Hartar Blog

Mark Carney did his best yesterday to justify the decision of keeping interest rates at 0.5% at the same time that it was promising that the economic momentum will be regained and that interest rates will have to rise soon. Unfortunately, this is not new. Since March 5th, 2009 (more than nine years ago), when interest rates were lowered to 0.5% in the UK, we have not seen much action despite all the talk and promises of higher interest rates. And inaction of interest rates has mostly come as a surprise as projections on interest rates were always much higher than what was later delivered by the central bank (see image below). What we are seeing in the UK is not different from what we have seen in the US after the Federal Reserve stopped quantitative easing and engaged in a slow path of increasing interest rates. So far there have only been surprises on one direction: the Federal Reserve ended up postponing an interest rate increase that was anticipated by the market. And the ECB or th...

Group setting or face-to-face, use this 2-question combo Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash The fastest way to identify intelligent people is to ask an easy question, followed by a more complex one. Let’s say you’re in a Zoom call with your marketing team. You need ideas on how to spend the last, unallocated $5,000 of your budget. That’s a lot of money, so the ideas better be good. Whose ideas can you trust? According to Shailesh Panthee , asking a very easy question in a group setting will reveal who’s eager — maybe too eager — to prove themselves. For example, you could ask a basic question about marketing lingo. “Remind me again, what’s CTR stand for?” CTR means click-through-rate. It’s the percentage of people who click on an element after viewing it. Most people in marketing know the term, and your team might think it’s a bit weird that you’re asking such a simple question in the first place. That’s okay, however, because what’s important is what happens next: Who shou...