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.

Waiting for Guffman

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I read a lot. I used to write more than I read, but that fluctuates. With each passing day, as I absorb news and commentary, I am increasingly convinced how backwards we’ve gone since the silly little book shown below was a bestseller.

It’s a tired trope, I realize, for some middle-aged guy to be jabbing his finger at the news and saying the world’s gone crazy, but that’s where I’m at. It’s even worse to think that, for every dollar someone earns, they’re allowed to keep almost 50 cents while the rest gets ripped away and given to all forms of feckless government, is appalling.

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Right Said Fed

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As you well know, Wednesday is the 6th (of 8th) FOMC Meeting of 2025, and it’s a widely anticipated one, since Powell has all but declared a rate cut is guaranteed, and the only unknown is whether the (meaningless) cut will be 25 or 50 basis points.

For months now, equity markets have been stomping higher on a near-daily basis. The trend is utterly bullish, and only a failure of the trendlines shown below would indicate even a whiff of a trend reversal.

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