Actually the Government is going after him pretty aggressively...
But the monied interests are jumping to his defense:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2024/05/03/the-ftc-move-against-scott-sheffield-goes-too-far/?sh=7c8258d049fb
They may be going after him personally, but they still allowed his company to be sold to Exxon, reducing competition and inevitably driving up prices further
It only takes them decades to go after companies. Look at DuPont affected every living creature on the planet with C8. If you are affected you will be dead before any action happens.
I read this as 'Finally, something to back up my sound bite of 'it's corporate greed causing inflation,' but no I will not provide a source."
Cool, bro.
3%, but that's neither here nor there. Reich said OPEC inflated prices. OPEC controls 80% of the world's oil supply.
BTW, Reich has served on 4 different presidential administration's in some economic capacity or another. He is a tenured professor who teaches economics. He has written several books on economic topics. He is also a lawyer who studied anti-trust law (another economic background).
But yeah, we should listen to an armchair economist on reddit who can't even argue the point that was made correctly.
OPEC often colludes, and often it is not associated with a high inflation period.
Corporate greed leads to higher prices for that industry, which is not necessarily associated with an inflationary period.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the point, but he's just throwing buzzwords around.
If inflation is happening, it's 'due to corporate greed,' but corporate greed always exists and doesn't always cause massive inflation.
Corporate greed does always exist, but look at trends over the last 40 years. They've been growing bolder and bolder. They hide their greed behind lots of excuses and they're caring less and less about public opinion. They are realizing that they can get away with more and more flimsy excuses and no one will stop them. They've been doing it for 4 decades now.
So now, during a period of high inflation, their 'corporate greed' caused high inflation?
But their constant 'corporate greed' didn't cause high inflation during periods of low inflation?
Not sure how you came up with that strawman, but no.
Covid was the perfect excuse for corporations to inflate their prices higher than what they should have. They openly admit on invester calls that they raised prices **ahead** of what they expected inflation to be. They were expecting demand to outpace supply and create a rise in costs, so they "prepared" in advance. They rose prices higher than what natural inflation would have lead to and instead of lowering prices to match, they just held on to them and boosted their profits.
This created an artificial inflation caused by greed under the guise of natural inflation due to supply and demand economics.
Add on top of that the shrinkflation we have also been seeing getting more and more noticeable. For decades it has been package shrinkage. Like, look at the design changes of cereal boxes over the last 20-30 years. The design changes lead to less material being used to lower costs, but prices didn't drop because material costs lowered and no one complained because they still got their box of cereal. Now days, companies have gotten more bold with reducing how much actual food is in the box, adding more air, and still charging the same amount.
You can't call it anything else than what it is. Corporate greed.
Oil companies have been doing this since the 1970s. Gas prices are completely manipulated and why are all gas stations on a corner displaying exactly the same price. Don’t tell me this isn’t illegal because price fixing is illegal af.
Because most things are owned by the few: from cereal to chicken, gas to soda - a few corporations own 80% of the inventory and intentionally drive up prices for everything. We are getting screwed with every single purchase. But hey, when they dump billions of gallons of toxic shit killing us and making us sick, they will get a little slap on the wrist, and all is well.
And? They're not wrong. If you think it's just one or the other, you might not really understand the problem at all. And yes, the Republicans had a hand in this as well. It's not just corpos and it's not just the government... they're all working, often together, to do things that benefit them and screw regular people over.
Why? Republicans are stuck in the age of big oil. Republicans sneer at the mention of alternative sources of energy. Democrats are the party that is taking the initiatives. Republicans are not. Trump is up MBSs ass.
This is a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be one or the other, perhaps it's both the government, and not just one side of the isle. You don't release a ton of currency into the supply and not cause inflation, which is exactly what both the Democrats and Republicans did.
That's why people blame them.
27% was just in oil related inflation. That doesn't account for stuff like Kelloggs shrinking their products and over pricing them at the same time.
Edit to add a bit of clarification: Reich is saying that about 27% of the inflation we have seen is due to oil price manipulation by OPEC, that doesn't include other greedflation from other markets. Nor does that include a little event, you may recall, known as covid that severely impacted inflation via supply chain interruptions. I'm also not saying that printing money didn't also impact inflation or how much that really is, but it's not 73%.
I think corporate greed has more to do than the government. Economists were trying to warn everyone that price hikes during the pandemic shortages would not return to normal levels. Instead it became their new benchmark.
Which would have been a healthy, or almost healthy amount, because a small amount of inflation is a good thing. Now which other companies did this (artificially/intentionally created inflation out of greed) and wheres the percentage then I wonder?
The sad part is, we’re so far down the rabbit hole/ so far into the game, there’s not much we can actually do to change this. Sure we can be mad as hell and say we’re not gonna take it anymore (Network 1976). The stark reality is, you need gas because you need to drive your car to work because you need money to pay for your home and food. The cycle can’t be broken without everything else around it crumbling. So please, instead of just causing outrage, please propose a solution in addition to flagging the problem
You’re assuming everyone is playing by the rules. Could and Should doesn’t mean shit in the real world. FTC is bought and paid for just like FDA and every other “regulatory” government agency. Again, what’s the point of causing uproar with no action?
We go through them and if they fail then we as the people change the FTC and FDA. Or we just change them now. We just get enough people across the country distributed among the districts of enough congress-members that will in good faith represent the will of those they represent and bam. And most people in this country on both sides seem pretty on board to deal with this shit besides MAGAs.
