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.

Too Big to Pay

By -

As you are paying your property taxes, sales taxes, federal income taxes, state income taxes, utility taxes, gas taxes, and God-knows-what-else taxes, here’s a fun thing to keep in mind: plenty of gargantuan corporations not only pay zero taxes, but they actually get REBATES from the government. This is the miracle of corporate lobbying in D.C., folks! Here’s a taste:

Food conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland enjoyed $438 million of U.S. pretax income last year and received a federal tax rebate of $164 million.

The delivery giant FedEx zeroed out its federal income tax on $1.2 billion of U.S. pretax income in 2020 and received a rebate of $230 million.

(more…)

Should We Clubhouse?

By -

Early in 2005, my wife told me I should start a blog. I told her I thought it was a dumb idea. She kept pushing. I kept saying it was dumb. I finally relented on March 29, 2005, and here we are on Slope. In my life, she is basically batting 1,000 about being right.

She’s been at it again. This time, regarding Clubhouse. This is the invitation-only audio app. I don’t want to do it. She thinks it’s a great idea. I think it’s dumb (plus – how shall I put this delicately – – surprisingly urban). Although the empirical data suggests I should listen (specifically, of the past fifty million opinions she has expressed, none of them have been wrong) I’d be interested to know if any of you would want to try this. I can’t imagine people wanting to hear each other, especially me, but who knows. Let me know……….

Get Back!

By -

Whoa! How did I not know about this? As big a Beatles fan as I am (it’s pretty much all I play on the bass guitar), I had no idea Peter Jackson was coming out with a Beatles documentary this year (it releases August 27th). This looks absolutely amazing, and in sharp contrast to the grainy Let It Be (which seems to show a band that is constantly on the verge of breakup), this looks filled with joy (although personally I’d lose my mind having Yoko Ono no more than six inches away from John Lennon morning, noon, and night):

Diamond Cracker

By -

Welcome back from the long weekend, everyone. Now we get to enjoy a couple of months of holiday-free trading, enriched with the Q1 earnings season which begins in earnest a couple of weeks from now.

Over the past week, the prospect of tech stocks making a meaningful reverse seems to have been blown to smithereens. Things were moving apace quite nicely for many weeks, but the strength we’ve seen in the chart below seems to put us all right back on the road of infinitely higher prices in spite of huge tax increases, an eye-popping debt, and what surely must be an exhausted twelve-year old bull market. And yet…………

nqyuop
(more…)

A Decidedly Different Look at the ISM

By -

ISM’s Report on Business (RoB) blisters upward, but…

My former residence within the real economy was right here, in the manufacturing base. I don’t miss it even one little bit, but were I still involved we’d be booming and bitching. Business would be very good and prices and supply constraints very aggravating. The way things went in my segment – Medical Equipment, often pressured by Medicare constraints and general competition – I’d be getting hit over the head by customers about maintaining low prices while facing immovable obstacles in the form of supplier prices and extended deliveries. Now I write for a living. It’s a no-brainer I guess.

That digression aside, let’s look at the RoB. Here is the headline. You can click the graphic to grab the entire report (pdf).

(more…)