M&G Home Business, M&G HomeBusiness Review, Leads are so easy to contact now thanks to M&G homebusiness

Help center • Email options • Report spam • Unsubscribe

Seth's Blog : Your story about money

Your story about money

Is a story. About money.

Money isn't real. It's a method of exchange, a unit we exchange for something we actually need or value. It has worth because we agree it has worth, because we agree what it can be exchanged for.

But there's something far more powerful going on here.

We don't actually agree, because each person's valuation of money is based on the stories we tell ourselves about it.

Our bank balance is merely a number, bits represented on a screen, but it's also a signal and symptom. We tell ourselves a story about how we got that money, what it says about us, what we're going to do with it and how other people judge us. We tell ourselves a story about how that might grow, and more vividly, how that money might disappear or shrink or be taken away.

And those stories, those very powerful unstated stories, impact the narrative of just about everything else we do.

So yes, there's money. But before there's money, there's a story. It turns out that once you change the story, the money changes too.

• Email to a friend •

marți, 25 martie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

IRS Clarifies Bitcoin as Property Not a Currency; What are the Implications?
Rise of the Eurosceptics: Socialists Hammered in French Elections; Le Pen Surprises, Calls for "Alliance of Eurosceptics"
Ukraine's Hryvnia Down 10 of Last 11 Days, Nearly Back to All-Time Low vs. US Dollar; Default Back in Play?
Jeremy Grantham 1999, Jeremy Grantham Today: "Over Next Seven Years, Market Will have Negative Returns"

IRS Clarifies Bitcoin as Property Not a Currency; What are the Implications?

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 07:07 PM PDT

Today the IRS further legitimized bitcoin simply by issuing a ruling bitcoin is property not currency.

In some respects this was the best possible ruling for bitcoin. In other respects it subjects those who intend to use it for everyday transactions to potentially huge bookkeeping requirements.

Please consider I.R.S. Takes a Position on Bitcoin: It's Property.

The Internal Revenue Service may have just taken some of the fun out of Bitcoin. But that may mean that the virtual currency is growing up.

The I.R.S. announced on Tuesday that it would treat Bitcoin, the computer-driven online money system, as property rather than currency for tax purposes, a move that forces users who have grown accustomed to operating under the government's radar to deal with new tax issues and reporting requirements.

While that may seem like an expensive headache for some, some financial experts view the move as a way to push Bitcoin further away from the fringes and into the mainstream financial system.

"It's getting legitimacy, which it didn't have previously," said Ajay Vinze, the associate dean at at Arizona State University's business school. The ruling, he said, "puts Bitcoin on a track to becoming a true financial asset."

While many users already treat Bitcoin like a currency, the I.R.S. made it very clear that "it does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction."

The industry had been expecting the government to come out with some sort of guidance on Bitcoin, so the announcement on Tuesday did not come as much of a surprise. But some users worry that treating it as an investment could discourage the use of Bitcoin as a payment method. If a user buys a product or service with Bitcoin, for example, the I.R.S. will expect the individual to calculate the change in value from the date the user acquired Bitcoin to the date it was spent. That would give the person a basis to calculate the gains — or losses — on what the I.R.S. is now calling property.

The I.R.S.'s decision would treat Bitcoin as property subject to capital gains taxes. Long-term capital gains taxes are capped at 20 percent, a more favorable rate than the top rate of 39.6 percent on federal income taxes. Individual traders in the currency markets — the British pound, for example — are expected to treat gains or losses as regular income for tax purposes.

"From a tax perspective, this is really the best possible outcome," said Barry Silbert, the chief executive of SecondMarket, which is planning to introduce a new Bitcoin exchange.

The new guidelines also mean that online exchanges that buy and sell Bitcoin will now have to provide customers with annual reports of their transactions, just as stock brokerages and other investment firms do.

But some efforts may already be underway to ensure that the new reporting requirements will not discourage users from trading with Bitcoin.

"I can assure you that there are a number of companies that have come up with software to automate this entire process," Mr. Silbert said.

