Milton Friedman (1963) argued that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” Nevertheless, in the last decades, the strong growth of money supply in many industrial countries was not matched by a respective increase in officially measured price levels.

Advocates of marijuana legalization won another victory last month when Governor Dan McKee signed new legislation legalizing recreational marijuana in Rhode Island. New Hampshire—where cannabis is “only” decriminalized and legal for medical purposes—is now the only state in New England where recreational marijuana is not legal. 

With Rhode Island now added to the legalization bloc, this means more than 144 million Americans now live in states where recreational cannabis has been legalized. That’s 43 percent of the US population.

Currently, a new cycle of protests involving the Ecuadorian indigenous peoples’ organization is happening, following another cycle that took place in October 2019 and paralyzed the country for two weeks, resulting in 8 people dead, various hundreds of other people injured, including law enforcement officers sent to diffuse the demonstrations.

In response to the strengthening of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) growth rate yearly to 8.6 percent in May 2022 from 5.0 percent in May 2021, on Wednesday, June 15, 2022, the US central bank (the Fed) raised the policy interest rate by 75 basis points—the largest increase since 1994. The new target range now stands at 1.50 percent to 1.75 percent, and most Fed officials expect the policy rate to rise well above 3.0 percent by the end of the year.