Author: Serkadis

Filed under: Car Buying, Etc., Mercedes-Benz

That’s customer retention, not retentive customers, though Mercedes-Benz could be said to enjoy both. J.D. Power and Associates has been indexing customer retention for seven years, and Mercedes-Benz tops the list in 2009. Power measures how many vehicle buyers are replacing an older model from the same brand, and Mercedes-Benz’s 67-percent retention rate tops all others, including the usual suspects, Honda and Toyota.

What’s resonating with customers are resale value and quality. Even used Mercs are spendy, but they all ooze an air of quality. Ingot-solid platforms and the fine sheen of obsessively-perfected engineering seem to convince buyers that the cars will last forever and are of the highest quality. Why said customers might then trade a car with such inherent awesomeness, which is built to withstand all manner of circumstances, is another story entirely, but Mercedes-Benz’s first-place finish this year caps a five-year run of increasing numbers, culminating with this year’s best-ever 67 percent, the highest the Power study has measured.

[Source: J.D. Power]

J.D. Power ranks Mercedes-Benz #1 for customer retention originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

by taxikipali, via libcom, 13 December 2009: “Reforms and fears about the explosive economic crisis mark the days after the latest riots in Greece… The day after the latest riots, which erupted as a response to mass preventive repression against the commemoration of Alexandros Grigoropoulos murder, is characterized by the launching of an array of reforms by the greek state struggling with an explosive economic crisis…” more

If you enrolled over 14,000 ICU patients into a study on a single day, and then did follow-up, what would you find regarding the relationship of infection to the outcomes of ICU stay and mortality?

Just such a study was published in JAMA last week, and here are the not-so-stunning conclusions:

Infections are common in patients in contemporary ICUs, and risk of infection increases with duration of ICU stay. In this large cohort, infection was independently associated with an increased risk of hospital death.

To an ID specialist, this is kind of like reading that someone has done a study linking time spent outside in the rain and the likelihood of becoming wet.  Patients in ICUs are susceptible to getting infections for innumerable reasons — so many that it seems to us (from our admittedly biased perspective) almost remarkable when an infection doesn’t occur.

In all seriousness, ICU-related infections are a gargantuan problem, and if this study helps publicize the clinical and research needs, more power to it.

Although the Wii and DS do have their own stable of worthwhile releases this year, the sheer number of shovelware titles have taken their toll. Review scores for games from both platforms have conspired to turn them

Politico recognizes inconsistency emanating out of the Obama administration based on comments from today’s Sunday morning yak-fests.

Two of President Obama’s top economic advisers disagreed Sunday about whether the recession had ended.

Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, flatly said that it had.

“Today, everybody agrees that the recession is over, and the question is what the pace of the expansion is going to be,” Summers said on ABC’s “This Week.”

But Christina Romer, who heads the White House Council of Economic Advisers, offered a more cautious view on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

What’s going on here?

Basically, the administration would love to take credit for a recovery, while also acknowledging the continued pain in the economy and allowing itself the ability to fire off a second stimulus if need be.

It’s a tigh trope to walk, though it’s probably one they’ll be trying to walk until the 2010 elections (though from then out, they want to be fully into taking-credit mode. If they’re still talking about a recession in 2011, Obama may be a one-termer.

The other message today was that Obama wants banks to lever up — er, lend more — again.

The White House will have the nation’s bankers as its guest on Monday

CBS News: When I asked top White House economic advisor Larry Summers if the President needs to encourage banks to do more lending, he told me that bankers “need to recognize that they’ve got obligations to the country after all that’s been done for them, and there is a lot more they can do.”

Tomorrow, the President will meet with heads of the country’s biggest banks and Summers told me the White House has a blunt message: “President Obama is going to be talking with them about what they can do to support enhanced lending to customers across the country.

“We were there for them. And the banks need to do everything they can to be sure they’re there for customers across this country.”

