Subject: RE: March Financial Report - casino Q3-2023
From: "Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada" <>
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2020 09:15:57 -0600
To: "Einar Davison. Secretary-Treasurer. Hussar Fire Assocn. Alberta"
Cc:

I've spent far too much time following the markets and COVID-19, but that is tapering away.  For the first time since ~2004, I got back into the markets to position my RRSP, and definitely NOT to do what I like best - high risk [bio, hi]-tech startups that always lose all of my money.  (It's fun but I just can't afford it any more) .   I couldn't believe the massive change to online investing, it's unbelievable what you can do , and CHEPLY!   The funny thing is that I've ben expecting a crash for several years, and have been vigilant about it for a year and half (before Feb2019, when I subscribed to an investment newsletter by the "bear of bes" of wall Street (act, he lives in Hawaii).  I thought that I was basically 95% cash, but after watching the markets crash for a month, I finally looked at my RRSP aandiscovered that a chunk of my RRSP was still in a health care company.  I can't remember anything about them, but it would have been nice if I had sold it off a year ago rather than finng out about it late.  <grin>

Note - I have an ongoing problem with computer pauses, which causes characters to miss out (among other problems)...

Some cautions :
  • To many of us, this isn't a COVID-1 crash, although the pandemic probably was the last straw, the catalyst.  COVID-19 is the "perfect storm" for justifying massive [federal, state, municipal] bailouts (I don't follow the Canadian market), and for covering up serious [fiunancial, economic] mis-behaviour (driven by government policies) so COVID-19 takes all of the blame.  This makes NO sense - the real estate analysis that I sent is just one of many examples.  I don't blame the market players who have leveraged things to the hilt, as this is the direct consequence of "Social Engineering" of the financial system, as with the 2008 crash.  We ASKED for this to happen.  By many astute marklysts, this crash should have happened last Aug-Oct, but 300 G$ then, and 450 G$ in ~Nov, underpinned marketroth at that time. 3-6 T$ currently has bought us breathing space, for now.  It possibly has delyed a 1929-style crash. 
  • "Dead cat bounce", or controlled markets?   Over last few days, the market has flat-lined in spite of major news and revisions to earnings that do not yet anticipate maan-month self-isolation.  The Fed may be using their expanded poweto help stabilize markets?  I don't know, but they might be able to.  In any case, as with the mortgages, the markets are fairly blind to (or ignoring) big underlying issues.  One blogger commented that this makes Adam Smith's "invisible hand" not just invisible, but substantially blind.  (Investment banking etc etc are related stories)
  • Valuations are dependent of the current near-zero interest rate environment (sub-zero in Europe).  If you believe that interest rates will go up, things are still waaayyy too expensive.
  • Nobody is honest about the pandemic.  As just one example if many, I've blog-posted about the BS [0.5, 1, 1.5, 3] month "slow trickle of deception" regarding the self-isolation period.  Two YEARS is more reasonable.  Sure, we might get lucky with the messenger RNA vaccines (first-time-ever approved for very small incidence weirdo heritable diseases in August 2018 or 2019?), plasmids, or conventional vaccine approaches.  We're by-passing  the safeguards and controls over vaccine developments given the urgency of the pandemic, and I am all for that.  But I am also half-expecting that there will be "glitches", quite possibly worse than COV19.  Moreover, some of those approaches are hereditable.  I find it hilarious that people freak over Monsanto GMOs, but are diving into techniques that are potentially multi, permanent]-generation hereditable now that they fear for their own ass.
  • I used to occasionally buy Barron's weekly newspaper (not availabat Ray's store in Hussar), and considered it one of the greatest publications on Earth, but it was expensive.  Now it costs next to nothing on-line, fresh as buns out of the oven.  I really regret being so far behind the times!  It has gone "politally correct", but nowhere near as bad as pretty well all of the other media (the Economist was a huge disappointment 15+years ago!!)

