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marți, 27 mai 2014

"They Gave Their Lives So That We Might Live Ours"

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"They Gave Their Lives So That We Might Live Ours"

Yesterday, the President traveled to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and deliver remarks at a memorial service honoring our fallen servicemembers and their families:

The fallen patriots we memorialize today gave their last full measure of devotion. Not so we might mourn them, though we do. Not so that our nation might honor their sacrifice, although it does. They gave their lives so that we might live ours -- so that a daughter might grow up to pursue her dreams; so that a wife might be able to live a long life, free and secure; so that a mother might raise her family in a land of peace and freedom. Everything that we hold precious in this country was made possible by Americans who gave their all. And because of them, our nation is stronger, safer, and will always remain a shining beacon of freedom for the rest of the world.

Watch the President's full remarks from yesterday's visit.

50+ Things You Should Learn About Your Client

Posted: 26 May 2014 06:00 PM PDT

Posted by RobOusbey

Six years ago I stood in a client's board room with a list of SEO recommendations that I was convinced would earn me big smiles, firm handshakes, and and maybe even a celebratory slap on the back. Instead I was met with icy stares and nonchalance to my suggestions.

This was despite all my preparation to understand various intricate SEO best practices, as well as the quirks of their website and CMS. I just had no idea what this team believed in, or what angle I should use to persuade them to get things done.

It was July 2008, and I decided: SEO is easy. Consulting is hard.

Every day that I've been at Distilled, I've had the pleasure of learning more about online marketing, but I've also been able to learn—through research, practice, observation and teaching—lots about the skills that make someone an effective consultant.

There are many many traits of a great consultant that can be developed, but one necessary skill is: getting to know your client and understanding how you can be effective for them. This knowledge is how you unlock your ability to talk to them about the problems they're facing, discover the problems they didn't know they had, and lets you be best set up to deliver solutions that they will actually understand and implement—and which will make a real and impactful change to their business.

Obviously this getting-to-know-you phase is important enough to invest real time into, but I've found there are a bunch of 'hacks' that can help you get up to speed on an organization and its individuals. I want to share these quick tips and tricks with you, as well as a bunch of other questions that are worth answering—either through research, by observing the client, or by asking outright.

Throughout this post, I've shared examples and anecdotes from my own consulting experiences. If you'd just prefer the TL;DR version, the top two or three questions in each section are highlighted, or you can see the full list of my '50+ things to learn' in this downloadable cheat sheet.

Business and Financials

How much profit does the company make from each additional customer?

How are the company's financials; are they profitable, or making a loss?

We'll begin with this section because it's so cut-and-dry that it's little more than 'business 101'. However, some of the seemingly obvious money-orientated questions can be overlooked; I met with one marketer last year who had absolutely no idea what the profit was on each sale he made, or which sales he was making or losing money on; it reminded me that sometimes you do have to make sure to ask the right questions and then go digging for the answers.

It's worth approaching this at two distinct levels—from the perspective of individual transactions, and the overall view of the company or department.

On a transactional level, we want to know the revenue & profit. For a retailer, that usually means understanding the average revenue associated with each purchase. For some businesses, there may also be a 'lifetime value' (LTV) for each new customer—which takes into account repeat purchases or the average length of time a user stays signed up (for a subscription product, or a SAAS company like Moz).

For those businesses, it's also important to understand the the 'marginal profit' of each purchase. (The amount made on each sale, after the cost of actually providing the product.) Since most marketing teams also have a good handle on their 'cost per acquisition' (the amount they spend to attract each conversion, etc) it's particularly important to view this in the context of the marginal profit from each sale. Where marginal profit is significantly higher than CPA for a particular marketing channel or tactic, it might indicate an opportunity to increase investment in that channel.

As well as understanding profit margin, CPA, etc, for your client's transaction, it's worth getting to know what these look like for similar companies or others in their niche. This may take some hunting around and research online, but will give you an insight into how aggressive your client can afford to be when it comes to beating their competitors.

