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.

Rich Man’s Panic (1 of 3)

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During these three-day weekends, I’ll sometimes lean on my Panic Prosperity and Progress book for an interesting morsel of content for my readers. Enjoy:

On a chart of the financial history of the United States, the downturn which took place in stocks in 1907 is a barely-recognizable blip. What took place during that year, however, would completely alter the financial structure of the world on a permanent basis. It is an astonishing story of what the financial universe of the United States was like before the nation had its own central bank.

In the early 20th century, it was not as if the U.S. had never had a central bank to call its own. Indeed, there was one in place long before, but President Andrew Jackson let the charter of the Second Bank of the United States expire in 1836, and the banks of the U.S. relied upon one another to navigate the roiling waves of the 19th century. Unfortunately, this system produced periodic panics and bank closures on a surprisingly frequent basis, and a depositor could not be assured of the safety of his money once it was deposited within an institution.

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California Gold

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With the focus on precious metals lately, I wanted to share a free chapter from my Panic Prosperity and Progress book about a germane period in financial history related to the California Gold Rush of the mid-19th century. Enjoy!

The California Gold Rush is one of the most universally-known eras of American history, but it is also one of the most widely-misunderstood. It obviously altered the importance of California (which today reigns as one of the most important technological and business powerhouses on Earth), but it was just as important to the history of the entire nation in the decades that followed gold’s initial discovery at Sutter’s Mill.

There were not any meaningful financial markets for it to affect, but the gold rush laid the foundation for some important personal fortunes and fundamental Californian characteristics that lived far past the middle of the 19th century.

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Funny Pages

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Long-time readers know I have an adversarial relationship with boredom. I can’t stand it. There’s a reason I wrote twenty published book by the time I was twenty years old. I get antsy. I’ve got to be creating.

Thus, last night, I was going out of my mind. There was nothing left to clean. Nothing left to organize. Hell, I’ve already done all my personal and corporate taxes months before they are due. So I decided to prowl our bookshelves for something to read. What else was I supposed to do? Watch an idiotic TV show? Come on.

I found something interesting that I had originally bought years ago for one of my beloved children. It is basically a 300 page comic book (oh, sorry, graphic novel) about Economics called, appropriately, Economix. It’s absolutely superb, and this ‘comic book’ imparts more information than over 99% of the American public understands.

I’d like to share one snippet with you in particular, which for some odd reason I find germane to ours times. The tinting is my own:

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Harmony at Gunpoint

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Over just two days, I read the newly-published book We Have Been Harmonized cover to cover. For anyone interested in China, global economics, or high-tech surveillance, I heartily recommend it. The book is superbly written, well-researched, and comes from an author who is an expert in the field. In this post, I would like to explore some of the topics covered in the book.

For starters, I offer a philosophical question: Is there such a thing as a universal, indomitable human spirit? In other words, are all human beings imbued with the desire to live their lives freely and express themselves without fear of reprisal? Or is this notion simply coming from the head of someone like myself who has been blessed with life inside a western liberal democracy his entire life?

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