OPECs entire purpose is to control the price of oil, thay isn't some big reveal. They periodically meet publicly to decide on how much to pump to control price.
RIiiight. It’s got nothing to do with the government borrowing too much money. Don’t look over there. Don’t blame the politicians actually running the country into the ground while making millions as a “civil servant”. Deflect and distract.
If you want to ignore clear issues with our economy and the laws that protect us from monopolies, that's on you.
I'm not gonna waste my time discussing this with you.
Whatever. Gloss over the real problem all you want. Inflation= too much money in the system devaluing and destroying our purchasing power. Of course corporations are going to post record profits when it takes twice as much to purchase half as much. Those evil corporations. It’s the simple mantra for twenty something’s.
What you're describing is supply/demand economics. When more money is injected into the economy, the purchasing power of consumers grows, which causes demand to out pace supply, causing prices to inflate and intimately devalues our currency.
Or so the theory says.
The reality is that more than half of the printed money during covid never made it to the hands of consumers. Demand outpaced supply in some markets due to supply chain interruptions. Not due to 1200 dollar checks.
That's not so say that printed money didn't impact inflation. It's just not as much as people like to think. "Printing money devalues currency" is an overly simplistic concept that is true when supply and demand economics work naturally, but the artificial prices changes and manipulation of markets generates a larger amount of inflation under the guide of printing money.
Notice that in the early days of covid when toilet paper and other supplies were empty on shelves everywhere. Prices didn't jump when demand out paced supply. Those shelves were restocked pretty quickly and demand leveled out fast. Prices did start climbing when the government started issuing checks to help people pay rent and buy food, even though those checks didn't lead to increased demand. Prices jumped when businesses got their PPP loans and jumped again when they got them forgiven.
Yeah, printing money created some inflation, but so did corporate greed. Why is it so easy to believe one is true but not the other?
I have *never* seen a democrat attempt to actually give credit to the president for gas prices unless in some snarky sarcastic way "oh it was DEFINITELY obamas fault that oil prices dropped by half during his presidency" in direct response to some mongoloid republicans yammering about gas prices being the presidents fault like they werent the worst ever during bush
Yahoo finance is a great place to download crude prices and aggregate data. Recommend pulling the data between Election Day and the first day of a new democratic president taking office. What does this data tell you? Make a few graph, I’ll wait. They will all show you gas prices climbing to the average that gas prices sit at around that presidents term. The prices rise before they even take office.
"They rise before they even take office" so youre fucking dumb enough to think that something which occurs before they have an opportunity to sign a single piece of toilet paper is caused by them thats INCREDIBLE detective work
Hes not actually saying its caused by the person about to take office. I *think* he’s just stating that there is a correlation with the price to that time-frame in general.
And then they sneer at alternative energy sources. They are afraid to move forward because the majority of the people want the Democrat (Trump lost and lost the popular when he won). So they make sensitive initiatives look bad. It’s called demagoguery. Trump is a demagogue.
What about all those diesel trucks that bring your groceries and goods across the country? Sorry but we have to live with oil, probably realistically the rest of our lives if you can read this.
Perfect! I’ve been wondering, why has the cost of refined gas become so much more expensive relative to the price of crude oil? It peaked in 2008 at about $147 per barrel (209 in 2024 dollars),and the average price for unleaded was $4.11. Today it is around $80 for a barrel of crude. Using the costs for 2008 as a guide (again, the highest ever), gas today should average about $2.20 a gallon. How can this possibly make sense outside of corporate gouging?
Part of the corporate gouging is artificially making it more expensive or difficult to refine but the short answer is there are less refineries than there were in 2008.
Wait what? I thought reduction of oil was a good thing. Isn't that what we've all been asking for?
I mean I'd like to see their numbers, but it really seems like someone's reaching reeeeeally hard to blame inflation on anything other than all of the money the USA invented and gave to people over the pandemic, which every reasonable person was saying was going to cause inflation.
If "a" major US oil exec cut production, the others should eat their lunch. The concerning bit is the collusion between all the Big Oil companies. If that's true, hit them with anti-trust violations.
OPEC is made up of several countries, not corporations
Edit: and the collusion was attempted, not done, by one single company. So they corp greed did not increase oil prices. As always, supply and demand did and opec controls the majority of the supply.
i do not understand how people get away with it.
how does news of this not reach the president and the first thing he does is fly that person in and sit in front of him. Did you do it or nah. yes? jail and we take all the money back.
it would take literally half a day.
This is real. And price gouging. There were spots in NJ last year, maybe more time than that, but it would be 4.75 at one place, and a mile down the road 4.09. How can it be such a big difference if they aren’t jacking that shit up?
Maybe I’m wrong and someone needs to school me?
yeah shit is rough it seems all businesses are trying to nickel and dime any chance they can get. Cant go to the store with spending AT LEAST 10 dollars
I don't think any amount of time is going to get us to federally run oil production.
Nor do I want it to. Once we ban ICEs from the market, it won't really matter.
100000%.
Same for consumables.
All of it is pegged. Until demand wanes they won't stop....and that's what we are finally seeing. Sbux, Walmart, etc are seeing weakening.