On a business level, it's worth making sure you have a handle on certain financial metrics such as revenue and operating profit. For larger / public companies, I typically prefer to research these sorts of things myself. If you have the time and interest to read through financial statements, Google is usually the fastest way to find these documents. (Search for the company name plus 'annual report' or '10k'.) However, various sources have done a good job making financial information easily digestible; I'm fond of MSN Money (e.g.: their page for Yelp, showing an $7.9m loss ) or simply Wikipedia (e.g.: their page on Dell, showing a $2.3b profit.)

For anything other than a fast-growing startup, knowing the company's current profitability is usually more interesting to me than revenue, as it can often guide their approach to marketing investment. A company with very little profit (or who is making a loss) is likely to be interested in very strategic spending, with a well understood path to return. A company that is flush with profits might be more able to include some more risky tactics in their marketing strategy.

People

Does your POC have more of an analytical or emotional personality type?

How does your POC prefer to communicate on project matters?

Above everything else, the relationship between a consultant and the people within a client organization is perhaps the biggest factor in determining how successful the engagement will be. Although building any relationship takes time, there are a few things I like to uncover (or just directly ask about) in order to speed up that process.

Beyond just knowing each person's role in a team, I want to understand what they are responsible for (what do they actually do from day-to-day?) and what they are accountable for. The 'accountability' includes what they are measured on. (Which is the most important thing to happen or improve so that they would be celebrated/rewarded; what would they be criticized for if it didn't happen?)

For my main point of contact inside an organization, we often phrase this as "what would make you look good to your boss?"—which can help set at least one clear objective for the engagement. Plus, helping your contact to be successful has a fantastic side-effect: as they get promoted and move up their organization, it can give you greater access, wider influence, and bigger budgets to work with.

There are many frameworks for how people view situations and make decisions, such as Myers-Briggs, the learning modalities, etc. I love the incredibly simplified approach of assessing whether someone is analytical (driven by data, talks about facts, wants to know about ROI) or emotional (driven by personal connections, talks about vision, wants to hear stories.) Although categorising people in such a binary way is clearly a gross oversimplification of human nature, I've found the value in this is that you can make an assessment of someone within just a few minutes of meeting them, and immediately better tailor your approach to them.

As part of 'getting close to your client', I also like to ask (to individuals or a team) what they have been excited about recently. When you have to start making recommendations to them, knowing what excites them gives an insight into the kind of answers they'll respond well to, or what is most likely to get implemented quickly.

Working quickly to understand how different individuals like to communicate can reduce friction and repays the time invested very quickly. I've worked with people who will reply to emails within minutes, people who prefer you to pick up the phone and call them, people who are great at running meetings, even people who always respond to messages on GChat / Skype. (And conversely, some people will have an out-of-control inbox, some never listen to voicemails, and some never get anything done in meetings.)

Related to communication styles, it's valuable to understand how people like to receive reports & updates—whether from consultants or their own team-members. Find out how often you're expected to prepare reports, the style (lots of data, bottom line metrics, written explanations?), the formats (email, spreadsheets, slide deck format, online dashboards?) and the audience (a project lead, a whole team, executives, juniors?).

From a reporting perspective, I've worked with a branding guy who "left the numbers up to other people", and was more interested in a monthly face-to-face where we recapped the status of each initiative & campaign, and I've known a successful CMO who reviewed a three-page spreadsheet/dashboard each morning and would chase down different team members to ask about the story behind changes in different numbers. In both cases, providing metrics & updates in a way that fit their existing process let them understand my information and respond to me more effectively.

Decision Making

Who will be making the decisions that affect your project?

What constraints does the team have to balance when making decisions?

Early on in my consulting career, I overlooked the value of investing time in how organizations make decisions. Naively, I would deliver 'the right answer' for a client, and be frustrated when they didn't decide to immediately put all hands on deck implementing my brilliant ideas.

Through conversation with members of your client's team, you will hear about decisions that have been made—at both the high/strategic level, and down at the tactical level. Within those stories is the information about what criteria were important, and who the influential people were. To kick-start these conversations, you can ask "which projects were big successes internally?" or "which big decisions do people still talk about?"

