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.
Propping up the stock market isn’t particularly hard for the Fed these days. Just conjure up trillions from thin air and focus on the ten stocks below. Even though there are thousands of public companies, these mere ten make up 48% of the NASDAQ Composite and a full 58% of the value of the NASDAQ 100. Let your eyes behold the greatest Fed beneficiaries of all:
The Small Business Association’s (SBA)’s Payroll Protection Program (PPP) handed out loans to small businesses, but it isn’t just small businesses getting the loans. Criticism of the program continues as officials released details on hundreds of thousands of businesses that received PPP loans from the SBA, many of which will be forgivable.
The Payroll Protection Program was designed to bail out small businesses impacted by the pandemic, but many firms that took the bailout money weren’t impacted by the pandemic.
The SBA’s PPP loans were supposed to be for small businesses that had to shut down during the pandemic. However, many large businesses, including asset management firms that didn’t actually shut down, are taking the loans.
(more…)Numb. That’s what it feels like. Or doesn’t feel like, I suppose. Numb. Not depressed. Not saddened. Just no longer subject to the psychological millstone collectively hanging around the neck of the nation’s psyche. Yet it’s still hard not to fill affected in some way.
On Saturday morning, in a short span of time, I was greeted by a series of realities. The first, known to us all Friday night, was the commutation of the Stone sentence. Let me say at the outset this has nothing to do with politics for me. I’ve always viewed Presidential pardons and commutations that weren’t plainly an act of grace and decency to instead reek of corruption (such as, for instance, Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich). Let’s face it, Stone is one of the smarmiest looking guys on the planet. This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
(more…)
