Well they finally got Boris Johnson. But he sure scared the bejesus out of them…or did he? Johnson’s time as Prime Minister has been one plagued by political turmoil, Coronavirus, and scandal, all three of which many thought he could overcome with relative ease and buoyancy. But alas, due to his own party imploding after the latest scandal - involving sexual allegations surrounding his Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher - and various cabinet ministers and others important to the running of a functioning government resigning, his position became untenable.

Robert Nozick is probably most familiar to readers of this column as a libertarian political philosopher, but this week I’d like to look at another issue, relevant not only to libertarians but to anyone interested in moral and political thought, which he discusses in his last book, Invariances (Harvard, 2001.) This is whether our beliefs about these subjects are objectively true or merely the expression of preferences. If we say, e.g., that people own themselves, is this something that is true or is it just a preference that we have?

Readers of the Mises Wire are most likely familiar with the Volcker moment. This was when former Fed chair Paul Volcker, in the face of steep price inflation, skyrocketed rates to nearly 20 percent. While critics of the Volcker moment complain that such a move also skyrocketed unemployment to almost 11 percent, it cannot be ignored that the price inflation was finally reined in.

The US Bureau of Labor statistics released new Consumer Price Index inflation estimates this morning, and the official numbers for June 2022 show that price inflation has risen to 9.1 percent year over year. That’s the biggest number since November 1981, when the price growth measure hit 9.6 percent year over year. The month-over-month measure surged as well, with the CPI measure hitting 1.4 percent.