keep tanking, stock market!!! let me eat up these shares like i'm pacman!!!
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
staffing shortage means a lack of bodies. so there's plenty of jobs out there. oil companies out here making crazy amounts of money.
how come you won't tell your free market to lower prices?
They shouldn't have to lower their profit margin. They haven't raised anything above normal.
Lower the cost of crude and you will see gas prices drop. Your guy is the one who came in shutting down pipelines and exploration. He is the one who came in with all the tough talk...so now he gets what he wanted. Lower output in the oil fields.
Too bad he and like people don't understand how things work. That raises prices, so no, the oil companies shouldn't do a damn thing to help that idiot. Record profits are a function of crude prices. It isn't because the oil companies raised their margins.
If everybody had like minds, we would never learn.
Here’s a very fact based, informative article. I quoted a couple parts for those that refuse to open links. There’s a ton more information in the article I’d encourage everyone to read.
“Gas production is the highest it’s been in decades
Production has not meaningfully changed between the current and the former President, but still, we see an all-time high price of $5/gal (Sanicola, 2022).
America produced 11.185 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2021, compared with 11.283 million a year earlier under Trump (Cercone, 2022). The amount produced in Biden’s first year exceeds the average daily amount produced under Trump from 2017 to 2018, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (Cercone, 2022; EIA, 2022). “
“There are around 9000 unused drilling permits, although it’s not that everyone is choosing not to (some definitely are doing that). To encourage supply, the Biden administration has issued more permits on federal lands than in the previous administration’s first three years (Loe, 2022). This has been met with criticism from environmental activists (AP News, 2021).
For others, there are legal cases and supply chain bottlenecks for materials like piping. Still, the industry could meaningfully increase the supply in the US were they so inclined. While the war will frustrate some industries, America gets less than 2% of its oil supply from Russia. In May of 2022, the House passed the Gas Price Gouging Prevention Act in a 217-207 vote. All Republicans and four Democrats opposed it (Daly, 2022).
The bill intended to prevent price gouging of customers by oil companies and gave the government the ability to fine companies for doing this (Gas Price Gouging Prevention Act, 2022). Although a supermajority of Americans supported the bill, it remains stalled in the Senate and unproved by its Republican members. Morning Consult found that energy price-gouging legislation is supported by 77% of registered voters, including 83% of Democrats and 76% of Republicans (Martinez, 2022). Effectively, the US has Senators who are both condemning gas prices and blocking action to prevent price gouging.”
For those in the back not paying attention. This is from the oil companies’ own mouths. Profits over everything else.
“Companies are intentionally keeping prices high
Many companies have admitted to choosing not to increase supply to keep profits high. Examples are included below. Where possible, the audio from the call or interview has been included so you can hear it from the executives directly. Excerpts were collected by Documented, an investigative journalism group focusing on corporate influence (Documented, 2022).
Marathon Oil
"Our cash flow-driven return of capital framework uniquely prioritizes our shareholders as the first call on cash flow generation, not the drill bit."
"I want to make clear that should commodity prices continue to surprise to the upside, we will remain disciplined and have no plans to allocate production growth capital."
Listen
Pioneer Natural Resources
"We expect to generate over $10.5 billion of operating cash flow, which will be a record for the company."
"Long term, we're still in that 0% to 5%. It's going to vary. We're not going to change, as I said. At $100 oil, $150 oil, we're not going to change our growth rate. We think it's important to return cash back to the shareholders."
Listen
Occidental Petroleum
"As evidenced by our guidance for 2022, we do not intend to grow production in 2022. At the point where it is appropriate to invest in future cash flow growth, we will only do so if supported by long-term demand." Listen
Diamondback Energy
"I can tell you definitively right now, what's being valued by our investors is a shareholder return program. And no one wants to see that shareholder return program put at risk with volume growth, not for Diamondback specifically for our industry in total...
"We've spent the last decade consuming capital and now we've got a little bit of sunshine in us where we can return that capital to our investors that have been waiting patiently and sometimes impatiently for this return." Listen
Oil CEOs cashing in on a crisis
Of course, CEOs are not simply trying to save face with investors. In addition to industry-wide record profits, individual executives have grown their personal wealth. As BailoutWatch recently reported, oil and gas executives have cashed out millions since the start of the war.
Marathon Oil, Pioneer Natural Resources, Occidental Petroleum, and Diamondback Energy are hardly industry outliers. Their peers are committed to robust shareholder returns, record cash flow, and slow growth.
Devon Energy - February 16, Q4 earnings call
With this powerful stream of free cash flow, we delivered on exactly what our shareholder-friendly business model was designed for, and that is to leave the industry in cash returns. As you can see on the graphic, we rewarded shareholders with outsized dividends, opportunistic share buybacks, and we took meaningful steps to strengthen our investment-grade balance sheet...
What I was just going to add, remember that we are growing in the Permian. At the same time, we're keeping our overall production flat.
Laredo Petroleum - February 23, Q4 earnings call
Our capital investments are disciplined and are being allocated to our best opportunities. We are fortunate to have a strong portfolio of high-return oil projects in the US's premier oil basin. We are maintaining our capital discipline, keeping activity levels flat from 2021, keeping oil production approximately flat from our Q4 '21 exit rate.
APA Corporation - February 22, Q4 earnings call
By maintaining capital discipline and investing in a level slightly below our plan, we let the strengthening oil price flow directly through to the balance sheet reducing upstream net debt in 2021 by $1.2 billion. In one year, we accomplished what we thought would take multiple years and made great progress toward our goal of returning to investment-grade status...
With $6.5 billion of projected free cash flow, we will return $4 billion to shareholders under our current framework, that leaves $2.5 billion for debt reduction or additional shareholder returns through buybacks and/or dividend increases.
Continental Resources - February 15, Q4 earnings call
First, thanks to our capital discipline and the strength of our operations and execution, we generated record quarter-over-quarter free cash flow for the last four quarters and a record full-year free cash flow of $2.64 billion...
We are projecting significant cash flows with over 55% of cash flow from operations available to shareholders in the form of net debt reduction, dividends and share repurchases...
Our projections are based on a flat year-over-year CapEx relative to 2022, delivering a low single-digit compound annual production growth rate. We are targeting significant cash flow and dividend per share growth over this time frame.
Hess Corporation- January 26, Q4 earnings call
As a reminder, as you've said earlier, we've been consistent in saying that our cash flow compounding, as it does, we intend to return the majority of our free cash flow to our shareholders by further increasing our dividend and also accelerating share repurchases.
EOG Resources - February 25, Q4 earnings call
2021 was a record-setting year for EOG. We earned record net income of $4.7 billion, generated a record $5.5 billion of free cash flow, which funded record cash return of $2.7 billion to shareholders. We doubled our regular dividend rate and paid two special dividends, paying out about 30% of cash from operations...
This period of high oil prices allows us to further bolster the balance sheet. To support our renewed $5 billion buyback authorization and prepare to take advantage of other countercyclical opportunities, we plan to build and carry a higher cash balance going forward...
We don't need more inventory. We are focused on improving our inventory quality.”
staffing shortage means a lack of bodies. so there's plenty of jobs out there. oil companies out here making crazy amounts of money.
how come you won't tell your free market to lower prices?
They shouldn't have to lower their profit margin. They haven't raised anything above normal.
