2019-12-23

La production de Francs repart !

Crise du REPO oblige, la Fed a rejoint les autres grandes banques centrales dans le mode "Ctrl-P".
La petite BNS suit le mouvement pour éviter une appréciation du Franc par rapport aux autres monnaies comme l'Euro ou le Dollar.

Le résultat (notez l'ascension sur la seconde moitié de 2019):



2019-11-30

The Corporate Bullshit Generator - the Crossroads of Data

Without fresh data from our fans, the Corporate Bullshit Generator could not stay at the cutting-edge of innovative data-centric business intelligence. Here are two key additions (coming from the same sentence):

(1)

At the crossroads of supply-chain, bandwidth and reorganization, value stream management is all about business acumen.
At the crossroads of values congruence, brand pyramid and socialization, the key to framework is technical strength.
At the crossroads of relevance, responsibility and convergence, the General Senior Head of Management Office drives customer-centric co-innovations.

---

(2)

Flat out, the standard-setters conversate by turning data into transformation processes.
Actually, an open-door policy transgenerates our outward-looking, skills-based and up-to-the-minute success factors by turning data into superior-quality re-engineering.
Adjacencies are on track by turning data into long-term, movements-based, rollout plan.
The science-based action fosters our integrative document; this is why industry market shifts accelerate the analytics-based, hypothesis-driven, top-level and diversified case study by turning data into synergization.
The product manager potentiates corporate data practices by turning data into trigger events.
The enablers ignite our accountability by turning data into workforce adjustments.
The standard-setters differentially right-size pipelines by turning data into business equation.
As the consumer and commerce landscape continues to evolve, the group targets our frameworks by turning data into convictions.
The Senior Vice Director of Facilities Management envisioneers scalings by turning data into cross-functional synergies.
Our sourced say/do ratios influence the game changers by turning data into infrastructure.
In order to improve, you need to promote advanced-analytics and first-mover support structures by turning data into outstanding issues.
The stakeholders cost-effectively overcome our problems/difficulties by turning data into mind-blowing core values.
To remain relevant, the Enterprise Chief Value Added Services Officer (CVASO) filters out our limitations by turning data into predictability.

---
Thanks for the input - and enjoy!

2019-11-02

The Corporate Bullshit Generator - Business Agility Edition

Our best-in-class, high-performance digitized business intelligence tool, the Corporate Bullshit Generator, just got a tremendous impulse thanks to no one less than Dilbert himself (see the October 28, 2019, cartoon: Business Agility Influencer) ! Here are a few gems including the new items, that the CBSG produces - by the thousands each second, beating the most talented managers worldwide and beyond !
  • The Global Chief Business Agility Officer (CBAO) influences our business process quality engineering.
  • Business agility and solution orientation empower a sales target by expanding boundaries.
  • The Chief Operations Solutionist (COS) activates a first-mover, state-of-the-art, cross-pollination across the entire spectrum.
  • An insightful say/do ratio strengthens our high-performing customer behavior patterns, whilst a hybridation quickly strengthens the mediators.
  • The Enterprise Chief Business Planning Influencer (CBPI) cost-effectively enforces synchronized assets.
  • The "why" behind visions will be best positioned to enforce our field workforce optimization.
  • Pre-integrated diversification is all about right, awareness-raising, usage-based and holistic data science innovation.
  • Our challenge is not to co-specify our Business Model Innovation (BMI). Our challenge is to call "check-mate" ahead of competition. 
Enjoy!

2019-09-17

New GitHub mirrors



New GitHub mirrors, for open-source projects I'm administrator or developer of, are located here.
Please ignore the old mirrors that relied on svn2github. If you see "svn2github" somewhere on a repository address, it's the old one → trash it!

You can find the same projects on SourceForge too, here.

The projects are...

Ada Bar Codesbar code (1D and 2D) generator in pure Ada
Ada PDF Writera standalone, portable package for producing dynamically PDF documents
AZipa free, portable Zip Archive Manager
Corporate Bullshit Generatorthe Corporate Bullshit Generator
Engine_3Da real-time, pure software, 3D engine for DOS-talgics
Excel Writera standalone, portable Ada package for producing Excel spreadsheets
GIDGeneric Image Decoder
GLOBE_3Da real-time 3D Engine written in Ada
GNAVI: GNU Ada Visual Interfacethe GNU Ada Visual Interface
GNOGAthe GNU Omnificent GUI for Ada
HACHAC Ada Compiler
Ini file managera standalone, portable Ada package for configuration files
LEALightweight Editor for Ada
Mathpaqscollection of mathematical, 100% portable, packages in Ada
Pascal-to-AdaPascal to Ada translator
TeXCADa program for drawing or retouching {picture}s in LaTeX
Wasabeea Web browser with safety focus
Zip-Adaa standalone, portable Ada library for Zip archives

2019-09-03

BNS - Taux d'intérêts CHF - Septembre 2019

On s'approche d'un rendement réel de -2% sur toutes les durées.

