In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to hike prices in search of profits.
“The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism,” Edwards wrote. “This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”
We actually already know the answer to that. In a normal environment raising prices is something consumers are very sensitive to. But when there’s already inflation consumers are very bad at gauging what the new price should be. The corporations know this and have for some time. They were just waiting for a good moment to raise their prices.