The best way to look at tariffs or import quotas or other protectionist restraints is to forget about political boundaries.

Janet Yellen didn’t make much news this week when she testified before the House and Senate banking committees. She continued to defend the Fed’s low interest rate policy, painted a very optimistic picture of the American economy, and struggled to defend her opposition to Audit the Fed.

In the past here at mises.org, we’ve looked at several different ways of comparing government spending across presidential administrations. No matter how we look at it, we’re forced to conclude that Republican presidents cannot be counted on to spend less than Democratic presidents. 

This Sunday the long awaited seventh season of Game of Thrones will premier on HBO. Two Mises Institute scholars, Matthew McCaffrey and Carmen Elena Dorobăț, have written extensively on the economics of the series, noting that:

George R.R. Martin’s story touches on a variety of economic issues, from the implications of not having an economic system at all, to the problems of money and public finance.

Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 20, no. 1 (Spring 2017)

The shock landslide defeat of PM Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the recent Tokyo metropolitan elections — and the triumph there of Tokyo Governor Koike’s new party (Tomin First) — has lit a faint hope that the radical Japanese monetary expansion policy could be on its way out. The flickering light though is not strong enough to soothe the mania in Japan’s carry trades and so the yen continued to slide in the aftermath of the elections.

Thousands lined up to purchase recreational marijuana legally at 12:01 a.m. on July 1. At Euphoria Wellness, with a location in southwest Las Vegas, a crowd of 400 to 500 people were lined up at midnight. Other locations had just as many.

Among the first to purchase was state senator Tick Segerblom, who has a strain of weed named after him: “Segerblom Haze.” The senator tweeted that he believed the state would rake in a million dollars in tax money this first weekend. Judging from the lines out the doors at dispensaries in just my neighborhood, I don’t doubt his projection.

There seems to be no shortage today of investors and pundits criticizing the market interventions of the world’s central banks. Monetary stimulus in the form of artificially low interest rates and bloated central bank balance sheets ($18.5 trillion, to be exact), the argument goes, have created another dangerous financial bubble (evidenced by ubiquitously bubbly stock market valuation ratios) that ultimately threatens the financial system yet again. The author shares wholeheartedly in this criticism.

On Wednesday, Janet Yellen testified before the House Financial Services Committee. Though the hearings lost much of their appeal when Dr. Ron Paul retired from Congress, the House Republicans have maintained a reputation for being far more hostile to the Federal Reserve than their colleagues in the Senate — managing to generate some worthwhile moments. While little news was made, with Yellen maintaining her support for generally low interest rates, there were some points made today worth noting.