Tuesday 29 December 2015

RCMP chief’s comments about racism 

fuel tense relations with officers


regarding:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/rcmp-chiefs-comments-about-racism-fuel-tense-relations-with-officers/article27949267/

Really ?

Do not read me wrong here; I have the utmost respect for the majority of police officers of all stripes, who are some of the finest Canadian citizens we have.

However comma, it is in this case, the RCMP Union's response, that [has been] continues to be the problem [notice I did not use the politically correct term 'challenge'].

As the Commissioner had the balls to publicly concede, that which every Canadian knows to be a fact; we have a significant number [any # is to many] of racists in our police forces ....really...you're kidding...

We also have a number of officer's who, emulating  their mirrored numbers from Canadian society [despite apparent recruit  vetting procedures] who are corrupt, self-serving and generally not interested in getting their uniforms dirty.

It is precisely this minority, and the majority's refusal to acknowledge the former's unimpeded existence, that is the primary cause of the nation wide public relations campaign that the police are rapidly losing.

Increasingly, where joe-average-Canadian is concerned, a tazer is employed, where a conversation may very well have cleared things up, to everyone's satisfaction. Increasingly,  a 9mm pistol round is employed, where a tazer would have sufficed. Increasingly, 5 or 6 or 10 rounds are employed, where one round, would have done the job just fine...

Commissioner Paulson has called them [the racists, the corrupt, the self-serving] out, and according to the Union, their feelings are hurt...

I'll respond un-politically, in language I'm very sure that you'll be able to relate to...suck it up princess.

And while your at it, please direct your violent tendencies , towards the mafia and criminal biker gang elements, instead of joe-average-citizen, and you might just start gain a measure of respect, back from the average Canadian.



Thursday 29 October 2015

Coffee Snobbery 

(Abbreviated)

Researching, to roast my own Costa Rican ‘Tarazu’ beans in my fabricated BBQ roasting drum, I learned that the French Roast was developed to simply make one’s beans ‘go farther’ by burning the coffee, to make it ‘stronger’, hence make more cups from a lb of beans. Thus a French roast is a poor man’s roast…

Where is the flavor & aroma ?  In the oil.

Roasting:
o   The tradition 1st crack [pop !] in roasting is the water coming to temperature

o   The 2nd  crack, is the oil coming to temperature; at which point, the oil starts coming to the surface of the bean...  Keep roasting and you physically burning the oil.


-Roast 15 seconds past the cresendo of the 2nd crack, remove ASAP and cool down in a LARGE metal bowl, stirring under a LARGE fan, so as to cool rapidly

-Let sit for a day to vent off the CO2

-Grind & enjoy !

Recommendations:

-        Roast to and/or buy a ‘City Roast’ (medium).
-        If you like your coffee stonger, grind/add more [unburnt] coffee
-    Use a paper filter with a drip machine ?  Your filtering out the oil (taste)
-        Us a french press to extract the most flavor, while retaining the unburnt oils.

…and avoid that burned crap Starbucks dishes out.

Check it out:

Friday 23 October 2015

Regarding Canadian 'Vets for Conservatives' seeking 'moral clarity'

Regarding Canadian 'Vets for Conservatives'

Retired, I ran into an old (Canadian) army acquaintance, a retired full Colonel, a former infantry Commanding Officer that I originally met as a young 2nd Lt when he first was posted to the battalion. This guy became known for his professionalism, hard driving leadership style. I watched as we deployed to Croatia (The Former Yugoslavia), he,  as a Company Commander, and then to Afghanistan as Battle Group Commander. One tough nut... the kind of leader that could drag you willingly into and back from hell, with a smile on his and your face...

Now, 30 years after I first met this gentleman, we are discussing Afghan insurgent tactics, and the subject of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) comes up. The Colonel, offered up his opinion that,

 "anyone afflicted with PTSD didn't measure
  up on the battlefield....that they had some 
situation where they failed to 'man up' and 
now were feeling guilty of thier personal 
shortcomings as a man and as a solider"


He essentially nailed it on the head; it is generally the situation that PTSD is a real or perceived shortcoming and/or inadequacy that results in mental anguish/dreams/nightmares etc... It can and often is simply experiencing situations where one has no power to do anything in a given situation;

  • unable to stop long enough [whilst on a mission with other priorities] to personally care for injured civilians, feed the starving.
  • unable to convert one's training and experience into battlefield confidence.
  • unable to save the life of a mortally wounded comrade in arms...
As a soldier who has dealt with a thankfully very minor case of PTSD, and known troops that are literally mentally and physically incapacitated because of it, I was astonished to here this coming from a former infantry Commanding Officer....