Lower the cost of crude and you will see gas prices drop. Your guy is the one who came in shutting down pipelines and exploration. He is the one who came in with all the tough talk...so now he gets what he wanted. Lower output in the oil fields.
Too bad he and like people don't understand how things work. That raises prices, so no, the oil companies shouldn't do a damn thing to help that idiot. Record profits are a function of crude prices. It isn't because the oil companies raised their margins.
I agree and strongly disagree. First, yes, Biden made his bed and has doubled down every step of the way. Not good, although the argument on the left is always over the ancillaries and not the posture that helped to exacerbate the problem.
But NO, not in my opinion... certain things that directly affect "way of life" should be more regulated in crisis situations. Oil companies shouldn't have a free ticket to charge what they want.
I'll put it in pure mathematical form... If I sell a good or service that is a requirement for society and charge, say, $10 with a 20% margin, I'm obviously happy and successful making two bucks. Now, if situation raises my cost to $100, should I now enjoy the same margin and $20 per unit profit on every sale? I say no, not when you are a trillion $ corp capable of playing puppet master with an entire species. There should be "raw profit" caps, pure unit, on things that affect American's well being and financial stability. jmo
which pipeline was shut down that was meant to supply the US?
What Is Keystone XL? The Keystone XL pipeline extension, proposed by TC Energy (then TransCanada) in 2008, was initially designed to transport the planet’s dirtiest fossil fuel, tar sands oil, to market—and fast. As an expansion of the company’s existing Keystone Pipeline System, which has been operating since 2010 (and continues to send Canadian tar sands crude oil from Alberta to various processing hubs in the middle of the United States), the pipeline promised to dramatically increase capacity to process the 168 billion barrels of crude oil locked up under Canada’s boreal forest. It was expected to transport 830,000 barrels of Alberta tar sands oil per day to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. From the refineries, the oil would be sent chiefly overseas—not to gasoline pumps in the United States.
Dirty energy lobbyists claimed developing tar sands would protect our national energy security and bring U.S. fuel prices down. But environmental reviews by both the Obama and Trump administrations concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline would not have lowered gasoline prices. NRDC and its partners also found the majority of Keystone XL oil would have been sent to markets overseas—aided by a 2015 reversal of a ban on crude oil exports.
________
so i certainly hope you aren't parroting this Keystone pipeline nonsense. even your boy's admin said it wasn't gonna help the US. i mean the facts have BEEN out here for a while now.
the oil companies control the output, and they control the prices. combined with the info Port just posted, i'm trying to figure out if you're paying attention to what's actually happening, or simply parroting false narratives to protect your profits like you're Joe Manchin.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
Did you have any idea that oil companies are sitting on millions of acres of land they are refusing to drill on? Leases they have taken out, control and refuse to drill on to increase oil production? Maybe you're looking in the wrong direction when looking for who is to blame.
The Oil Industry's Public Lands Stockpile
Oil and gas companies are sitting on millions of acres of idle leases that they've acquired through a rigged system | February 2021
First, PART of the price of gas right now is due to the 'summer' blends, as they say.
Secondly, having a lease on land doesn't mean there is oil under it. Is there potential? Of course, but that doesn't mean you willy nilly start drilling. It takes research. Planning. And lots of work. Then, you'd have to pay the costs of .... a pipe line, transport, etc. I would imagine 100's of millions would be involved in that, but I don't know that.
So, simply saying there are 9000 leases not being used is correct, it is misleading, at a minimum.
I didn't say there were 9000 leases not being drilled. I said millions of acres. You are correct that summer blends during the initial crossover from winter blends helps drive the cost of gas up. But this steady increase has gone on much longer than that and really has nothing to do with oil companies not exersizing their option to up production by drilling on lands they have under lease.
In regards to you point about research, drilling costs and logistics expenses, that too is correct.
But what one would have to believe if we feel that's the reason they aren't drilling on these millions of acres would mean you would have to believe that these oil companies didn't consider any of those factors when leasing the land. That they didn't do their research, they didn't take into account the logistics, they didn't do geological surveys or any of the factors needed in making a responsible business decision.
Now that may be a thought process you are willing to entertain. But if that's the way they're running their business, they would have gone out of business long before now. These are multi billion dollar corporations and they didn't get to be that way by throwing darts at a map to decide which land to lease.
Here is an example. Do oil companies have their own geologists?
I think you made some excellent points. But I think we should both be able to agree that many of the points you brought up would have been addressed by an oil company before they acquired a lease. Would even someone such as ourselves take out a lease on land that was too expensive to deliver our products from? Would we take out a lease on land to garden or farm on that we didn't know would grow the food we wanted to grow? You brought up very basic points that anyone would have taken into consideration before they made a decision acquire those oil leases.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
More Major Disasters Hit U.S. Food Production – Are You Prepared For What Comes Next? BY MICHAEL SNYDER June 16, 2022 in Cross-Posted, Opinions
The hits just keep on coming. Over the past few months, I have carefully documented the rapidly growing global food crisis, and I have explained that even here in the United States food production is going to be way below original expectations this year. Unfortunately, most of the population still doesn’t grasp what is happening. Most people simply assume that everything will turn out okay somehow. Meanwhile, farmers are telling us as loudly as they can that everything will most definitely not be okay.
In my entire lifetime, I have never seen America’s farmers this alarmed about what is ahead. And of course everything that we are currently witnessing in the U.S. and around the globe is setting the stage for the sort of historic famines that I have been relentlessly warning my readers about. I wish that I knew a way to get through to the millions upon millions of apathetic people out there that don’t seem to care that a major food crisis is coming, because the suffering that we are going to witness all over the world will be off the charts.
Many seem to believe that we are going to be immune from the coming shortages because we live in the United States.
Unfortunately, food production in the U.S. continues to be hit by one major disaster after another. This week, a historic June heat wave absolutely baked the center of the country…
On Monday night into Tuesday, 125 million people – a third of the population – were under heat alerts across much of the central and eastern states.
Cities such as Tulsa, Memphis, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Raleigh and Charlotte were all under the heat warnings.
Chicago residents on Monday fled to their basements and nearby shelters when a surprise tornado ripped through the city as it experienced 100F weather for the first time in a decade.
Needless to say, this sort of weather was not welcomed by farmers in our agricultural heartland.
Records were shattered all over the nation, and I was particularly surprised to see a high temperature of 108 degrees in North Platte, Nebraska…
The mercury in North Platte, Nebraska, hit 108F, breaking the record set in 1952; St Louis’s record of 98 degrees from the same year was also broken on Monday, with temperatures reaching 100 degrees.
Charlotte, North Carolina, hit 98 degrees and Nashville, Tennessee, was at 97F – tying the previous record set in 2016.
‘To have an excessive heat warning this early in the year is kind of unusual,’ Mike Johnson, a meteorologist with the Memphis NWS, told CNN.
Yes, what we are witnessing is definitely unusual.
And summer hasn’t even started yet.
It is being reported that the extreme heat was responsible for “at least 2,000 cattle deaths” in Kansas alone…
The deaths add pain to the U.S. cattle industry as producers have reduced herds due to drought and grappled with feed costs that climbed as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine tightened global grain supplies.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment knew of at least 2,000 cattle deaths due to high temperatures and humidity as of Tuesday, spokesperson Matthew Lara said. The toll represents facilities that contacted the agency for help disposing of carcasses, he said.
