#greedflation
#Mobile and #broadband firms accused of fuelling #UK #greedflation with major price hikes | #Telecommunications industry | The Guardian
The #UK doesn't have wage-price #inflation, it’s #greedflation – and big companies are to blame
British ministers seem keen to avoid what the data tells us: it’s not pay that is turbocharging the cost of living. Despite attempts by ministers to finger workers for the persistence of the cost of living crisis, there is no real evidence that this is the case. Both the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank have looked at whether higher wages are driving up prices, and neither of those august bodies thinks that is happening.
What they have found is that companies have been able to use the crisis to drive up prices and boost profit margins. The IMF and the ECB wouldn’t put it in these terms, of course, but both support the idea that companies are gouging their customers when they can. The non-technical term for what is going on is greedflation.
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This was a point made by the IMF’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, last week. “Should we worry about the risk of an uncontrolled wage-price spiral? At this point, I remain unconvinced. Nominal wage inflation continues to lag far behind price inflation, implying a steep and unprecedented decline in real wages.”
Gourinchas went on to note that companies were doing rather better out of the cost of living crisis than workers were. The flipside of steeply rising prices but only modestly higher wages was that profit margins had “surged”, he said.
This echoes what unions have been saying. Unite, one of the UK’s biggest unions, published a report in March that blamed systematic profiteering across the economy for fuelling the cost of living crisis. Energy companies, supermarkets, shipping companies, car dealers and food manufacturers had all cashed in on drought, war, and strong demand after the pandemic to “push prices and profits through the roof”.
Greedflation
When costs go up, so do profits? That’s not how capitalism is supposed to work, but that is the recent trend. For over a year now, consumers and businesses, both in the U.S. and worldwide, have struggled with stubborn inflation. But the soaring costs haven’t prevented corporations from raking in record profits. The companies in last year’s Fortune 500 alone generated an all-time high $1.8 trillion in profit on $16.1 trillion in revenue. Voices largely on the left side of the political spectrum have been sounding the alarm on this—think: Bernie Sanders in Congress or Jon Stewart’s recent grilling of former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers—but now an economist at one of the world’s oldest and greatest investment banks is singing the same tune.
Albert Edwards, a global strategist at the 159-year-old bank Société Générale, just released a blistering note on the phenomenon that has come to be called Greedflation. Corporations, particularly in developed economies like the U.S. and U.K., have used rising raw material costs amid the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as an “excuse” to raise prices and expand profit margins to new heights, he said. And the French investment bank isn’t just historic: It’s one of the select banks considered to be “systemically important” by the Financial Stability Board, the G20’s international body dedicated to safeguarding the global financial system.
More in the article: https://fortune.com/2023/04/05/end-of-capitalism-inflation-greedflation-societe-generale-corporate-profits/amp/
Die Energiepreise werden spätestens seit dem russischen Überfall auf die #Ukraine und einem möglichen Gasembargo von den allermeisten als Haupttreiber der derzeitigen Preiserhöhungen ausgemacht. Aber zumindest im Fokus der deutschen Diskussion steht die zaudernde Europäische Zentralbank ( #EZB), die es viel zu lange versäumt habe, den Leitzins anzuheben. Und die Beschäftigten, die doch jetzt bitte Lohnzurückhaltung üben müssten, weil zu hohe Tarifabschlüsse die sogenannte Lohn-Preis-Spirale in Gang setzen würden. Demnach würden die Unternehmen auf hohe Lohnabschlüsse mit Preissteigerungen reagieren, die #Gewerkschaft|en mit erneuten hohen Abschlüssen und so weiter und so fort.
Mit der Realität der gegenwärtigen Preissteigerungen hat das nicht viel zu tun. Das hat sogar der Arbeitgeberpräsident Rainer Dulger anlässlich des erstens Treffens zur »konzertierten Aktion« im Kanzleramt nüchtern festgehalten: Löhne seien aktuell kein Inflationstreiber. Das Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Institut der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung schätzt den Reallohnverlust #EU -weit wie für #Deutschland für das laufende Jahr auf 2,9 Prozent.
Anstatt über eine Lohn-Preis-Spirale zu reden, wäre es angebracht, über eine Gewinn-Preis-Spirale oder eine Gewinninflation zu reden. In den #USA ist schon vor wenigen Monaten eine Debatte über die Rolle der großen Konzerne bei den Preissteigerungen entbrannt. Es wurde sogar ein neues Wort dafür erfunden: #Greedflation, abgeleitet vom englischen greed = Gier.
https://www.akweb.de/politik/inflation-lohn-preis-spirale-warum-steigen-die-preise/ #wirtschaft #krise #inflation #usa #energie #beoliberalismus #tankrabbat #9-euro-ticket