He nailed it in defining the general causation, but his enunciation was not simply explanatory, it was condemning.  They, were weak, pathetic, to be despised  in that they didn't have the balls, the cahonaas, to man up and get on with the profession of soldiering.

The level of ignorance was astounding...

So, you can imagine the instant thoughts that ran through my mind upon hearing recently, words being tossed out recently, in the middle of a federal election, by a Facebook Group called 'Veterans for the Conservative Party'....words challenging the 'courage' and 'moral clarity' of those present retired Canadian vets who started up 'Veterans against the Conservative Party'. 

Granted, they [the latter] are not terribly organized. Some of the lads have become a tad worse for wear, becoming of 'wide girth', Few of them seem to have forgotten how to 'form' a beret and seem to think that speaking on national television in a T-Shirt, is ok.

But god dam it, these veterans have suffer from horrendous physical, emotional and mental injury. The fact that the Canadian Medical Corps had completely institutionally forgotten how to deal with 'shell-shock' (another story), only partially explains why they had to come up with a new name for it...PTSD.

So, when I read and hear 'Veterans for the Conservative Party' spouting off about challenging the 'courage' and 'moral clarity' of these veterans, the words of the Colonel, immediately sprang forth...

When challenged, the 'Veterans for the Conservative Party' denied to media that 'courage' and 'moral clarity' were not 'code' for something else, I thought to myself, that's exactly, what it is, code for cowardice, code for moral confusion, code for weakness, code for having failed on the battlefield, code for PTSD.

It's the Colonel, it's the 'Sgt Rocks' who can deploy repeatedly & endlessly, slaying jihadi dragons without mercy, feeling, doubt or remorse. And how dare anyone fail them, by not being able in body or spirit, to be there 'watching their six'. How dare they.

Even more than the TheoCons betrayal of injured vets, were these same despicable "Vets for Conservatives', retired and serving soldiers that effectively turned their backs on their 'weak willied' fellow brothers [and sisters] in arms, who are branded failures, lacking courage and moral clarity.

A huge disappointment, listening to these same Vets 4 TheoCons current and former soldiers spouting off, about how the system is just fine.

I personally have had great experiences with VAC however comma, there are injured troops [in mind and body] that have and continue to fall thru the cracks as a direct result of 'the system'.

 I have a vague sensation, that comments questioning the 'courage' and 'moral clarity' of injured vets, is in fact 'code' for doubting those afflicted with PTSD...

But the 'Vets for Conservatives'
don't have the 'courage' 
to come right out and say it...

In the same way Stephen Harper and his ilk, used code words to rally the ill-informed, the  evangelically distracted, the dung kickers. Those claiming a moral high ground in a similar fashion, knocking down courage and moral clarity of the disadvantaged, of those who would have the audacity to actually use employment insurance, of those who may temporarily need the services of a food bank. Those not strong enough to stand up on their own two feet, to man up...

One can see a striking condescending similarity between The Colonel, 'Vets for Cons' and hard hard right TheoCons.



http://www.torontosun.com/2015/10/05/conservative-military-veterans-aim-to-counter-cowardly-anti-conservative-group

Saturday 10 October 2015

Actively Managed RRSPs – the biggest scam on planet earth






‘Actively Managed’ RRSPs/retirement funds – the biggest scam on planet earth

Right above the No. 2 scam, Realtor commission rates…
 
If you are like me, and didn't grow up with money, understanding the rules, this is likely one of the most important things you will read in your entire investment lifetime.
 
And I didn't write that just for the clicks!

*supporting links @ the bottom

QUESTION: Why, would the vast majority of Canadians and the rest of worldly investors, willingly give up 40-50% of their profits, to financial money managers, over the lifetime of their RRSP/retirement investment timeline ?

Why indeed ?

If you’re like me, you sat down with your investment manager [in my case, from a Canadian firm we will call  'Investor' Company for the sake of argument] and at some point, I asked him, “so how do you make your money here ? “ He promptly replied, ” in the case of this specific fund, we charge 3.2% of your profit. 

I thought to myself,  

 $3.20 for every 100.00 dollars profit I bring in (gross),
is actually really good…
These guys are not the grubby greedy snakes I presumed !
GREAT !

And thus, the conversation ended, with a smile on his face.

What I found out years later, was this ‘charge’ is called a ‘Management Expense Ratio (MER)
So, ten years went by, and eventually I was wondering, why my tens of thousands, didn’t seem to be making that much money, despite my 9 -10 % returns…especially considering, that I was only being charged 3.2%, a paltry sum…

Except it wasn’t just 3.2%  …. Three dollars & twenty cents for every $100.00 in profit….
It was and is the FIRST 3.2%

Allow me to explain.
----
For simplicity sake, let’s say our funds MER is 2.5%. I invest a bunch of money and end up making a gross profit of 5% (5% which works out to $1,000.00)

ABC Investment Corp will take their 2.5% MER right off the top, leaving me with the remaining 2.5%....of my initial 5% …..

