Last year, Joseph Salerno cautioned against the use of year-over-year CPI inflation rate calculations.

This way of calculating the annual inflation rate is backward looking, because the most recent monthly rate is heavily outweighed by the previous eleven months’ rates.

A member of the Fort Lupton, Colorado Police Department was fired last month after she was found guilty of reckless endangerment and third-degree assault. Former Officer Jordan Steinke had arrested Yareni Rios-Gonzalez for suspected menacing and put her in the back of the patrol car of Platteville police officer Pablo Vasquez. Vasquez had parked his cruiser on railroad tracks. Moments later, the car was struck by a passing train with Rios-Gonzales inside.

Welfare states in Scandinavia are revered by the American Left. Many think that America could reduce social problems by copying their policies. To such people, the success of the Scandinavian states is evidence that socialism works. Confidence in the welfare policies of these places is so great that pundits even attribute the prosperity of Scandinavia to these policies. Few ponder why socialism leads to disastrous consequences elsewhere but fruitful outcomes in Scandinavia.

In 1903, a lawyer in Germany took out an insurance policy and made payments on it faithfully. When the policy came due in twenty years, he cashed it in and bought a single loaf of bread with the proceeds. He was fortunate. If he had waited a few days longer, the money he received would have bought no more than a few crumbs.

According to a relatively new economics field called Behavioral Economics (BE), one’s emotional state rather than reason influences their economic decisions. Vernon Smith, the BE economist who won a Nobel in economics, wrote: