Just a late-night note about that horizontal line I’ve been following on the Russell 2000, which represents the highest levels reached since February. It was pierced tonight, which is unprecedented.
Stop-Sweeper?
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.
Destruction of a Billionaire (2 of 4)
Preface to all four parts: with all the focus on precious metals lately, I wanted to share a chapter from my Panic Prosperity and Progress book about a germane period in financial history related to the Hunts and their attempt to corner the silver market. You can read part one here.
Around this time, a radical military man named Colonel Gaddafi seized power in Libya and nationalized the country’s oil wells. Of course, Bunker’s successful operation was one of these, and the arch-conservative Bunker expected the United States to take ferocious action against this thief. The U.S. did nothing of the sort, and Armand Hammer (the interestingly-named CEO of Occidental Petroleum) agreed to give Gaddafi a 51% “royalty” in exchange for continuing operations in Libya.
Bunker was incensed at this thinly-veiled extortion payment. The Hunts had a grave distrust of many parties, including East Coast oil companies (led, they believed, by the Rockefeller clan), and Occidental’s capitulation to this lunatic Colonel was just more proof that their worldview was correct.
(more…)Why I Love Nikola
Note from Tim: I didn’t write this. Honest. I have a feeling it isn’t meant as a serious piece.
I love Nikola Corporation (NASDAQ:NKLA) because the stock goes up and not down. This means the stock makes me money and I will become rich one day (I own three shares). I wanted to share my knowledge on why I’m buying Nikola Corporation hand over fist.
(more…)Parvus Sed Potens
Yeah, that’s one of the bits of Latin I remember from back in high school. It means “small but powerful” which, regrettably, describes the small caps. It’s been an absolute heart breaker. If it pushes above the horizontal, the bulls will simply have more wind blow into their already very-full sails. Groan.
Destruction of a Billionaire (1 of 4)
Preface to all four parts: with all the focus on precious metals lately, I wanted to share a chapter from my Panic Prosperity and Progress book about a germane period in financial history related to the Hunts and their attempt to corner the silver market.
The stunning bull market in precious metals in the late 1970s, followed by its swift collapse, has a fascinating and remarkable history. The roots of the event date back to the dark days of the Great Depression, when President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102 which outlawed the “hoarding” (that is, the ownership in almost any form) of gold by any person or other entity within the United States.
Prior to this order, gold was intricately intertwined in the nation’s currency. U.S. dollars were convertible into gold on demand, and this convertibility helped constrict the velocity of money severely. Roosevelt recognized that inflating the money supply was essential to turning the economy around, so he took the extraordinary step of criminalizing private ownership of gold as one of the steps to decouple the precious metal from the nation’s currency.
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