The Truth About Inflation: It Isn’t What The Fed Thinks It Is

[skews13]

Since the 1980s, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated. Monsanto now sets the prices for most of the nation’s seed corn. Wall Street has consolidated into five giant banks. Airlines have merged from 12 carriers in 1980 to four today, which now control 80 percent of domestic seating capacity. The merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas has left the US with just one large producer of civilian aircraft — Boeing. Three giant cable companies dominate broadband: Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. A handful of drug companies control the pharmaceutical industry: Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.

All this concentration gives corporations the power to raise prices, because it makes it easy for them to coordinate price increases with the handful of other companies in their same industry — without risking the possibility of losing customers, who have no other choice.

In sum, inflation isn’t driving these price increases. Corporate power is driving them.

Psst: You want to know the truth about inflation? (It's not what the Fed thinks it is.)

Yesterday, the Fed’s policy committee announced it would both end its bond-buying program and likely raise interest rates sooner than had been expected. “Inflation is more persistent and higher, and that the risk of it remaining higher for longer has grown,” Fed chair Jerome Powell explained...

www.rawstory.com

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Since the 1980s, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated. Monsanto now sets the prices for most of the nation’s seed corn. Wall Street has consolidated into five giant banks. Airlines have merged from 12 carriers in 1980 to four today, which now control 80 percent of domestic seating capacity. The merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas has left the US with just one large producer of civilian aircraft — Boeing. Three giant cable companies dominate broadband: Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. A handful of drug companies control the pharmaceutical industry: Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.

All this concentration gives corporations the power to raise prices, because it makes it easy for them to coordinate price increases with the handful of other companies in their same industry — without risking the possibility of losing customers, who have no other choice.

In sum, inflation isn’t driving these price increases. Corporate power is driving them.

Psst: You want to know the truth about inflation? (It's not what the Fed thinks it is.)

Yesterday, the Fed’s policy committee announced it would both end its bond-buying program and likely raise interest rates sooner than had been expected. “Inflation is more persistent and higher, and that the risk of it remaining higher for longer has grown,” Fed chair Jerome Powell explained...

www.rawstory.com

Paul "wrong in the Trillions Column" Krugman School of Economics

 

[Otis Mayfield]

I think workers are asking for higher wages.

Then employers have to raise prices to pay the higher wages.

And that's what raises prices.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Borrowing countless trillion that do nothing to add to productivity fuels inflation!

Why do seniors on a fixed pension or Social Security put up with this?

 

[Meister]

Since the 1980s, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated. Monsanto now sets the prices for most of the nation’s seed corn. Wall Street has consolidated into five giant banks. Airlines have merged from 12 carriers in 1980 to four today, which now control 80 percent of domestic seating capacity. The merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas has left the US with just one large producer of civilian aircraft — Boeing. Three giant cable companies dominate broadband: Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. A handful of drug companies control the pharmaceutical industry: Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.

All this concentration gives corporations the power to raise prices, because it makes it easy for them to coordinate price increases with the handful of other companies in their same industry — without risking the possibility of losing customers, who have no other choice.

In sum, inflation isn’t driving these price increases. Corporate power is driving them.

Psst: You want to know the truth about inflation? (It's not what the Fed thinks it is.)

Yesterday, the Fed’s policy committee announced it would both end its bond-buying program and likely raise interest rates sooner than had been expected. “Inflation is more persistent and higher, and that the risk of it remaining higher for longer has grown,” Fed chair Jerome Powell explained...

www.rawstory.com

Can't be all the magic money that's being printed, can it?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I think workers are asking for higher wages.

Then employers have to raise prices to pay the higher wages.

And that's what raises prices.

Sure, Bro. Sure.

Another graduate of the Paul "Wrong in the Trillions Column" Krugman School of Economics

 

[Meister]

Thread closed, there is no personal content from the OP