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| Pablo Picasso's Art Through The Ages Posted: 10 Apr 2015 09:15 PM PDT Pablo Picasso was just never satisfied with staying the same because he knew that in order to create great art, you have to evolve as an artist.         |
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Washing your hands helps you avoid getting sick.
Putting fattening foods out of your reach helps you stay slim.
And the provocations and habits you encounter in the digital world keep you productive (or drive you crazy):
Each habit is hard to swallow and easy to maintain. Worth it.
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| Incredible Tornado Footage from Illinois, Yesterday Posted: 10 Apr 2015 04:05 PM PDT A tornado touched down yesterday in McHenry Illinois, less than 10 miles from where Liz and I live. Tornadoes hit multiple locations. Here is some incredible footage of a tornado tipping a truck over and debris flying everywhere. This footage is near Rochelle, Illinois. "Tornado developed west of I-39 and widened as it moved toward the highway. The tornado entered it's wedge stage while crossing the highway and doing significant damage. The tornado then moved away toward the Fairdale community where at least one fatality has taken place and destruction took place. This large tornado churned across a long track and the National Weather Service will survey the damage starting tomorrow. Footage shot by Tyler Olson of Live Storms Media." Link if video does not play: 4-9-15 Rochelle, Illinois Tornado. More Tornado Footage "Around 7pm, we began documenting a tornado forming near the Rochelle, IL area. We briefly lost visual while positioning closer to the tornado, but began filming again when we had visual of the massive tornado. We continued to follow and document the tornado the northeast until it dissipated south of Belvidere, IL at ~7:40pm CDT." Link if video does not play: Rochelle to Kirkland, IL Complete Tornado Footage Footage of Homes Being Demolished Watch a huge tornado directly hit huge grain bins. I am surprised they survived the hit. With debris flying everywhere, some nearby homes didn't. Link if video does not play: Rochelle, Illinois Tornado April 9 2015 Thanks to reader Mark for the links. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot |
| Phone Tax Scam by "Officer Melvin" Allegedly with IRS Posted: 10 Apr 2015 12:31 PM PDT It is tax season and that means it's time for tax fraud and tax fraud scams. Today I received a voice mail allegedly from "officer Melvin" with the IRS. "We have received a legal petition notice against you concerning a tax division. So before we file a case against you, and before you get arrested, kindly call us back on our callback number. The number to reach me is 202-684-6608. I repeat 202-684-6608. Do not disregard this message. Do return the call. Again, this is officer Melvyn Betchett with the Internal Revenue service. Thank you and have a great day." Here is the WAV file if you wish to hear the short 33 second fraud scheme: Tax Fraud WAV File. The file may or may not play automatically. It did not for me. Instead I saw this box when I hit the forward arrow to attempt to play.  The download did work, and Windows Media Player played it automatically just fine. Here is the sharable link if you wish to download the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4QF4MBBMA0kT2diSnFZOXM1Tjg/view?usp=sharing The IRS sends bills. The IRS does not make phone calls threatening arrest, or ask for your bank account number or debit card number. I notified the authorities. You can do so at the Treasury Inspector General IRS Impersonation Site. Hopefully, the audio will allow the authorities to catch crook "Melvin" soon enough. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot |
| France vs. Sydney Australia Property: What Will $600k to $1M Buy? Posted: 10 Apr 2015 10:49 AM PDT Here's an article that came my way from reader Robert who lives in Australia. The article compares the price of entire "castles" in various cities in France to 1-3 bedroom units in or near Sydney, Australia. The term castle appears to be somewhat of a misnomer, but certainly the French properties are "castles" compared to the single units. The US word would more likely be estate or mansion rather than castle. Please consider 10 French Castles are Cheaper than Sydney Units. Notes
For example the first image below says €422,940 or $597,184. My calculation says AU $654,070 or $502,060 US dollars. The rest of the images are similarly wrong. Picardie France — $597,184 (€422,940)  This picture-perfect five-bedroom mansion in Picardie near the town of Abbeville is less than 200kms from Paris. It is on more than 6000sq m of land and features a billiard room and grand cellar. Cronulla Australia — $620,000+  Poitou France — $667,146 (€472,500)  There are nine bedrooms in this grand chateau in the Poitou Charentes region of south western France. It has 1610sq m of landscaped gardens, ceiling medallions, a rotunda dining room, a conservatory and a circular kitchen. Campsie Australia — $689,000+  In the heart of Campsie on Sixth Ave, a three-bedroom unit in this plain Jane unit block has parking, built-in wardrobes and two balconies. Vienne France — $732,801 (€519,000)  This elaborate chateau near Vienne has 14 bedrooms, seven reception rooms, a pool, a chapel, a kitchen garden a double-length drawing room and library all on a 1.4ha estate. Zetland Australia — $760,000+  Picardie France — $972,833 (€689,000)  Just 138kms from Paris, this manor house in La Fere has nine bedrooms, a wine bar, disco, cinema, library and cellar inside, and out the back there is a pool, pool house, sauna, nine-hole golf course and petanque area. Elizabeth Bay Australia — $999,000+  With a million-dollar price tag, this one-bedroom apartment, has no parking and no balcony, but the Elizabeth Bay apartment on Onslow Ave is all about location, location, location. Mish Comments $1,000,000 for one bedroom, no parking, and no balcony vs. a 9 bedroom manor house with a pool, pool house, sauna, nine-hole golf course and petanque area. I had to look that up. Pétanque (French pronunciation: [petɑ̃k] is a form of boules where the goal is to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet (literally "piglet") or jack, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground. The current form of the game originated in 1907 in La Ciotat, in Provence, France. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot |
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| Posted: 10 Apr 2015 12:06 PM PDT In Xinjiang in northwest China, a 450kg (990lb) camel was coated in a lurid yellow marinade before it was lowered by crane into a 6m-tall tandoor kiln.           via people.com |
| The Rock's Insane Diet Has Him Eating 10 Pounds Of Food A Day Posted: 10 Apr 2015 11:43 AM PDT Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson takes everything to the next level even his diet. It's recently been revealed that he consumes up to 10 pounds of food a day in order to maintain his physique.   Meal 1: 10 oz cod 2 whole eggs 2 cups oatmeal Meal 2: 8 oz cod 12 oz sweet potato 1 cup veggies Meal 3: 8 oz chicken 2 cups white rice 1 cup veggies Meal 4: 8 oz cod 2 cups rice 1 cup veggies 1 tbsp fish oil Meal 5: 8 oz steak 12 oz baked potato Spinach salad Meal 6: 10 oz cod 2 cups rice Salad Meal 7: 30 grams casein protein 10 egg-white omelet 1 cup veggies 1 tbsp omega-3 fish oil Notes: ► "I do cardio 4–5 a.m., then take 4–6 scoops of Optimum's Amino Energy." ► "After cardio I eat breakfast [Meal no. 1]." ► "After breakfast I hit the iron for 90 minutes." ► "Post-workout I have 60 grams Optimum Nutrition's Platinum Hydrowhey with 15 grams of glutamine." ► "Thiry minutes later I consume 32 oz of Gatorade.  |
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| Elements of Personalization & How to Perform Better in Personalized Search - Whiteboard Friday Posted on: Friday 10 April 2015 — 02:15 Posted by randfish From information about your location and device to searches you've performed in the past, Google now has a great deal of information it can use to personalize your search results. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains to what extent they're likely using that information and offers five ways in which you can improve your performance in personalized search. For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard. Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab! Video transcriptionHowdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat personalization, talking about the elements that can influence personalization as well as some of the tactical things that web marketers and SEOs specifically can do to help make their sites and their content more personalized friendly. How personalization worksSo, what are we talking about when we're talking about personalization? Well, Google is actually personalizing by a large number of things and probably even a few things I have not listed here that they have not been totally transparent or forthcoming about. Logged-in visitorsThe things that we know about include things like:
Logged-out visitorsIf you are logged out, they still have a number of ways of personalizing, and you can still observe plenty of personalization. Your results may be very different from what you see in a totally new browser with no location applied to it, on a different device with different search and visit history. Now, remember when I say "Logged out," I'm not talking about an incognito window. An incognito window would bias against showing anything based on search history or visit history. However, location and device appear to still remain intact. So a mobile device is going to get sometimes different results than a desktop device. Different locations will get different results than other locations. All that kind of stuff. Now you might ask, "Quantify this for me, Rand." Like let's say we took a sample set of 500 keywords and we ran them through personalized versus non-personalized kinds of searches. What's the real delta in the results ordering and the difference of the results that we see? Well, we actually did this. It's almost 18 months old at this point, but Doctor Pete did this in late 2013. Using the MozCast data set, he checked crawlers, Google Webmaster Tools, personalized logged in and incognito. You know what? The delta was very small for personalized versus incognito. I suspect that number's probably gone up, which means this correlation number -- 1.0 would be perfect correlation -- 0.977 very, very high correlation. So we're seeing really similar results for personalized versus incognito at least 18 months ago. I suspect that's probably changed. It'll probably continue to change a little bit. However, I would also say that it probably won't drop that low. I would not expect that you would ever find that it'll be lower than 0.8, maybe even 0.9, just because so much of search is intentional