Cliquer pour agrandir

Cliquer pour agrandir

Un agrandissement s'impose:

Cliquer pour agrandir
Cliquer pour agrandir

2019-08-08

Gold and Monetary Base

A little thought on recent movements of gold price, in relation to my recent post about the new floor the Fed has set for the monetary base under pressure of the President economic data.
I show my chart again:
The Monetary Base was around 800 Billion USD before the last crisis (pompously called the Great Financial Crisis). Now the floor is set at around 3200 Billion USD (the Fed has even completely stopped the Quantitative Tightening last week). It's 4 times more. For one "cash" dollar of 2008, there are now 3 more "free cash" dollars (they come out of nothing).

A few nights ago, I had a little idea about it. In 2008, the gold price was around $800/oz. What should it be in diluted dollars? Assuming (wrongly) that the quantity of gold being mined is not substantial compared to the already mined one, the price could then reach $3200/oz. There are some guesstimates around about global gold production, but they are difficult to verify. If there are, say, 33.3% more gold between 2008 and now, the price above should be adapted in its turn to the larger supply, by a factor of 3/4. This makes $2400/oz.

2019-08-03

AZip 2.35

New AZip features since v.2.25:
  • Select columns menu entry allows you to select the columns that you find useful to be displayed (v.2.30)
  • Option for a default extraction directory (v.2.31)
  • Drag & Drop from a folder within AZip, to Windows Explorer or to the Desktop (v.2.35)
  • Context menus within AZip (v.2.35)
Visit AZip home page here.

Column selection - click to enlarge

Option for a default extraction directory - click to enlarge

Context menus with AZip - click to enlarge

2019-07-06

Pasta! - Levels 37 to 40

Levels 37 to 40 of Pasta! are now available.
Enjoy, and try to beat the best score!

If you like the game, don't forget to "like" it with the Facebook button!


Screenshots:

37

38

39

40

2019-06-27

Assouplissement...

L'assouplissement sur les taux, annoncé par la BCE et la Fed, s'est déjà propagé sur le Franc Suisse (CHF) et, par ricochet, sur les taux hypothécaires:



On converge vers une courbe de taux plate à 1% sur toutes les durées!

Côté impression monétaire, le calme apparent est dû à l'absence des données de juin (on les aura fin juillet), mais vu l'appréciation récente du Franc par rapport à l'Euro, on verra certainement le facteur de surbooking dépasser les 11x actuels.



Ce sera l'occasion pour la BNS de rattraper son retard sur la banque centrale d'Argentine.



2019-06-25

The new floor

The Fed has now admitted the obvious: the "temporary" measures of the last decade are actually permanent: zero (or less) real interest rates, and Quantative Easing.

I recommend the following article, "The Fed Stops Pretending", for more about the subject...

Mr Market is only now realizing the "new" situation and buys gold or bitcoins.

Here is in a graphical and quantitative way how the "new" dollar compares to the "old" one.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

2019-06-04

LIBOR yield curve inversion


Click to enlarge

We are as close to an inversion between the 3 Months and 12 Months yields as in late October 2008.

Click to enlarge

Let's see what happens next...

2019-04-02

Etat du malade, 2 avril 2019

Taux hypothécaires d'une banque suisse, à durée fixe. Cliquer pour agrandir

Taux hypothécaires d'une banque suisse, à durée fixe. Cliquer pour agrandir

Cliquer pour agrandir

Cliquer pour agrandir

2019-03-28

No way back from QE

For the last ten years, the Fed's narrative around Quantitative Easing (QE) was basically the following:
  • the US QE is a temporary measure
  • it is no money printing since it will be reversed (Quantitative Tightening, QT)
  • it has positive effects, but the reverse operation has no negative effect.

Of course the third point seems to be wishful thinking for anybody with a scientific intuition.
Even Jay Powell, back in 2012, expressed concerns about it.

We had, end of 2018, the empirical confirmation that adding tens of billions of dollars of bonds on the market - the effective consequence of QT - was too painful, especially for the stock market.
So the Fed decided to stop QT.

