Feb28Subprimes pour les nulsPosted at 08:28 in Gadgets and Fun, Risk Management

Voici une explication très simple pour ceux qui essaient encore de comprendre ce qui s'est passé :Madame Ginette a une buvette à Bertincourt, dans le Pas-de-Calais. Pour augmenter ses ventes, elle décide de faire crédit à ses fidèles clients, tous alcooliques et presque tous au chômage de longue durée. Vu qu'elle vend à crédit, Madame Ginette voit non seulement augmenter sa fréquentation, mais en plus peut augmenter légèrement les prix du calva et du ballon de rouge.

Le jeune et dynamique directeur de l'agence bancaire locale, quant à lui, considère les ardoises du troquet comme des actifs recouvrables, et commence à faire crédit à Madame Ginette en prenant les dettes des ivrognes comme garantie. Au siège de la banque, des traders avisés transforment ces actifs recouvrables en CDO, CMO, SICAV, SAMU, OVNI, SOS et autres sigles financiers incompréhensibles.

Ces instruments financiers servent ensuite de levier au marché actionnaire et conduisent, au NYSE, à la City et aux Bourses de Francfort et de Paris à des opérations de dérivés, dont les garanties sont totalement inconnues de tous : les ardoises des ivrognes de Madame Ginette.

Ces dérivés sont négociés pendant quelques années comme s'il s'agissait de titres solides et sérieux sur les marchés financiers de 80 pays, jusqu'au jour où quelqu'un prend soudainement conscience que les alcoolos du troquet de Bertincourt n'ont pas un rond pour payer leurs dettes.

La buvette de Madame Ginette fait faillite ... et le monde entier l'a dans le luc ...

 

Voici un autre lien qui explique de façon plus détaillée comment cela fonctionne...

Feb15Chaos & Project ManagementPosted at 11:15 in Chaos, My Work, Project Management

You might have noticed that I have renamed my blog to "Lost in Chaos". I'm not talking about my geographical location, although some people might argue that it would be a perfect match. No, I'm here talking about Chaos in Project Management, which is my favorite field of research, and I intend to post more about it in the future.

The word chaos did not initially mean "disorder", but this became the common acceptance of its meaning as of today. Mathematically, Chaos means "an aperiodic deterministic behavior which is very sensitive to its initial conditions" (i.e., small perturbations of the initial conditions lead to large variations). A chaotic system typically looks random but is not: It is very difficult to predict accurately, but still predictable if you have enough information (it is called a deterministic system, e.g. weather forecasting). The whole idea behind my work, and this re-branding of my blog, is to be able to reveal patterns of order out of seemingly chaotic systems (a.k.a. Projects), and why not use this information to "Control the chaos" !

Feb08Datacenter technologies & virtualizationPosted at 07:54 in Dubai, Web/Tech

Last week, I attended the SNIA (Storage & Network Industry Association) Storage Academy focused this year on Datacenter technologies, Green & virtualization.

I was absolutely stunned by the first presentation from Dr. Evangelos S Eleftheriou (IBM Fellow & Manager Storage Technologies, IBM Research) on the trends for storage. Although the intellectual level was extremely high (electrons density and such), the delivery was perfect and he made it accessible to all of us, regardless of our backgrounds.

The second presentation from Juergen Arnold (SNIA chair) on Green Storage was also very interesting, and to say the least, a wake-up call. Datacenters use a lot of energy, and there are ways to reduce that footprint by implementing best practices (lower cost) or implementing green technologies (higher cost). The SNIA features 117 best practice in their GSI (Green Storage Initiative), that any datacenter operator should read. We all have a role to play in making this a better place, and reducing the energy consumption in datacenters will have a dramatic impact, given the skyrocketing needs for storage and bandwidth (youtube, emails, file sharing, etc).

The rest of the day was a bit more casual, but I enjoyed the Madinat Jumeirah a lot (it was actually my first time there) and its seaview.