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.

Red China

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For all the pearl-clutching and teeth-gnashing last week about how amazing yet-another-bailout from China would be, it hasn’t amounted to jack squat. There was feverish talk about how the Chinese Communist Dictatorship’s Ministry of Finance (sounds straight out of 1984, doesn’t it?) was going to hold a big press conference on Saturday and Monday morning. They did, declaring how “ultra-long-term bonds” (that’ll never be paid off, I’m quite sure) in the TRILLIANS of yuan were being issued. In response, the market hasn’t done dick.

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Oh, Baby, Baby……

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There are about 8.2 billion humans on this planet, which is probably about 8.2 billion too many, but let’s set that aside. It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 to flatline that level, and we are moving from an era of grotesquely large numbers of new humans to a dying, shrinking world (particularly in the well-educated, prosperous places; impoverished shitholes are cranking out LOADS of babies still).

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Bon Ami

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On Monday evening, after a grueling 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in front of a computer, barely moving from the spot since I was contemporaneously dealing with my normal life (writing posts and trading) and my very abnormal life (screaming blue murder at my hosting platform for all the technical troubles we were having), I treated myself to cleaning a large pot in the kitchen sink that my wife had used earlier in the day to cook our dogs a big helping of chopped-up steak.

See, I like cleaning. We’re talking Felix-Unger-levels of enjoyment. So, I set about the task, scrubbing, rinsing, scrubbing, rinsing, and then with just a little water still in the pot, I swirled in enough white scouring powder to really do the job right.

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