The long tail of greedflation may be subsiding, just as a federal jury cracks the longstanding egg cartel. Plus antitrust action on airlines and the turkey industry are likely delivering lower prices.
Why does everyone ignore that we have been having record inflation in housing, education, and healthcare for 20+ years? Food, gas, and travel take up much less of our spending than those three fked inflated things.
The reason? Finance capitalism... It's a modern form of serfdom.
Aholes make money merely by owning things. They produce NOTHING.
It's parasitic and somehow everybody was asleep because they thought they could be wealthy too.
George Carlin was right... It's called the American dream because you gotta be asleep to believe it.
Financialization has decimated us. Dr Michael Hudson has written several Important books on this matter. Weird, while I respect a lot of what Matt has written in the past, interestingly, he has dismissed Dr Hudson quotes Ive posted on this substack, such as this:
Free Market:
To the classical economists, an economy free of land rent, usurious banking practices and monopolies in private hands. But as finance capitalism has superseded industrial capitalism, it has inverted “free market” rhetoric to mean a market free FOR rent extractors to obtain land rent, natural resource rent, monopoly rent and financial gains “free” of government taxation or regulation. This INVERTED re-definition depicts a free market as one free for the financial and propertied classes to subject the economy to a network of extractive tollbooth fees. Such a “free market” has become a doublethink term for the path to neo-feudalism, financialization and kindred rentier policies. (See Free Lunch, Kleptocrats and Road to Serfdom.)
Hudson, Michael. J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS: A Guide To Reality In An Age Of Deception
Does it seem interesting that 100,s of thousands if not millions of users (as per multiple agents) are locked out of their Comcast mobile email accounts. going on 48 hours now. I've been on hold multiple times longer than an hour. A reason or cause is unknown. It's been stated multiple times that only the 2nd level security unit knows what is being worked on and they are not forthcoming with any information. If this is so, one would think that this is at least network news worthy (or maybe that's a reason why it's not?) It's certainly, on various levels, is a inconvenient time to not have the ability to send or receive email from one's mobile device.
You're "speaking truth to power". Corporations drove inflation by raising prices, forgetting that American consumers don't have bottomless wallets. Once consumer spending slowed, conglomerates started lowering prices. That's why we're seeing so many pre-Black Friday sales. But these price cuts are actually just rolling back prices to what they should have been.
We own a mobile home park and buy Thanksgiving meals for our residents. The cost was $350 higher this year with all other metrics the same. It’s frustrating to hear media say turkeys are cheaper. That’s very deceiving.
One of my first jobs when I was in high school was in a gas station, so I can give you a little insight that (though dated) is probably still pretty accurate.
Firstly, gas stations are buying their fuel from a local wholesaler and that market price when they buy the gas is pretty much going to be the same for every chain just based on the regional gas market supply and pricing. So, if their cost to buy fuel is the same, their pricing can be the same and they will achieve relatively the same profit margins. There's only really regional variability in supply and cost, but locally it's really consistent.
Second, a gas station makes most of their profits not on gas, but on all the other things you impulse buy when you go into the store. So they have a strong incentive to at least *match* the price of other local gas stations, so that you will choose their station and hopefully establish a long term, recurring choice to go to the station that is nearest to your home or office out of convenience, rather than constantly shopping around for the best fuel price.
Thirdly, it was a known thing back when I worked in a gas station that the general manager would go out of his way in dropping off our daily deposits at the bank to drive by the local competition and record their prices. And on some occasions the assistant manager would just call the other stations pretending to be a customer and asking what their current price was for regular unleaded. Since the markup for diesel and premium are usually a set rate, you could then extrapolate the other prices fairly easily.
And so, there you go. It's both market factors and soft collusion that makes it so all your local gas stations usually have the same price, and any outlier is usually 10 cents per gallon or less different... which might not be enough to make you disrupt your behavior to go to a different station than the one you normally visit. And that 10 cent variance can as often as not just be attributed to the fact that one station got resupplied at a point when the supply cost was a little higher and the other one at a point in the week or month when the cost was lower.
I worked for an Esso station in my youth, and then BP, and can say, yes, yes, yes to these three things. My boss was away from the Esso station all morning gathering pump prices from local rivals. All petrol was bought at Bowling refinery near Glasgow regardless of brand, and what you get with oil company branding is ... oil company branding: you like a tiger in your tank or the figure "76" has historical meaning for you.