Another source is reporting that the true death toll in Kansas is actually somewhere around 10,000…
The current heat wave blazing through Kansas feedlots has killed an estimated 10,000 head of fat cattle.
Final death numbers continue to come in, but that early estimate was shared with DTN by livestock experts, who put the geographical center point for those deaths at Ulysses, Kansas.
Needless to say, cattle have been dying in other states as well, and hopefully I will be able to find some of those numbers for you all.
Meanwhile, Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas have just been hit by historic flooding that was so bad that it is being called a “thousand-year event”…
Yellowstone National Park could be closed ‘indefinitely’ as devastating flooding continues to ravage the towns, roads, and bridges along the Yellowstone River.
Park officials characterized the severe flooding tearing through the region as a once in a ‘thousand-year event,’ that could alter the course of the Yellowstone river and surrounding landscapes forever.
Officials say that the river’s volume is flowing 20,000 cubic feet per second faster than the previous record measured in the 90s.
It would be difficult to overstate the devastation that this flooding caused.
For many ranchers and farmers, things will never be the same after this.
On top of everything else, another “mysterious fire” just happened. This time, it was a pizza plant in Wisconsin that totally burned to the ground…
More than 70 firefighters from almost two dozen departments in four counties battled a blaze at a pizza plant on Monday in eastern Portage County.
The American Red Cross reported that its volunteers provided food and water for firefighters battling a five-alarm fire at the Festive Foods pizza plant at 7811 Portage County D in the town of Belmont, near the Portage-Waupaca County line.
As I have detailed previously, we have seen this sort of thing happen over and over again in recent months.
In many of these cases, mysterious fires erupt very suddenly and grow to immense size even if firefighters are able to respond very rapidly.
And despite the best efforts of the firefighters, many of these food production facilities end up being completely destroyed.
Authorities are assuring us that all of these incidents are just “accidents”, and you can believe that if you want.
But to me it definitely appears that something very strange is happening. Recently, Zero Hedge republished a list of 97 disasters that have hit food production facilities in the United States that was originally published by the Gateway Pundit…
1/11/21 A fire that destroyed 75,000-square-foot processing plant in Fayetteville 4/30/21 A fire ignited inside the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Monmouth, IL 7/25/21 Three-alarm fire at Kellogg plant in Memphis, 170 emergency personnel responded to the call 7/30/21 Firefighters on Friday battled a large fire at Tyson’s River Valley Ingredients plant in Hanceville, Alabama 8/23/21 Fire crews were called to the Patak Meat Production company on Ewing Road in Austell 9/13/21 A fire at the JBS beef plant in Grand Island, Neb., on Sunday night forced a halt to slaughter and fabrication lines 10/13/21 A five-alarm fire ripped through the Darigold butter production plant in Caldwell, ID 11/15/21 A woman is in custody following a fire at the Garrard County Food Pantry 11/29/21 A fire broke out around 5:30 p.m. at the Maid-Rite Steak Company meat processing plant 12/13/21 West Side food processing plant in San Antonio left with smoke damage after a fire 1/7/22 Damage to a poultry processing plant on Hamilton’s Mountain following an overnight fire 1/13/22 Firefighters worked for 12 hours to put a fire out at the Cargill-Nutrena plant in Lecompte, LA 1/31/22 a fertilizer plant with 600 tons of ammonium nitrate inside caught on fire on Cherry Street in Winston-Salem 2/3/22 A massive fire swept through Wisconsin River Meats in Mauston 2/3/22 At least 130 cows were killed in a fire at Percy Farm in Stowe 2/15/22 Bonanza Meat Company goes up in flames in El Paso, Texas 2/15/22 Nearly a week after the fire destroyed most of the Shearer’s Foods plant in Hermiston 2/16/22 A fire had broken at US largest soybean processing and biodiesel plant in Claypool, Indiana 2/18/22 An early morning fire tore through the milk parlor at Bess View Farm 2/19/22 Three people were injured, and one was hospitalized, after an ammonia leak at Lincoln Premium Poultry in Fremont 2/22/22 The Shearer’s Foods plant in Hermiston caught fire after a propane boiler exploded 2/28/22 A smoldering pile of sulfur quickly became a raging chemical fire at Nutrien Ag Solutions 2/28/22 A man was hurt after a fire broke out at the Shadow Brook Farm and Dutch Girl Creamery 3/4/22 294,800 chickens destroyed at farm in Stoddard, Missouri 3/4/22 644,000 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Cecil, Maryland 3/8/22 243,900 chickens destroyed at egg farm in New Castle, Delaware 3/10/22 663,400 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Cecil, MD 3/10/22 915,900 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Taylor, IA 3/14/22 The blaze at 244 Meadow Drive was discovered shortly after 5 p.m. by farm owner Wayne Hoover 3/14/22 2,750,700 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Jefferson, Wisconsin 3/16/22 A fire at a Walmart warehouse distribution center has cast a large plume of smoke visible throughout Indianapolis. 3/16/22 Nestle Food Plant extensively damaged in fire and new production destroyed Jonesboro, Arkansas 3/17/22 5,347,500 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Buena Vista, Iowa 3/17/22 147,600 chickens destroyed at farm in Kent, Delaware 3/18/22 315,400 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Cecil, Maryland 3/22/22 172,000 Turkeys destroyed on farms in South Dakota 3/22/22 570,000 chickens destroyed at farm in Butler, Nebraska 3/24/22 Fire fighters from numerous towns are battling a major fire at the McCrum potato processing facility in Belfast. 3/24/22 418,500 chickens destroyed at farm in Butler, Nebraska 3/25/22 250,300 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Franklin, Iowa 3/26/22 311,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota 3/27/22 126,300 Turkeys destroyed in South Dakota 3/28/22 1,460,000 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Guthrie, Iowa 3/29/22 A massive fire burned 40,000 pounds of food meant to feed people in a food desert near Maricopa 3/31/22 A structure fire caused significant damage to a large portion of key fresh onion packing facilities in south Texas 3/31/22 76,400 Turkeys destroyed in Osceola, Iowa 3/31/22 5,011,700 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Osceola, Iowa 4/6/22 281,600 chickens destroyed at farm in Wayne, North Carolina 4/9/22 76,400 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota 4/9/22 208,900 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota 4/12/22 89,700 chickens destroyed at farm in Wayne, North Carolina 4/12/22 1,746,900 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Dixon, Nebraska 4/12/22 259,000 chickens destroyed at farm in Minnesota 4/13/22 fire destroys East Conway Beef & Pork Meat Market in Conway, New Hampshire 4/13/22 Plane crashes into Gem State Processing, Idaho potato and food processing plant 4/13/22 77,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota 4/14/22 Taylor Farms Food Processing plant burns down Salinas, California. 