It's easiest to understand the decision making process when you're clear on how a team's success is measured. I once worked with a marketing team who were measured and bonused on overall conversion rate of visitors. I failed to persuade them to invest in SEO because even though it would have brought a fire hose of new traffic and customers, organic visitors to their site converted at ~6%, which brought down their current ~8% average. I was gobsmacked, but once I understood their situation, I realized I had to go to the CMO instead to explain why the teams current objectives were counterproductive.

An aspect of this which can take longer to grok are the constraints, roadblocks and objections that a team faces. While some are quite easy to ask about (eg: the team that has a limited budget to invest in marketing activities), some are only uncovered throughout a project (eg: the boss who wouldn't A/B test pricing in marketing emails, in case a customer found out that someone else was offered a deeper discount.) Effective consultants will be respectful of an organization's history, values and beliefs—but great consultants can balance this with knowing when to challenge those things.

Finally, a great 'hack' I learned from one colleague at Distilled is that there's a lot of discovery value in asking a new client "what made you hire me for this project?" This forces them to provide insight into how they made a very real, very recent decision. Plus, by exposing what they valued in making the decision, it also does a lot to set expectations and an agenda for the engagement.

Processes and Behavior

What criteria are used to prioritize new tasks or projects?

How does the team tend to run / use meetings?

How risk tolerant is the team?

Beyond just how plans are made, I always want to discover how work is prioritized, the criteria for that prioritization, and how the plans are shared with the team. Occasionally, a team will perfectly implement the Agile methodology, others rely on an odd Waterfall-esqe model, many have something less formal still. Understanding their processes lets you know, for example, whether quick & easy wins can be hustled up the backlog, or whether they will have to 'wait their turn'.

Related to processes are the tools a team uses for project management. They may rely on Trello/Basecamp/MS Project, or a wall full of sticky notes—and it'll be up to you to integrate yourself.

I'm always fascinated by the 'meeting culture' at different companies. I've seen companies where the most effective work happens during impromptu five-minute stand up meetings, and organizations that are crippled by the archetypal 'terrible' meetings (too long, too many people, no agenda, no actions, etc.) Understanding whether I need to be 'in the room' to help make decisions, or whether to avoid any unproductive time-sinks, improves my effectiveness as much as my sanity.

There are myriad other cultural factors worth picking up on relatively quickly. How you behave with them, and the recommendations you make could be influenced by:

a team's degree of risk tolerance (eg: a marketing team might be happy with a PR story that raises some controversy around their brand, but wouldn't do anything that puts their rankings at risk of a Google penalty)
their bias to action (are they in the Facebook-esque mold of 'move fast and break things'?)
their hunger for success (how invested are the team members in the organization's achievements, or to what degree is this just a job for them?)

For some cultural factors, you just need a trusted person who can give you the inside track, rather than waiting to recognize them yourself. For example: I've seen everything from companies that were run like non-stop frat parties, to companies where bad language was highly frowned upon—so it's good to know which sort of team you might be talking to.

Vision

What is the company's mission / vision?

Does the team you're working with believe in these things?

There are bunch of very straightforward questions here, which typically don't have simple answers. What is the company's vision? (IE: what do they believe about the future and their place in it?) Do they have an explicit 'mission' or 'purpose'? What are their stated values? (For instance Distilled, Moz and Amazon are all very public about these.) Do they have a BHAG?

Beyond these things, do they have a company strategy (or marketing strategy) that is congruent with the vision/mission/purpose?

However, beyond the presence of things like a mission statement or values, I like to understand how much the team members have bought into all of these things, or whether the CEO is alone in believing these things. This tells me how much to rely on those values in working with the team. For example: I've seen Amazon employees make certain decisions explicitly because "this demonstrates a bias for action", but that 'buy-in' doesn't exist at every company.

Their Industry and Marketing

Does everyone in the the team have a good understanding of the company's USP, customers, etc?

How much knowledge of your niche (SEO, social media, etc) does the client's team have?

With each new client, you may have to invest time in reading and learning about an industry that you're unfamiliar with. (The client can obviously explain lots to you, but probably shouldn't be your only source; they may be snowblinded, or only viewing the niche through the lens of their own organization.)