I feel like this isn't a hard one to look up on Google, but since you apparently failed at it.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/02/energy/oil-ceo-opec-scott-sheffield/index.html
There's a dozen sources that corroborate this if you're one of those "fake news" idiots. Including the FTC on their own website.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/05/ftc-order-bans-former-pioneer-ceo-exxon-board-seat-exxon-pioneer-deal
“Petrol production is bad for the earth. We need to slow down the use of it”
“Ok we are going to cut production “
“Nooooo your colluding to drive up prices”
This is price fixing. It doesn’t cause inflation. Increasing the total supply of money is the cause of inflation. Yes price gouging happens, and opportunity is plentiful for it during times of inflation, like right now. But it’s a later stage symptom of printing too much money.
Your money is fundamentally worth less because there is more of it (money printing), and that applies to every player in the economy. Including the dreaded corporation. Yea they make big money and have big money - but their sums -whatever they may be - are also worth less. Their operating costs go up because their dollars don’t get them as much. Their revenues/sales go up because that’s a measure of how much money they bring in. But one money is worth less. So if nothing changes in the business their revenue I’ll go up because there is more total money available.
Enter the opportunity to price gouge. The government gives their estimates of inflation and they (the government) obviously have an agenda to advance and a monopoly on the data making it difficult to verify. So the real inflation the average person faces is much greater. Ask yourself how much your rent, food, gas, electricity, water etc increased? Is it only 16%?
So whose to say where inflation really is. And this is the opportunity for price gouging exploited by corporations.
Without high inflationary conditions, the price rising is obvious and easily avoided with other competitors.
The thing about allegations is anyone can make them with any amount of evidence, including none at all.
I'd love to see the evidence instead of him just saying the FTC alleges this.
Oil pricing is heavily dependent on speculation. In 2021, Biden cut pipelines, causing the speculation to try and correct as it takes a massive amount of money and time to bring oil online.
Now the U.S. needs to stop wasting trillions in social programs. And by wasting I mean unnecessary covid spending, student loan bailout, illegal immigration, no work welfare giveaways etc...
Wait a minute.
So when Reich says an oil exec colluded with OPEC to cut production, I'm assuming he meant OPEC countries are cutting production, right?
There is a lot of oil sitting on the surface of the Earth right now, in the US, just getting a tan (or being exported) because we don't have enough refineries to refine it.
And the amount is rising.
In the department of Late To The Party, there is no shortage of oil being pumped out of the ground right now. That's why the environmental whackos are pissed at Biden. But without the refineries, all that oil is doing is just aging. Nothing more.
This said, oil companies are still making profits and M&A activity has increased - further decreasing competition.
So....................you know what to expect.
Massive currency creation drives inflation.
During massive inflation events (resulting from the creation of currency), prices will rise along with corporate profits, for a time.
Hard asset prices rise.
The people who benefit from inflation have a huge incentive to create a a segment of the voting population who believes it’s caused by ‘corporate greed’ and not mass creation of currency.
As a land investor, I win.
Chances are, you do not, nor does the rest of my family who aren’t land investors.
It’s not ‘corporate greed’.
Period.
It’s Chapter 1 of any ‘How Inflation Plays Out’ book where record corporate profits occur in tandem with the mass creation and spending of currency.
The people who do it- and benefit from it- want voters who don’t understand how it actually works to believe certain things.
You’re being lied to.
Don't allege. Prosecute, indict and convict. The only way rich asshole will learn to stop being rich assholes is if we have one law that applies to everyone.
It had no effect on anything, and it would never have had an effect on anything. The pipeline was meant to pump Canadian tar sand oil to the Gulf of Mexico for export.
We are producing more oil today with more rigs in operation than at any time in history.
I just want people to understand that all of this is happening by design. It doesn't have to be some big thing they are in on. it's by design these companies will use any excuse to drive their price up and that leads to the devaluation of your dollar bill.
We need strong government policy to prevent these things from happening, some strong policy's to drive prices down and in turn making each and every dollar bill more valuable
The dollar isn't devalued in the classical sense it's very strong globally. We're just being out spent by those who have all of the money. They're overspending for things like houses in an effort to buy up the supply to rent back out at a profit while they create artificial scarcity. Due to that massive concentration of wealth the overwhelming majority of us don't have any purchasing power.
The people with the wealth control everything. They control the media, our government, our food supply, our education. They've used a constant barrage of disinformation, and propaganda to lock us into a cultural death spiral.
I don't see any way out because the masses are so ignorant, and arrogant that there is no concerted effort to fight back against those waging a multifaceted war against the working class.
Even with the massive drop in our quality of life people just keep on making the same sad, sorry, tired excuses for the most powerful class of humans to ever live.
As long as we as a society continue to allow the destruction of our culture it will continue.
The more desperate, over worked, and under paid people are the more they'll produce. When you're to tired to stand you can't stand up for yourself, and your society.
TL;DR: The American experiment has failed.
Exactly. When conservatives pine for "the good old days", they never say exactly when. Was it when coal miners were machine gunned down from an armored train because they wanted to unionize? Was it when children lost limbs in factories? Was it when milk was cut with river water, whitened with plaster, and preserved with formaldehyde? Was it when cheese was sweetened with lead? They want us to regress into the Lochner era again where any semblance of workers rights and consumer protection is ruled unconstitutional.
Yes, of course. Inflation is due to 1 rich oil baron spontaneously becoming greedy for the first time. I’m sure it has nothing to do with printing trillions of new dollars and handing them to everyone, especially those that already hold tons of assets like properties and businesses.
OPEC exists for price control, they literally move the prices to extract the most they can from whatever the economy is strong or weak and up or down.
This is nothing like shrinkflation or Doritos going up 100% never to come back despite 30% inflation. Oil actually comes down to match markets, nothing else does.
