On Aug 15, 12:52 am, Paul Rubin wrote:
Bruce writes:
I think the only positive balance years they ever really had in
operations was the year of the draconian staff cuts and the years
where they sold the building and moved.

The positive balance years were when everyone was buying expensive
dedicated chess computers from the B&E operation. That was also when
the expensive habits developed. The market for dedicated chess
computers has dried up and gone. The expensive habits are still rampant.

Actually there were strong suspicions even back then that B&E was not
nearly as profitable as everyone was led to believe if accounting had
properly figured the costs.

Even if so, the age of our great B&E sales were during the
administration of Al Lawrence who was ED prior to 1996. So it's been
over 10 years since they were in fact profitable in operations, except
in the year they cut staff.

On Aug 14, 10:52?pm, Paul Rubin wrote:
Bruce writes:
I think the only positive balance years they ever really had in
operations was the year of the draconian staff cuts and the years
where they sold the building and moved.

The positive balance years were when everyone was buying expensive
dedicated chess computers from the B&E operation. That was also when
the expensive habits developed. The market for dedicated chess
computers has dried up and gone. The expensive habits are still rampant.

Ah the expensive computers.

Those were in the years before USCF adopted GAAP and those numbers
were bogus beyond words.
If memory serves, computers were given by a certain computer company
to USCF and their full retail value was credited as income.
We didn't sell them exactly.
We ended up giving away most of them.

We have a long long history of financial nonsense.

Richard Peterson