4/14/22 99,600 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota 4/15/22 1,380,500 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Lancaster, Minnesota 4/19/22 Azure Standard nation’s premier independent distributor of organic and healthy food, was destroyed by fire in Dufur, Oregon 4/19/22 339,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota 4/19/22 58,000 chickens destroyed at farm in Montrose, Color 4/20/22 2,000,000 chickens destroyed at egg farm in Minnesota 4/21/22 A small plane crashed in the lot of a General Mills plant in Georgia 4/22/22 197,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota 4/23/22 200,000 Turkeys destroyed in Minnesota 4/25/22 1,501,200 chickens destroyed at egg farm Cache, Utah 4/26/22 307,400 chickens destroyed at farm Lancaster Pennsylvania 4/27/22 2,118,000 chickens destroyed at farm Knox, Nebraska 4/28/22 Egg-laying facility in Iowa kills 5.3 million chickens, fires 200-plus workers 4/28/22 Allen Harim Foods processing plant killed nearly 2M chickens in Delaware 4/2822 110,700 Turkeys destroyed Barron Wisconsin 4/29/22 1,366,200 chickens destroyed at farm Weld Colorado 4/30/22 13,800 chickens destroyed at farm Sequoia Oklahoma 5/3/22 58,000 Turkeys destroyed Barron Wisconsin 5/3/22 118,900 Turkeys destroyed Beadle S Dakota 5/3/22 114,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania 5/3/22 118,900 Turkeys destroyed Lyon Minnesota 5/7/22 20,100 Turkeys destroyed Barron Wisconsin 5/10/22 72,300 chickens destroyed at farm Lancaster Pennsylvania 5/10/22 61,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania 5/10/22 35,100 Turkeys destroyed Muskegon, Michigan 5/13/22 10,500 Turkeys destroyed Barron Wisconsin 5/14/22 83,400 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania 5/17/22 79,00 chickens destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania 5/18/22 7,200 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania 5/19/22 Train carrying limestone derailed Jensen Beach FL 5/21/22 57,000 Turkeys destroyed on farm in Dakota Minnesota 5/23/22 4,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania 5/29/22 A Saturday night fire destroyed a poultry building at Forsman Farms 5/31/22 3,000,000 chickens destroyed by fire at Forsman facility in Stockholm Township, Minnesota 6/2/22 30,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania 6/7/22 A fire occurred Tuesday evening at the JBS meat packing plant in Green Bay. 6/8/22 Firefighters from Tangipahoa Fire District 1 respond to a fire at the Purina Feed Mill in Arcola 6/9/22 Irrigation water was canceled in California (the #1 producer of food in the US) and storage water flushed directly out to the delta. 6/12/22 Largest Pork Company in the US Shuts Down California Plant Due to High Costs 6/13/22 Fire Breaks Out at a Food Processing Plant West of Waupaca County in Wisconsin We can debate why this is happening until we are blue in the face.
But what everyone should be able to agree on is that we should all be getting prepared for what is ahead.
Are you ready for much higher food prices and widespread shortages?
Protect your wealth from Joe Biden, Klaus Schwab, or any of the globalists who want you to own nothing. Contact for a wide range of precious metals products or Our Gold Guy for physical precious metals.
The head of the UN World Food Program has warned that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War II.
By the time it is all said and done, I believe that what we will experience will be much worse than that.
So I would encourage you to stock up while you still can, because the clock is certainly ticking.
So they just take them out for the hell of it and do not plan to drill on it? And if they do plan to drill, you're suggesting they didn't do their basic homework before taking out the lease? And if they're not planning to drill on it, why do they sign an "oil or gas lease"? So they're just tying up millions of acres in oil leases because they can?
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
So they just take them out for the hell of it and do not plan to drill on it? And if they do plan to drill, you're suggesting they didn't do their basic homework before taking out the lease? And if they're not planning to drill on it, why do they sign an "oil or gas lease"? So they're just tying up millions of acres in oil leases because they can?
Basically yes. And the government is complicit in this shell game. The SEC purposefully changed reporting guidelines so that simply holding the leases could result in "prospective value"... as part of the recovery effort after the housing crisis. Do you blame oil companies for holding leases when they are offered for $1.50 - $2 per acre?
'Progressives" are trying to tank the country...and they have sucked normal Dems in to buying their crap.
Seriously, people can post all they want, but their elected leaders, thus my leaders, are totally inept and own this deal.
If you voted for this guy, you own it.
Just look at the idiots this guy puts in front of us...the Press Secretary is a joke. That is the best we can muster as a spokesperson? She can't answer anything without stammering while thumbing through pages of cliff notes.
If everybody had like minds, we would never learn.
i love history. i love learning new things. i also now understand this deep seeded hatred toward government assistance from what are now modern day conservatives/republican voters.
1964......this was part of the 50's and 60's that so many older people love talking about as the best times of america.
and i will always respond with "great for whom?"
and yea, this absolutely belongs in this economic thread.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
we got people alive and healthy today who remember those years. damn man....
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
3 ocean carrier alliances control 95% of shipping between Asia and the US and have hiked rates more than 1,000%. The White House wants to shake their control.
- The vast majority of international shipping is controlled by just three cooperative alliances.
- The White House says the consolidation has led to increased freight rates that spur inflation.
- A new federal initiative will use anti-trust laws to promote competition in the shipping industry.
Expensive shipping costs are the target of a new initiative that the White House announced on Monday, which directs the Justice Department to use anti-trust laws to push the industry's largest companies to be more competitive with each other.
Roughly 80% of all global shipping capacity — and 95% of East-West trade — is controlled by a trio of alliances that allow freight carrier firms to coordinate rates and schedules.
This consolidation largely flew under the mainstream radar until the pandemic completely disrupted the global supply chain. Ocean carriers responded to the increased demand and reduced supply by hiking the rates for shipping cargo between Asia and the US by over 1,000%.
When freight costs go up, the prices of consumer goods go up too, and White House experts estimate that shipping will add a full percentage point to inflation in the coming year.
And it's not only consumers who are stuck paying more — exporters have complained that the major firms aren't carrying US products to foreign markets.
Some carriers apparently found it more profitable to send empty containers back to Asia to reload, instead of carrying US agricultural goods to other ports.
These ballooning prices have been good for shipping companies' profit margins, soaring to 56% in the third quarter of 2021, compared with 3.7% in 2019.
For President Biden, such fat profits in such a historically low-margin business are evidence of anticompetitive practices. He plans to address the issue during the State of the Union address Tuesday evening.
Under the new initiative, a regulatory agency known as the Federal Maritime Commission will coordinate with the Justice Department to identify and prosecute violations under the Shipping Act and the main US anti-trust laws, the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act.
"Competition in the maritime industry is integral to lowering prices, improving quality of service, and strengthening supply chain resilience," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "Lawbreakers should know that the Justice Department will provide the Federal Maritime Commission all necessary litigation support as it pursues its mission of promoting competition in ocean shipping."
This heightened scrutiny of the shipping industry follows weeks of political messaging that blames corporate greed for making inflation worse. Other sectors that have come under the microscope include beef producers and oil companies.
Republicans failing to acknowledge the real problems for political gain COULDN'T be part of the problem. YOu wonder why we have shortages? Here's the answer. But don't let facts get in the way. The POTUS can't cause global collapse by himself for simply being inept. No that takes strategy and partners.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
Biden Blasts Ocean Carriers as Congress Readies Tougher Shipping Regulations
The first major overhaul of maritime rules in 24 years follows skyrocketing freight rates and severe supply-chain disruptions
U.S. lawmakers are preparing to toughen oversight of international shipping companies as the White House and American importers and exporters say historically high freight transportation costs are hampering business and contributing to accelerating inflation.
House Democratic leaders say they plan next week to take up a measure already passed by the Senate that would add new regulatory constraints to shipping operations and limit the ability of ocean carriers to levy the special fees that shipping customers say are driving up costs.