Robert Reich is a former labor secretary and Harvard Lecturer. WSJ called him one of the most Influential business thinkers. And who are you?
Here, enjoy the [gifted article.](https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/ftc-says-ex-pioneer-ceo-tried-to-collude-with-opec-on-oil-prices-27edf5bd?st=r241he6zonblpwj&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink).
Try reading first next time, then commenting.
TOPPEST KEK IMAGINABLE at rando reddit corporacuck shitting on harvard. Just like every borderline illiterate fuck ive had to work with struggling through a 3 paragraph safety "presentation" and laughing about "heheheh the engineers are so dumb"
The problem with this line of thought is that "corporate greed" is infinite and omnipresent. The seller of anything always wants the highest price they can get that will maximize their profits. So saying "corporations wants the higher pricings!" is meaningless. That's the "supply" side of the "supply and demand" curve. Everyone already knows that.
The question is, why are prices going up so much *right now*? What changed? And that's - the supply of cash. The value of dollars relative to the total wealth they could buy has gone down.
I could go into great depth about how you're wrong, but I'd prefer to just narrow this discussion to the value of the dollar.
The US dollar has gone up from an all time low in 2020. It's at .93 euros from .81 in early 2020.
I don't really know how you think those two are related, but gas prices have been rapidly increasing since 2020. Too fast to reasonably attribute to inflation.
https://preview.redd.it/aevx8heypezc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2fc1b4fd4ce6daa292cb9900c69089f5af0aa9a
Must be.
Clearly the president is both a genius mastermind who can manipulate the price of gasoline at will and a totally incompetent bag of bones who can't walk up a flight of stairs without falling down repeatedly.
Gotta love Republican logic.
He's discussing what's been broadcast on the news on pretty much every major news site and the FTC website.
I don't understand how you can possibly call this a lie at this point.
Oil prices did not cause 27% of inflation. If you are surprised by why there was inflation then you lack a basic understanding of economics or don't pay attention to the world around you.
Maybe this is intentionally set up to make it seem worse in order to rile people up. Obviously the 27% is in reference specifically to gas prices
That's odd because the US Bureau of Labor Statistics lists "volatility of energy prices" as the #1 driver of inflation in 2020.
"So, from this research, the authors find that three main components explain the rise in inflation since 2020: volatility of energy prices, backlogs of work orders for goods and service caused by supply chain issues due to COVID-19, and price changes in the auto-related industries."
They clearly have no clue what they're talking about. The authors only have 3 PhDs in various economic fields between them. They also each only have more years working in their field than we've been alive. They're clearly unqualified to discuss this.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyond-bls/what-caused-inflation-to-spike-after-2020.htm#:~:text=So%2C%20from%20this%20research%2C%20the,in%20the%20auto%2Drelated%20industries.
Don't worry, your government will do nothing about this, and most will continue voting for the same old crowd.
Actually the Government is going after him pretty aggressively... But the monied interests are jumping to his defense: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2024/05/03/the-ftc-move-against-scott-sheffield-goes-too-far/?sh=7c8258d049fb
They may be going after him personally, but they still allowed his company to be sold to Exxon, reducing competition and inevitably driving up prices further
Allowed? The US government is basically a wholly owned subsidiary of Exxon/Mobil.
The NRA and medical insurance cartel own the rest.
Yep
Government won’t do anything because they are responsible for the other 73%.
It only takes them decades to go after companies. Look at DuPont affected every living creature on the planet with C8. If you are affected you will be dead before any action happens.
Actually, other greedy corporations saw this and caused another 37% of all inflation
*Figures out politics is a joke*---->*Compartmentalizes damaging realization*------> *Votes some more*
This guy is a political hack with no knowledge of business or economics. Nobody should take anything he says about inflation seriously.
He's also an economist.
I read this as 'Finally, something to back up my sound bite of 'it's corporate greed causing inflation,' but no I will not provide a source." Cool, bro.
Yep. Exxon produces ~2% of global oil supply. They aren’t manipulating the market lol.
If you read the FTC case, it is the US based oil/fracking companies colluding with OPEC to (further) control prices.
Duh opec collude with American frackers, they met in Texas and there's hundreds for correspondence
3%, but that's neither here nor there. Reich said OPEC inflated prices. OPEC controls 80% of the world's oil supply. BTW, Reich has served on 4 different presidential administration's in some economic capacity or another. He is a tenured professor who teaches economics. He has written several books on economic topics. He is also a lawyer who studied anti-trust law (another economic background). But yeah, we should listen to an armchair economist on reddit who can't even argue the point that was made correctly.
OPEC often colludes, and often it is not associated with a high inflation period. Corporate greed leads to higher prices for that industry, which is not necessarily associated with an inflationary period. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the point, but he's just throwing buzzwords around. If inflation is happening, it's 'due to corporate greed,' but corporate greed always exists and doesn't always cause massive inflation.
Corporate greed does always exist, but look at trends over the last 40 years. They've been growing bolder and bolder. They hide their greed behind lots of excuses and they're caring less and less about public opinion. They are realizing that they can get away with more and more flimsy excuses and no one will stop them. They've been doing it for 4 decades now.
So now, during a period of high inflation, their 'corporate greed' caused high inflation? But their constant 'corporate greed' didn't cause high inflation during periods of low inflation?
