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.

Back in 2016, Donald Trump criticized the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates too low. Trump explained that the Fed’s work to keep interest rates artificially low benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor:

And you know the people who are hurt the most are people that saved all their lives, and thought they were going to live off the interest. Those people are getting absolutely creamed.

Momentum is strongly behind the United States government ending its war on marijuana.

In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith described many ways in which people solve problems to be able to work with other people. Trust is a key theme which Smith returns to throughout his works. “We trust our health to the physician; our fortune and some­times our life and reputation to the lawyer and attorney.

A Peru-born friend of mine complains that Christmas trees have become popular in his native country. Given that Douglas firs aren’t exactly part of the indigenous flora in Peru, the (mostly artificial) firs and pines used as Christmas trees in homes across the country strike him as incongruous with local customs and the local environment.

He has a point. But he may be fighting a losing battle.

After all, over the past four hundred years, the Christmas tree has taken the world by storm, spreading from northern Europe to the Americas and beyond.