Bitcoin has attracted many of its users precisely because it operated outside the established financial system and offered the promise of cheaper transactions. But many Bitcoin advocates and experts have said that regulation is necessary to make Bitcoin a viable currency.

"The people that feel ideologically that Bitcoin should be free of all regulation aren't going to be happy," said Gil Luria, a managing director at Wedbush Securities who has written about virtual currency. "If you're trying to replace an existing financial system, then you need to have all the features that are required of that financial system."

The few employers who pay in Bitcoin will have to report those wages just like any other payment made with property, and Bitcoin income will be subject to the normal federal income withholding and payroll taxes, the I.R.S. said.

What are the Implications?

As I have said, Bitcoin is here to stay. Moreover, because of the IRS ruling, bitcoin has tax advantages over currencies.

However, for day-to-day transactions, accounting is potentially a problem. One needs to track gains and losses from both a long-term and short-term perspective on every purchase!

Regardless of the property distinction, I am still willing to bet that I took the correct side in Missing the Boat on Bitcoin Ownership; Theoretical Question Regarding Bitcoin Theft

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

Rise of the Eurosceptics: Socialists Hammered in French Elections; Le Pen Surprises, Calls for "Alliance of Eurosceptics"

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 10:49 AM PDT

Round one in French elections is over, and the socialists were hammered.

The victor was Marine Le Pen's Front National party. The Socialists only received 43% of the votes, with the center-right pulling in 46-48%. Front National only got 5-7% (reports vary), but that was far better than expected. Front National fielded candidates in fewer than 600 of France's 36,000 municipalities.

The goal of the socialists was to prevent Front National from winning a mayoral race in any town. They failed.

Recall that French elections are in two rounds. If someone gets 50% in the first round, they win. Otherwise there is a runoff between the top two candidates.

Le Pen Surprises in French Elections

The Guardian reports Le Pen Grows Stronger Amid Disillusion as FN Surprises in French Elections

Was this the moment the Front National became more than just a protest party?

While France's local elections on Sunday were notable for record voter abstention and a bloody nose for the governing Socialists, it was the far-right party's showing in a crucial European election year that really stood out.

The anti-Europe FN, led by Marine le Pen, fielded candidates in fewer than 600 of France's 36,000 municipalities – and still secured about 5% of the total votes cast at the weekend. As a result, expectations are mounting that it will do extremely well in May's European elections.

The FN secured one mayor elected outright in the northern town of Hénin-Beaumont, a former coalmining area traditionally in Socialist hands, and enough votes to take part in the second-round runoff in nearly 230 municipalities. The FN goes into next Sunday's vote ahead in a number of major and symbolic towns and cities including Avignon, Perpignan and Béziers.

France's biggest selling newspaper, Ouest-France, said the FN was now the "third political force" in the country.

Swing to the Right

EuroNews reports France's Front National Far Right Punches High in Local Polls

In France's latest municipal elections, almost four out of ten voters abstained. The centre-right UMP did best in Sunday's round one, scooping more than 46 percent of the country's votes, the governing Socialist party almost 38 percent. Notably, however, the far right Front National (FN) packed quite a punch.

Ifop polling expert Frédéric Badi said: "The left lost badly except in a few strongholds. The Front National only ran in 600 cities; this means only one French voter in three had the chance to vote FN. The five percent score it got across the country is an illusion compared to its real potential."

In the ex-industrial north, the small city of Hénin Beaumont has been in Socialist hands since 1945, and FN leader Marine Le Pen has been vote-hunting here for several years; finally, the FN candidate gets to be mayor. That's just the thin end of the wedge in her strategy.

Le Pen said: "The Front National success signifies a national force and also, from now on, a great local force. It's a vote calling for us to grow roots in all the territories of the Republic, to prepare for tomorrow's alternative."

France's big centre-left and centre-right parties realise tomorrow's alternative could hurt them worse: the daughter of FN founder former paratrooper Jean-Marie aims to gain ground gradually in preparation for the legislative elections to be held in 2017. The prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, appealed to stop the FN in its tracks.

