3 ms·
I’m not an expert in this topic but to me this kind of seems like a big hand wavy extrapolation & it’s not clear how accurate any of the specific numbers in her
by jrsj 5y ago
I’m not an expert in this topic but to me this kind of seems like a big hand wavy extrapolation & it’s not clear how accurate any of the specific numbers in here are.
In particular the corporate profits being cited are coming from ALL non-financial corporations which is a suspiciously broad data set to use when trying to make an argument about price fixing. As an example if there were a shift in profits from small businesses towards larger corporations driven by pandemic behavior, that would contribute to increasing this.
And are we really supposed to believe that near 0 interest rates and unprecedented levels of quantitative easing have no impact on this?
Another thing that’s still worth consideration is that even if 3% of inflation were attributable to corporate profits (it’s probably safe to say he’s exaggerating this a bit at least), is the real rate of inflation actually 6.8%? Many think this is an understated number and the reality may be in the low double digits. If this were the case, corporate profits would represent a relatively smaller portion of real inflation.
- kesselvon 5y agoBase inflation is never zero. In the article he mentions the 1.8% average inflation rate, plus 2% attributed to gov't stimulus, and 3% towards corporate profits. That adds up to a 6.8% inflation rate. It's hard to blame this purely on ZIRP or QE because we've had both for the last ten years, all without any meaningful spike in inflation.