The bill would make it tougher for the shipping lines to refuse export cargoes, a practice that has grown over the past two years as carriers have sought to turn around empty containers quickly to return them to Asia and take advantage of high prices for Asian exports. It would also boost the workforce at the Federal Maritime Commission, the main U.S. shipping regulator.
President Biden highlighted the issue this week, calling on Congress to “crack down” on ocean carriers. Mr. Biden, a Democrat, said in a video Thursday that one of the main reasons shipping costs have gone up is because nine ocean carriers control the trans-Pacific market and “have raised their prices by as much as 1,000%.”
Speaking Friday at the Port of Los Angeles, Mr. Biden said it was time to let the ocean shipping lines know that “the rip-off is over.”
“One of the key ways to fight inflation is by lowering the cost of moving goods through the supply chain,” he said.
The high freight rates and tight capacity in the shipping sector tormented American retailers, manufacturers and farmers during the heights of the Covid-19 pandemic, when demand for space on container ships skyrocketed and ocean shipping lines, mostly based in Europe and Asia, made billions of dollars in profits.
Shipping industry and trade officials say the FMC already has the power to impose many of the enforcement tools proposed in the bill, but that getting the details into law will push the regulator to take action and strengthen its position against legal challenges from the shipping industry.
“The commission needs to be told straight out you do have the authority,” said Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition, which represents farmers. “That’s what this shipping act does. You do have the authority, you should use it.”
Agricultural exporters say they missed out on billions of dollars in revenue last year when ocean carriers declined their goods and instead rushed empty containers back to Asia for more lucrative eastbound trade routes. Importers say they were charged hefty penalty fees for failing to pick up and return containers, even on days when congested cargo-handling facilities refused to handle the boxes.
The bill, known as the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, passed the Senate by a voice vote in March. The House passed its own version that includes tougher oversight provisions by a 364-60 vote in 2021, but House leaders decided in recent weeks to take up the Senate version rather than try to reconcile the separate measures.
“The Senate bill accomplishes the same goals,” said Rep. John Garamendi (D., Calif.), a sponsor of the original House bill. “It just does it in a different manner.”
Mr. Biden blames a lack of competition in the ocean shipping industry for the high supply-chain costs that have contributed to inflation hitting a four-decade high. Eleven companies control a majority of the world’s container shipping capacity, according to the FMC. They also cooperate with each other under vessel-sharing agreements similar to those found in the airline industry.
The average world-wide spot market rate to ship a container rose eightfold during the pandemic to a peak of $11,109 in September 2021, according to the FMC. An agency investigation recently concluded that the ocean shipping industry is competitive and that the rapid increase in prices was driven by “an extreme spike of consumer demand in the United States that overwhelmed the supply of ship capacity.”
During the pandemic, many Americans cut back on spending on restaurants and travel and instead splurged on home office equipment, electronics and furniture. Import volumes to the U.S. in 2021 were up 20% over 2019 levels.
Freight rates have tumbled in recent months as U.S. consumer spending has softened and Covid lockdowns in China have weakened export volumes. The average spot rate to ship a container on heavily congested routes from Asia to the U.S. West Coast fell 41% in the past three months to $9,588, according to the Freightos Baltic Index.
A backup of container ships waiting to unload at the nation’s busiest container-handling complex at Los Angeles and Long Beach has also receded. The queue was at 20 ships on Thursday, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, down from a record 109 vessels in January and the lowest level since July 19, 2021.
The bill in Congress represents the biggest overhaul of ocean shipping rules since 1998. The World Shipping Council, a Washington-based trade group representing container shipping lines, said it would wait until Congress passes the bill before commenting on it.
Christine McDaniel, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, who specializes in international trade, said the regulatory overhaul could have unintended consequences on the financial ballast of a shipping industry that until a few years ago was struggling. She said she was concerned, for instance, about the provision aimed at preventing ocean shipping companies from unreasonably declining exports.
“To the extent that the government is going to tell ocean carriers what they can and cannot, or must and must not, ship is concerning,” Ms. McDaniel said.
The bill also shifts the burden of proof to ocean carriers to show that penalty fees were properly assessed against shippers for delays picking up and dropping off containers.
The FMC has launched enforcement actions against several ocean carriers in the past year for unfairly imposing penalty fees when supply-chain congestion tied up shipments and left importers unable to reach their containers within specified periods. The regulator on Wednesday reached a $2 million settlement with Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd AG for improperly assessing such fees.
FMC Chairman Daniel Maffei said the agency’s expanded role will require hiring more attorneys and economists and expanding the agency’s workforce by some 25% to about 150 people. The FMC needs to become a “more robust regulatory agency that makes sure everyone plays on a level playing field,” he said.
Blaming Workers, Hiding Profits in Primetime Inflation Coverage
Rising prices directly impact virtually the entire population, so it’s not surprising that there has been a constant drumbeat of reports in the corporate media laying out the factors contributing to inflation as well as its economic and political consequences. But while the media cite many legitimate factors, including pandemic-induced effects on supply and demand, their choices of which causes to emphasize can have political and economic consequences of their own.
A FAIR study looking at six months of coverage across six primetime television news shows and NPR‘s All Things Considered found that segments on inflation put far more emphasis on the contributions of labor shortages and social spending—through driving up the cost of labor—than to the role of corporate profit-taking.
This portrays the economy as a zero sum game between workers and consumers, who appear to be intractably at odds if corporate profits are left out of the equation.
During the same period, the shows proved capable of hearing workers’ demands for higher wages when their coverage framed the issue as a “Great Resignation,” or during the shows’ scant coverage of “Striketober,” when a wave of labor militancy swept through much of the country.
This points to an inconsistency in coverage of the same labor market trends: When the shows were covering inflation, the “tight” labor market was mostly treated with the cool and icy calculation of market logic. But on the comparatively rare occasions when the shows covered the grievances of workers and their demands for dignified work—which are widely popular demands, given that most consumers are in fact workers too—the reports showed a more human side to what would otherwise be numbers on a scorecard, and mentioned the record profits of corporations.
Causal arguments
FAIR analyzed the transcripts from ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, CNN’s Situation Room, Fox Special Report, MSNBC’s The Beat, NBC Nightly News and NPR’s All Things Considered between September 2021 and February 2022, using the Nexis news database. We searched for stories mentioning “inflation” and identified 310 segments.
We also searched for segments mentioning “labor,” “union” or “worker.” The labor search terms were meant to identify coverage of worker activism and how it compared to labor market coverage in the context of inflation. The search turned up 73 such segments.
We recorded the main causal arguments identified in inflation segments, grouped into six main categories:
Supply (“The supply of new cars was limited by that shortage of semiconductors.”—All Things Considered, 1/12/22) Demand (“People just said they had more money from not going out and doing stuff last year.”—All Things Considered, 11/26/21) Labor shortage (“There aren’t enough truck drivers. So, more containers get stacked up. They don’t get delivered.”—Situation Room, 11/10/21) Social spending (“The spending plan could create more inflation to the extent that it’s pumping more dollars into an economy that has a lot of money flowing around in it.”—Fox Special Report, 11/24/21) Covid-19 (“The emergence of the Omicron variant poses increased uncertainty for inflation.”—Fox Special Report, 12/22/21) Profiteering (“There’s increasing evidence and suspicions that this market power has gone too far and is beginning to hurt consumers.”—All Things Considered, 9/13/21) These categories were non-exclusive; a suggestion that Covid had caused supply problems, for example, would be counted in both categories. Many segments included more than one causal argument, while 116 attributed inflation to no cause in particular.