But as a sense-check: don't be afraid to get your client's team members talking to you about the company's work and their industry. A memorable experience was being in the room with the marketing department from a tech company, where 50% of the team admitted to not really understanding the industry, or their company's services.

In the other direction, don't skip over getting a sense of the team's understanding of your industry, whether that's marketing, social media, SEO, UX, etc. I overlooked this with one of my early clients, and realized far too late that I was talking to a room split between experienced marketing people, and product people who didn't know the first thing about SEO. (One quote that stuck in my head, maybe 45 minutes into the session: "so you're saying that links are good?" I learnt my lesson very quickly at that moment.)

Other Tactics, Cheat Codes and Considerations

Research senior people and your point-of-contact online to find their favorite concepts or metaphors.

Sign up to all of their marketing emails.

Beyond just asking questions or reading about the things I've mentioned, I also like to do a bit of stalking to see how a company's leaders talk—for example—about their industry and how they use their values when speaking.

The company's CEO, CMO and your point-of-contact are great people to research; Twitter feeds, blog posts and bylined articles are easy places to start, but you can usually find webinars, keynotes or presentations to watch as well. Framing concepts using their own favorite words, phrases and metaphors can be a quick route being better understood.

In terms of ongoing research of a client, there's an old (but still worthwhile) recommendation to set up a Google Alert for their name—both to watch the organic chatter that exists around the brand, to make yourself look very on-the-ball, but also just to find out about the other marketing/PR activity that your contacts may not have known enough about to mention it to you.

In addition, I suggest signing up for all of the client's email marketing lists, in order to see a side of their content that is hidden from the web or search engine spiders.

One of my colleagues will routinely go through the 'customer process' for every new client, to learn more about how they manage their funnel. (She now has everything from insurance quotes for her fake grand piano, to a contractor listing for her fake plumbing company—but always find insights that would have been missed otherwise.)

Finally, spending time in a client's office can be an expensive, but worthwhile endeavor—particularly early on in a relationship. While trying to discover the answers to everything I've talked about above, it's illuminating to have a room with a good mix of team members. While one person is talking, watch everyone else for their reactions. A nod of approval, a roll of the eyes, pursed lips, or a deep breath can all mean different things—and it's worth catching that person later to ask their opinion, or (if you're feeling really confident) mine for conflict there-and-then with the group.

I hope you've been able to find at least one new question or shortcut here, to give you extra insight into new clients. The summary cheatsheet is here, and can even be downloaded in PDF format—so you can load it onto your phone/tablet/Kindle and take it with you to client meetings. Download it now!

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!

Standing Still

Standing Still

Posted: 27 May 2014 01:37 AM PDT

I once overheard a conversation between a web developer and a project manager. They were discussing the case of a client who had raised an issue with their website.

The website had been built 18 months before and up until this point in time had had no problems. 18 months later and the client had uncovered an issue with the website. It was minor, but annoying nonetheless.

The client's claim went like this; "I haven't changed anything on the website since it went live 18 months ago, therefore the issue must have been caused by you (web developer)".

The web developer had a similar message; they too had not changed the website since it went live and could also confirm that no one else had worked on it.

This leaves two questions:

Why was the website broken?
Whose fault was it? (…and as a result, who should bear the cost of fixing it?)

Things Change

To find the answer to these questions we need to look at another factor that could have caused the issue: progress or a lack thereof.

As we have heard, the website has not changed in the last 18 months. The developer built the site, the client signed it off, and it went live. Since then everything on the website has remained in a constant state.

However, the same cannot be said for the rest of the world. Whilst the website in question has remained static, the rest of the web has developed, changed, adapted and improved on previous versions.

Web Browser Usage

Since the website in question went live (for the sake of argument we are going to say in October 2012) a lot has changed.

People are using different web browsers. Internet Explorer (IE) has suffered an impressive drop in market share while Google Chrome, following a successful marketing campaign, has further secured its position as the market leader.

