‘Greedflation’ study finds many companies were lying to you about inflation
‘Greedflation’ study finds many companies were lying to you about inflation
Companies like Exxon Mobil, Shell, and Kraft Heinz enjoyed bumper profits as consumers struggled with historic inflation.
In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to hike prices in search of profits.
“The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism,” Edwards wrote. “This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”
Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
Seriously, promise?
I and my family will take the painful collapse and rebuild, because at least that provides hope for a better future, unlike today's path, further enriching a few thousand sociopath's ego scores in their race to see who can burn up the the planet for private profit the fastest.
Living under the tyranny of the greed class is just pain by design. Pain in generational perpetuity.
Yeah, seriously. The path is so obvious and linear for society today due to that. I feel like it just gets easier to predict the future, from axioms such as "the rich are powerful and will always try to expand their influence and cement their rule".
It's easy to see that climate change will never be solved for as long as something big doesn't change, wealth inequality will keep rising, it will just keep being more and more expensive to live and own things, working conditions won't improve or may even worsen, automation will put out more and more people out of a job, creating a massive crisis, poor countries will get worse leading to wars or other crises, and ever more commercialization of everything, such as art and hobbies.
At least, unless it collapses/a revolution happens.
We've had political, social and economic revolutions before without shit collapsing. Lots of death and destruction though generally. People don't give up power easily unfortunately.
He's literally complaining about capitalism while saying it might end capitalism. Fucking wild.
He’s literally complaining about capitalism while saying it might end capitalism. Fucking wild.
Capitalism could work with very strong governmental oversight. You have the hustle and means to get filthy rich? Good for you. You want to get filthy rich x 10,000? Get fucked.
I can't wait for capitalism to end. Here's a good video explaining it...
'Why it's a hard time imagine life after capitalism' https://youtu.be/PaASqPnpq5Y
Next thing we know it they'll be lying about shoplifting or something else that sends a little of they pain they're causing us back home.
The shoplifting lie was posted yesterday I believe. Both are repeated articles that have just constantly been found to be true, but nobody has the energy to even be mad because we’re so busy trying to survive.
Not really sure what the tenor is of your reply but I would just say they steal a lot from us (shrinkflation, price-fixing, straight up lying about amount of product in unit, etc), people steal some of that back. Sunrise, sunset
Edit: on the retail side, a lot of those businesses are abusing the social safety net to reduce the amount they pay and socialize the losses while bitching their privatized profits would be higher if it wasn't for all the socialized theft that was occuring on their watch!
All our regulations are so eroded, our government bodies so toothless and captured, that these companies are just fucking around with people's lives because they can. There is no recourse. Burn your local chain store today.
This has been public knowledge since the very first quarterly earnings call in the greedflation era.
No surprise there, really. Those corporations were posting record high profits... In an environment of "real" high inflation those companies don't get to increase their profits and their margins like that. Yet most news publications lend then a microphone for them to spread their lies instead of calling their bullshit. It's not inflation, it's greed. Why would they want you to pay less instead of more? It's not like capitalism was invented yesterday. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed
An economist worth his salt should be considering. "Why didn't this happen earlier?" Instead of being "shocked".
We actually already know the answer to that. In a normal environment raising prices is something consumers are very sensitive to. But when there's already inflation consumers are very bad at gauging what the new price should be. The corporations know this and have for some time. They were just waiting for a good moment to raise their prices.
They absolutely do get to increase their profits and margins like that. They did, and they will again.
Welcome to c a p i t a l i s m
But the trillion dollar company told me times were tough for them and their billionaire ceo. I should trust them, they know everything about me and have no reason to decieve me
"Times are tough" = everything from "1 week til collapse" to "might not meet our growth stretch targets, that trigger my massive bonus"
Well, no shit. You don't need a study to know a case of water going from $2 to $5 is greed, not inflation. People who made $70k a couple of years ago were considered "living a comfortable life" in a lot of parts of the country. Not anymore. It's just ridiculous how we have to fight tooth and nail with these assholes who want to drain every last fucking penny we have for their fucking quarterly fucking profits.
Oh no, I'm so surprised. Such an unexpected turn of events. Flabbergasted I tell you.
Yea, this happens every single time there is any excuse to raise prices. My first time was when my country switched our currency from Kroon to Euro and everyone said that will not cause an increase in prices. About a year later everything was about 30% more expensive.
This is not new and nothing will be done to fix it would be my prediction from like the last 10 times this has happened.
Same in Portugal. A 100 escudo coin was actually quite similar to the 1 euro coin but it was worth half. In one year what costed 100 escudos was now 1 euro. A 100% price increase.
And so people say we gotta tighten our belts and work just a little harder. Like in the good old days. We don't want any handouts, do we? Do it for our country.
I literally saw someone quote JFKs "ask not what your country can do for you" yesterday, opposing a raise of social security payouts here in Germany. A raise that was necessitated by the galloping inflation which is hitting poor families the hardest. Coupled with an unwillingness of corporate management to adequately pay their workers, i.e. pay the very people who are making stock indices rise to record heights.
