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.

Fiscal Fantasy

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I cannot imagine any other time in the history of this country where people felt so confident, so placid, and so assured about their investments. And why wouldn’t they be? Every year, every month, every week, and every moment, it has been made crystal clear to “investors” that their risks will be rewarded, and their losses will be reversed. Sure, at first, people doubted it, because that’s not how markets work. But after the past 33 years – – this all began in earnest in 1987 – – people have been “saved” countless times, and it is considered a truism that there’s really no such thing as risk anymore.

Join me on a brief fantasy, however, and a thought experiment. I’d like you to embrace your most imaginative self and briefly accept a circumstance in which the following has taken place.

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