Confused ? You should be…


It’s not $2.50 for every $100.00 profit, it’s the FIRST  2.5% of my 5% I made !

THIS, is the industry’s dirty little secret.

And just what percentage, is 2.5% of 5% ?  …….You guessed it, 50%

--BIG LIGHTBULB COMES ON

Why would anyone give up 25/30/50% of their profits to an investing company/guru ?
 
Remember that $1,000.00 gross profit I made ?   Well, it’s actually going to be $500.00, as ABC Investment Corp will skim their 2.5% MER/$500.00 (the first 2.5% of 5%) right off the top, before I even see it (standard practice in the entire industry, wouldn’t you guess), and I’ll get a paper statement, telling me that I made/netted (the remaining) 2.5%/$500.00, on my investment this year.

Now, MERs and gross investment returns fluctuate year to year, but, over your investing life time (40-50 years), you will give up in MERs, 40 to 50% of your gross profits to the (crooked) investment firm.

This, is the white elephant in the room; your corporatized investment guru will not explain to you in detail, unless pressed, very hard. But, you will find it all explained in legalese, in the very fine print in the contractual paper work you signed with them.

QUESTION: How can I pay a lower MER on my RRSP investments?

 ---

~Lower MER ‘Index’ funds –Versus-- Higher MER ‘Actively Managed’ Funds~

Actively Managed Funds:
 
Why will the vast majority of investment managers steer you toward ‘actively managed’ funds ?  Because they charge a (much) higher  MER of 2.5, 3.0, 3.5%.  And if you didn’t know any better you’d say, “Geez, 3% (three dollars) for every one hundred I make is pretty good ! But now you know better…

It’s the FIRST 3%  [STUPID]  of your 6%   = 50%

They will tell you, that we charge a higher MER for ‘actively managed funds, because we have hundreds of professionally trained investors who spend all days combing the world, ‘actively managing’ your funds, to get you the best possible returns….to beat the markets, to beat the TSX, the S&P 500, etc…  They are ‘stirring the pot’. And with each stir, your MER goes up a fraction of a percent.

The 2nd elephant in the room,

Is that ‘actively managed funds’ (by ‘professionals’) RARELY outperform the markets [the TSX, the S&P 500, etc…). In fact, they normally underperform them; but, you get to pay more for that privilege.

Hopefully, you can taste the sarcasm, dripping off my keyboard…

Index (Tracking) Funds:
 
Index funds, very simply track or ‘mirror’ a given stock exchange/market; The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSC), American S&P 500, etc…  If the TSX gains 7% through the past year, you make 7% (MINUS (you guessed it; your magical MER)) . Thus a 7% gross gain, minus our hypothetical (but your (very real) MER of 1.2%, allows us to net out a profit of 6.8% .

This, is much better than an actively managed fund, as is plainly obvious. Many Index funds cost well below a 1% MER; many are in the .5%, .75% range. It takes a bit of digging and persistence.

Index funds can charge a lower MER, because instead of a pool of professionals trying to stir the pot, to beat the markets, a computer, simply tracks the performance (or Index) of the particular stock market.

I spent a decade+ paying 'Investor' Company MERs to manage my RRSPs, invested in actively managed funds, paying them well above 3%.  Keep in mind that Canada has on average, the highest MERs in the known world, and 'Investors' Company charges some of the highest in Canada. After all, they have to pay themselves some fairly high wages, and pay for all of those Cable TV ads that are continuously spewing forth.

Once I realized, that 3.5% meant the FIRST 3.5%, I asked my 'Investor' Company guru, if Investor Company offered RRSP investing in Index Funds. The initial answer was a non-answer, in that he simply informed me that “ He was convinced that he had us best positioned for our long term interests ”.

So, I when back to him and specifically asked, “Does 3.5% meant the FIRST 3.5% ? “. And, to his credit, he answered, “Yes.” . 

I expressed my amazement; and he was quick to point out, that a decade+ or so previously, I had signed a piece of paper, where it was explained and thus I had legally acknowledged, acknowledging that it’s ‘the first…’ and not $3.50 for every $100.00

To this day, I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around this concept. Had my Investor Company guru, precisely explained this concept in language I would have understood…  my immediate response would have been, “are you out of your mind ?   I’m going to effectively pay you between 30 and 50% of my profits, so that you can stir the pot, vainly trying to beat the market averages ?  I don’t think so, would have been my reply.

