We have taken a consistent stance on the inept handling of the inflation bubble that hit globally in the wake of the Covid pandemic and have not shied away from blaming the central banks even whilst recognising that they have but a limited number of tools in their toolbox to have dealt with this crisis. Now, the latest impetus to global inflation is coming from yet another space which squarely falls under governmental policy jurisdiction: corporate greed. The question then is: will they do anything about it?
The term that started off in the left-wing press and is now part of mainstream thinking is ‘greedflation’- where the inflation that we are witnessing now is because of excess profits being made by corporates hiking prices over and above their rise in costs. 90% of the respondents in a Markets Live Pulse survey conducted by Bloomberg believed that companies on both sides of the Atlantic have been raising prices above the rate of their cost inputs since 2020.
It is a well-known tenet of economics that companies will take advantage of prevailing price rises- inflation due to exogenous reasons, to hike the prices of their own goods; especially if their own input costs rise and margins would compress unless they also compensated for it. This is not disputed and neither is their logic in doing so. But what differentiates this period from inflationary periods in the past is that- unlike in the past, price hikes are far in excess of the inflation rate and- since not all prices are going up equally, also far in excess of their own input cost mix. This is where the ‘greed’ in ‘greedflation’ comes in.
This is a particularly sensitive issue because the world has lurched straight into a price crisis after the pandemic- where the main brunt of price increases have been in the energy and food cost baskets which disproportionately affect the poor. In a situation where the justification for raising prices has been because of the Russia-Ukraine War hiking up both these costs (food and energy) because of global dependency on the two countries as suppliers of oil, wheat, metals, wood and so on, then the subsequent fall of these input costs to pre-war- and in some cases, pre-covid levels, would justify falling prices in consumer baskets as well.
That this is not happening is part of the problem. Inflation becomes persistent when it sets in because it creates its own upward pressures. If corporates use the cover of inflation to increase prices this pushes up inflation which, in turn, gives license to other corporates to hike their prices in a feedback loop. Then, at some point, workers increase their demands for wage hikes in order to regain their lost standard of living. We are witnessing this particularly in the UK but also in the US with greater mobilisation for unionisation. The minimum wage was last set in 2009 and- if it had been revised in line with the intervening years of inflation and productivity increases, would be in the vicinity of US$24 instead of US$7.25 currently.
We can see from the chart below that corporate profitability in the US is at multi-decadal highs. This has not been achieved through a radical transformation in their productivity or through the use of new technology or cost-cutting measures. The growth has largely been achieved by large increases in their margins and helped by the twin crises that engulfed the world (through supply disruptions) over the last 3 years. The problem is not the only cause of inflation but most certainly a significant factor behind the persistence or ’stickiness’ of it.
It is true that the stimulus fuelled demand that was unleashed during the pandemic coupled with the rise in savings added to inflationary pressures but that was necessary to prevent the global economy from sinking into earnings recession even if aggregate output took a hit. But to believe that supply-constraint driven price rises can be tamed by high rates is incorrect. Furthermore, as we have seen, if corporate price-gouging is behind inflationary pressures then any mean reversion to earlier margins can only happen in a competitive environment- that is, if there are sufficient producers and sellers to compete for market share and drive down margins.
But this is less and less the case with decades of market consolidation where a few megafirms operate through a number of different brands but with one overriding corporate ethos. This inflationary period is being termed as a ‘seller’s inflation’ or ‘profit-led inflation’, “stemming from the ability of dominant firms to exploit their monopolistic position in order to raise prices” according to Isabella Weber, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Weber states that “bottlenecks can create temporary monopoly power which can render it safe to hike prices not only to protect but to increase profits.’’ The bottlenecks in question refer to the supply constraint situations arising out of pandemic restrictions and war between Russia and Ukraine.
Even though margins are falling it should be noted that they are still much higher than before pre-covid and likely to remain so. This should act to keep equity prices elevated as a countervailing measure to the downward pull of higher rates and tighter liquidity. Market watchers expect now- after being in denial for so long about rising rates, that rates will remain elevated. The strange thing is that they believe it the best measure to tame inflation- even though they acknowledge that inflation is being driven by corporate margins.
Ultimately, the danger around inflation is that it moves from one cause to another- from supply-side bottlenecks to corporate margins and it may move on to wage renegotiations next. This is where high rates may ultimately impact inflation- which is unfair on the working class. The blame on central banks has been valid because they should have limited their actions to withdrawing some of the huge liquidity infusions they made which led to market bubbles in equity and property. They should now look to lower rates quickly before they damage the re-balancing needed that wage renegotiations might bring about.