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.

The Source of the Red

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Last night, I was doing what I always do when I’m out of projects, which is that I roamed Slope, polishing things up here, tidying up things over there, and basically making this 19-year old creation a little nicer for you each day. Something occurred to me in doing so: there is SO MUCH here, and, frankly, it is SO good. To me, it’s bewildering that Slope isn’t a hundred times more popular than it is. I mean, honestly, this isn’t just a proud papa talking: this is SUCH a great site. I bet you aren’t even aware of 70% of the stuff in here, because it’s so easy just to hang out and chew the fat with other traders, but honest to God, the fact Slope isn’t the home page for every trader is a travesty.

The point is driven home for me when I visit other sites that I considered, at one time or another, rivals. I won’t name names (or give URLs), but I visited a couple last night, and they are utter crap. Not only has the feature set not changed for years, but there are SLATHERED with advertisements, which is totally annoying and intrusive. As some of you know, I have fought back the temptation to have ads, since I don’t want my beloved Slope sullied with crass, annoying garbage. Would you really like to have to constantly be closing pop-up ads? Yeah, I didn’t think so. So maybe throw in a few bucks.

Meh, don’t worry, TIm. If an honest-to-God bear market starts, your problem isn’t going to be why the place isn’t more popular. Your place is going to be having the servers keep up with the traffic.

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The Gospel Truth

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Uncertainty is a fact of life, and with the #1 story these days being the Debt Ceiling, it seems things are more uncertain than ever. Nonsense! Here are a few truths you can put in The Bible:

  • The U.S. isn’t going to default;
  • Instead, the warring political parties will get as much press as they can, and pander as much as they are able to their constituents, right up to the brink;
  • There will be some kind of meaningless concessions on which they all finally agree, and the entire issue will vanish instantly, even if they miss the so-called X-Date by a few days;
  • Thus, our nation will gleefully march its way to its next debt level of $40 trillion, which matters as much as if it were $500 trillion, since none of it is ever going to be paid back in any genuine way regardless of how gargantuan it becomes.
  • The end result is that the federal government is simply going to grow larger and larger until it eventually either collapses into utter chaos or winds up making 90% of the population wards of the state by way of Universal Basic Income.

The decrepit Janet Yellen is playing her role in this performance beautifully, using scare tactics to try to cow the other side into compliance. This is all political theatre, and it’s an embarrassing farce that this once-great nation has now been reduced to a grotesque and degenerate debt addict that can only beg and plead for more trillions, since it is is incapable of making any difficult yet sensible fiscal decisions.