Through the majority of that decade+, I was netting roughly 6% on any given year. With my MERs in the 3.4% range, (meaning I was grossing 9.4%) you can see that I was paying Investor Company, approx. 35% of my profits to active manage my ‘portfolio’ (such a fancy smancy word)  (Remember, ‘actively manage’ means they are professionals…) and through all of this, they were doing neither no better, nor any worse than ‘average’.

It was this 35% that was missing, and that gave me a ‘feeling’ in my monthly investment statements, that something was not adding up…

The third elephant in the room,

Is that you get a monthly statement that gives you the overall value of your investments generally in what is called  a ‘UNIT VALUE’ ; this unit value fluctuate within the stock markets, up and down, each day, month, year… So as markets fluctuate, and your focused on the unit value, attempting to track whether your making any money or not, your somewhat oblivious to the  (in my case) 35% of my profits that were getting skimmed off without my knowledge; Because I did not really understand what an MER was, and I certainly did not understand, that an MER of 3%, meant the FIRST 3%. My bad.

Thus, I should have been invested in ‘passive’ Index tracking funds, (which I am now with a different investing firm, thank you very much) being charged something in the  1 -1.5% range, and I would have still grossed 9.4%, BUT, netted out,  making on average 7.9% profit.
Netting a profit of 7.9% is significantly better than 6%, especially over the long term.
It’s not just 6%, you can now understand that it works out to 40-50%, depending on your circumstances, your gross profits and the (transparent/unseen) MER you’re paying some guy in short pants, the in the vast majority of cases, match, if you’re lucky, what the market is performing at,  all by itself.

So, having gone through this I hope and trust that I’ve been able to clearly explain that the charged MER is the slice in percentage points that the investing advising guru, takes directly off your gross gains, before you see it. (and you have to figure, there is a very very good reason [for them] that they do this…it assists in keeping you, the chump, ignorant).

If the MER is 2%, (as it is commonly with actively managed funds)and I gross 6% (not uncommon in today’s 2014/15 investing climate), your investing company takes the FIRST 2% of gains, leaving you with the remaining 4%; This means you’re giving them (in this case) 33% of your profits. 

THIRTY THREE PERCENT ! That, IMHO, is highway robbery and should be a criminal offence.

These MERs in my case were what is called ‘front end loaded’ funds, in that the MER is taken off at the front end, ‘before’ I see my net gains…  Some funds are ‘rear end’ loaded. Some funds have additional charges every time they ‘stir the pot’, moving your money between investments, or between funds.

Statistics over the long term, (YOUR long term investing of 30-40-50 years) show that with actively managed funds, the MERs eat up 40 to 50% of gains.

Over the short term, you may not notice much of an effect. (I did, and that’s why I started asking questions.But it took 10 years for me to catch on !) However comma, over the long term, this can and does mean, that instead of netting out with a $250,000.00 retirement fund (with an Index fund charging a 1% [or better] MER), you’re going to end up with 130,000.00 – 150,000.00 . 

Yes, a ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND+  DOLLAR DIFFERENCE, over a lifetime of investing.

That ladies and gentlemen, is going to translate in a huge difference; in the monthly ‘annuity’ you eventually create from that money, to finance your retirement.
Now, you know better.

I have spent considerable time on the internet, looking for papers/web sites/authors, that explain this phenomenon if it being the first XX % of your gross profits, without a lot of success. You can imagine that it’s not in any investment advisors interest to be completely transparent about it, is it. They stand to make more money from your/our ignorance. 

Let me say that it is not just Investor’s Group that enables ignorant clients, it’s the entire industry. They [all of them] will claim that they have a financial gain to make, from being completely forthright, open, and transparent. After all, if they make you money, you will stick around, recommend them to others. That’s how the ‘grow the business’. 

I submit, they grow the business, the profit margin, from keeping clients ignorant. IMHO, it highway robbery with a smile on their face. It is unfortunately, perfectly legal, thus making them nice guys in a shirt and tie. They will make the average schmuk 200K in long term profits. However comma, what they will not tell you is to walk down the street, and invest in a (passive)  Index Tacking Fund, paying a .5% MER, and thus making an additional 150K.

The few sites that have broached the subject, do so in language that often obfuscates the message. And as you can now appreciate, the message is initially beyond belief and comprehension. It took me a few days of saying, “it can’t be - this just doesn't make sense on any level” to figure it out.
 
Remember, it's the FIRST xx.xx% ...

Additional opinions on this subject (complete with charts & graphs on the subj):



I encourage you to forward this to everyone you know who has set up a retirement fund, so that it becomes common knowledge. The financial industry presently has legal licence to fleece the world, as long as we are ignorant.

Declaration: spelled checked @ 0741 11 Oct 2015