I was recently in Tilburg, Holland, where two petrol stations face each other across a busy urban highway. One was selling 95 octane at 2.20 euros. Across the road it was at 1.85 euros (per litre). What that shows is precisely the opposite of what Crystal is saying. In her, my and Laurie's cases, the identical prices are indicative of true competition. It's the wild difference in Tilburg that proves what I later had confirmed to me: the two petrol stations are under identical ownership, which uses the one as a detractor in order to make the other look a bargain. But in Belgium we could get petrol at 1.62, and now it's 1.57.
If concentration leads to higher prices in order that cabal members can exploit their power, why don't we just nationalise their industry and take the profits for ourselves, the people? After all, having one meat producer from ocean to ocean is surely every bit as bad or good as having four?
In short, if industry cannot regulate itself and doesn't want to be regulated by government, then let government take over the industry. It will then soon regulate itself.
Robert Reich & Thom Hartmann have been talking about corporate greed as THE source of inflation.
How about the Fed raising interest rates? (Remember when TFG “warned the Fed not to raise rates during his “reign”? He knew that would kill “his” lovely economy)
Egg prices were up in 2022 as well as poultry prices because flocks had to be culled because of the avian flu epidemic. This actually proves that the egg market is fairly competitive because the reduction in output due to avian flu increased prices more than average cost. (Demand can only be inelastic if there is no monopoly.)
Just saw the news today that Open AI added Larry Summers to their board of directors. I don't know about you all, but that prospect chills my bones.
Can't wait for Larry to tell us all how great it is for the economy and stock market that the AI have decided to liquidate 70% of us into soylent. :P
Hahaha...
Why does everyone ignore that we have been having record inflation in housing, education, and healthcare for 20+ years? Food, gas, and travel take up much less of our spending than those three fked inflated things.
The reason? Finance capitalism... It's a modern form of serfdom.
Aholes make money merely by owning things. They produce NOTHING.
It's parasitic and somehow everybody was asleep because they thought they could be wealthy too.
George Carlin was right... It's called the American dream because you gotta be asleep to believe it.
YES!
Financialization has decimated us. Dr Michael Hudson has written several Important books on this matter. Weird, while I respect a lot of what Matt has written in the past, interestingly, he has dismissed Dr Hudson quotes Ive posted on this substack, such as this:
Free Market:
To the classical economists, an economy free of land rent, usurious banking practices and monopolies in private hands. But as finance capitalism has superseded industrial capitalism, it has inverted “free market” rhetoric to mean a market free FOR rent extractors to obtain land rent, natural resource rent, monopoly rent and financial gains “free” of government taxation or regulation. This INVERTED re-definition depicts a free market as one free for the financial and propertied classes to subject the economy to a network of extractive tollbooth fees. Such a “free market” has become a doublethink term for the path to neo-feudalism, financialization and kindred rentier policies. (See Free Lunch, Kleptocrats and Road to Serfdom.)
Hudson, Michael. J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS: A Guide To Reality In An Age Of Deception
SHIFTING GEARS
HI Matt,
Does it seem interesting that 100,s of thousands if not millions of users (as per multiple agents) are locked out of their Comcast mobile email accounts. going on 48 hours now. I've been on hold multiple times longer than an hour. A reason or cause is unknown. It's been stated multiple times that only the 2nd level security unit knows what is being worked on and they are not forthcoming with any information. If this is so, one would think that this is at least network news worthy (or maybe that's a reason why it's not?) It's certainly, on various levels, is a inconvenient time to not have the ability to send or receive email from one's mobile device.
You're "speaking truth to power". Corporations drove inflation by raising prices, forgetting that American consumers don't have bottomless wallets. Once consumer spending slowed, conglomerates started lowering prices. That's why we're seeing so many pre-Black Friday sales. But these price cuts are actually just rolling back prices to what they should have been.
We own a mobile home park and buy Thanksgiving meals for our residents. The cost was $350 higher this year with all other metrics the same. It’s frustrating to hear media say turkeys are cheaper. That’s very deceiving.
Why is it so much more expensive?
Hasn’t ‘inflation’ always been inflated by ‘greedflation’?...The producers cost increases by ‘x’ and that cost is passed on to the consumers as ‘x+y’.