Here is what has changed since the website went live:

Web browser market share – Source: W3 Schools (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)

When the website went live the following was true:

Google Chrome was the market leading browser. However, over half of the market was still using an alternative browser.
Almost half of the market (48%) was shared between IE and Firefox.

Today (as of April 2014) the following is true:

Google Chrome is still market leader but has significantly grown market share by taking users from IE and Firefox.
IE and Firefox combined now only control ⅓ of the market.

Why does this matter? It matters because different web browsers do things differently. Sometimes the differences are slight, sometimes (particularly when it comes to IE) the differences are very noticeable.

A website that worked in October 2012 may have only worked because it was being viewed in a web browser that made it work. Habits have changed and now, in 2014, the client and the web developer may have begun working predominantly in an alternative web browser.

Web browsers take the code of a website and then display it in a way that they believe it should be displayed. As a result, different web browsers interpret website code differently. Layouts can be slightly different and fonts can look slightly bigger or smaller for example. This can have the effect of breaking some website features where other browsers make them work.

A good web developer will be aware of the need to build a website to cater for cross-browser quirks. However, what a web developer cannot foresee are the negative side-effects of future browser updates.

Web Browser Updates

As well as user habits changing, web browsers have evolved. The graph below shows the version release history for the top five web browsers since 1995:

Web browser versions over time – Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_web_browsers)

Here are the most current browser version numbers comparing October 2012 and April 2014:

Each of the top five web browsers has gone through at least one major version update since October 2012. The market leader, Google Chrome has gone through 12 version updates. Second-placed in the market, Firefox has pushed out 13 new versions.

Looking further back in time, the period since 2010 has seen an increase in the rate at which web browsers are updated, particularly Chrome and Firefox, which have seen 31 and 27 updates respectively.

All of these updates represent an opportunity for a website to break. A website that works perfectly in Chrome version 22.0 could have any number of issues in version 34.0.

Taking this into account, we begin to build a picture of why the website in question has 'broken'. The client and the web developer have both confirmed that 18 months ago the website worked. They have both confirmed that no changes to the website have been applied between then and now, meaning any changes have happened outside of the website.

Aside from the visual appearance of a website breaking there are also marketing issues to be aware of.

Google Algorithm Updates

The graph below shows the number of reported Google algorithm updates since 2000:

Reported Google algorithm updates – Source: Moz (http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change)

In 2012 there were 37 reported algorithm updates, followed by 17 in 2013. Among these algorithm changes were various incarnations of the infamous Panda and Penguin updates.

These updates represent various changes in the way that Google decides who should be indexed in their search engine and where they should be shown when someone searches for a related keyword.

Some of the changes in algorithm mean that tactics that once worked no longer have an impact or, indeed, have a negative impact.

So What?

Back to the two questions from the start:

Why was the website broken?
Whose fault was it?

Because the website hasn’t been changed since it went live, we can assume that web browser updates have caused it to break.

The various updates applied to Chrome, Firefox, IE and all of the others have rendered the code used on the website from 18 months ago less effective.

But why should you care about all of this and how does it relate to SEO?

SEO is about keeping yourself moving. The role of an SEO consultant is to remain ahead of the changes being applied to the technology that defines our roles.

A website that falls behind can break physically, or it can fall victim to rule changes applied by search engines. Both issues can have a negative impact on how a website is found using search engines.

SEO isn’t just about pushing forward, sometimes it is about maintaining a position of power.

In a world where everything around you is moving forwards, standing still is as good as moving backwards.

Data

In the process of putting this post together I brought together data on web browser and Google algorithm updates. The whole lot is in a spreadsheet and took a bit of time to do so, in the name of sharing, below is a link to download it and use it as you wish.

The spreadsheet includes the following nuggets of information:

Web browser market stats timeline (which browsers do people use)
Browser update timeline
Number of browser updates per year
Reported Google algorithm update timeline
Reported Google algorithm updates per year

Please feel free to download it but please also comment or tweet @paulwould to say "thanks mate, you're the best".

A quick nod to the data sources:

Moz
W3 Schools

The post Standing Still appeared first on White.net.

