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.

Gold!

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When I was a freshman in High School, I took a course there called Introduction to Business, taught by Mr. Coleman. You may be familiar with him not by name, but by the old saw, "Those who cannot do……….teach."

In any case, this was in 1980, and gold had done its spectacular run over $800. Now remember, after the 1970s, seeing anything explode higher in value like that captured the public's imagination. This was two decades before dot-com mania. Anyway, he sat us down, turned off the lights, turned on the tv, and played a video from National Geographic called "Gold!"

A freshman in high school is all too happy to watch television, but the interesting thing to me, in retrospect, is that National Geographic's trumpeting of the marvels and mysteries of gold pretty much nailed the top of the market for a very long time.

Imagine my feelings when, heading through the airport, I saw this newest issue of…………National Geographic………on the newsstand:

Perhaps we'll see history repeat itself. I think we will.

There are a lot of doomsday folks running around, and I'm one of them – – but one attribute I don't have in common with my Cassandra-like brethren is the belief that gold is going to be worth thousands of bucks an ounce in some kind of inflationary mania. I think the things highly-valued in the coming years will be………I dunno……….chicken, water, beef, milk, bread, and a roof over one's head.

If I have time later, I'll do another post, but I just got back home, so………..talk to you later tonight or in the morning.