People are stupid. Mark my words, we will have a fascist government again soon. Because it's all the brown people's fault, so they say. And the queers and the trannies and the intellectuals, so they must all be purged.
Never again, we used to say here. Well, we're almost there.
I wish I lived in a country that raised social security payments to lift people out of poverty. Sadly, I live in the U.S. where, apparently, if you're poor, it's your fault.
If this surprises you, you’re an idiot.
Perhaps, although a little harsh. Most people just don't think that deeply about things.
The accepted narrative is that inflation happens when poor people get too much money.
Yes it's obvious that there's more going on if you think about it for a few moments, but no one does.
I guess one way it's surprising is that, it takes a degree of coordination for this to happen. I mean you have some major international event that can trigger international economic consequences like some degree of inflation and then some genius thinks that since the public have been forced to swallow price rises across the board because of this, what if we just raise our prices some more and it will be assumed it's for the same unavoidable cause. Okay, I get the scam, great. But, whether consumers believe the pretense or not and have sympathy or not, wouldn't stop them going elsewhere if someone else didn't come up with the same clever scheme or hasn't launched it yet, and still has higher, but not extra high prices. Or maybe they do all see a great caper and jack up the prices at the same time, eventually, for the same greedy reasons, those businesses would want to take the other's lunch if they could and would see the benefit of being at least just a little bit cheaper which is supposed to create a cycle that is the way capitalism supposedly works.
This doesn't happen when you see monopolies or near monopolies. Supermarkets in Australia are in particular being talked about for price gouging and there's an associated near duopoly between 2 dominant chains. In that context it's definitely not very surprising. I'd bet that this particularly recent example of price spikes without adequate explanation are associated particularly with sectors where there is very little competition. The article was pay walled so I can't tell if they're referring specifically to prices for groceries or economy wide problems.
May I offer a solution?
I prefer fire. I just want to start burning things.
Deep fryer.
The billionaires yearn for it!
We know, just goes to show how out of control these capitalist pigs truly are
No, but workers getting a $2 raise because unemployment rate is not high enough is the problem. /s
I thought having a society was to avoid this kind of mad max landscape of unchecked greed. Evidently capitalism gets a pass to ruin even that idea.
Better use the Fed to reduce worker leverage again in response to this new information, amirite?
This is a class
waroccupation, whether you choose to fight your oppressors or love them as so many peasants are successfully propagandized from birth to do.All those moral, humane, compassionate corporations lied to me for profit?
Many companies are lying, period
Now that there’s a study that proves what we all already knew, there’s going to be real change
Thanks for the laugh
No shit.
anybody with 2 brain cells to rub together has known this for a while. who is this article for? can we fucking revolt yet guys?
I mean yea, we can also eat the rich
I too hate when they make an article that uses science to demonstrate my assumptions were right, they should know that no one cares about the truth! we had our assumptions that should be enough!
Grocery prices at ALDI have barely budged over this whole shitshow.
Today on: No shit sherlock.. 🙄
No shit?? Wow..let me... WOW !!!??
Who even knew?
Tax the billionaires
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A joint study by think tanks IPPR and Common Wealth found profiteering by some of the world’s biggest companies forced prices up significantly higher than costs during 2022.
Analysts have typically laid the blame on supply-chain bottlenecks created by excess demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Profits for companies in some of the world’s largest economies rose by 30% between 2019 and 2022, significantly outpacing inflation, according to the group’s research of 1,350 firms across the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Brazil, and South Africa.
The biggest perpetrators were energy companies like Shell, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron, which were able to enjoy massive profits last year as demand moved away from Russian oil and gas.
In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance.
In November, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon suggested the era of high inflation in the U.S. was over, and shoppers may soon begin to experience a contraction in prices—known as “deflation”—in company stores.
The original article contains 639 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
And in a related story, a new scientific breakthrough has discovered that the sky is made of air.
Greed is not a new force in the world so anyone trying to sell recent increases in inflation as a function of greed is either mistaken, or lying to you.
So you're saying the unusual increases in profit corresponding to inflation is in error? The authors published their methodology. Please show your work.
Okay my work is basic logic.
Imagine a graph of greed over time. This graph is a horizontal line, like this:
“ _______
Now imagine a graph of inflation over time. This graph has a spike in it, like this:
______/
See the difference here? It makes no sense to argue that the spike in the second graph is a result of the variable being shown in the first graph, because one of those variables stayed instant and the other one did not.
Now here’s a graph showing the amount of competition between companies in the same time period. See if you notice any patterns:
———-\
Oh! Interesting. Looks like the competition between companies went down. Could it be that variable is somehow associated with the increase in inflation?
What could have caused that drop in competition between companies?
Well, let’s look at the graph of companies being forcibly shut down by the government, and see if there are any interesting patterns:
_____/_
Oh what’s this? What is that enormous spike in companies being forcibly shut down? Oh right, that’s when we forcibly shut down millions of small companies. We called it “the lockdowns”, and sure enough it destroyed huge numbers of companies, reducing the amount of completion in the market.
So, to recap:
Greed:
Inflation:
__________/Competition:
——————\I hope this has been an informative journey through the world of basic logic.