POTUS, Robots, and More:

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

POTUS, Robots, and More:

The fourth-ever White House Science Fair is today. And you're going to want to tune in.

Starting at 10:00 a.m. ET, you can watch all the festivities at WH.gov/Science-Fair -- from interviews with student innovators, to project demonstrations, to the President's remarks and walkthrough.

Take our word for it -- you really don't want to miss this one.

Make sure you're watching starting at 10 a.m. ET -- and if you've got a hankering for science in the meantime, take a look at some footage from past Science Fairs (read: robots, the President, and kids).

Stay Connected

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Seth's Blog : Tribal organizing (right and wrong, slow and fast)

Tribal organizing (right and wrong, slow and fast)

Where do community organizers fall off the rails?

Crisis—They communicate to their audience with invented urgency. Everything is an emergency, a crisis that must be dealt with now, or it's all over. This boosts short-term response, of course, but destroys attention and trust. The boy shouted wolf, but the villagers didn't come.

Cash—They fundraise. All the time. Everything that isn't a crisis is a pitch for money, or sometimes it's both. They justify this by pointing out that without money, the other other side will win.

Cliffs—Most pernicious of all is a focus on today, not tomorrow. One campaign manager said to me, "I don't care a bit about what happens to this list a week from now. If we don't win the election, it doesn't matter. Burn em if you need to, we go out of business on election day." What a selfish, antisocial, cynical way to view the world.

On the other hand, effective tribes are built around:

Connection—We are here for the members of the tribe and the change they seek to make. Are people in this for the long haul, the destination as well as the journey? What do we stand for? Are relationships being built, or is this merely an ATM?

Commitment—There's no cliff. This is a mission, a journey, a cultural convenant for the long haul. We'll be here tomorrow and next year and ten years after that.

Conversation—It might feel like a broadcast tool, but it's not. The tribe thrives when it talks to itself, not when it merely listens to you shout.

• Email to a friend •

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

US Economy Poised to Accelerate? Bond Market in Disbelief

Posted: 26 May 2014 07:43 PM PDT

The US treasury market is not in sync with the widely held belief the economy is growing stronger. A single chart clearly shows what I mean.

Yield Curve as of 2014-05-26

click on chart for sharper image

The above chart shows end-of-month closing values except for the current month which is up-to-date.

Legend

$TYX: 30-Year in green
$TNX: 10-Year in orange
$FVX: 05-Year in blue
$IRX: 03-Month in brown

If the US economy was really strengthening, the long end of the yield curve ought to be rising strongly.

So why isn't it?

My take is the economy is poised to decelerate, not take off as most seem to think.

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

Steen Jakobsen on "Slow Growth Impact" of European Parliamentary Elections

Posted: 26 May 2014 10:22 AM PDT

In a morning email, Saxo Bank chief economist Steen Jakobsen had a few comments on the European parliamentary elections.

Here's my two cents on the EP-2014: One conclusion which stands out is growth and reform will be delayed. The trade remains LONG fixed income. Everything which just happened in Ukraine, ECB and now EP-2014 has a negative growth/inflation impact.

Europe is caught out – miscommunication is the norm, and the mandate for change just moved further away despite the strong showing for anti-EU votes.

The anti-EU vote is diluted by institutional frameworks and a modus operandi in proceedings which makes it impossible to change the course, but hopefully It can change the pace.

Europe rejected Barosso's idea that the solution to Europe's problem is more Europe – they shouted: No! It's a better working Europe.

Steen

Rising Unemployment, Slowing Growth

On his blog, Steen offers his detailed view in Europe's lurch to right will see unemployed, growth, emerge as losers.

Massive eurosceptic bloc breakthrough at parliamentary elections impossible to ignore
European project at risk as voters reject Brussels' push for ever-further integration
Real losers in vote continue to be unemployed and growth prospects as Europe divisions rise

Across Europe, EU-sceptic voters gained ground, but it could be in vain as the overall majority of the old guard: Conservative, Liberals, Greens and Social Democrat's still carry 70 percent of the mandates.