We don’t talk about profit-taking
Of the 310 segments that covered inflation, eight identified profiteering as a causal factor, while 50 put the focus on workers, either in the form of labor shortage or supply-side social spending arguments (the latter being a proxy for the former). While labor market trends have had an inflationary impact, the disproportionate focus on them, without mention of the underlying conditions that lead to labor shortages in the first place, erases the culpability of corporations. And as economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 11/10/21) explained, it would be a “perverse” solution to inflation to put “downward pressure on wages” by increasing unemployment, when companies are already incentivized to “innovate to get around bottlenecks…in ways that could lead to lasting productivity gains.”
An NBC Nightly News investigation by Jacob Ward (1/22/22) was one of the only segments that focused on the inflationary impact of market consolidation. Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef, Ward reported, “control roughly 85% of all beef production in America, and saw their profits tripled during the pandemic.” Other references to the meat trusts were limited to Joe Biden’s plan to apply pressure to meatpackers and Tyson’s decision to raise prices due to “escalating costs” (NBC Nightly News, 12/10/21, 11/15/21). This angle was absent when it came to other powerful industries, however.
David Dayen and Rakeen Mabud of the American Prospect (1/31/22; CounterSpin, 2/11/22) raked through company earnings calls and CEO statements, and found ample evidence for profit-taking in the direct accounts of numerous retail executives:
Corporate profit margins are at their highest level in 70 years, and CEOs cannot help but tout in earnings calls how they have taken advantage of the media commotion around inflation to boost profits. “A little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” the CEO of Kroger said last June. “What we are very good at is pricing,” the CEO of Colgate-Palmolive added in October. Inflation is being enhanced by exploitation, with companies seeing a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to raise prices.
Corporations with no choice
Despite this, the decision to raise prices was often reported from the perspective of small business owners. Five such segments appeared across CBS Evening News, including a Houston boutique owner (11/10/21) lamenting that she hates having to raise prices, but that “if they’re charging me, I have to turn around and charge my customers.”
One of the segments that directly addressed the decision from the perspective of multinationals appeared on ABC World News Tonight (10/22/21), where Gio Benitez reported:
Major companies facing rising costs now expecting to charge more, like Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company; Unilever, maker of Dove soap and Ben & Jerry’s; Procter & Gamble, from grooming products to diapers; and Danone, maker of yogurts and plant-based milks, even Evian water. Inflation shooting up by 5.4% in just a year. That supply chain crisis is taking center stage.
The profitability and market dominance of these firms, especially Nestle and Procter & Gamble, made no appearance—with price hikes instead attributed to corporations “facing rising costs.”
Despite this framework, recent polling from Data for Progress suggests that Americans aren’t buying it, with only 29% of respondents believing that corporations had no choice but to price-gouge. And with $19 billion being paid out to Procter & Gamble shareholders in the wake of a 14% rise in the cost of diapers, that skepticism is hardly surprising.
Ari Melber of MSNBC’s The Beat (1/11/22) covered inflation’s disproportionate impact on workers, even citing the “Great Resignation” as a factor in labor shortages, but did not mention monopolistic corporations’ price-gouging. Melber pointed out that it is average workers who “bear the risk in our version of capitalism,” as opposed to “pandemic billionaires.” He described this disproportionate impact as “classism.” The omission of the evidence for price-gouging was all the more stark in the context of reporting that ostensibly focused on the interest of workers.
Slamming social spending
Despite the mounting evidence that corporate greed plays a significant role in rising prices, the shows tended to focus on social spending as a possible factor, with 67 segments framing debates around both whether the already-passed stimulus bills were responsible for current inflation, and whether Build Back Better would worsen it.
These debates centered around both supply-side and demand-side factors. On the supply-side, the debate was whether social spending was keeping Americans from seeking work, given that the stimulus provided an alternative form of income. This in turn fueled the labor shortage and strengthened workers’ hands, the argument went, contributing to the rising cost of labor and the shortage of goods. It follows that businesses had no choice but to pass these rising costs onto consumers.
Washington Post opinion writer Charles Lane went on Fox‘s Special Report (10/8/21) to share his view that redistribution will slow job growth and increase inflation: “Two bills of spending that are more than $4 trillion. And we’re going to pretend that this is going to have no effect on jobs? No effect on inflation?”
While other networks proved more willing to provide an alternative view when discussing social spending as a possible inflationary cause, they rarely outright refuted the claim, let alone touched on corporate profits.
Kristen Welker (NBC Nightly News, 11/12/21) reported that although Biden was
insisting that while more spending generally drives prices up, his trillion dollars bipartisan infrastructure bill will bring prices down long term…. Moderate Democrat Joe Manchin suggest[ed] the president’s spending bills could raise prices even more.
And Republicans were “blasting the president’s policies.” The report cut to Rep. Jim Jordan (R.–Ohio), who claimed, “Their plan is basically, lock down the economy, spend like crazy, pay people not to work.”
To center debates over inflationary causes around redistributive measures, while failing to bring up the stacks of cash lining the pockets of the very corporations raising prices, leaves an impression of scarcity and implies a necessary struggle between workers and consumers. It also ignores the reality that countries like France and Japan, which had larger stimulus packages, actually saw less inflation.
Not only do supply-side social spending arguments blame labor for rising costs, they do so by claiming that workers have it too good. Redistributive measures can’t work, they presume, because if labor is not desperate enough to seek alienated, low-wage jobs, the economy will grind to a halt. Something has to give, and it won’t be the billionaires who happen to own the media outlets.
On the demand side, opponents of social spending argued that the stimulus put far too much disposable income in the hands of ordinary people, whose spending therefore outpaced supply. To argue that there is too much money in the hands of regular people, in light of more than a decade of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve—transferring wealth to the very wealthy to prop up stock markets—brings to mind Martin Luther King’s statement that this country has “socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.”
Inconsistent labor reporting
The six-month timeframe coincided with both “Striketober” and the “Great Resignation,” moments that together saw workers utilizing their temporarily enhanced bargaining power. While union membership is at a historic low, support for unions is at the highest it’s been since 1965. According to Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker, there were 442 strikes and labor protests between September and February—likely an undercount, given the rise in strike activity not sanctioned by unions.
FAIR found that NPR’s All Things Considered included 28 segments on labor activism, but the remaining shows had at most half that amount. NBC Nightly News came in second place, with 14 activism segments, while Fox Special Report had 11, ABC’s World News Tonight had six, MSNBC’s The Beat and CNN’s Situation Room had five, and CBS Evening News had four.
While the coverage of strikes proved some shows were capable of hearing the concerns of workers bargaining collectively, the focus on labor shortages in inflation reporting highlighted a disregard for the perspective of labor.
When reporting on the John Deere strike that saw more than 10,000 workers walk off the job, Charlie De Mar (CBS Evening News, 10/14/21) noted that it came “as the company is forecasting its best earnings ever”; he listed workers’ demands, including “livable hours and benefits.
