Mentioned many times before, but just an update………
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 Latest Salvo
So if the prospect of a relaxation in trade wars is worth 3,000 points on the Dow, then surely the total collapse of trade talks is worth – – what – – about 70 points or so? Anyway, as I type this on Sunday evening, the ES is down, getting slaughtered and vanquished to the tune of two-tenths of a single percentage point. It’s just like last weekend. A mountain of bad news resulting in a tiny downtick, all of which will be green by tomorrow, right?
Financial Cold War
As we crossed the finish line last week into the longest bull market in human history, a question that has been on my mind for years came bubbling to the surface again: if this is so easy, why didn’t the governments of the world do it before? In other words, since it’s been proved quite clearly that central bankers can prop up equity markets around the world, as well as public sentiment, why did it take them so long to figure it out?
Were they really that dim? Why would the governments, and all the self-interested individuals which comprise them, put themselves through the financial horrors of 2007/2008, the crash of 1987, the Internet bubble collapse of 2000, or the grinding equities-are-dead market that lasted the entire 1970s? It doesn’t make any sense.
(more…)Real Independence
Happy Independence Day, Slopers. The series John Adams was brilliant, and here is a favorite scene from it. Please take seven minutes of your life to watch it and meditate on the fact that these were real men facing real peril. Death by hanging is a pretty strong threat. How blessed we are these such a group of ingenious and principled leaders were present to create this nation of ideas.
In Dodd We Trust
NOTE that has nothing to do with this post: we have SUBSTANTIALLY sped up how fast comments update. Please refresh with a Ctrl-F5 so activate this. OK, on with the post…….
What is it with Texas politicians and the banking industry?
I thought Texans were supposed to be all about cattle and oil. Yet over the decades it seems like they are first in line, shoving themselves even in front of New Yorkers, to provide whatever aid, assistance, and comfort that big banks require. It’s bizarre.
The most famous example, of course, being the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act in 1999, championed by this genius:
When public “servants” are whoring themselves out to any particular industry, they couch it in the mask of freedom and progress. This was no exception, as Senator Gramm said at the time: (more…)