That was it... USD Monetary Base, linear scale. Click to enlarge

That was it... USD Monetary Base, logarithmic scale. Click to enlarge


What Mr Market will take time to realize is that the convoluted "Fed decides to stop QT" means that the Fed is admitting it has actually practiced money printing over the last ten years, and is ready to do more of it (only some gold buyers did connect the dots and have reacted quickly enough).
Concretely, the Fed is helping Uncle Sam to pay its bills (including interests of its debt) with freshly printed money. It also help banks to get rid of doubtful debts ("cash for trash").

2019-03-17

Pasta! - Level 35

Level 35 of Pasta! is easy.

However you'll notice the redoubtable Antipasta hiding below basil layers.
Still, they can trigger nice chain reactions...

Pasta! - level 35
As a bonus, I've written down how much time it took to build this level.

  • 7 minutes from the sketch on paper to Ada code, using two editors: LEA and GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) including debugging: Ada detects at compile-time bugs like size mismatches or type errors. The only run-time issue was an infinite loop with rows of identical Antipasta. Perhaps it is a bug, or there are really no possible combination without immediate match for the startup board. I did not look into this.
  • 15 minutes testing the first version, which was a bit boring with nine columns and too few pasta sorts - that is, too many pasta of the same kind.
  • After reducing the number of columns from nine to seven and increasing the number of sorts of pasta, it became much funnier.
  • After v2 (2 minutes of testing), came v3 (7 minutes) and a few others (30 minutes in total) with always smaller fine-tuning for the number of rounds, the threshold in points, that corresponds to an easy (but not too easy) level.

2019-03-12

Pasta! - Level 34

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the newcomer, the fusillone:


The new pasta makes its first appearance in level 34 of the Pasta! game.


Caution: it's a Piccante level, which means it's a tough one.
Here are a few hints about how to tame it.

  • There are lots of moves at start (30), so your fate is (mathematically speaking) quite divergent: perhaps you'll be very lucky quite early, perhaps not at all. Don't give up, and try again!
  • Spot the 4's, the L's and T's early to earn points, even if all this basil is still blocking you (usually the tactic is to get rid of obstacles first)
  • Try to clear as much basil as possible in single moves (like the three fusillone on the bottom left in the picture)
  • Once there is more room on the plate, don't forget the general rule of these kind of games: do matches on the bottom, so you trigger more chain reactions.
  • Remember that there is an infinity of lives in this game, and that you can restart a level at any time either by clicking on the map, but, even easier, by clicking the Reload button!

As a bonus, here is the development Pasta! server, running from the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS), with level 34 as source code.
Click to enlarge

2019-03-06

Inflation et taux réels

D'abord, l'indice des prix à la consommation.
La poussée de février contribue à stabiliser l'inflation (moyenne mobile sur 12 mois) autour de 1%.


Par conséquent, les taux réels plongent encore un petit peu, à -2% (taux directeur)...


2019-03-05

Piazza 4

After 1 1/2 year of inactivity, the development of Pasta! continues, with the levels 31 to 40.

Click to enlarge

A gentle level #31 to begin with Piazza Quattro...

Click to enlarge

For those curious about the code behind the game, here you are:

Click to enlarge

The entire level's description holds in an expression (called aggregate in Ada), returned from a function.

2019-02-22

Vers de nouveaux records

Depuis la volte-face de la Fed au tout début de l'année, qui a joué le rôle d'un puissant "coup de whiskey", il neige des billets, réels ou comptables, partout dans le monde.
Dans la douce Helvétie, cela ressemble à ceci:

Cliquer pour agrandir

Les billets? Un record de 80 milliards (courbe rouge sur le graphique).
Les rotatives d'Orell-Füssli tournent à plein régime!

L'ensemble de la monnaie centrale fait aussi un record, à 562 milliards, promptement joués investis par la BNS à la bourse de New York. Buy! Buy! Buy!

Je vous mets aussi le graphique logarithmique (doublement à chaque ligne horizontale):

Cliquer pour agrandir

Que l'on se rassure: depuis quelques années, la BNS ne fait plus la course avec sa consoeur argentine:

Cliquer pour agrandir


2019-02-06

Zip-Ada and AZip presentations at FOSDEM 2019


Shrink your Data to (almost) Nothing with Trained Compression


Presentation is available as PDF and PPT.


The AZip Archive Manager: a full-Ada Open-Source Portable Application



Presentation is available as PDF and PPT.


Click here for the whole list of presentations (8½ hours without break!) in the Ada developer room at FOSDEM 2019.

Gold pricing 2024-03-16

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