Read the whole thing >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Risk Of Double-Dip Recession Is Rising, Says Krugman
• Arianna Huffington: Larry Summers Should Resign
• Citi: Cost Cutting Is Over, Now Leverage Will Drive Earnings

I just watched “Fanboys” earlier so I’m a bit stuck on Star Wars today. Anyway, I know that a few of you were a bit miffed when Force

Filed under: Spy Photos, Crossover, Nissan

Just when you thought Qashqai was about a weird a name as a car could get comes some spy shots of the Nissan Qazana. Mmmm… yeah, you’re right. Qashqai is still weirder. However, the Qazana, which we first saw in Geneva, is weirder looking than the Qashqai. Or practically anything else, for that matter. But it’s not bad-weird, just weird-weird. That said, sticking with the maxim that all SUVs (and cars that look like SUVs) want to either be WW2 Jeeps or lunar rovers, the Qazana isn’t that odd. We quite like it.

The lads at AutoExpress just caught some spy shots of a Qazana prototype, complete with black trash-bag crypsis. Despite the budget camo, it does look like some of the show car’s more novel elements are making it into production — specifically, its large headlights. It even seems as though the highly-stylized grille will see the light of day.

AutoExpress claims that it doesn’t stop there: The motorcycle-inspired (and highly whacked-out) interior will also allegedly make the final cut. In terms of where it fits in the lineup, the Qazana will slot below the larger Qashqai. Like the Qashqai, look for the Qazana to be built at Nissan’s Sunderland, UK plant. Here’s hoping Nissan chooses the bold path and brings out a Qazana that truly resembles the concept. Odds of it making to the US? We’d normally say “zilch,” but we did just get the Cube, so who knows?

[Source: AutoExpress]

Spy Shots: First Nissan Qazana prototype caught testing originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (qjnet/news/vga-2009-star-wars-the-force-unleashed-2-announcedmore-announcements-are-coming-your-way-thanks-to-the-ongoing-video-game-awards-after-the-batman-arkham-asylum-2-reveal-we-have-another-hot-sequel-in-the-form-of-star-wars-force-unleashed-2.html) brings up a number of of questions. Why is Starkiller still alive? Will whirling dervish frog Yoda be in

Verdun, France | Ossuaries

In 1916, this nine-month battle of Verdun claimed over 300,000 lives, and left about 300,000 more wounded. (By comparison, the total current death toll for American soldiers of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is currently 6,227.)

The field of battle is today marked by the Verdun Memorial. The most chilling place in this eerie landscape is by far the so-called “Trench of Bayonets.”

In June 1916, this entrenched position was a part a salient west of Fort Douaumont, which the Germans desperately wanted to take. On June 12, Germans unleashed a hailstorm of iron and lead upon French positions. The attack caught the French by surprise.

The 137th Regiment of French infantry was annihilated almost to the last man. Years after the war, French teams exploring the battle field uncovered the clues of the horrific fate of this regiment. One of the trenches was discovered completely filled in, with only a neat line of bayonets sticking out of the ground. The bayonets were still fixed to their rifles. A body was found next to each one. The 3rd company of 137th regiment had been buried alive, almost instantaneously, having died where they stood.

Marking the third straight year for a sophomore winning the Heisman Trophy, Alabama’s Mark Ingram takes CFB’s top honor in the closest balloting ever, beating out the 1985 race between Auburn’s Bo Jackson and Iowa’s Chuck Long. Ingram received 227 first place votes, barely edging Stanford’s Tony Gerhart’s 222. Ingram’s point total was 1304, and Gehart’s 1276. Third place went to Texas’ Colt McCoy, 4th to Nebraska’s Ndamukong Suh and 5th to former Heisman winner, Florida’s Tim Tebow.

Ingram’s win marks the first time ever for a player from the university of Alabama to win the prestigious award, which is very strange considering Alabama’s storied past and the number of great players to come through that program. “The legacy of Alabama football certainly had a void filled,” Tide coach Nick Saban said.

Showing a predilection for winners, this year’s award marks the sixth time out of the last seven that the trophy winner has gone on to play in the BCS championship game. Both Ingram and Tony Gerhart enjoyed a late surge of support, catching perrenial favorite Colt McCoy, who would have definitely been a candidate in the ‘body of work’ category. Ingram, in spite of not winning the SEC rushing crown, ultimately was deemed to be more of a MVP for the undefeated Tide, which may have been enough to push him past the candidate from 8-4 Stanford.

© fanblogs.com

View the original post or comment on Mark Ingram Wins Heisman…

It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas here at Fanblogs–very little CFB news. So time to come up with your own!

