On 3rd March my conclusion was the Pound was probably going down for the remainder of 2010. Looking back, we can see that clearly this was an incorrect call.
However, let's see if it just needs a little more time.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Haven't looked in on the Pound's progress for a while
I realised I haven't updated progress on the Pound since March. That's a long time, but I'm sure you weren't waiting so no biggie eh? :-)
On 3rd March my conclusion was the Pound was probably going down for the remainder of 2010. Looking back, we can see that clearly this was an incorrect call.
However, let's see if it just needs a little more time.
On 3rd March my conclusion was the Pound was probably going down for the remainder of 2010. Looking back, we can see that clearly this was an incorrect call.
However, let's see if it just needs a little more time.
Friday, 7 January 2011
Interesting comment about Marketing
I was just reading an article on ZeroHedge (I was looking into their recent interest in the Baltic Dry -- clearly I now have lots of time to make up elsewhere as a result, what with the number of, mostly inane, comments over there... :-\ ) and I stumbled across one interesting comment, that I thought was worthy of note. I'll simply paste it below:
by Sudden Debt
on Mon, 01/03/2011 - 14:45
#844830
That shart looks like Titanic just sunk.
Another bleak forecast:
Since a few years, I've been watching the jobmarket pretty close and I've seen to have noticed a small trend indicator of the economy.
The jobmarket to watch is actually Marketing & Communication. Whenever bad new was being reported, a few months before that, Marketing jobs went away. At arround newyear last year, there where suddenly about 3 times more job offerings in marketing in just a matter of months. And those grew untill the summer.
Now suddenly, the number of Marketing jobs has bottomed to near zero. Actually I've never seen it that bad.
The reason why I mention this is because Marketing uses a 1 year forecast model linked on investments and growth forecasts.
And now I tend to believe that this years investment plans are going to hit rock bottom and sales might be facing for impact.
Normally Marketing expenditures are between 2 & 5% of the turnover. 2 starting from BtoB and 5% for retail.
So if a company starts hiring agressivly on all channels, they might be upon something big.
If you hear rumors about sacking them, it's bad.
These job numbers are now even lower then 2008!
(From this ZH article)
by Sudden Debt
on Mon, 01/03/2011 - 14:45
#844830
That shart looks like Titanic just sunk.
Another bleak forecast:
Since a few years, I've been watching the jobmarket pretty close and I've seen to have noticed a small trend indicator of the economy.
The jobmarket to watch is actually Marketing & Communication. Whenever bad new was being reported, a few months before that, Marketing jobs went away. At arround newyear last year, there where suddenly about 3 times more job offerings in marketing in just a matter of months. And those grew untill the summer.
Now suddenly, the number of Marketing jobs has bottomed to near zero. Actually I've never seen it that bad.
The reason why I mention this is because Marketing uses a 1 year forecast model linked on investments and growth forecasts.
And now I tend to believe that this years investment plans are going to hit rock bottom and sales might be facing for impact.
Normally Marketing expenditures are between 2 & 5% of the turnover. 2 starting from BtoB and 5% for retail.
So if a company starts hiring agressivly on all channels, they might be upon something big.
If you hear rumors about sacking them, it's bad.
These job numbers are now even lower then 2008!
(From this ZH article)
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
Latin American countries want to weaken their currencies?
Today I read that Brazil are once again rattling the cage about the strength of their currency (or more to the point, the weakness of the US Dollar). Chile also are concerned about the strength of their currency, and are intervening in the market process by purchasing US Dollars (which strengthens the Dollar, while also weakening their currency at the same time).
This idea to try to out-run the US in debasing your currency is a fool's errand.
If they really want to compete on world markets through having a cheap currency, they should take a leaf out of the European Central Bank's book, and change what it is they're going to debase themselves against. The ECB realised that you can't out-run the US in debasing your currency. Instead, they choose to measure their currency, the Euro, against something other than the Dollar. Something more reliable and stable. Real money. Gold.
All the Brazilians and Chileans need to do, is change the layout of their financial statements. Include in there the marked-to-market value of their gold reserves in the assets column, and on the liabilities column list the issued currency promises. In this way, you gain as the US debases their Dollar (because the value of your gold will go up as a result of that process). But because you have tight control over how much gold you have in your reserves, you can issue and extinguish the amount of your own currency in existence to suit your own purposes. If you want to weaken your currency, no problem just print up some more Reals. If your currency is getting a bit too weak, perhaps the rest of the world is losing confidence in your responsibility levels or perhaps the cost of imported commodities is starting to choke your economy -- no problemo! Just stop issuing your currency any further and allow some of the existing debt to mature and not be rolled over. You are in control of your own destiny, rather than continuing to be tied at the hip to US profligacy.
One day, all currencies are going to be arranged in this way -- so why wait and keep playing the Dollar Game any longer?
Simples.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/8241635/Brazil-pledges-to-stop-US-melting-the-dollar.html
This idea to try to out-run the US in debasing your currency is a fool's errand.
If they really want to compete on world markets through having a cheap currency, they should take a leaf out of the European Central Bank's book, and change what it is they're going to debase themselves against. The ECB realised that you can't out-run the US in debasing your currency. Instead, they choose to measure their currency, the Euro, against something other than the Dollar. Something more reliable and stable. Real money. Gold.
All the Brazilians and Chileans need to do, is change the layout of their financial statements. Include in there the marked-to-market value of their gold reserves in the assets column, and on the liabilities column list the issued currency promises. In this way, you gain as the US debases their Dollar (because the value of your gold will go up as a result of that process). But because you have tight control over how much gold you have in your reserves, you can issue and extinguish the amount of your own currency in existence to suit your own purposes. If you want to weaken your currency, no problem just print up some more Reals. If your currency is getting a bit too weak, perhaps the rest of the world is losing confidence in your responsibility levels or perhaps the cost of imported commodities is starting to choke your economy -- no problemo! Just stop issuing your currency any further and allow some of the existing debt to mature and not be rolled over. You are in control of your own destiny, rather than continuing to be tied at the hip to US profligacy.
One day, all currencies are going to be arranged in this way -- so why wait and keep playing the Dollar Game any longer?
Simples.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/8241635/Brazil-pledges-to-stop-US-melting-the-dollar.html
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