Ayrault said: "Where the Front National is ready to prevail in the second round, the left and the right are responsible for creating the conditions to prevent it."

Le Pen Calls for "Alliance of Eurosceptics"

Via translation from Corriere.It, please consider Le Pen Calls for "Alliance of Eurosceptics"

Regarding European elections in May, which according to some surveys, the National Front is credited in first or second place, Le Pen has called on all euro-skeptics in Europe, including the Five Star Movement and the Northern League, to do so to "be as many in the pews of the European Parliament."

All anti-euro parties "must unite for the defense of nations, the return of democracy, the sovereignty of peoples and national identities," added Le Pen, who on Sunday earned a historic achievement in the first round of the municipal elections of France.

Beppe Grillo responded in a blog "Marine Le Pen is a beautiful lady of great success. No one hates her. However, M5S has a different political agenda so deals are not possible.

Le Pen a Bigger Threat than Grillo

Commenting on the above story, Eurointelligence offered this opinion "Those who dismissed Grillo as a comedian have clearly underestimated him. The bit of his past he has not shaken off is that he is still performing a one-man show, unwilling to form coalitions of any kind, in Italy and at EU level. This is why Le Pen is a far more potent threat than Grillo."

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

Ukraine's Hryvnia Down 10 of Last 11 Days, Nearly Back to All-Time Low vs. US Dollar; Default Back in Play?

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 09:23 AM PDT

Following the imposition of capital controls towards the end of February, Ukraine's currency, the Hryvnia recovered a bit over a period of six days. Since then it has been nearly all downhill, losing to the US dollar in 10 out of the last 11 days.

click on chart for sharper image

Given that about half of Ukraine's debt is in foreign currencies, the latest plunge spells renewed trouble.

The Economist notes

The Ukrainian shadow economy is one of the biggest in the world—at around 50% of GDP, according to IMF research. Businesses operating underground tend not to pay taxes, further depriving the government of funds. And last week Ukraine's new prime minister estimated that $37 billion had gone missing during Viktor Yanukovych's rule.

Right now Ukraine is not too worried about improving economic management. But big bills are imminent: Ukraine needs to find about $25 billion this year to finance its large current-account deficit and to meet foreign creditors. Foreign-exchange reserves are only $12 billion. Default is certainly on the cards.

Default back in play? Probably not, but a wrecked country is a near certainty.

The Troika is highly likely to put together some economically crippling "aid" program to stave off default just as it did to Greece and Cyprus.

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

Jeremy Grantham 1999, Jeremy Grantham Today: "Over Next Seven Years, Market Will have Negative Returns"

Posted: 24 Mar 2014 11:49 PM PDT

It is extremely difficult to sit out a party. Do so and you lose both clients and assets. Invest in unloved and undervalued assets and you do even worse.

But what is the alternative? Get drunk like everyone else?

I have to admit (time and time again actually), that this market has gone further, faster, than I thought possible. Bubbles of the current magnitude have never been blown back-to-back in such a short timeframe.

I am not the only one who see things that way. John Hussman has been preaching essentially the same message, and so has Jeremy Grantham.

"Over Next Seven Years, Market Will have Negative Returns"

I strongly encourage you to read an interview of Jeremy Grantham, by Stephen Gandel, senior editor of Fortune: The Fed is Killing the Recovery.

The entire article is well worth a read. But here is one snip that caught my eye.

Fortune: Are you putting your client's money into the market?

Grantham: No. You asked me where the market is headed from here. But to invest our clients' money on the basis of speculation being driven by the Fed's misguided policies doesn't seem like the best thing to do with our clients' money. We invest our clients' money based on our seven-year prediction. And over the next seven years, we think the market will have negative returns. The next bust will be unlike any other, because the Fed and other centrals banks around the world have taken on all this leverage that was out there and put it on their balance sheets. We have never had this before. Assets are overpriced generally. They will be cheap again. That's how we will pay for this. It's going to be very painful for investors.

It's well worth reading the entire interview. But I am biased. It supports my own view about market valuations and the Fed.

