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.

Putting The Fallacy Of QE Into Perspective

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You can’t turn on a financial news program without being bombarded by panelists as well as the hosts ready-at-the-draw to pounce on anyone with an opposing view as to the “effectiveness” of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program (QE).

Once again this played out just the other day on CNBC™ where this time it was Peter Schiff who found himself in the cross hairs of today’s version of “ambush the guest.”

You can agree or disagree with anyone’s viewpoint and I even encourage people to question mine if they see fit. However, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to watch many of these anchors to witness for yourself what now has turned into all the appearances of – an ambush. (more…)

FOMC Cites Job Gains?

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Fed Announces End to Bond-Buying, Citing Job Gains –New York Times

Just a week or so ago one of the Fed’s three most celebrated hawks jumped the mic with a ‘shucks ya know, we could always delay the end of QE’ routine as the stock market plummeted. They don’t make hawks like they used to.

So what does the FOMC really mean, ‘job gains are good so we are ending QE’ or… ‘phew, that was a close one but the market took the Bullard bait and is back near the highs so we are ending QE… for now’. I’ll take ‘B’ Alex.

I seriously wonder how people other than promoters in the media and the financial services complex can continue to fall in line behind this transparent stuff. Maybe it is not really people after all but instead a bunch of connected black boxes, dark pools and other such robo systems simply programmed, without feeling, to follow the code. (more…)