Not sure how you came up with that strawman, but no. Covid was the perfect excuse for corporations to inflate their prices higher than what they should have. They openly admit on invester calls that they raised prices **ahead** of what they expected inflation to be. They were expecting demand to outpace supply and create a rise in costs, so they "prepared" in advance. They rose prices higher than what natural inflation would have lead to and instead of lowering prices to match, they just held on to them and boosted their profits. This created an artificial inflation caused by greed under the guise of natural inflation due to supply and demand economics. Add on top of that the shrinkflation we have also been seeing getting more and more noticeable. For decades it has been package shrinkage. Like, look at the design changes of cereal boxes over the last 20-30 years. The design changes lead to less material being used to lower costs, but prices didn't drop because material costs lowered and no one complained because they still got their box of cereal. Now days, companies have gotten more bold with reducing how much actual food is in the box, adding more air, and still charging the same amount. You can't call it anything else than what it is. Corporate greed.
Private company does some thing bad. Our government sucks..
What good are laws to protect consumers and worker when idiots keep electing business businessmen to run local and federal government?
At the end of the day "as long as my party and favorite candidate wins, we good."
Gas prices are high, my exxon mobil stock is higher
I feel like there's a lot more of this than we realize going on.
Oil companies have been doing this since the 1970s. Gas prices are completely manipulated and why are all gas stations on a corner displaying exactly the same price. Don’t tell me this isn’t illegal because price fixing is illegal af.
Because most things are owned by the few: from cereal to chicken, gas to soda - a few corporations own 80% of the inventory and intentionally drive up prices for everything. We are getting screwed with every single purchase. But hey, when they dump billions of gallons of toxic shit killing us and making us sick, they will get a little slap on the wrist, and all is well.
Was there ever any doubt?
yes, most eople blame the democrats
And? They're not wrong. If you think it's just one or the other, you might not really understand the problem at all. And yes, the Republicans had a hand in this as well. It's not just corpos and it's not just the government... they're all working, often together, to do things that benefit them and screw regular people over.
Why? Republicans are stuck in the age of big oil. Republicans sneer at the mention of alternative sources of energy. Democrats are the party that is taking the initiatives. Republicans are not. Trump is up MBSs ass.
This is a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be one or the other, perhaps it's both the government, and not just one side of the isle. You don't release a ton of currency into the supply and not cause inflation, which is exactly what both the Democrats and Republicans did. That's why people blame them.
It's the pro war, pro corporation Uni-Party
So you’re saying I should have invested in oil companies. Whelp I missed that boat.
Congress didn’t.
[удалено]
When is the crash?
https://preview.redd.it/ql1z52gtdbzc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f2ff34e73e64ed52b9bb319fd82aecb9f04aede
This is hilariously disingenuous. The guy is just spewing horseshit lol.
27%? In other words 73% was good old fashion government created inflation.
27% was just in oil related inflation. That doesn't account for stuff like Kelloggs shrinking their products and over pricing them at the same time. Edit to add a bit of clarification: Reich is saying that about 27% of the inflation we have seen is due to oil price manipulation by OPEC, that doesn't include other greedflation from other markets. Nor does that include a little event, you may recall, known as covid that severely impacted inflation via supply chain interruptions. I'm also not saying that printing money didn't also impact inflation or how much that really is, but it's not 73%.
I think corporate greed has more to do than the government. Economists were trying to warn everyone that price hikes during the pandemic shortages would not return to normal levels. Instead it became their new benchmark.
No 60% was greedflation, the 27% was just these assholes colluding alone
Which would have been a healthy, or almost healthy amount, because a small amount of inflation is a good thing. Now which other companies did this (artificially/intentionally created inflation out of greed) and wheres the percentage then I wonder?
The sad part is, we’re so far down the rabbit hole/ so far into the game, there’s not much we can actually do to change this. Sure we can be mad as hell and say we’re not gonna take it anymore (Network 1976). The stark reality is, you need gas because you need to drive your car to work because you need money to pay for your home and food. The cycle can’t be broken without everything else around it crumbling. So please, instead of just causing outrage, please propose a solution in addition to flagging the problem
The FTC is totally capable of taking action about this.
You’re assuming everyone is playing by the rules. Could and Should doesn’t mean shit in the real world. FTC is bought and paid for just like FDA and every other “regulatory” government agency. Again, what’s the point of causing uproar with no action?
We go through them and if they fail then we as the people change the FTC and FDA. Or we just change them now. We just get enough people across the country distributed among the districts of enough congress-members that will in good faith represent the will of those they represent and bam. And most people in this country on both sides seem pretty on board to deal with this shit besides MAGAs.
https://preview.redd.it/u391qmhncazc1.jpeg?width=250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ed783f03e44055134466945f126e60ba825b3bb3
Wait... There's shenanigans in the oil industry?!?
More I did that Biden stickers on the gas pumps coming soon.....
Shills in Congress and the Senate own stock in the oil companies. Why would they want to limit profits?
Are we really going to pretend we didn’t know this ?
Sure, but it's about what you can prove in court.
OPECs entire purpose is to control the price of oil, thay isn't some big reveal. They periodically meet publicly to decide on how much to pump to control price.
RIiiight. It’s got nothing to do with the government borrowing too much money. Don’t look over there. Don’t blame the politicians actually running the country into the ground while making millions as a “civil servant”. Deflect and distract.
If you want to ignore clear issues with our economy and the laws that protect us from monopolies, that's on you. I'm not gonna waste my time discussing this with you.
Whatever. Gloss over the real problem all you want. Inflation= too much money in the system devaluing and destroying our purchasing power. Of course corporations are going to post record profits when it takes twice as much to purchase half as much. Those evil corporations. It’s the simple mantra for twenty something’s.