However, in the show’s segments that attributed inflation to labor market trends, workers’ grievances were mostly left out of the picture. Carter Evans (CBS Evening News, 12/10/21) reported that the rising costs of “just about everything,” from beef prices up by 50% to fuel prices up by 53%, were the result of soaring demand, while the supply chain was hampered by “a shortage of truck drivers to deliver the goods.” Never mind the evidence of price-fixing in a meatpacking industry fraught with consolidation, or the poor labor conditions driving people to resign from trucking.
CBS‘s Scott McFarlane (1/12/22) reported that “a survey by an association of the nation’s grocery stores finds 80% of them are having trouble recruiting or retaining workers right now,” citing this as evidence that labor shortages were a factor in empty grocery shelves and higher prices. McFarlane neglected to mention the low wages and safety concerns that prompted more than 8,000 Kroger grocery workers in Denver to go on strike that very morning (Wall Street Journal, 1/12/22).
Claims of a trucker shortage received the most emphasis, appearing in 13 unique segments across all shows. ABC‘s Whit Johnson (10/13/21) included “not enough truck drivers” among a list of inflationary pressure points. Fox News chief correspondent Jonathan Hunt (10/8/21) claimed that “supply and demand is not the problem…. There simply aren’t enough truck drivers to get goods to American store shelves.” News flash: If there aren’t enough drivers, that’s a supply problem.
While primetime audiences were made well aware of how few truck drivers are on the highways, they were left in the dark about how trucking deregulation has led to stagnant wages and lack of driver protections (American Prospect, 2/7/22). Segments reporting on ports remaining open 24/7 to alleviate backlogs (NBC Nightly News, 10/13/21) made no mention of the stolen wages and general precariousness of the labor making that happen.
Fickle supply chain
While there were multiple mentions of “supply chain bottlenecks” across the seven shows, the decades-long transformation of the global supply chain to maximize profits at the expense of its resiliency (CounterSpin, 2/11/22) was generally not a part of the story.
Just three ocean shipping alliances control 80% of the market, giving them substantial power to set prices and squeeze wages. In order to keep down the costs of production and distribution, shipping companies promoted a “just-in-time” delivery schedule, reducing warehouse costs but also raising the chances of disruptive shortages. Coupled with the outsourcing of manufacturing, just-in-time delivery supply chain “shocks” are less shocking than they might appear.
But according to Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich (11/24/21), the White House’s accusations of price-gouging by the ocean shipping cartel as a driver of inflation were “ominous,” as they indicated that supply chain crises may take years to resolve. Not once did she mention the cartel in question made nearly $80 billion in the first three quarters of 2021, giving the companies ample and unaccountable price-setting capabilities (American Prospect, 1/31/22).
News media that feature constant coverage of inflation may appear to be serving the public interest, but with an issue that directly affects so many peoples’ wallets, it’s important that the corporate media give an accurate portrayal of the contributing factors. And while sympathetic coverage of labor activism may seem pro-worker, that’s undercut when the debate about what’s making it harder for people to put food on the table is centered around low-wage essential workers saying enough is enough.
What’s FAIR FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. We expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, we believe that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.
Just to point out, they blamed reporting on the left too.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
The truth about who or what is actually at fault for inflation numbers not seen since the 1980s is more complex than any political talking points or anti-Fed screeds.
President Joe Biden blames Vladimir Putin. Republicans blame Biden and the Democrats. Some economists and Wall Streeters put it all on the Fed.
Everyone is pointing fingers over the dramatic spike in inflation in the U.S. over the past year that has wiped out wage gains, driven stocks to their worst start to a year since 1970 and generally put Americans in a funk about the nation’s direction.
A key reading on inflation released by the Labor Department Friday rose at a 6.3 percent annual rate in April, down from 6.6 percent in March but still highly elevated. The figure, called the Personal Consumption Expenditure index, covers the broadest range of goods of all the inflation measures and is closely watched by the Federal Reserve.
Politicians on both sides will look to spin the numbers to their advantage. But the truth about who or what is actually at fault for inflation numbers not seen since the 1980s is more complex than any political talking points or anti-Fed screeds.
“It’s not just the Fed or the end of infrastructure or the exact kind of stimulus or any one single thing,” said Harvard economist Megan Greene. “I actually thought the Fed had pulled it off last year waiting for inflation to come down on its own as the pandemic waned. Then Omicron hit China and Russia invaded Ukraine. A lot of this is just very, very bad luck.”
Here’s what the numbers show and what experts told POLITICO about what’s behind an inflation rate that has driven 75 percent of Americans to say the nation is on the wrong track and squashed Biden’s approval rating below 40 percent.
Spoiler alert: There are no single villains. And it’s all quite complicated.
`Putin’s price hike’
Biden and Democrats say high prices are largely a result of Russian President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has sent oil and food prices soaring.
“Inflation is still too high and Putin’s price hike continues to impact food and energy prices,” Biden said on Friday in a statement after the latest numbers were released. “There is more work to do, and tackling inflation is my top economic priority.”
Biden is correct that the invasion rocked the oil market and contributed to higher inflation the past two months. But prices began rising sharply well before Putin shocked the world and attacked Ukraine in late February.
Inflation sank to a pandemic low of 0.1 percent in May 2020 even as both the Fed and Congress began pouring trillions into the economy and the central bank kept interest rates at historic lows. But as soon as some Covid restrictions began to lift in the summer of that year, inflation began to rise, picking up strength in February 2021. The Consumer Price Index, the better-known inflation gauge, hit 7.5 percent in January of this year. It was at 8.3 percent in April over the previous year.
Biden was also correct that energy costs comporised nearly 70 percent of the monthly increase in inflation from February to March of this year as markets reacted to the war. But many thought Biden was saying 70 percent of inflation over the past year stemmed from the war. That is not the case. Even after taking out the energy hit, the annual rate in March would have been over 7 percent, still easily wiping out wage gains running around 5 percent. So-called core inflation was at 6.2 percent in April.
Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, said the war certainly contributed to recent inflation, further damaging supply chains and driving up energy prices, but not the way Biden described it.
“The truth is, consumer demand fell off a cliff in the spring of 2020 as the virus hit and as it rebounded, it was inevitably going to be messy,” she said. “But the ingredients for why the economy has been as strong as it has and the incredibly robust way that demand bounded back ahead of supply completely surprised me.”
`Biden-flation’
Republicans are hammering Democrats on the midterm campaign trail for what they like to call “Biden-flation,” attributing the sharp spike in prices to overly generous stimulus that fattened consumer wallets during the pandemic and discouraged them from going back to work. It’s clearly having an impact, with polls showing dismal ratings for Biden’s stewardship of the economy.
The debate continues to rage over the full impact of Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021 with only Democratic votes. And economists say Republicans are probably right that at least some of the rise in inflation comes from the plan’s $1,400 in direct payments to qualifying Americans and an extension of enhanced unemployment benefits and child care tax credits through September of last year.
That injection of cash into the economy came after the roughly $4 trillion in emergency Covid relief passed under the Trump administration. Sorting out exactly how much inflation resulted from the additional stimulus is challenging.
But price hikes in the U.S. did start outpacing other developed countries last year, according to a San Francisco Fed study, indicating that the extra spending played some role in speeding up inflation. Other advanced economies faced similar problems with supply chain disruptions and supply and demand mismatches. But the U.S. has it worse on inflation. Inflation in the Eurozone spiked to 7.4 percent in April, still below the U.S. but elevated by a big spike in energy costs following the Ukraine invasion. It was 5.9 percent in February.
