The Web Tycoon’s blog

Ben Bernanke, president of the Federal reserve, that received this week the price of best person of the year from the magazine time, and is facing his reelection in the senate, is keeping his monetary policy steady.

The FED left yesterday the intervals of the interest rate low, between 0% and 0.25%, this level has been remaining the same this last year. Furthermore, stated that will leave interest rates exceptionally low during a low period of time.

Ben Bernanke is showing more optimism about the economic situation, mainly about the labor market. The information received from the Federal Open Market committee (FOMC) since the meeting in November suggest that the economic activity is improving and the destruction in the labor market has ended, the unemployment rate surprisingly decreased in November from 10.2% to 10%.

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The data from the big European Banks showed that the worst of the financial crisis is over. The third quarter profits from main entities( excepting the British ones, that do not have Quarter results) has been higher than €9600 million this year, this supposes an increase by 73% from the same period in 2008.

From the Big European banks, only the Swiss UBS is continuing with red figures, with 374 millions in loses, while Credit Suisse and ING are having profits again. Santander with €2,221 in profits this quarter, is the first of the ranking, followed by Credit Suisse, BBVA, and Deutsche Bank.

The recovery seems weaker if we take data relative to the whole year, when the 11 examined European banks won €24,770 million, a 17,6% more. Looking at the accumulated, ING hasn’t still left loses, and UBS is losing still more money, up to €2,600 million.

Santander is keeping the leadership in profits in this temporary landscape, While the French BNP Paribas is the second, just before BBVA.

European banks are doing just the opposite than Goldman

Most entities, after being affected by the financial crisis, have centered efforts to increase income from retail banking, reducing exposure to investment banking. Solvency is another key point for the big European banks as large part of them (except Santander and BBVA) needed public help to survive the financial crisis.

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You should have noticed a message sent by the Facebook Tycoon mark Zuckerberg informing about some privacy changes in Facebook, this message can be seen after logging in in the platform during several days is you aren’tstill configured the new privacy settings.

As we can se from the Mark Zukerberg's profile, the person who is selling our privacy, does not follow it's own philosophy.

What the Facebook Tycoon has been saying is that the standard way we should use Facebook is by showing our information to everybody, not just to friends. And according many experts, this is considered as a privacy invasion.

24 hours after the announcement of the Facebook tycoon, the answers of security companies and privacy foundations invaded the web, as a example, we have the Electronic Frontier foundation that published a reaction to the Facebook Tycoon’s new privacy concepts.

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The president Barack Obama, will try to struggle with unemployment (that is at 10% in USA), with the unused tarp funds.

In a speech hold on the Brookings institution, Barack Obama said that wants to ”boost the job generation” with part of the unused $200bn that will be saved from the financial rescue.

”The aid to the banks, was forecast to cost billions of dollars, but not it is in the way to generate billions of dollars in profits to the public treasure”, said Barack Obama.

The program was launched by the administration of his ancestor, George W.Bush, to prevent the the financial system to collapse after the bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers. However, Many Banks returned the funds with interests as market stabilized during the last months, and the cost of the program has been reduced.

”This will give us the opportunity to reduce deficit faster than what we expected before, and use funds that would have gone to help the banks of Wall Street, to contribute in job generation”, said Barack Obama.

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Greece will have serious problems with his national debt because its credit ratings have been downgraded to the lowest level in the eurozone on Tuesday, as its deteriorated finances began to spread fear all over the world.

The incoming national debt disaster caused heavy selling of Greek Stocks and bonds and the shares on the Athens stock exchange fell more than 6 per cent.

For first time in 10 years, a leading rating agency, Fitch, has given to Greece the BBB plus grade with negative Outlook, that is lower than A.

Maybe this building will be for sale to pay Greek national debt.

The Greek Finance Minister,George Papaconstantinou, said that the downgrade reflected Greece’s “mounting credibility gap in recent years and an exceptionally difficult fiscal situation” faced by the new Socialist government, which took over in October.

the other main ratings agencies,Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, have also warned Greece that they can also downgrade ratings on Greek national debt, that is forecast to rise to 125 per cent of gross domestic product next year.

Concern focuses on whether Greece will be able to contain its national debt by implementing a new revenue-raising measures swiftly enough to cut the deficit from 12.7 per cent to 9.1 per cent of GDP next year in line with budget projections.

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The president Barack obama, partially admitted that the continuous unemployment carnage in the United States seems to have arrived to an end. During the month of November, the job destruction wasn’t higher than 11000, very lower than the expected 130000 and the best record from December 2007, two years ago.

This has been excellent data because the November unemployment in the US not only prevented the record of the last 26 years from being higher than the 10,2 of October, but also reduced it to 10%. The president Barack Obama highlighted that the data is positive but we have still a long way to obtain a prolongated improvement in the job market.

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Last week we seen how to monitor measurable things with marketing analytics and determine the ROI, and we also approached the concept of return on investment as a way to make your boss happy. But not every time in social media we have results that can be counted with numbers.

Sentimental Marketing analytics

Not for count the exact number of mentions, you will know if they are positive or not, so sentimental marketing analytics are so useful, but you can also use them to determine a baseline before implementing or changing a social media strategy and calculating your ROI.

With the tweetfel I discovered that about 50% of twitter users, do not like it.

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The Federal Reserve noted since the last report on October 21^st that the Economic conditions in the United States have improved. At the same time, the Fed featured in the Beige Book that the labor market is continuing weak, but there are some isolated improvements.

The Beige Book records the economic evolution of the 12 zones in the Federal Reserve, this institution, highlighted that in eight regions,they recorded improvements, and in the other four, the situation was remaining more or less steady this last month. The major issue for the Federal Reserve is the labor market.

Yesterday, the private Unemployment data from November was released. During the last month, the companies of the United States destroyed 169000 jobs, more than the expected by the analyst, but less than the month of October, when 195000 jobs where destroyed.

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The members of the ECB’s Observatori, a committee of experts, believe that its necessary to keep the interest rate at 1% and will say it in the meeting that will be hold tomorrow.

However, there isn’t consensus on the way the emergency measures taken because of the crisis should be lifted, the committee believes that the support given to the banks should be gradually retreated.

The recent Crisis of Dubai, Whose government asked for a moratorium to pay part of the public company , Dubai World, triggered the divergence of opinions. ”the panic generated by Dubai is the best test to reach a conclusion about the financial crisis, this case mirrors a trust crisis that is far of being solved”

Explains José Luis Martinez, strategist in Spain of Citi ”’the Central Banks must continue spreading liquidity and adecuated credit conditions to normalizethe markets”,

added. Nowadays banks can get money at a low interest rate an lend it very expensive.

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In the middle of the season where the forecasts for 2010 are released, Morgan Stanley is seeing something different than the optimistic approach of the majority. The company predicted that the European Stocks could close the 2010 with 5% lower levels than nowadays. Before of this, they could reach additional improvements by 10%.

In a different approach than Morgan Stanley The Investment firms are returning to rely on increases by until 10-15% in the European Stock this incoming Year.

Morgan Stanley calculates that in the next months the rally begun in March will continue, since then, the European Stock market is accumulating profits of 50%.

If the Forecasts of Morgan Stanley are correct, in middle-2010 The European MSCI index, will reach a 10% of additional revaluation and a maximum of 1200 points.

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