Congratulations, LR, for bringing the receipts.
Starting at the top, Eamon Barrett is a graduate of Leeds University in 2015 with a degree in Chinese and International Relations. He specializes in translating articles published in Hong Kong for Fortune. He states that the chip shortage will cost automakers 4% in sales this year, though doesn't make any connection from the lower supply to higher new car prices. Much can be extrapolated, but it's not being said by poor Eamon from High Wycombe.
Christiaan Hetzner ia a graduate of Georgetown University, with a degree in Foreign Service, International Affairs. An interesting chap, he was an election monitor in Bosnia and Kosovo for three years. He is an experienced automotive correspondent working in Germany for Fortune. He draws the direct relation between higher prices for cars and chip shortages. Note these are for new cars, not older cars, which with a lessening in new cars should probably also see some demand pickup. But it's all rather superficial. I don't know how much cars have gone up and I don't know how much supply is effecting demand etc. It's more of an investment story, right up Fortune's alley, than it is an economics story.
Jaime LaReau is an even more experienced reporter in the automotive industry. She graduated with a BA in Journalism from Michigan State in 1991. Go Spartans. She's even more detailed in discussing how new car prices have risen and how used car sales have also risen, but there is a significant lack of macro economic view from the article. Like, why did demand for new and used cars not drop during the pandemic and during the recovery? She talks about zero percent financing and home car delivery, but that doesn't really explain the demand does it? It's a business article, not an economics article.
Lance Lambert actually has a BA in Economics and Journalism, from the great University of Cincinnati. He's also something of a data journalist. He confirms what you wrote earlier about the prices of lumber, but still doesn't answer the question about how demand jumped in 2020. There is some talk about running to Home Depot for do it yourself projects and millennials hitting homebuying years, but that doesn't explain where all the money come from while sawmills thought there was going to be a housing crash. In the midst of a recession, where did the money come from for millions to start home improvement projects or put down payments on new homes? It seems to remain a mystery for Fortune, which is a business and investment magazine, not an economics magazine.
I'm not going to delve deep on the bacon bit. Suffice to say that the pattern is clear yet I generally cannot see sales of bacon really changing much in America. But one thing to note is that the price of bacon is apparently being driven by investors in pork futures. Like any commodity, the link between price and actual supply and demand is warped by investor perception. The author, Jennifer Shrike, also points to booming stock market profits needing to be reinvested somewhere, so why not pork? Jennifer happens to be a graduate of Kansas State University with a BA in Agriculture Journalism, Communications, and Animal Science. Was also a member of Gamma Sigma Delta, the honor society of agriculture.
God bless Reuters and Timothy Gardner. He as a BA in Anthropology from Franklin and Marshall College, an MA in Print Journalism from New York University, and a BS in International Environmental Studies from Rutgers. This one full of anonymous sources. Also from April of 2020 and there is no clear line between then and now. It's been a year and a half. Certainly with a different POTUS in the white house, Russia and OPEC should have been able to ramp up production by now if they wanted. This is primarily a political story, with everyone's favorite devil, L'Orange, at the center of it.
For my response, I would like to give a Mr. Steven Rattner. Mr. Rattner has a degree in Economics from Brown. He is the Chairman and CEO of Willett Advisors, which handles Michael Bloomberg's charity money. He writes for the Grey Hooker and is the economic analyst for Morning Joe. He was a counselor to the secretary of the Treasury during the Obama administration. Mr. Rattner seems to believe that the Biden penchant for shoveling money into the economy seems to have played a part in rising inflation, and is joined by former Treasury secretary Larry Summers and "others".
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/opinion/biden-inflation-spending-manchin.htmlIn an oped for the Grey Hooker, Mr. Ratter seems to believe the Rescue America Plan of the Biden Administration has much to blame for the fact that Americans have 2.3 trillion dollars in their bank accounts. I've personally been getting an extra $800 in tax credits every month (thank you Uncle Joe), which I have been spending on hookers and blow (thank you Uncle Joe). This is on top of the ten thousand dollars Mr. Catgrabber threw at me. All of this despite the fact that I never lost my job, and in fact made more money than ever last year due to my connections with the health care industry and COVID being a massive industry. Multiply this across millions of Americans and I guess that demand probably is going up.
The original sin was the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in March. The bill — almost completely unfunded — sought to counter the effects of the Covid pandemic by focusing on demand-side stimulus rather than on investment. That has contributed materially to today’s inflation levels.
Doesn't really seem to shine a bunch of hope that BuildBackBetter is going to help inflation either. Being largely unfunded as well.
The responsibility for easing inflationary pressures also lies with the Biden administration. To its credit, it is scrambling to address the supply shortages, doing things like unclogging ports. But other ideas, such as releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, amount to distracting symbolic moves that are unlikely to have a significant effect on inflation.
The White House needs to inject some real fiscal discipline into its thinking. Given the importance of Mr. Biden’s spending initiatives, the right move would be to add significant revenue sources. Yes, that means tax increases. We can’t get back money badly spent. But we can build this economic plan back better.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/fed-inflation-markets.htmlLawrence Summers is the Charles W Eliot Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard. He has a PhD in economics from Harvard. He was Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton, and served as the Chief Economist at the World Bank (illuminati member) and was the President of Harvard for five years.
First, while there are enormous uncertainties, there is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability. This will be manageable if monetary and fiscal policy can be rapidly adjusted to address the problem. But given the commitments the Fed has made, administration officials’ dismissal of even the possibility of inflation, and the difficulties in mobilizing congressional support for tax increases or spending cuts, there is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply. Stimulus measures of the magnitude contemplated are steps into the unknown. For credibility, they need to be accompanied by clear statements that the consequences will be monitored closely and, if necessary, there will be the capacity and will to adjust policy quickly.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/04/larry-summers-biden-covid-stimulus/I truly respect the good sources and excellent reporting by experienced automotive and agricultural reporters. I don't know about the clowns at Reuters. But they were talking about prices, not exactly inflation, or how demand rose while supply dropped off. I will see your journalists and raise you two economists, both who worked for democratic administrations.
