Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

The Moment of Truth

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First, a bit of shameless commerce – – for those of you potentially interested in joining Slope Plus, remember that this month I’m running a special (the first I’ve had in about half a year) in which you can use the service for free for a month. Just enter the coupon code trickortreat on the Subscription page, and voila, a virtual $29.95 is in your hands!

Now, on to my post………

Back on August 30, I did a post called Past Fear, Present Fear which, it seems, turned out to be really, really, really prescient. I urge you to give the post a glance, but in short, it drew a powerful parallel between the volatility leading up to the financial crisis and the volatility we were witnessing through this summer………. (more…)

“It’s Inflation All the way, Baby!”

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The title’s quote is one of many eminently quotable messages I had the pleasure of receiving over a few years of contact with a late, great and a very interesting man* named Jonathan Auerbach, who headed a unique specialty (emerging and frontier markets) brokerage in NYC called Auerbach Grayson.

kabukiJon was an honest and ethical man. He was also a gold bug (in that descriptor’s highest form) who innately understood the Kabuki Dance that has been ongoing by monetary authorities since the ‘Age of Inflation onDemand‘ (what guest poster Bruno de Landevoisin calls the Monetized New Millenium) started its most intense and bald faced phase in 2000.

Yesterday the minutes were released from the last (FOMC) meeting of official interest rate manipulators and surprise surprise, they are found to be hand wringing about the strong dollar. A strong dollar is going to take direct aim at US manufacturing among other exporting businesses, after all. (more…)