navigation and so much of it is also not fully capable to be personalized in truly intelligent ways. The results are the best results already. There's not a whole lot of personalization that might be added in besides potentially showing your Google+ follows or something at the bottom and things based on your visit history. Performing better in personalized searchSo let's say you want to perform better in personalized search. You have a belief that, hey, a lot of people are getting personalized bias in my particular SERP sets. We're very local focused, or we're very biased by social kinds of data, or we're seeing a lot of people are getting biased in their results to our competitors because of their search history and visit history. What are things that I need to think about? Get potential searchers to know and love your brand before the queryThe answer is you can perform better in personalized search in general, overall by thinking about things like getting potential searchers to know and love your brand and your domain before they ever make the query. It turns out that if you've gotten people to your site previously through other forms of navigation and through searches, you may very well find yourself higher up in people's personalized results as a consequence of the fact that they visited you in the past. We don't know all the metrics that go into that or what precisely Google uses, but we could surmise that there are probably some bars around engagement, visit history, how many times, how frequently in a certain time frame, all that kind of stuff that goes into that search and visit history. Likewise, if you can bias people here and rank higher, you may be getting more and more benefit. It can be a snowball effect. So if you keep showing up higher in their rankings, they keep clicking you, they keep finding information that's useful, they don't need to go back to the search results and click somebody else. You're just going to keep ranking in more and more of their queries as they investigate things. For those of you who are full funnel types of content servers, you're thinking about people as they're doing research and educating themselves all the way down to the transaction level with their searches, this is a very exciting opportunity. Be visible in all the relevant locations for your businessFor location bias, you want to make sure that you are relevant in all the locations for your business or your service. A lot of times that means getting registered with Google Maps and Google+ local business for maps -- I can't remember what it's called exactly. I think it's Google+ Local for Business -- and making sure that you are not only registered with those places but then also that your content is helping to serve the areas that you serve. Sometimes that can even mean a larger radius than what Google Maps might give you. You can rank well outside of your specific geographies with content that serves those regions, even if Google is not perfectly location connecting you via your address or your Maps registration, those kinds of things. Get those keyword targets dialed inGetting keyword targeting dialed in, this is important all the time. Where a lot of people fall down in this is they think, "Hey, I only need to worry about keyword targeting on the pages that are specifically intended to be search landing pages. I'm trying to get search traffic to these pages." But personalization bias means that if you can get keyword targeting dialed in even on pages that are not necessarily search landing pages, Google might say, "Hey, this wouldn't normally rank for someone, but because you've already earned that traffic, because that person is already biased to your brand, your domain, we're going to surface that higher than we ordinarily would." That is a powerful potential tool in your arsenal, hence it's useful to think about keyword targeting on a page specific level even for pages that you might not think would earn search traffic normally. Share content on Google+ and connect with your potential customersGoogle+ still, in my opinion, a very valuable place to earn personalized traffic for two reasons. One, of course you can get people actually over to your site. You may be able to get potential traffic through Google+. You can appear in those search results right at the bottom for anyone who follows you or anyone who's connected to you via email and other kinds of Google apps. You may have also noticed that when you email with someone, if they're using Gmail and their Google+ account is connected, you see in the little right-hand corner there that they'll show their last post or their last few posts sometimes on Google+. Again, also a powerful way to connect with folks and to share the content as you're emailing back and forth with them. For brands, that also shows up in search results sometimes. There's the brand box on the right-hand side, kind of like Knowledge Graph, and it'll show your last few posts from Google+. So again, more and more opportunities to be visible if you're doing Google+. I am also going to surmise that, in the future, Google might do stuff with this around Twitter. They just finished re-inking that deal where Twitter gives their full fire hose access to Google and Google starts displaying more and more of that stuff in search results. So I think probably still valuable to think about how that connection might form. Definitely still valuable directly to do it in Google+ even if you're not getting any traffic from