Business Performance Management

Almost everything I have ever written I did not write for the reader I wrote it for the writer Unpublished, unedited, undated, unread But still written in the language of a mortal fool In the language that keeps changing Until it?s original meaning is lost But is it lost forever? A wise man just told me an ancient tablet recently was discovered and decoded I wonder if it was written for the writer or for the reader?

Philosophy is in the mind of the philosopher. If you not are the philosopher you cannot observe the philosophers philosophy directly. All you can do is observing the philosophers philosophy indirectly through words or similar expressions coming from the philosopher. In other words we are extracting limited amount of information about the philosophy from the philosopher. The words we observe from the philosopher we can call implied philosophy. The implied philosophy only implies something about the philosophy of the philosopher. The implied philosophy can sometimes sound like gibberish that often reflects upon the poor philosophy of the non-philosopher that like to call himself a philosopher. However, that the implied-philosophy sounds gibberish can just as well reflect upon the observer that not is a true philosopher and thereby not can distinguish dirt from gold. Implied philosophy can be skewed and biased. If we observe the implied philosophy from a series of philosophers we will get what we can call the philosophy-surface. The philosophy-surface is dynamic and changes over time. The implied philosophy-surface can go through regime shifts, from periods with great philosophy to periods with mostly gibberish. The implied philosophy is the mask of the philosophers philosophy. Only true philosophers can see straight through the mask of the philosopher or the so-called philosopher. And what you read now is not philosophy. This is implied philosophy. I am not a philosopher. When I was a king's guard (in Norway) I had a lot of time to think, like figuring out how many minutes it would take to boil a egg in my hat during the summer, that I am sure was just as warm as the British Queens guards hats.

In the financial boom several countries lowered the reserve requirements for banks. Solid strategic reserves were not important anymore, because the world was different, we had internet, facebook and twitter. Then surprisingly still we got the bust, many banks went bankrupt, but it was only money, and the big ones got bailed out. During the last 30 years many western countries have also strongly reduced, if not completely removed their strategic grain reserves. Several countries have converted strategic grain silos into fancy apartment complexes. What do we need strategic grain silos for when we can live in a grain silo and order sushi over the internet :-) Due to drought and fires Russia temporary ban its grain export. The fast rising wheat prices should be a reminder that the very fundament of the world still is much the same as it always have been. Most food still comes from the earth and the sun. No I do not predict a near term hunger catastrophe in the western world. And even if we got one (if it did not last for too many years) it could probably even be healthy for many people (but bad for others). And think how nice, when people again really would appreciate if they got invited for dinner. Not long ago I was just by coincident reading an old book about cooking in wartime. Well I do not remember the exact title now. My copy is an ocean away. But it was quite funny to read how less food and higher prices on food in some parts of the world during the second world war (where there not was big lack of food) according to the author actually made many people healthier. But I hope people not need a war to find this out, the cause of such a diet typically has many horrible side effects. The total world production of wheat looks like it will be quite good this year. But may be politicians should start to think more than a few years ahead, but when did this ever happen.

"The Indian equivalent of the Great Wall, the Customs Hedge, which is rarely mentioned in history books, was grown to prevent the smuggling of salt in response to the East India Company's oppressive Salt Tax. Composed of thorny trees and shrubs, this barrier covered 2500 miles and was attended by 12,000 men for 50 years before it was finally abandoned in 1879" From the book "The Great Hedge of India" By Roy Moxham

The Greek problem is just another sign of the ongoing flight to qualitas. Some fractional fiat monies naturally have more quality than others, but non of them have any significant primary or secondary qualitas. Has the dollar ever been worth more than a dollar? Has the pound ever been worth more than a pound? I expect an ongoing flight to primary qualitas.

?It boils down to this?we haven?t had a strike in over ten years, so we must have been overpaying them all along.? Actually I have never heard of a quant strike, are they overpaid or could it simply be because they still are working on finding the optimal strike price? I wonder if it strikes you fellows, as it strikes me, that all we ever seem to talk about is integration and derivation over strike prices!

FDCI reports 7 banks failed this week, and about 70 this year so far. Well that means everything is "normal" in the banking business I guess.....Are you tired of keeping track of the number of failed banks, it makes you fall asleep like a sheep. May be time to count something else then, what about the number of satellite´s that will get fried in solar Cycle 24: " Galaxy 15 stopped responding to ground controllers on April 5. The satellite's manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Virginia, has said an intense solar storm in early April may be to blame."

Countries and central banks bailed out most of the big financial institutions (except the few one they did not like), and many small banks they let go bankrupt. Several big corporations got bailed out one way or the other. And now we see that several countries "need" to be bailed out some way or the other. Who will bail out the biggest countries? Simply the electronic fiat-money printing press? Well let?s hope the world economy stabilizes before the house of cards is bailed out with air, air and house of cards are not always a good combination. Hope for the best, plan for the worst!