Oil markets :  "Buy on a dip" is what 3-4 generations of investors have learned, and that seems most reasonable for oil markets.  Caveats :

  • [Anti-oil, CO2]-related bias -  Tesla's valuation are, to me, insane at this point, but it is a hot issue still on Wall Street.  It's not just Potatoe-head Trudeau and Rachel Knothead that want to get rid oil.   For now, I assume that the worst extremes have to bow to practical need, but just look at the tribulations of the Calfornia ?PG&T" gas distributor.   Hard to run a business that way. 
  • The Energy Holy Grail -  from Canada?   "... Fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be.   ..."   They've made tremendous progress with advanced materials (especially high-temperature superconductors) that have allow great progress towards the [temperature, pressure] requirements of modern physics for fusion energy (2030-2040 timeframe).  Only problem is, the physics is shit.   Inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky, advanced by mythologists (I don't like mythology in general, but I've had to pull my foot out of my mouth on this), the great SAFIRE electical model of the Sun experiment  Toront has finished.  They destroyed many laws of [physics, astronomy] experimentally, as predicted by the mythologists.  The ?private? Canadian company ([financer, owner, host] of SAFIRE, with American & Australian scientists, Canadian consultant project lead, Canadian technical people) :
    • initially targeting 3 markets :
      • "instant-non-radioactive" process to treat high-level nuclear waste, thereby resolving a key issue with fission power plants  (MIT-based concept, SAFIRE plant)
      • heating -  This seems weird to me - probably means byproduct heat, as the plants will start with hydrogen under vaccum conditions (i.e. low power density?), and hydrogen is dominantly produced from natural gas, so why not just use natural gas?
      • very small fusion power systems.  I don't know the projected [energy, power]  densities, will this be enough for consumer cars, more  like big trucks (farm equipment), or at least [locomotives, ships, possibly large aircraft]
    • negligible radio-active by-products, none used in process
    • alchemy - they've proved transmutation
    • small unit could probably be out in next-to-no-time (ignoring approvals)
    • can scale up indefinitely (it is a  model of stars - so go supernova!)
    • poses the problem of how to dispose of ITER and all the other conventioanl fusion setup
    • Uber should be approached to contract all of the current phsycists.  They've screwed up science long enough (~120 years)
    • This is a potential oil-killer, because of of it's trransportation applications.  However, it needs coal or natural gas to provide hydrogen competitively.   So there isisk to oil byond 3-5 years, possibly, albeit 20-30 years for widespread use?
    • https://aureon.ca/    https://safireproject.com
  • Geopolitics :  They've been saying for at least a generation or two that the House of Saud is vulnerable to internal revolutions, but this is a high-risk time for discontent over there.  Now that they've lost recent conflicts and learned what other American allies have learned, this is an ideal time for Putins's moves.  Historically, the time is ripe for them, and this may follow the classical socialist approach of fomenting collapse and successfully blaming the "capitalists" during a period of rapid decline of RELATIVE American power?  China is by far the most exposed oil importerand we don't hear anything about their moves.  Something must be going on.   It's quite possible that this situation could lead to super-surge of oil prices, but that may not be for a few years (or tomorrow)?
  • Coal-to-Petroleum liquids :
    •  Will the Chinese [post-pone,cap] their massive buildup of coal-to-petroleum plant construction?  I suspect a bit - but this is also a high-risk time for a WWIII, and given the times for construction of un-economical, but strategically important plants on a scale that absolutely dwarfs Nazi Germany and South Africa, maybe they aren't really curtailing construction in a big way yet.  The ~500,000 bpd projected scale of current plans is very small, (7-10,000 bpd imports? I forget), but not completely insignificant for China.  We don't even know of many plant constructions that aren't even mentionned publicly.  I have long en surprised about the "invisibility" of these plants, albeit not something you want to broadcast to the unstable West.
    • Can Alberta's tar sands (not so much heavy oil) compete against Chinese coal-to-petroleum?  It makes no sense that this could be possible.  On the other hand, Canadian thinking makes no sense either, and while you can cure COVID-19, there is NO [cure, hope] for stupidity.
Oh yeah -  I'm putting everything into my "MindCode" neural network" project (I'm having a ball!), plus, over the next 3 weeks, a peer rreview that distantly relates to what I doing (see below).


Bill


***********************************
Analysis of the transferability and robustness of GANs evolved for Pareto set approxismations
Unai Garciarena(a),∗, Alexander Mendiburu(b), Roberto Santana(a)
(a) Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
(b) Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, Faculty of Informatics, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).