Google+. Be multi-device friendly and usableThen the last one, of course, being multi-device friendly and usable. This is something where Moz has historically fallen down, and obviously we're going to be fixing that in the months ahead. I actually hope we fix it after April 21st so we can see whether we really take a hit when they do that mobile thing. I think that would be a noble sacrifice, and then we can see how we perform thereafter and then fix it and see if we can get back in Google's good graces after that. So given these tactics and some of this knowledge about how personalized search works, hopefully you can take advantage of personalized search and help inform your teams, your bosses, your clients about personalization and the potential impacts. Hopefully we'll be redoing some of those studies, too, to be able to tell you, hey, how much more is personalization affecting SEO over the last 18 months and in the years ahead. All right, everyone. Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you again next time for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com 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! |
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| Posted: 09 Apr 2015 10:47 PM PDT Milestones in Bond Insanity Two events happened this week for the first time: negative yield on 10-year government bonds and 100-year bonds by Mexico denominated in euros. Please consider Swiss, Mexican Bond Deals Represent Milestones for Debt. Until Wednesday, no country had ever sold 10-year debt that gives investors a yield of below 0%. And no country had ever issued a 100-year bond denominated in euros.Huge Risks Will the euro even be around in 100 years? Even if the euro is around in 100 years, what countries will be in it? The value of the euro will vary widely if the answer is peripheral Europe vs. Germany, Austria, etc. Mexico is taking a gamble on this. Of course, if the peso rises vs. euro, Mexico comes out ahead. Euros vs. Mexican Pesos  Analyzing the Risk In April of 2001 one euro bought 7.7 pesos. Today, one euro buys 16.1 pesos. That is a decline of 52%. Had Mexico done this transaction in 2001, it would be 52% in the hole on the currency move alone. And given that yields are lower now, no doubt it would be hugely underwater on interest as well. Issuing debt or taking on debt in foreign countries is risky business. Just ask all those in Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic who took out mortgages in Swiss Francs. Many will lose their homes because debt payments have skyrocketed along with the soaring Swiss Franc. As recently as 2009, one euro bought 20 Mexican pesos. Looking ahead, is it so hard to believe the Peso will not sink to that level or even a bit further, say to 25. A move to 25 pesos per euro would put Mexico 36% in the hole on currency fluctuations, and it would only collect 4.2% in interest. I have no particular insight into which way the move will go, at least in a stated timeframe. I am simply highlighting the currency risk. There is interest rate risk as well, but at least that is defined. Whether this deal works out well and for whom, depends on currency fluctuations. The big risk in a eurozone breakup. If Germany exits the euro (which I think it should do, but probably won't), Mexico wins big as the euro would sink vs. the peso. If Greece, Spain, and Portugal leave the eurozone, the euro could easily strengthen by a lot, perhaps after a bit of volatility. Are 1000-Year Bonds Next? Given that countries are issuing bonds in foreign currencies for 100 years, why not 1000 years, or perpetual bonds? After all, no country really ever intends to pay back this debt in the first place. Debt just grows, and grows, and grows. A currency crisis is on deck, but few see it coming. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot |
| Posted: 09 Apr 2015 02:21 PM PDT Illinois state pension and retirement plans are in dire straits. The only way to fix the problems is with plan changes. Michigan did that in 2012. And in a 6-0 decision yesterday, the Detroit Free Press reported the Michigan Supreme Court, rejected arguments from unions, and upheld the 2012 state law requiring teachers to put more of their pay toward their pension plans or face cuts to benefits. The Michigan Supreme Court, rejecting arguments from unions, has upheld a 2012 state law requiring teachers and other school employees to put more of their pay toward their pension plans or face cuts to benefits such as post-retirement health care.Good News For Illinois What passes constitutional muster in Michigan may not do so in Illinois, but the unanimous ruling provides a model for what may work elsewhere. This is good news for all cash-strapped states. In Illinois, Gov. Bruce Rauner Wants Changes to Insurance Programs for State Workers, Retirees. Health insurance for active state workers and retirees is being targeted for big savings in Gov. Bruce Rauner's budget plan.Right Path Governor Rauner is on the right path. Benefits must be cut. For starters, Illinois needs to move all employees going forward into 410K type plans. Next, Illinois needs to address spiraling costs for those in defined benefit plans. Michigan passed one law the Michigan Supreme Court rejected, and a second one in 2012 law that was upheld unanimously. Illinois would be wise to pursue changes that are likely to be upheld in court. We now have at least one model that works. For more on problems in Illinois and what to do about them, please see ...