“This was the largest fiscal and monetary response in history and that’s great, but elements of how it was delivered weren’t the best and we probably overdid it,” Brett Ryan, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said of the U.S. “From one perspective, all the spending worked, [and] we bounced back very fast. But all those stimulus checks pushed demand up very fast and left already strained supply chains even further behind the curve.”
Did the Fed blow it?
The Fed is the chief inflation-fighting authority in the U.S., so it naturally comes under heavy scrutiny when prices spin dramatically higher. The central bank’s mandate, after all, is to keep inflation low – its target is about 2 percent – while also promoting full employment.
So did Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues blow it by keeping interest rates low for so long and continuing to support the economy through hundreds of billions of dollars in asset purchases? Can we just blame all of it on the Fed, as some economists and Wall Street traders do?
Not all of it, economists say, but some fault clearly lies with the central bank.
Powell was a chief proponent early on of the idea that the price hikes would be “transitory” and ease more quickly as supply chain problems got fixed and more people went back to work. Biden and the White House adopted that term as well before having to ditch it.
Because inflation has turned out to be longer lasting, the Fed had to quickly shift gears in December and say it would pull back its highly stimulative policies. Uncertainty over just how far and fast the Fed will have to move created huge volatility and large losses for stocks this year.
“The Fed is now so far behind on inflation that people are getting worried about the consumer,” said Jim Paulsen, chief economist at the Leuthold Group.
Central bank defenders say Powell faced a near-impossible task. He has endured tremendous, bipartisan pressure to keep rates low to boost the economy – including from then-President Donald Trump, long before the pandemic – making a much earlier pivot to tighter policy difficult. And just how much of a game-changer an earlier move would have been is not clear.
“If you had perfect hindsight you’d go back and it probably would have been better for us to have raised rates a little sooner,” Powell said in a Marketplace interview earlier this month. “I’m not sure how much difference it would have made, but we have to make decisions in real time, based on what we know then, and we did the best we could. Now, we see the picture clearly and we’re determined to use our tools to get us back to price stability.”
The only thing I've seen is he wants to shift blame and do what he can where he can. Problem is that most of it, he has no control over.
One way to drive down inflation is to stop spending your money on anything but necessities. Don't travel, don't buy luxury goods, and don't spend on the frivolous. When corps start losing, prices will plummet. We have as much power as any government in the world with our wallets. None of these factors driving inflation can exist long-term without the huge demand, period. That's what the Fed will be doing basically. Raising rates to curb spending/borrowing.
And the best way Biden can help IMO is to help create American competition for all these foreign goods and shipping companies. Including competition for American companies that are price gouging. When corps are driven by profit and shareholders' best interest, the only way to hurt them is in the wallet.
Last edited by OldColdDawg; 06/16/2209:24 PM.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
He has none. His (and his supporters) only concern is an incessant finger-pointing campaign to shirk any and all responsibility for a plan by placing blame in the laps of others. You hear it every day, so you already know this.
Biden's plan for fighting inflation: "Folks, prices are higher" Pete Buttigieg response to supply chain issues: "This may last years and years" Janet Yellen on inflation: "I'd like to talk about gun violence"
We could replace them all with the cast from the Muppets, there would be more progress and it would be *nearly* as entertaining.
No dem administration can do what is needed with 50 Republicans Senators and 2 Dems who act like Republicans. Just saying, congress is in deadlock and can only seem to pass legislation that is good for the corps. On the other hand, there are no Republicans that can be trusted not to abuse the office while Trumpian politics rule the day. And the next time they take power, we will probably have to remove them by force if we ever want them to go.
Last edited by OldColdDawg; 06/17/2212:21 AM.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
Just in general....it seems all of this has happened since President Biden took over with his anti-business agenda.
The bottom line is anti-business agenda's are also anti-American people agendas.
With the push to use more ethanol, I wonder how long it will take to see food shortages? I guess we are already seeing them. I mean it takes 26 lbs of corn to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. That is that much less corn going towards food and feed stocks.
I will admit I don't know it that takes raw corn so to speak or left over corn after some processing for food stock.
If everybody had like minds, we would never learn.
Can they try? Maybe take a stab at something? Sit around the campfire and come up with an idea or two??
Hey, I don't mind fair criticism of dems, because they have proved themselves to be inept time and again. I just don't like the baseless blaming. And when I say dems, I'm not talking progressives as a group. Progressives ARE under the dem banner and are not blameless, but until the POTUS is a real progressive, and the centrists treat progressives equally instead of just captured voters, progressives have no real power outside of elections. That said, yes dems can talk about how to solve issues and do, but the gridlock will not allow actual implementation of said solutions without compromising so much that the watered-down solutions lose all efficacy. This is where dems are inept, they act like it's still the 80s and 90s where both sides can get in a room, compromise, and come out with a plan that makes everybody happy. This hasn't been the case since the early 2000s.
On the other hand, Republicans are ruthless in going after their policies, but they are so far off the rails and or in the pockets of corporations that every piece of legislation they pass, eventually becomes another nail in the working class coffin. If you don't believe me, go back and look. I mean hell, we are in the worst inflation of our lifetimes, and where are they with their ideas and trying to help their constituents? The only thing they are doing or have done for years is obstruct ALL dem progress, pass legislation when they are in power that favors elites and corporations (usually under the ruse of helping people), then blame dems when people take the hits. It's nuts.
At least progressive actually care about the 99% and want to do whatever they can to make life better for all. They talk a lot about leveling the playing field and making sure everyone pays their fair share, but that's mostly due to the vast inequalities that are hurting working-class and poor folks. Generally, the progressives want all ships to rise proportionately and want capitalism with a social checks and balances system. This is why I pivoted. I'll be fine no matter who is in, Hell my life isn't far from over. But right now, I fear what this country will be for my grandkids and beyond when they reach my age. That and the Republican party that I thought I knew died in the 2000s, only to slowly be replaced by the bastardized version we have today. I used to think Republicans had more integrity than dems, that's so far from true today it's disgusting.
So, personally, I think progressive policies, at least as a starting point for negotiating IN THE PEOPLES BEST INTEREST, are the only way forward. And until we crush this abhorrent greed, corruption, and radicalized hate, in both parties, we are dead in the water. So I don't care when the stock market nose dives, or the economy goes to hell in a handbasket, or even when the people on the right side of history get violent; because all of those things lead to change. It's our job as citizens to vote for the right kind of change.
After all of that, my conclusion is that it won't matter who is in office until the people come together and take their government back from all the bad actors, then focus on actually making life better for everyone, starting from the bottom up.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
Just in general....it seems all of this has happened since President Biden took over with his anti-business agenda.
The bottom line is anti-business agenda's are also anti-American people agendas.
With the push to use more ethanol, I wonder how long it will take to see food shortages? I guess we are already seeing them. I mean it takes 26 lbs of corn to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. That is that much less corn going towards food and feed stocks.
I will admit I don't know it that takes raw corn so to speak or left over corn after some processing for food stock.
Wrong again. This is an accumulation of crappy policies and actions from both sides that have led us here, with a big old crapstorm of bad luck, like covid and Putin's War.
Last edited by OldColdDawg; 06/17/2208:59 AM.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
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