How the protest votes engage with the main stream parties will set the tone for Europe over the next five years. If the protest parties just want a floor to shout "No thank you to Europe", then we will see the old parties align themselves more towards the middle and dilute the negative votes. On the other hand, if the EU-sceptic votes want real influence, then compromise and seeking real influence on key votes will be the strategy.

The European Parliament makes a new law every second day, which is scary in itself, but it also shows you that Europe today is very much a machine where stopping the momentum is extremely hard. The EU system is built and set up to protect the bureaucratic model and it clearly favours pro-EU inclined political parties.

This biased set-up and momentum makes the results in the UK, Italy, Greece, Denmark, and France impossible to ignore. The implications in France and the UK carries the biggest weight where Marine Le Pen's National Front took 25 percent of the vote foran estimated 25 seats and Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party obliterated the traditional parties of power to take 28 percent of the poll and an estimated 23 seats.

The chances of a UK voting no in the referendum next year is now a clear and present danger. UKIP has arrived at the national scene, likewise in France where Marine Le Pen has now clearly become a force to reckon with in the next Presidential election.

A move to a more wait-and-see attitude away from the full support for everything European will be the biggest marginal change in Europe. By ignoring the wishes of their voters, a lot of mainstream parties across Europe are now looking for a new strategy – a strategy which after this week's election will entail less Europe, not more.

It is also in total opposition to EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barosso's State of the Union speech where he said: "the problem with Europe is not that we have too much Europe, it's that we have too little". Europe's voters clearly disagree and the consequences of this EP election may be slow and small, but significant.

The new European Parliament will have stronger democratic credentials which is anchored in the Lisbon Treaty and includes new lawmaking powers. It will be decisive on the majority of EU legislation. In total, over 40 new fields have been added including agriculture, energy policy(or the lack of it), immigration and EU funds. The Parliament also has the final say on the EU budget.

The biggest immediate change will be that the new President of the European Commission will need to have the approval of the Parliament to take office. We can expect a major fight between the EU Council and the European Parliament on exactly this point. Don't expect any consensus before the last minute.

The 751 members of the EU Parliament operate through coalitions of interest across countries and sometimes political standpoint. The final date for submitting a coalition is June 23, and a "coalition" has to be at least 25 members from seven different nations.

Here the protest votes can play vital role. The Europe-sceptic vote is divided. The risk is that, similar to the Occupy movement in the US, al ack of common goal, except those of a negative nature, allows the majority get away with ignoring what clearly is a call from the voters to the politicians that Europe is too far away from the daily life of its 500 million citizens.

The Banking union, high unemployment and low growth remain formidable challenges. I still see a dramatic slow-down in Germany into 2015 as the biggest risk for Europe. Germany has been the locomotive so far, surviving by exporting to Asia during this crisis, but now Asia is slowing down leaving us with less export in Europe.

The EU "economic police" will be tested. France and Spain is already in violation of budget deficits for 2014 and 2015. The so called "recovery" is actually a stabilisation, not recovery. In history, unions, even primitive ones, fail when economic times turns negative. A new test is upon us as we leave 2014 in my opinion, and has not been made easier by the new European Parliament. Voters and politicians are clearly not agreeing. Putting anything European to a referendum will be risky and hence Europe is now on move to a pace of speed walking from jogging along.

The market is ignoring the European Parliamentary 2014 results, they see the glass as half-full. However, as the new European Parliament gets down to business, the in-fighting will continue in the European Council, in the European Parliament, between the EU Council and European Parliament, and between the EU and the voters of Europe. That is the ultimate conclusion: Europe's politicians and its voters have never been further apart. The price for that is a continued flow of miscommunication which will leave Europe weaker, with less decision power and ever-widening rifts.

As George Bernard Shaw once said: "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place".

What Europe needs is to move forward with a political and fiscal union to consolidate and progress. It will clearly not happen. It also needs to simplify its business. Also very unlikely to happen. We have just increased the complexity of politics and decision making. The loser, as always remains the unemployed, growth and reforms. The victor: Buying more time. Sad. Really.

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

marți, 27 mai 2014

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