© fanblogs.com

View the original post or comment on Fanblogs Open Thread…

Here’s more from this year’s Spike Video Game Awards. This time we get to see the debut trailer for EA’s Medal of Honor reboot. It’s short, but pretty damn sweet, really. EA says all of the footage

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Europe, Mercedes-Benz, Luxury

Germans are generally so conservative that we sometimes wonder if their aftermarket scene exists only to provide for the anomalies that every society needs. Not many of you fell for MEC Design’s first attempt at visually tuning the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, and we would have thought it was something from Tron Legacy if not for the fact of it being yellow. It appears that boys from Berlin returned to their easels and now present the MEC SLS, take two.

It’s called a “style study” and to its credit, MEC has deleted the most obscene gestures from the previous rendering: the mommy-make-it-stop nose and horrendous wheels. Nevertheless, MEC’s Erector-Set-and-Laffy-Taffy design ethos has only been barely restrained, and the result is still quite troubling. If you have suggestions, you can leave them in the comments section below. We think MEC is reading…

[Source: Caradisiac]

MEC Design takes another (eyeball) stab at the SLS AMG originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

If you thought Visceral Games’ Dante’s Inferno couldn’t stray any further from Dante Alighieri’s original, well, you thought wrong. They’re throwing a frickin’ space miner in there just to spice things up for gamers in Europe.

As I was viewing the demo of the latest WebTrends 9 release, I started to experience those familiar conflicted feelings. I liked some of what I was seeing: a further improvement to report presentation, real time alerts for rule-based changes in traffic. But at the same time, I was thinking, "where’s the beef, where are the improvements I thought I was going to see on the OnDemand analyst tool which is still pretty much 8.5"the core part of the product? Isn’t this what WebTrends said they were going to present in the Fall 09 release?"

So, I asked.  The answer I got from WebTrends: There are 3 audiences they’re trying to address: the senior manager, the business user, and the analyst. Who’s the main target with this release? The senior manager and business user.  WebTrends’ rationale is that this is the base that they must win over…and they must give tools to their core customers (analysts and hybrid marketers/analysts) to do a better job of pushing WebTrends out to the greater enterprise. 

There’s a certain logic to this argument that I understand. One of the biggest issues that larger organizations have with analytics is getting reports out to people in a timely and coherent manner so that they can use the data to make decisions. You’d think that after this many years, it would be pretty straightforward.  It’s a gap that Google Analytics has done a wonderful job at exploiting. But getting reports out to lots of people still doesn’t address the gap of being able to understand how to use the data. Once your managers, marketers and content writers understand the basic “out of the box” reports, they want analysis that guides their decision making. So, by following Google’s lead, WebTrends is solving only half the problem.

If you’re an experienced WebTrends analyst or have one on your staff, there’s a decent argument for staying the course with WebTrends and seeing what they come up with in February at their user conference. Based on the improvements already made in the product, using the new interface and alert system will help you with report distribution and doing very basic traffic analysis.

On the other hand, if you’re managing a WebTrends installation and folks aren’t using it, I’m not sure Analytics 9 will address the issue enough for you to justify a business case for continued use of the product. Of course, the same could be said of any fee-based solution, but WebTrends is making a much stronger pitch to this level of user than the other fee based vendors.

As I described in a recent post, there are a few interesting new offerings that address business questions based on analytics data. I anticipate that there will be growth in point solutions that focus on automating the extraction of actionable information out of web analytics data.  These solutions don’t ask you to analyze data; they tell you what you need to know. As this level of automation becomes "smarter", the need for web analytics reporting, could quickly lose currency.

Talk of a dollar ‘bottom’ keeps building, this time from Trader’s Narrative. Don’t forget that even the commodity bull Jim Rogers has been buying dollars.

Any hardcore contrarian has to be tempted at this point. It’s just too easy to trash the dollar.

For what it’s worth, here are a few technical reasons why sentiment might be turning:

Traders Narrative: While US dollar sentiment has been extremely bearish for a few months, the US dollar index has just now managed to move above its 50 day moving average. The last time we saw such a tiny gleam of positivity from the dollar was back in April (and that didn’t work too well):

…

At best, the US dollar has taken the first tentative steps in the bottoming process. In which case, this simply deserves monitoring. At worst, this is not a signal but more ‘noise’ similar to the myriad counter trend mini-rallies we’ve seen. The reason the distinction is important is that all risky assets are correlated now thanks to the carry trade.

