On December 14, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Obamacare unconstitutional because its individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance “can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s tax power,” since the tax that enforced it is now gone. Progressive leaning critics quickly called it bad jurisprudence and assured people that Obamacare remained constitutional.

A growing chorus of alarmist voices decries the rising economic inequality in the Western world and especially in the United States.1 Surprisingly enough, the same mainstream analysts complain about the anemic growth of labor productivity without seeing the correct link between the two.

“Everything is happening, nothing has changed,” Alex Massie wrote over at CapX last week, perhaps summing up best the political situation in the UK right now. What has happened in the Brexit debate in the last few months, but in the last week in particular, has caused much astonishment around the globe — indeed, it has left almost everyone with the question of what in the world is going on in Britain.

Although some capitalists and defenders of free markets believe that Ebenezer Scrooge has much to teach us about good economics, I have long found him to be less than inspiring in this respect.

In a market economy, a major service that money provides is that of the medium of exchange. Producers exchange their goods for money and then exchange money for other goods. As production of goods and services increases, this results in a greater demand for the services of the medium of exchange (the service that money provides). Conversely, as economic activity slows down the demand for the services of money follows suit.

Following last February’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, some students claimed local government officials were at fault for failing to provide protection to students. The students filed suit, naming six defendants, including the Broward school district and the Broward Sheriff’s Office, as well as school deputy Scot Peterson and campus monitor Andrew Medina.

Money supply growth slowed in November, falling to the lowest rate recorded since February of this year. Overall, money-supply growth remains well below the growth rates experienced from 2009 to 2016, and has fluctuated very little since March.

In November, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 3.48 percent. That was down from October’s growth rate of 3.7 percent, but was up from November 2017’s rate of 2.6 percent.

Zero Hedge has reprinted my recent Mises Wire post discussing the historical movements of the Rothbard-Salerno True Money Supply aggregate and what they portend for the future of the current boom in the U.S. economy.