Jeremy Grantham 1999

Grantham is one of few who saw things correctly in 1998 and 1999. While others were partying like no tomorrow, Grantham sat things out. In the process, he lost 60% of his asset base simply for not acting like a drunken fool, like nearly everyone else.

Please consider this Forbes Interview of Jeremy Grantham, by Steve Forbes, from 2009. The section of most interest to me pertains to 1999

Steve Forbes: Well thank you, Jeremy, for joining us today. First, since you have bragging rights in this situation, what made you a bear, [a] great skeptic? Between 1999 until about a couple of months ago, you were saying, "Stay out."

Jeremy Grantham: Well, really very simple. Not rocket science. We take a long-term view, which makes life, in our opinion, much easier.

Steve Forbes: Well everyone says it, but you certainly practiced it.

Jeremy Grantham: We actually do it. Well, we tried the short-term stuff and it was so hard; we thought we'd better do the long-term. We just assume that at the end, in those days, of 10 years, profit margins will be normal and price-earnings ratios will be normal. And that will create a normal, fair price. And more recently, we've moved to seven years, because we've found in our research that financial series tend to mean revert a little bit faster than 10 years–actually about six-and-a-half years. So we rounded to seven

And that's how we do it. And it just happened from October '98 to October of '08, the 10-year forecast was right. Because for one second in its flight path, the U.S. market and other markets flashed through normal price. Normal price is about 950 on the S&P; it's a little bit below that today.

And on my birthday, October the 6th, the U.S. market, 10 years and four trading days later, hit exactly our 10-year forecast of October '98, which is worth talking about if only to enjoy spectacular luck. The P/E was a little bit lower than average and the profit margins were a little bit higher, so they beautifully offset. And given our methodology, that would mean that on October the 6th, the market should have been fairly priced on our current approach. And indeed it was–that was even more remarkable–950, plus or minus a couple of percent.

Steve Forbes: And what did you see during that 10-year period that made you feel–other than your own models–that this was something highly abnormal, that this couldn't last?

Jeremy Grantham: Well, first of all, the magnitude of the overrun in 2000 was legendary. As historians, you know we've massaged the past until it begs for mercy. And we saw that it was 21 times earnings in 1929, 21 times earnings in 1965 and 35 times current earnings in 2000. And 35 is bigger than 21 by enough that you'd expect everyone would see it. Indeed, it looks like a Himalayan peak coming out of the plain.

And it begs the question, "Why didn't everybody see it?" And I think the answer to that is, "Everybody did see it." But agency risk or career risk is so profound, that even if you think the market is gloriously overpriced, you still have to get up and dance. Because if you sit down too quickly–

Steve Forbes: Famous words of Mr. Prince.

Jeremy Grantham: If you sit down too quickly, you're likely to get yourself fired for being too conservative. And that's precisely what we did in '98 and '99. We didn't dance long enough and got out of the growth stocks completely, and underperformed. We produced pretty good numbers, but they're way behind the benchmark. And we were fired in droves.

I think our asset allocation, which is the division I'm now involved in, we lost 60% of our asset base in two-and-a-half years for making the right bets for the right reasons and winning them. But we still lost more money than any other person in that field that we came across, which is a fitting reminder that career risk runs the business.

Grantham did not lose client's money. Rather, he lost accounts and assets. Clients who stayed with him did quite nicely.

Unfortunately, it's a sad state of affairs that investors (speculators really), time and time again chase rising markets and managers with a current hot-hand rather than invest prudently. Then again, that's precisely what it takes to make a bubble.

This bubble is in a rare class with 1929, 2000, and 2007. But I do not know when the party ends, nor does Grantham, nor anyone else.

Actually, it matters not, at least in the long run.

Stocks in general are poised for negative returns for seven years once again. If the party lasts a lot longer, seven might turn into eight or ten, but that will not change the ultimate outcome.

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

miercuri, 26 martie 2014

Pandas!

The Science of Great Digital Content Ideas

The Science of Great Digital Content Ideas

Creativity as a process

The problem with ideas

Before you start

The environment