I stumbled upon this totally by chance, and it’s mesmerizing. These men didn’t know their conversation was being recorded (it isn’t clear who was doing the bugging), but it is riveting, particularly considering how high the stakes were. The mutual respect is also inspirational.
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 Warren Collapse
I find these political betting sites charts nearly as fascinating as those for equities. Just look what a shooting star Elizabeth Warren turned out to be!

Hong Kong Phase 2
As a follow-up to this morning’s Hong Kong Phase 1 post, there is now more market action, thanks to the U.S. Congress taking an extraordinarily rare, virtually unanimous, opportunity to voice its support for Hong Kong. First it was the Senate, and now the House joins them. I mentioned this morning, ” The ES needs to crack 3100, however, to get a little more interesting.” Well, it has done so, and I think 3105 is a fairly important line in the sand on the ES.

And the Next President Is…
Yesterday I ran this post which included a one-answer poll about who Slopers thought would be elected next year President. I tried to stress they should vote for who they thought would win, but I’ve got a hunch most folks were “talking their book” and voted for who they wanted to win. Anyway, here are the results. Let’s see how it turns out 365 days from now!
(more…)One Year Hence
Just for fun, I wanted to do a poll about the President Election of 2020, since it’s in exactly one year. Try to guess who will win, not you who hope will win. Oh, and this isn’t a solicitation to start talking politics. I just think it’ll be an interesting artifact to look back on a year from now, which is a day I suspect the ol’ comments section will be bustling. The choices are presented in completely random order for each Sloper: (once you click a radio button, scroll down a bit to click Finish Survey)
Easiest Prediction Ever
Simple Minds
We live in a very complex word, and it grows more complex by the day. But let’s set aside all the uncertainties, possibilities, relationships, and exogenous outliers. Let’s strip it away and focus on the basics.
It’s quite evident that being simple-minded in 2009 was the way to go. The President said to go out and buy stocks. The Federal Reserve made it absolutely clear they were going to pour everything they had into “saving” the economy. Any member of John Q. Public who naively took them out their word has made out fabulously well to this day. We sit at lifetime highs in equity markets, in spite of a $23 trillion debt which is going to grow $1 trillion per year (at least) as far as the eye can see.
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