Weird monopoly: in my hometown gas prices are fixed. Nobody seems to know how but all stations have the same prices.
One of my first jobs when I was in high school was in a gas station, so I can give you a little insight that (though dated) is probably still pretty accurate.
Firstly, gas stations are buying their fuel from a local wholesaler and that market price when they buy the gas is pretty much going to be the same for every chain just based on the regional gas market supply and pricing. So, if their cost to buy fuel is the same, their pricing can be the same and they will achieve relatively the same profit margins. There's only really regional variability in supply and cost, but locally it's really consistent.
Second, a gas station makes most of their profits not on gas, but on all the other things you impulse buy when you go into the store. So they have a strong incentive to at least *match* the price of other local gas stations, so that you will choose their station and hopefully establish a long term, recurring choice to go to the station that is nearest to your home or office out of convenience, rather than constantly shopping around for the best fuel price.
Thirdly, it was a known thing back when I worked in a gas station that the general manager would go out of his way in dropping off our daily deposits at the bank to drive by the local competition and record their prices. And on some occasions the assistant manager would just call the other stations pretending to be a customer and asking what their current price was for regular unleaded. Since the markup for diesel and premium are usually a set rate, you could then extrapolate the other prices fairly easily.
And so, there you go. It's both market factors and soft collusion that makes it so all your local gas stations usually have the same price, and any outlier is usually 10 cents per gallon or less different... which might not be enough to make you disrupt your behavior to go to a different station than the one you normally visit. And that 10 cent variance can as often as not just be attributed to the fact that one station got resupplied at a point when the supply cost was a little higher and the other one at a point in the week or month when the cost was lower.
I worked for an Esso station in my youth, and then BP, and can say, yes, yes, yes to these three things. My boss was away from the Esso station all morning gathering pump prices from local rivals. All petrol was bought at Bowling refinery near Glasgow regardless of brand, and what you get with oil company branding is ... oil company branding: you like a tiger in your tank or the figure "76" has historical meaning for you.
I was recently in Tilburg, Holland, where two petrol stations face each other across a busy urban highway. One was selling 95 octane at 2.20 euros. Across the road it was at 1.85 euros (per litre). What that shows is precisely the opposite of what Crystal is saying. In her, my and Laurie's cases, the identical prices are indicative of true competition. It's the wild difference in Tilburg that proves what I later had confirmed to me: the two petrol stations are under identical ownership, which uses the one as a detractor in order to make the other look a bargain. But in Belgium we could get petrol at 1.62, and now it's 1.57.
You don't need to be cheapest; just cheapER.
I to worked in a few gas stations in my younger years. gas has little margin for the retailer. the money is on volume and rebates for volumes met.
gas is actually a loss leader for the convenience store, for the retailer.
If the stations are franchises the franchiser sets the prices.
The Worse Things Get . .
They Needed crooked BidenFlation
for it's All Falling Apart! sensation . .
Eggs Off The Chart! . .part of an Alt
Reality art . . like The Woke Threat
and Tidal Wave Immigration .. .
The Better Party . .. .# and traitorous Vermin
If concentration leads to higher prices in order that cabal members can exploit their power, why don't we just nationalise their industry and take the profits for ourselves, the people? After all, having one meat producer from ocean to ocean is surely every bit as bad or good as having four?
In short, if industry cannot regulate itself and doesn't want to be regulated by government, then let government take over the industry. It will then soon regulate itself.
Now, where was that ProPublica railroad dossier?
Price drops are cuz of the strength of the dollar.
Robert Reich & Thom Hartmann have been talking about corporate greed as THE source of inflation.
How about the Fed raising interest rates? (Remember when TFG “warned the Fed not to raise rates during his “reign”? He knew that would kill “his” lovely economy)
Here’s an article on food prices:
https://daniellcooper.substack.com/p/lets-talk-turkey
Egg prices were up in 2022 as well as poultry prices because flocks had to be culled because of the avian flu epidemic. This actually proves that the egg market is fairly competitive because the reduction in output due to avian flu increased prices more than average cost. (Demand can only be inelastic if there is no monopoly.)
That’s the excuse, it’s not the reason.
https://www.thesling.org/its-not-the-flu-feed-or-fuel-profiteering-is-driving-record-egg-prices/