You wish it was money printing. It's just plain greed. Without money printing what you'd get is even higher inflation. (Though probably only by some percentage.

You wish it was money printing. It's just plain greed. Without money printing what you'd get is even higher inflation. (Though probably only by some percentage.) Any excuse is good to raise the price if some people really need your product and it doesn't jeopardise your demand enough. (This is called demand inelasticity.) No price fall is needed or done when the excuse goes away. If you control supply side sufficiently, you can also use that to further raise prices and keep them high. Thus equilibrium economics efficiency arguments fail. Housing has limited but highly inelastic demand. So does food, water, healthcare, energy, fuel. Some of these cannot be substituted easily either. And the smarter capitalist to get maximum profit will do anything to make this demand yet more inelastic by reducing choices, especially away from their control. Be it by monopoly, cartel, tacit cartel, hostile takeovers, PR to bury options, government intervention, over or underregulation... Assets are liabilities unless they're directly in demand or are actively capital (as in used to make things). For example, having houses nobody can buy that will disintegrate is a liability. It's even clearer with office buildings which are a bit more elastic in demand. Unless you control most housing and can thus enhance relative demand, of course... The justifications for current capitalism are very vacuous based on willing misinterpretation of it. Even ignoring the whole monetarist view which is a second order misinterpretation.