When was the last time Trillions were being printed?
Does anyone else feel that inflation is to the right what global warming is the the left?
* lots of charts and graphs
* those reports come from people eager to sell you protection from the coming doom
* every news story gets interpreted as evidence for it
* it’s always right around the corner
* in 30 years of crying wolf it has still never happened
Does anyone else feel that inflation is to the right what global warming is the the left?
It happens always. Inflation is reflected not only in price increases. If prices would have been lower but stayed the same due to printing of money, that’s also caused by inflation.
Inflation is real. How persistent and severe, yet to be determined. Lots of shortages. Lots of backlog at the ports. Higher fuel and energy costs. Cereal boxes are now about 10% smaller in net weight, which is effectively a price increase. We import so much from Asia and ship so little back that there are miles of stacks of empty containers just sitting around the ports and the shippers don’t really want to send empties across the ocean. There is a shortage of containers in Asia. So you have a situation where higher margin exporters are paying to get loaded on limited numbers of containers while the commodity type imports used to process finished goods in the USA take a back seat. The cost to ship a container from Asia was ~$1000 a year ago, now ~$5000 to the west coast and ~$10,000 to the east coast. That is quite a big bite on bulk commodity type imports that sell for, say $1 a pound, they are now up 15%-20%.
Some of this is still lingering from covid and catching up with demand. But there is a shortage of silica, used to make microchips and silicones of all kinds etc, which mostly comes out of China. I had heard (but cannot confirm) that the main processing plant in China had an explosion. I do know that it is near impossible to get silicones and received a letter from the largest US supplier that basically said “forget about it until after Q1-2022”. We all also heard they can’t get microchips for 4 million vehicles either assembled or scheduled for assembly by US auto makers. There is also a shortage of palm oil derived products (which is used to process thousands of input materials) due to an embargo on Indonesia over labor practices. These kinds of things tip the pricing power into the hands of suppliers over those with demand for materials.
Does anyone else feel that inflation is to the right what global warming is the the left?
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Apparently you don’t shop for groceries. Or gas. Or houses. Or cars.
When was the last time Trillions were being printed?