Illinois desperately needs to address the root of its fiscal problems: untenable pension benefits and promises. Massive proposed tax hikes are not the answer. Tax hikes will do nothing but make already uncompetitive Illinois even more uncompetitive. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot |
| Russia Forced to Do Right Thing? Buy Russia? Posted: 09 Apr 2015 12:55 PM PDT Here's an interesting opinion article on MarketWatch: Sanctions, drop in oil price best things that ever happened to Russia. A round of punitive sanctions designed to cripple the economy. A collapse in the price of its key commodity. A currency in freefall and a central bank hiking rates to emergency levels while a corrupt, authoritarian government embarks on foreign adventures at potentially huge expense. For the whole of 2014, the Russian economy was the most toxic in the world, with one calamity coming hard after another.I sent the article to Pater Tenebrarum at Acting Man. He replied: It seems Medvedev and his free-market economic advisors have convinced Putin to do just that. It was not reported in the Western press, but a few months ago Putin announced that all inspections of companies will be suspended for at least three years and that company start-ups will be free of taxation for their first two years. Add to that the 13% flat tax, and there could be quite an effect. According to Medvedev's advisors, Russian GDP could improve by $200 billion per year by curbing corruption alone. Since the inspections were the main avenue of corruption, their suspension is a very significant step. Admittedly, the jury is still out on the success of these measures, but they have been taken, and it was in reaction to the sanctions. Also, the author is correct: industry surveys in Russia show that companies see import substitution as a huge growth area over the coming year and have accordingly already increased investment and production.I bought into Russia near the peak of the panic, but not enough. I have plans to add more. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot |
| Readers Question Free Trade; Does Nonreciprocal Free Trade Cost Jobs? Paul Krugman "Was" Right! Posted: 09 Apr 2015 01:00 AM PDT I received many questions and comments regarding Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership Fiasco vs. Mish's Proposed Free Trade Alternative. While most do see Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a fiasco, many question my alternative proposal: An excellent free trade agreement would consist of precisely one line of text: All tariffs and all government subsidies on all goods and services will be eliminated effective June 1, 2015". Even some "free trade" advocates disagree with my follow-up statement "I firmly believe the first country that fully embraces free trade would come out ahead, regardless of whether or not any other country reciprocates." Worry Over Loss of Manufacturing Jobs Reader Pina is worried over the loss of jobs. He writes ... I realize that most economists advocate tariff free trade but how is this in the interests of workers who had careers in the rust belt who have watched their jobs migrate to China, India and other countries. Yes, American multinational corporations like the cheap labor and modest regulation in the third world but is this really best for the American worker?Seen and Unseen For starters, employment in manufacturing and some service industries is down everywhere due to hardware and software robotics. Tariffs or not, many manufacturing jobs have vanished and are never coming back. Initially, those jobs left the US because of wage differentials, now they are simply gone. Moreover, and more importantly, it is a mistake to look at manufacturing (or any trade) in a vacuum. We lost manufacturing jobs, but cheap goods from China provided millions of trucking and shipping jobs and allowed the expansion of massive numbers of retail jobs and construction jobs to build all the stores and malls everywhere. Standards of living have soared. Even the poorest of families tend to have cell phones, internet services, and huge digital TVs. Were the price of goods to double to save manufacturing jobs how many could afford to buy such things? Productivity and Free Trade The Library of Economics and Free Trade has an excellent article on the subject. It's title is simply Free Trade. Here are a few snips, emphasis in italics is mine. I encourage you to read the entire article. In running our personal affairs, virtually all of us exploit the advantages of free trade and comparative advantage without thinking twice. For example, many of us have our shirts laundered at professional cleaners rather than wash and iron them ourselves. Anyone who advised us to "protect" ourselves from the "unfair competition" of low-paid laundry workers by doing our own wash would be thought looney. Common sense tells us to make use of companies that specialize in such work, paying them with money we earn doing something we do better. We understand intuitively that cutting ourselves off from specialists can only lower our standard of living.China Dumps Solar Panels Let's investigate an amusing EU point of view in regards