Read more here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Desmond Lachman: The Dollar Is A Mess, But Here’s Why The World Can’t Ditch It
• Jim Rogers: I’m Loading Up On Dollars, But Long-Term Treasury Rates Heading Back To 80s Levels
• Trading The Dollar/Stocks Correlation Is Complete Bunk

   +       +  

about strategic default – American Dream 2: Default, Then Rent – By MARK WHITEHOUSE – summary …  step 1 suck equity out of your house and take a cruise vacation … step 2  strategic default, rent, and use the extra money you would have paid for your mortgage to take a cruise vacation = double dip – hattip V – read the article at Wall Street Journal

and
Cheryl Lang On Strategic Defaulters, Borrower Incentives – BY JOHN CLAPP – This week, MortgageOrb caught up with Cheryl Lang, president of Integrated Mortgage Solutions, to get her thoughts on HAMP, strategic defaulters and borrower motivation. – MortgageOrb

and

Great Response to WSJ article: Spitting Into The Housing – Tom Lindmark – … Get a clue! The reason they aren’t sending back their docs is that they’ve moved around the corner and found a better house to rent. The people you want to save don’t want your ministrations, they knew how to game the system to buy into the housing market and now that it hasn’t worked out, they are smart enough to game you and the futile efforts being made to keep them in a property they want no part of. … – But Then What

————

Will The New ABX Prime Index Be The Reason For The Next RMBS (And Thus, FHA/GSE) Collapse? – Submitted by Tyler Durden – … And MarkIt is more than happy to provide them with the tool to do it. So what will this new index do – well, in addition to making trillionaires out of Paolo Pellegrini and Kyle Bass (in the same way ABX Subprime made them billionaires), the new index may just be the tipping point that finally collapses the trillions in sham GSE holdings at mark-to-myth. … – Zero Hedge  – good primer

————

Wells Fargo Cuts as Much as 30 Percent in Principal From Loans – By Dakin Campbell – … Wells Fargo has forgiven an average of $46,000 in principal, or 15 percent, for the 43,500 option-ARM loans it has modified this year through September, said Franklin Codel, chief financial officer at the bank’s home-lending unit. … – Bloomberg
————

worth reading – Fitch predicts another tough year for most US structured finance sectors – Though the U.S. economy is on a slow path to recovery, collateral performance will continue to be weak for all U.S. structured finance sectors next year,  Fitch Ratings says  in its 2010 outlook report. – has their assumptions for ABS, CMBS, RMBS, CDO’s – Research Recap

Annaly Capital Management Announces Monthly Commentary for November

————

Pimco’s Gross: No Fed move before 2011 – U.S. economic growth is likely to remain weak in 2010, forcing the Federal Reserve to keep short-term interest rates at current ultra-low levels throughout the year and even in early 2011, influential bond fund manager Bill Gross said on Wednesday. – Reuters

————

Paul Kasriel video: What happens after the stimulus spending wears off? –  Paul Kasriel, Northern Trust’s Chief Economist, shares his prognosis on inflation, the U.S. dollar and the year ahead.- Northern Trust

————

Jim Rogers: Lessons from a Legend – Matthew Bradbard – Last night I took a trip down to Miami to visit with Jim Rogers at a book signing for his most recent book … he spoke a little about the aforementioned book and took questions from the audience. These are the general themes I took away, in no particular order .. – interesting – read on – Seeking Alpha
————

4 page report – U.S. Macro Outlook: Less Than Graceful – By Mark Zandi –
• A recovery has begun, but the transition to a self-sustaining expansion will be less than graceful.
• Without more hiring, household income will not support spending growth.
• After the trauma of last year’s financial panic, businesses need time to grow confident about expanding.
• Policymakers must remain aggressive to keep the economy from falling back into recession.
Moody’s – Economy.com

It was another eventful week for the PS3 faithful. Hardware-side, we heard a lot about the Sony motion controller. Is it gonna be called Gem? Sony says that’s just a prototype name. What we do know is