It is not only in finance many people are relying on Gaussian models. Also in volcano modeling there exist Gaussian models. The picture is a hypothetical Gaussian volcano with sigma 5 kilometers. Add some stochastic volatility (sigma) and the model get slightly more realistic, then add some jumps and it is even more realistic. Or even better listening to the music of the volcanos, if smooth and Gaussian stay calm "Giant smoking volcanoes stand in a row like the pipes of a cosmic organ through which the mighty breath of the earth blows its roaring music." by Robert Scholten By the way the picture is from a book "Earthquake and Volcano Deformation" (2010) By Paul Segall, an interesting book that contains many other quantitative models outside the Gaussian volcano.

If you thought that the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke are the most powerful money masters in our current monetary system, you are wrong. There is in fact a much stronger money master that could destroy all our money within minutes, including the USD, the British pound, the EURO and the Ruble. When Will God Destroy Our Money?

Last year I walked on the top of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier on Iceland (or was it 2 years ago?). I found it particular interesting when the guide told there was a volcano underneath it. I felt wonderful walking on a tail event producer under blue sky. The volcano did not go off before the next year (now). Recently I walked in the streets of London talking to a Professor that is obsessed with tail events. I got very exited, finally someone to share ideas with. Suddenly he was yelling at me ?Watch up?, and I jumped forward to avoid the fast approaching car that I strangely not had seen, simply because I had got way too focused on discussing tail events phenomena. Too focused on tail event theory and you will get hit by practice.

A quantum tunnel time model was today for the first time in the history tested out by the Large Hadron Collider. It proved that continuous delta hedging perfectly works. And not only under the theoretical fantasy assumptions of continuous time hedging but also for discrete time hedging. Stocks where accelerated with much higher energy than ever before in the history, reaching close to the speed of light. This made it possible to tunnel through time in even distributed annual time steps. By setting Delta t to discrete time steps exactly one year apart the experiment proved it was possible to hedge away all the risk. And also risk neutrality went into a perfect equilibrium. Strangely enough some unexpected counter-intuitive results also showed up. If Delta t was moved 1 day backward going from 31 of March to 31 of March each year then the model failed to remove risk. Also if Delta t was moved one day forward the model was blowing up and some people were even afraid it would cause a micro-black-hole that could suck up the whole earth. Why it worked with annual time steps only from this day should be further investigated!

Two years ago I walked into a large sportsstore during the summer with nothing particular in mind. On one of the shelf?s I could see a sleeping bag named Tempelfjorden after the Tempelfjorden in Svalbard (the islands close to the arctic where my father once got attacked by a polar bear). A sticker claimed the bag would be comfortable down to -40 Celsius and that it would tolerate up to minus 50 celsius. The weight was ?only? 4,7 kg. Quite amazing if it could do what it promised. I am not sure why, I guess it sounded interesting and it was on sale and I actually bought one. Or was it my unconscious mind preparing me for global cooling while everyone talked about human made global warming? Anyway it was warm and I put it away in my cabin in Norway. The sleeping bag was laying there unopened until this winter. Visiting Norway this winter during a cold spell. What an excellent opportunity to test out my extreme hedge. It was just minus 25 celsius outside, but still good for testing the comfort of my extreme cold hedge. I grabbed the bag and walked out in exactly what I was wearing inside in front of my fireplace. A thin cotton trouser and cotton t-shirt. Wow it was freezing cold outside. At about 10 meters from my doorstep I quickly opened and unrolled the bag. It was harder to get into it than expected. First later on I figured out I not had opened the zippers. After getting inside I was quickly impressed by how warm and comfortable it was. And I was watching the most beautiful roof in the world, the clear ?arctic' night sky filled with all its shining stars. It was comfortable, but to fall asleep I found my nose got a bit too cold. I also had something slightly uncomfortable lying beneath my back. It was pitch dark but I had a mini torch in my pocket. Below my back I found what was a thin, but very warm and comfortable face mask and also a green cover to put over the sleeping bag to make it water proof. The waterproof cover I was throwing out, but I put on the facemask. Next I figured out how to close the end of the sleeping bag to an extend I only had an opening for my eyes. I felt wonderful comfortable and warm. Just a sleeping bag and thin layer of cotton clothe, noting more. To sleep ?comfortably? at minus 40 Celsius I however think you would need to combine it with full winter-dress. The price on extreme sleeping bags is probably way up now, as always you should buy your hedge when everyone excluded a (temperature) crash.

From I was 15 to 17 I was every Christmas running my own Christmas tree business. I was standing in the center of my home village in front of the Town Hall selling Christmas trees. Trees that I had got for free from the farm of my parents, and also from a "neighbor" farm. I did not have driving license yet (you first get it at age 18 in Norway), but my father was driving the trees down for me. My younger brother was my Christmas tree business partner one year. Some of the savings from this I invested in a bond issued by a oil company, I think I was 16. I had little idea what I was holding in my hands. Yes it was a paper bond certificate that I actually was holding in my hands that I had bought at the local village bank (I have no idea how they could let 16 year old farm boys buy such complex derivatives, nothing changes I guess). Even if I never had heard about options, never studied options I understood from the text in very small print on the back of the bond that there was some type of optionally/flexibility (it was indeed a convertible bond). I remembered after the underlying shares had rallied a lot I was thinking a lot about if I should use the flexibility described on the back of the bond certificate to exchange my bond into shares. It was very hard to decide I remember, because if the shares felt I would no longer have the bond where I could clip off the coupons and collect cash. I very well remember there was a coupon card. At some point I decided to exchange my bond into shares I remember. And looking at it now, I think it was close to an optimal conversion point (even if I never had heard about options or studied any option theory), especially in a market where it not was allowed to short shares. The embedded option was deep in the money. Not long after I also sold the shares.