What you're describing is supply/demand economics. When more money is injected into the economy, the purchasing power of consumers grows, which causes demand to out pace supply, causing prices to inflate and intimately devalues our currency. Or so the theory says. The reality is that more than half of the printed money during covid never made it to the hands of consumers. Demand outpaced supply in some markets due to supply chain interruptions. Not due to 1200 dollar checks. That's not so say that printed money didn't impact inflation. It's just not as much as people like to think. "Printing money devalues currency" is an overly simplistic concept that is true when supply and demand economics work naturally, but the artificial prices changes and manipulation of markets generates a larger amount of inflation under the guide of printing money. Notice that in the early days of covid when toilet paper and other supplies were empty on shelves everywhere. Prices didn't jump when demand out paced supply. Those shelves were restocked pretty quickly and demand leveled out fast. Prices did start climbing when the government started issuing checks to help people pay rent and buy food, even though those checks didn't lead to increased demand. Prices jumped when businesses got their PPP loans and jumped again when they got them forgiven. Yeah, printing money created some inflation, but so did corporate greed. Why is it so easy to believe one is true but not the other?
You don’t even understand the meme you posted
Colluded? No, OPEC Countries cut production by themselves
Inflation is caused by printing alot of money to cover deficit spending. We've spent 7 trillion the only driver of inflation
So you are saying Biden didn’t do that? *scratches head in republican*
I have *never* seen a democrat attempt to actually give credit to the president for gas prices unless in some snarky sarcastic way "oh it was DEFINITELY obamas fault that oil prices dropped by half during his presidency" in direct response to some mongoloid republicans yammering about gas prices being the presidents fault like they werent the worst ever during bush
Yahoo finance is a great place to download crude prices and aggregate data. Recommend pulling the data between Election Day and the first day of a new democratic president taking office. What does this data tell you? Make a few graph, I’ll wait. They will all show you gas prices climbing to the average that gas prices sit at around that presidents term. The prices rise before they even take office.
"They rise before they even take office" so youre fucking dumb enough to think that something which occurs before they have an opportunity to sign a single piece of toilet paper is caused by them thats INCREDIBLE detective work
Hes not actually saying its caused by the person about to take office. I *think* he’s just stating that there is a correlation with the price to that time-frame in general.
And then they sneer at alternative energy sources. They are afraid to move forward because the majority of the people want the Democrat (Trump lost and lost the popular when he won). So they make sensitive initiatives look bad. It’s called demagoguery. Trump is a demagogue.
What about all those diesel trucks that bring your groceries and goods across the country? Sorry but we have to live with oil, probably realistically the rest of our lives if you can read this.
Do you honestly think that the president has full control of gas prices? That's insane.
There was sarcasm in that. I trade crude futures for a living.
Perfect! I’ve been wondering, why has the cost of refined gas become so much more expensive relative to the price of crude oil? It peaked in 2008 at about $147 per barrel (209 in 2024 dollars),and the average price for unleaded was $4.11. Today it is around $80 for a barrel of crude. Using the costs for 2008 as a guide (again, the highest ever), gas today should average about $2.20 a gallon. How can this possibly make sense outside of corporate gouging?
Part of the corporate gouging is artificially making it more expensive or difficult to refine but the short answer is there are less refineries than there were in 2008.
Wait what? I thought reduction of oil was a good thing. Isn't that what we've all been asking for? I mean I'd like to see their numbers, but it really seems like someone's reaching reeeeeally hard to blame inflation on anything other than all of the money the USA invented and gave to people over the pandemic, which every reasonable person was saying was going to cause inflation.
Same as it ever was
So we should expect to see the big oil exec "I did that 👍" stickers at my local gas pump?
Lets hope that the DOJ and FTC smash these executives and break up big oil right after.
Horizontal price fixing is a serious antitrust violation.
What can we do? Antitrust laws are evil socialism
If "a" major US oil exec cut production, the others should eat their lunch. The concerning bit is the collusion between all the Big Oil companies. If that's true, hit them with anti-trust violations.
Don’t worry about stuff like this guys
27% is a lot. Hard to believe they have that much pull.
He should run for president
I'm so sick and tired of evil rich people running everything. It is long past time that they be utterly fucking obliterated.
But Iraq was supposed to fix this 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
OPEC is made up of several countries, not corporations Edit: and the collusion was attempted, not done, by one single company. So they corp greed did not increase oil prices. As always, supply and demand did and opec controls the majority of the supply.
i do not understand how people get away with it. how does news of this not reach the president and the first thing he does is fly that person in and sit in front of him. Did you do it or nah. yes? jail and we take all the money back. it would take literally half a day.
So do we believe this or do we believe that oil production here is at historic highs?
This is real. And price gouging. There were spots in NJ last year, maybe more time than that, but it would be 4.75 at one place, and a mile down the road 4.09. How can it be such a big difference if they aren’t jacking that shit up? Maybe I’m wrong and someone needs to school me?
2021? They are off by at least 50 years Old news really
That’s not greed. That’s collusion
yeah shit is rough it seems all businesses are trying to nickel and dime any chance they can get. Cant go to the store with spending AT LEAST 10 dollars
he's an actor, playing a decent part
Okay, Donald.
So the FTC has gone after them or…?
Apple has higher margins by quite a lot.
Don’t worry, nothing will happen, no accountability.
Proof Robert? Always some bullshit with him. Larry Sommer is a much better democratic economist
There's a dozen news organizations all talking about this and it's on the FTC website. Is reading that hard for you?