to "clean energy" tariffs. In May of 2013, Spiegel Online reported the European Commission approved tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels in response to complaints of price-dumping. In my article Paul Krugman "Was" Right I commented on the solar panel boondoggle .... Please note the irony in these tariffs. The EU is hell bent on promoting "clean energy" but does not want clean energy if the cost is too cheap. Obama's position is similar.Here is a second irony. The first sentence in the Spiegel article reads "Back in 2008, the German solar manufacturing industry was riding the crest of a wave of growth fueled by generous subsidies and high demand." Without generous subsidies, the European solar panel manufacturers were not profitable in the first place. Yet, the EU imposed tariffs to prevent Chinese "dumping". Paul Krugman "Was" Right In Paul Krugman "Was" Right, I also discussed a shockingly accurate revelation from Krugman. Why Does Free Trade Seemingly Not Work? The above examples show free trade only fails to work from the self-serving point of view of the industry demanding protections. Amusingly, auto manufacturers want to use cheaper steel, but the steel industry wants protection. And whether or not the auto manufacturers get steel imports at cheap prices, they want protection from alleged subsidies of Toyota. It's hypocritical madness its finest. Role of Nixon There is another facet to the free trade debate and that is in regards to huge trade imbalances between the US and China. I have written about this so many times it is disheartening to have to point out once again the root cause. Please read, and make an attempt to understand Hugo Salinas Price and Michael Pettis on the Trade Imbalance Dilemma; Gold's Honest Discipline Revisited. Pettis: "The capital and current accounts for any country, and for the world as a whole, must balance to zero. In the old days of specie currency – gold and silver – this meant that specie would have flowed from Spain to Germany as the counterbalancing entry, and of course this flow created its own resolution." Hugo: "The gold standard imposed order and harmony. If President Nixon had not 'closed the gold window' in 1971, the world would be radically different today. China sells vast quantities of goods to the rest of the world, without the rest of the world having any chance of selling similar quantities to China. China can do so, because today trade deficits are "paid" not in gold, but in dollars or euros or pounds sterling or yen, which will never be scarce: they are created at will by the USA, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, or the Bank of Japan. It is no coincidence that some analysts have observed that in real terms, American workers have had no real increase in their income since 1970. The best and brightest of today's accredited economists attempt in vain to find a solution to a problem that cannot be solved except by the renewed use of gold as the international medium of commerce." Enforcement Mechanism Those are small snips from an article I wish everyone would read in entirety to fully understand where the problem is. Pettis admits that a gold standard would address the issue, but that is not his preferred solution (which to the best of my knowledge he has never stated). What both Michael Pettis and Hugo Salinas Price refer to is that ever since Nixon stopped paying for US trade deficits in gold, monetary expansion has been exponential. The result has been massive trade imbalances and extreme income inequality. Problems in "Speece" The lack of an enforcement policy also explains the problems of Greece and Spain vs. Germany. Collectively, I refer to (Spain, Greece, and peripheral Europe in General) as "Speece" To properly understand the trade mess in Europe please read From ZIRP to NIRP: Virtues of Germany vs. the Vices of Greece; What About "Speece" and Gold? Here is a key paragraph on "Speece", but to understand the ripple effect of no enforcement mechanism I suggest re-reading the entire article. Still No Enforcement Mechanism, AnywhereExcellent Trade Agreement Lack of a gold standard is a key reason "free trade" seems not to work. But the problem is not "free trade", the problem is elsewhere. I repeat the assertion I made in Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership Fiasco vs. Mish's Proposed Free Trade Alternative; How Will TPP Function in Practice? An excellent free trade agreement would consist of precisely one line of text: "All tariffs and all government subsidies on all goods and services will be eliminated effective June 1, 2015." Moreover, the first country that fully embraces free trade would come out ahead, regardless of whether or not any other country did so as well. The logic behind those statements is impeccable. Free Trade Never Causes Net Job Loss Free trade is always beneficial. Lack of an enforcement mechanism, unsustainable union agreements, a loss of jobs to robotics, and incessant self-serving whining from industry groups demanding favors makes it hard for many to see the benefits. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot |
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