The oldest book of time need no author. Only re-written books need authors. The oldest book of time contains all knowledge. Knowledge that keep their secrets. No book is heavier. No book is thicker. Still it can easily be carried anywhere. The oldest book of time has three languages. Two of them unchanged since the beginning of time. One of them forever changing, and partly understood by man.

In the evening me and a friend was returning from cross country skiing. It was time for tea and chess at the local cafe. My friend started out very good and took the lead. I decided not to give up and got into deep concentration. He did a few mistakes and I took the lead. He wanted to quit, and told it was over. I told him do not give up, you never know what can happen in the end I told him. He did a very smart move. I was leaning on my elbow and went into deep chess mediation. A mysterious light was shining over the chess pieces, but I did not take much notice of it. So many people into deep meditation talks about seeing some sort of light, why not also me. Then suddenly my arm felt very warm, or should I say burning. My jumper was on fire, I quickly extinguished it. My jumper was "luckily" made of some type of cotton that not burnt that well, so no big deal, no damage to my arm, just that my sleeve got a bit shorter. Oh yes there was a candle on that cafe table. After this I lost my concentration a bit and my friend was close to beating me, but in the end I made him chess mate. This was just a mini tail-event or may be I just should say clumsiness (out of several tail event this months).

Until the financial crisis started there were almost no excess reserves in the banking system. The excess reserves have exploded and now stand at more than a trillion dollars: www.federalreserve.gov excess reserves There has been a series of stories about this, how it potentially indicates money not is getting out to the people. That the unemployment now stands at between 10% to 20% possibly indicate that the money not is getting out there. But this could naturally also be related to other factors. Several people have also claimed the massive excess reserves at some point down the road will cause considerable inflation. The idea is as long as the velocity of money stays low we will not see inflation, we could even see deflation. But when the economy stabilizes and lending activities picks up and the velocity of money picks up then the excess reserves now flowing into the system and working as a money multiplier could cause inflation: Inflation is looming on America?s horizon In an interesting report from FED July 2009 it is claimed that the excess reserves neither means the banks not are lending out their money and further that the massive excess reserves are unlikely to cause inflation down the road: Why Are Banks Holding So Many Excess Reserves? Thanks to a ?new invention? FED claims things are different this time around. The new invention is to pay interest rates on excess reserves. Paying interest rates on excess reserves where introduced by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and this is the new magic trick among central banks around the world. FED now supposedly have much better control of when and how much of these excess reserves will go into the economy in form of increased lending. FED?s report seems to be based on a series of hidden assumptions. They do not seem to take into account that FED has much less control over the long-term interest rates than the short rates. If the long-term interest rates went much higher than short rates and the economy at the same time picks up could it not happen that banks will start to lend out their excess reserves to long-term investments to get higher returns? And what about the equity markets and other markets, if the returns here should be great over an extended period of time would it then not be tempting for banks to increase lending to get considerably higher returns than on their excess reserve accounts? Possibly I am completely wrong, I am far from an expert on excess reserves in the banking system. However to me there simply seems to be too many unknown factors that potentially could limit FED?s control over the excess reserves and thereby the money supply. The central bank system also seems have very limited experience with how much extra control they actually gain over money supply and money multiplier by giving interest rates on the excess reserve accounts. FED mentions that The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has used this type of framework since 2006. But what is 4 or 5 years experience? The record high gold price seems to tell a different story. People are normally moving towards gold when they start loosing their faith in the monetary systems ability to sustain stability in the value of legal tender. The high gold price is probably also a way for parts of the market to say they fear inflation coming down the road. What if FED is wrong in some of their assumptions, what if these massive excess reserves at some point down the road should cause massive turbulence and or inflation? It could naturally take many years before we know the answer to this question. Last time the excess reserves where ballooning was under the great depression. Excess banking reserves in USA were just above 70 million dollars in 1929. In 1935 they had exploded to 1282 million dollars. But this time everything is different; the central bankers have finally found the solution, the magic trick of giving interest rates on the excess reserves will be our savior this time around. I hope and wish it is this simple, but I am afraid not! M1 is way up, M3 is flattish (or slightly down) likely due to the falling velocity of money. Shadow stats When the velocity of money at some point picks up it will be interesting to see how well FED can control the total money supply of the economy. But yes we can clearly get deflation before we get inflation. Well there has already been quite a lot of house price deflation around the world.