Abstract
The generative adversarial network (GAN) is a good example of a strong-performing, neural network-based generative model,  even though it does have some drawbacks of its own. Mode collapsing and the difficulty in finding the optimal network structure are two of the most concerning issues. In this paper, we address these two issues at the same time by proposing a neuro- evolutionary approach with an agile evaluation method for the fast evolution of robust deep architectures that avoid mode collapsing.  The computation of Pareto set approximations with GANs is chosen as a suitable benchmark to evaluate the quality of our approach. Furthermore, we demonstrate theconsistency, scalability, and generalization capabilities of the proposed method, which shows its potential applications to many areas. We finally readdress the issue of designing this kind of models by analyzing the characteristics of the best performing GAN specifications, and conclude with a set of general guidelines. This results in a  eduction of the many-dimensional problem of manual design or automated search.



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: March Financial Report - casino Q3-2023
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2020 19:19:42 -0600
From: E Davison <>
Reply-To:
To: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <>


Hey Bill,

I agree spring would be nice, winter has lasted too long.  I'm finally organizing and backing up all my files.  I finally had to go for groceries yesterday, and besides five minutes a week to pick up mail I was at home for 16 days and so far so good...haven't been sick, no coughs, no fever, a drippy nose but I always have sinus issues in the spring, nothing serious. 
I didn't know that we didn't have to pay mortgages anymore.  My operating line is backed by land...not a big one...I wonder if they would let me stop paying it.  Would definitely help my slightly disastrous bottom line right now.  But I guess I'm not the government!  This kind of is setting up for a rapid increase of interest rates..to much sovereign debt chasing to little credit left.  Something to think about.  I took a real flyer, I've bought a lot of oil stocks for next to nothing (basically because I had nothing better to do).  If this oil business gets sorted I might make some money off this.  If not I just threw a bit of money down the toilet.  Once this all gets done I think I will need to add business continuity planning to my offerings.  Here I was going to step things up, get a functional website, hire some talent build a bigger company and then this had to happen, all my projects on hold, so now I play the market ha ha. Not even anything good to watch on TV.

So how are you doing?  I imagine all your conferences have been postponed, but no doubt the background work continues.  So we just need to be patient, this too shall pass and we'll get on with our lives again.  Thank you for the information, you always have good stuff.

Cheers!
Einar

On 4/3/2020 10:44 AM, Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada wrote:
Worse than cabin fever, but at least it's not COVID-19 fever.  <grin>

Actually, it doesn't change much for me, as I still program at the same computer etc.   Big things are the [restaurant-bars, Badlands Community Facility] closures.  Would be nice to get spring weather.

I didn't know that we didn't have to pay mortgages anymore?  :
(Apparently, some haven't paid much for a decade or so - since the 2008 debacle.)

Keith Jurow's article in MarketWatch (link below) delves into the [murky, invisible] housing mortgage situation.   Steve Putz had touched on this in his newsletter back in May2019 as part of a continuing series on debt issues (table attached). 

BEFORE corona virus (back in November-January) I had anticipated 1 T$ [Fed, other govt] help now, 2-5 T$ by year-end.  They've probably already exceeded this in total assistance programs (not with mortgages, which aren't even included as an ongoing burden).  You can't really tell, as some powers are open-ended.

Seems like we don't have "free markets" anymore - more like ever-growing social engineering of the markets. 


Bill


***********************
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-the-hard-truth-about-the-mortgage-markets-that-isnt-being-told-2020-04-02?mod=MW_article_top_stories
Opinion: This hard truth about the mortgage markets isn’t being told
Published: April 2, 2020 at 3:35 p.m. ET
By Keith Jurow
Real estate industry sees no problem, hears no problem, speaks no problem


Keith's website :
http://www.keithjurow.com/?mod=article_inline&mod=article_inline


**********************************
[Epidemic, pandemic]s impacts in the USA  (Center for Disease Control (CDC), worldwide numbers not shown below):
Year        cases        hosp    deaths     epidemic-pandemic
2012        2            2        0            Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) (obviously NOT an epidemic in the USA)
2009        60.8M        274k    12.5k        novel influenza A (H1N1)pdm09 virus
2003        8                                 SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) (not an epidemic in the USA?)
1968                            100k        influenza A (H3N2) virus.  Most excess deaths were in people >= 65 years
1957                            116k        new influenza A (H2N2) virus (“Asian Flu”), avian flu components
1918                            675k        H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin

Widespread shut-downs damage people's work, businesses, finances, i.e. the economy in general.  An oft-cited number is that 40,000 US citizens die for every % increase in unemployment.  I don't trust that number, but the politically-correct use it to push their agenda, so now it can be used with confidence where they don't like it (not by their reasoning, of course).  Several economists have forecast 20-25% unemployment with COVID-19, plus a risk of major recession.  Is there any validity in any of the numbers below for projected deaths in the USA ? :
-     800,000 from recession ( 40,000 deaths per % unemployment increase)
-     250,000 from COVID-19 (Donald Trump ~31Mar2020, project to the end of April?)
-10,000,000 from COVID-19 (a friend's guess - you can do this too)



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: March Financial Report - casino Q3-2023
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2020 08:52:03 -0600
From: Einar Davison <>
To: pshop <>
CC: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <>, Randy Kaiser. Chair & President. Hussar Fire Assocn. Alberta <>, Kevin Taubert. Vice-Chair & Vice-Pres. Hussar Fire Assocn. Alberta <>, Ben Armstrong. Divison 7 Councillor. Wheatland County. Hussar Fire Assocn. Alberta <>, Peter Anderson. past VP. Hussar Fire Assocn. Secretary. Hussar Lions. Alberta <>, Mike Hagar. Fire Chief. Hussar. Alberta <>, Les Schultz. Director. Hussar Fire Assocn. Councillor. Alberta <>


You guys must be getting cabin fever when you respond to a month old financial report 😈😂 but thank you.
Einar

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 3, 2020, at 08:47, pshop <> wrote:

Great news Einar !! 



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: "Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada" <>
Date: 2020-04-03 5:45 AM (GMT-07:00)
To: "Einar Davison. Secretary-Treasurer. Hussar Fire Assocn. Alberta" <>
Cc: "Randy Kaiser. Chair & President. Hussar Fire Assocn. Alberta" <>, "Kevin Taubert. Vice-Chair & Vice-Pres. Hussar Fire Assocn. Alberta" <>, "Ben Armstrong. Divison 7 Councillor. Wheatland County. Hussar Fire Assocn. Alberta" <>, "Tim Frank. Councillor. Hussar. Alberta" <>, "Peter Anderson. past VP. Hussar Fire Assocn. Secretary. Hussar Lions. Alberta" <>, "Mike Hagar. Fire Chief. Hussar. Alberta" <>, "Les Schultz. Director. Hussar Fire Assocn. Councillor. Alberta" <>
Subject: RE: March Financial Report - casino Q3-2023

Great news on the casino, Einar.  Good work.


Bill Howell
Volunteer firefighter, Member of Hussar Lion's Club & Sundowners
1-587-707-2027     www.BillHowell.ca
P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: March Financial Report
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2020 12:25:42 -0600
From: E Davison <>
Reply-To:
To: Ben Armstrong, Division 7 Councillor <>, Bill Howell <>, Bill Slemko <>, Kevin Taubert <>, <>, Mike Hager, Fire Chief, Hussar Fire Department <>, Peter Anderson <>, Randy Kaiser <>, Tim Frank <>


Good Afternoon,

Please find attached the financial report for March.  Nothing major to report just a county utility bill, I think they finally are up to December (I don't have the invoice in front of me) and the Telus data bill for the computer.  We will have some larger expenses coming up as we need to buy some PPE for our new recruits.  We've used up our tools and equipment budget so I'm going to use up the misc expenses, and whatever is left in the firefighter retention and other accounts where we are finished for the year. 

I just wanted to mention that we have been assigned a casino for the third quarter of 2023. It's going to be a bit of a wait, but we can maybe try a 50/50 draw or something over the next three years.  I've invited Pam to attend our next board meeting in June to go over everything for us.  I will have our charitable annual report sent to the Fed's by the end of the month.  The county has been given our annual financial report and the report on everything else required under our current agreement.  I need to still give them copies of all our small cap receipts.

Cheers to Mike, Matt for bringing in new recruits, if you look at the firefighter sheet we have 16 firefighters and Michelle is still on strength as an MFR.  We had a busy Sunday past, but I will let Mike tell you about that.  At any rate very promising!  I guess that is it!

Cheers!
Einar