Reply to Why has inflation hit the US more than Europe?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]American corporate greed and shareholder expectations, with low government regulation.

Companies took the Covid excuse to raise prices as much as they could get away with without decreasing demand for their product. 
Also once the few top companies started cutting their workforce 10%, almost all the Fortune 500 companies took the opportunity to do the same. 
Result- record corporate profits and stock market performance for last 3 years[/quote]

Corporate profits have not outpaced actual inflation. The value of the money is dropping rapidly due to inflating the money supply since 2008. If corporate profits weren’t “up” then profits would be in the toilet adjusted for inflation.
[/quote]

Plus, the "record for the last three years" thing conveniently avoids the fact that corporate profits were mostly very low four years ago. What has happened is that corporate profits have recovered to where they were before, adjusted for inflation. [/quote]

Not evenly across industries. I worked for a global corporate food company for 15 years.  We can take more pricing in the U.S. due to less competition and regulation than in Europe. We were able to keep prices initially increased for supply chain issues high well after the problems were resolved and reap profits for the past 3 years. We had record profits and bonuses. Now demand has finally tanked and we will lay off employees to meet shareholder expectations.  Europe also has harder labor laws that prohibit this.  Money supply that kept rates low since the last recession and US stimulus helped feed the demand despite prices.  If the U.S. had raised rates at the end of Obama or during Trump, govt stimulus wouldn't have been our only lever during covid.[/quote]

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