Archive - Dec 2015

BANZAI7 FOOD, BEVERAGE AND FASCIST BILDERBITCH WARNING

Slope of Hope celebrated its 10th anniversary last March, and during the course of 2015, thousands of interesting charts and articles were published. Here's a sampling of the best of them:

If Donald Trump is a megalomaniac salivating over taking control of American Weimar, then both Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio are führers in the making. The same goes for the rest of the field, where each and every candidate aspires to be the Celebrity-in-Chief. Trump only looks worse because he doesn’t have the benefit of a sympathetic media on his side.

According to a piece published earlier this month by Spiegel, ISIS obtains the satellite technology it needs to disseminate its propaganda in Antakya. In addition to reinforcing the link between the group and Turkey, this also raises an interesting question: why are the satellite service providers not doing anything to stop the group from spreading its message?

Earlier in 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he found it difficult to understand what Russia was doing in Syria, since "it does not even border Syria." By that logic, Turkey should not be "doing anything" in the Palestinian territories, Somalia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan or any of the non-bordering lands into which its neo-Ottoman impulses have pushed it.

Elections, elections, and more elections is the 'regime change' meme for 2016 but, as Bloomberg details, the key events of the year ahead vary from a California marijuana referendum to Brazil's Olympics, and from Davos to SCOTUS. No matter what, 2016 holds a lot of opportunity for volatility, and without The Fed's safety net, who knows what that means for markets...

What better way to end 2015, than with a highlight reel of Donald Trump’s more colorful insults.

How did Venezuela stocks perform in the past year under the country's hyperinflation? The answer: using a meaningess exchange rate, they rose 4x and, as Handelsblatt incorrectly concluded, "were the best investment of the year"; on the other hand using an exchange rates that actually reflects the country's economic implosion, they lost just over 20% of their value in the past year.

In 2015, the iron fist of power clamped down on humanity, from warfare to terrorism to surveillance, police brutality, and corporate hegemony. The environment was repeatedly decimated, the health of citizens was constantly put at risk, and the justice system and media alike were perverted to serve the interests of the powers that be. However, while 2015 was discouraging for more reasons than most of us can count, many of the year’s most underreported stories evidence not only a widespread pattern that explicitly reveals the nature of power, but pushback from human beings worldwide on a path toward a better world.

Deja vu, 1939 ...

"Current information indicates that a terrorist attack has been planned in Munich," police said in a statement, adding "please avoid crowds and train stations. We will provide updates on the current situation."

Moments ago the effective Fed Funds rate tumbled from yesterday's 0.35% to just 0.12%, confirming that indeed the rate hike corridor can and has been breached at least once, and only two weeks into the Fed's rate hike experiment.

The unfolding correction of the visible excesses of the credit inflation - such as overinvestment and malinvestment - will destroy incomes and profits; the Great Unwind of the less visible effects, such as the sovereign wealth fund liquidations, are a giant pin aimed squarely at the monumental worldwide bubbles in stock, bonds and real estate.