It must be a boom time for commodity traders. By any measure, whether in the news, on TV, or in stores, prices are increasing. Here’s some headlines, starting with Reuters on Sunday:

U.S. gasoline prices soar to highest since 2008 on Russia conflict -AAA

And today:

Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been making headlines lately as the presidential race in the Philippines runs ever closer toward the 2022 elections in May. On the local level, at the time of this writing, he maintains a commanding lead in polls and opinion surveys despite opting out of public debates against other candidates. With overwhelming support behind him, he is currently poised to win the elections and become the next president after Rodrigo Duterte.

A popular idea in finance theory is that the prices of financial assets fully reflect all available and relevant information and that adjustment to new information is virtually instantaneous.

Remington Arms, America’s oldest gun manufacturer, settled for $73 million in a wrongful-death suit filed by the families of several victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. Bushmaster, the company that actually manufactured the rifle used in the shooting, is owned by Remington Outdoor Company.

“I find a hundred thousand sorrows touching my heart, and there is a ringing in my ears, like an admonition eternal, an insistent call, ‘It must not be again! It must not be again!’” said a tearful President Warren G. Harding in May 1921, as 5,212 wooden caskets with the remains of American servicemen from France arrived on the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey.

The New York Times published on March 4 a hostile obituary notice of Gary North. Although the writer, Sam Roberts, mentions that North held a PhD in economic history from  UC Riverside, the entire stress of the article is on North’s religious views rather than his scholarly achievements. He published an article in the Journal of Political Economy, a feat most professional economists would envy. Mr.

People often believe that price gouging is so obviously immoral that making it illegal is the equivalent of criminalizing theft. In their minds, sellers who drastically hike their prices after a supply or demand shock are simply cruel capitalists taking advantage of poor consumers, who are practically forced to hand over their money.

The student of economics, of course, would sooner laud this practice than condemn it. After all, price changes are an important part of the market process because they help us economize scarce resources.