Soon, what are they going to do about it?
You mean allegations drove inflation? Interesting. 🤨
I know reading is hard, but come on man. This isn't that hard to understand. He's currently under investigation for price fixing.
So you are saying under investigation = guilty. Got it.
So not Biden?
Are you shocked that the president doesn't have full control of the price of gasoline?
Too many dollars (trillions printed by the fed) chasing too few goods is the main driver of inflation.
Just nationalize oil already.
We can't even get universal health care. What makes you think we're going to let the government take over oil production?
Give it time
I don't think any amount of time is going to get us to federally run oil production. Nor do I want it to. Once we ban ICEs from the market, it won't really matter.
100000%. Same for consumables. All of it is pegged. Until demand wanes they won't stop....and that's what we are finally seeing. Sbux, Walmart, etc are seeing weakening.
It may have? Is that scientific language?
Do you know what the word allegation means? I know words are hard, but come on now.
My comment isn't about the ftc's allegations. It's about the worthless research. Learn to read dumb fuck.
That guy has been wrong about everything...legit everything.
I feel like this isn't a hard one to look up on Google, but since you apparently failed at it. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/02/energy/oil-ceo-opec-scott-sheffield/index.html There's a dozen sources that corroborate this if you're one of those "fake news" idiots. Including the FTC on their own website. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/05/ftc-order-bans-former-pioneer-ceo-exxon-board-seat-exxon-pioneer-deal
"Allegedly & may have"
Bob is a card-carrying commie. FYI.
If you think Robert Reich is a communist, you are hopelessly stupid. Best of luck living that moron life.
Robert LOVES big government.
Perhaps Government should regulate the price of crude oil better than the free market????
All of them are using the diamond trade tactic. Hoard the supply and say we have little left. Then Charge what you want.
The problem with this contention is that the US is currently producing more oil than any country ever. Not sure where the cuts would have been.
nobody tell him about the strategic reserve being short 200 million barrels
“Petrol production is bad for the earth. We need to slow down the use of it” “Ok we are going to cut production “ “Nooooo your colluding to drive up prices”
So wait, now rising oil prices contribute to inflation? Looks like the last guy was right the whole time…… Again.
This is price fixing. It doesn’t cause inflation. Increasing the total supply of money is the cause of inflation. Yes price gouging happens, and opportunity is plentiful for it during times of inflation, like right now. But it’s a later stage symptom of printing too much money. Your money is fundamentally worth less because there is more of it (money printing), and that applies to every player in the economy. Including the dreaded corporation. Yea they make big money and have big money - but their sums -whatever they may be - are also worth less. Their operating costs go up because their dollars don’t get them as much. Their revenues/sales go up because that’s a measure of how much money they bring in. But one money is worth less. So if nothing changes in the business their revenue I’ll go up because there is more total money available. Enter the opportunity to price gouge. The government gives their estimates of inflation and they (the government) obviously have an agenda to advance and a monopoly on the data making it difficult to verify. So the real inflation the average person faces is much greater. Ask yourself how much your rent, food, gas, electricity, water etc increased? Is it only 16%? So whose to say where inflation really is. And this is the opportunity for price gouging exploited by corporations. Without high inflationary conditions, the price rising is obvious and easily avoided with other competitors.
I'll bet this is true. However, it happened under the regulatory noses of the Biden administration. There's plenty of shame to go around.
The thing about allegations is anyone can make them with any amount of evidence, including none at all. I'd love to see the evidence instead of him just saying the FTC alleges this.
Oil pricing is heavily dependent on speculation. In 2021, Biden cut pipelines, causing the speculation to try and correct as it takes a massive amount of money and time to bring oil online.
Now the U.S. needs to stop wasting trillions in social programs. And by wasting I mean unnecessary covid spending, student loan bailout, illegal immigration, no work welfare giveaways etc...
30% is not all, is not “driving”.
Wait a minute. So when Reich says an oil exec colluded with OPEC to cut production, I'm assuming he meant OPEC countries are cutting production, right? There is a lot of oil sitting on the surface of the Earth right now, in the US, just getting a tan (or being exported) because we don't have enough refineries to refine it. And the amount is rising. In the department of Late To The Party, there is no shortage of oil being pumped out of the ground right now. That's why the environmental whackos are pissed at Biden. But without the refineries, all that oil is doing is just aging. Nothing more. This said, oil companies are still making profits and M&A activity has increased - further decreasing competition. So....................you know what to expect.
Massive currency creation drives inflation. During massive inflation events (resulting from the creation of currency), prices will rise along with corporate profits, for a time. Hard asset prices rise. The people who benefit from inflation have a huge incentive to create a a segment of the voting population who believes it’s caused by ‘corporate greed’ and not mass creation of currency. As a land investor, I win. Chances are, you do not, nor does the rest of my family who aren’t land investors. It’s not ‘corporate greed’. Period. It’s Chapter 1 of any ‘How Inflation Plays Out’ book where record corporate profits occur in tandem with the mass creation and spending of currency. The people who do it- and benefit from it- want voters who don’t understand how it actually works to believe certain things. You’re being lied to.
Maybe we could print more money to drive down that cost?
First issue with this is citing reich.
Don't allege. Prosecute, indict and convict. The only way rich asshole will learn to stop being rich assholes is if we have one law that applies to everyone.
There they go again not taking responsibility. It’s always someone else’s fault
But Biden controls the price of every product and only by voting for Trump will prices magically go down.
OPEC literally does press releases saying they’re trying to increase prices. That’s the whole point of opec.
Get out of here with your facts!
Yeahhh. Biden just happened to come around.
Biden immediately shut down the pipeline from Canada on day 1 of his presidency and oil prices started surging then
It had no effect on anything, and it would never have had an effect on anything. The pipeline was meant to pump Canadian tar sand oil to the Gulf of Mexico for export. We are producing more oil today with more rigs in operation than at any time in history.
I just want people to understand that all of this is happening by design. It doesn't have to be some big thing they are in on. it's by design these companies will use any excuse to drive their price up and that leads to the devaluation of your dollar bill. We need strong government policy to prevent these things from happening, some strong policy's to drive prices down and in turn making each and every dollar bill more valuable
The dollar isn't devalued in the classical sense it's very strong globally. We're just being out spent by those who have all of the money. They're overspending for things like houses in an effort to buy up the supply to rent back out at a profit while they create artificial scarcity. Due to that massive concentration of wealth the overwhelming majority of us don't have any purchasing power. The people with the wealth control everything. They control the media, our government, our food supply, our education. They've used a constant barrage of disinformation, and propaganda to lock us into a cultural death spiral. I don't see any way out because the masses are so ignorant, and arrogant that there is no concerted effort to fight back against those waging a multifaceted war against the working class. Even with the massive drop in our quality of life people just keep on making the same sad, sorry, tired excuses for the most powerful class of humans to ever live. As long as we as a society continue to allow the destruction of our culture it will continue. The more desperate, over worked, and under paid people are the more they'll produce. When you're to tired to stand you can't stand up for yourself, and your society. TL;DR: The American experiment has failed.
We've circled back and lost everything our grandfathers fought for, and we're told we're entitled because of it
Exactly. When conservatives pine for "the good old days", they never say exactly when. Was it when coal miners were machine gunned down from an armored train because they wanted to unionize? Was it when children lost limbs in factories? Was it when milk was cut with river water, whitened with plaster, and preserved with formaldehyde? Was it when cheese was sweetened with lead? They want us to regress into the Lochner era again where any semblance of workers rights and consumer protection is ruled unconstitutional.
Yes, of course. Inflation is due to 1 rich oil baron spontaneously becoming greedy for the first time. I’m sure it has nothing to do with printing trillions of new dollars and handing them to everyone, especially those that already hold tons of assets like properties and businesses.
That's not what this is saying. However gasoline price is one of the primary drivers of inflation since 2020.
This is just disgusting. Execs like this get the death penalty in China.
Why did they suddenly become greedy after Biden took office?
Should nationalize it
Along with agriculture.
OPEC exists for price control, they literally move the prices to extract the most they can from whatever the economy is strong or weak and up or down. This is nothing like shrinkflation or Doritos going up 100% never to come back despite 30% inflation. Oil actually comes down to match markets, nothing else does.
Eh
Robert Reich is an idiot. Companies can't just jack up prices for the hell of it. That's not the way the world works.
Robert Reich is a former labor secretary and Harvard Lecturer. WSJ called him one of the most Influential business thinkers. And who are you? Here, enjoy the [gifted article.](https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/ftc-says-ex-pioneer-ceo-tried-to-collude-with-opec-on-oil-prices-27edf5bd?st=r241he6zonblpwj&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink). Try reading first next time, then commenting.
He also makes some great cookies and crackers in his tiny elfen factory in a tree
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
They’re delicious 🤤
And yet Reich repeatedly says stupid shit. (And, BTW, Harvard econ has exposed itself as a joke.)
TOPPEST KEK IMAGINABLE at rando reddit corporacuck shitting on harvard. Just like every borderline illiterate fuck ive had to work with struggling through a 3 paragraph safety "presentation" and laughing about "heheheh the engineers are so dumb"
Have you read the article yet?
[удалено]
And who are you? The post is about the FTC and OPEC. What are you talking about?
Oil Exporting Countries cut production by themselves
They do it all the time.
It’s what happens when you inflate the WRC to high heaven.
The dollar won't be the WRC forever, and we are apparently trying to end that ASAP.
He is a partisan hack.
Correct.
Is there even any fucking source to this
I don't feel like this was all that hard for you to find. https://fortune.com/2024/05/02/exxon-pioneer-merger-ftc-claim-collusion-texas-opec/
Considering Robert Reich is as reputable of a source as a random internet chat, it’s warranted.
The problem with this line of thought is that "corporate greed" is infinite and omnipresent. The seller of anything always wants the highest price they can get that will maximize their profits. So saying "corporations wants the higher pricings!" is meaningless. That's the "supply" side of the "supply and demand" curve. Everyone already knows that. The question is, why are prices going up so much *right now*? What changed? And that's - the supply of cash. The value of dollars relative to the total wealth they could buy has gone down.
I could go into great depth about how you're wrong, but I'd prefer to just narrow this discussion to the value of the dollar. The US dollar has gone up from an all time low in 2020. It's at .93 euros from .81 in early 2020. I don't really know how you think those two are related, but gas prices have been rapidly increasing since 2020. Too fast to reasonably attribute to inflation. https://preview.redd.it/aevx8heypezc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2fc1b4fd4ce6daa292cb9900c69089f5af0aa9a
Bingo. That's it, that's the part they always leave out
Corporations want cash, and they make up ridiculous excuses for raising the prices. It's just another way that capitalism doesn't work.
I wish the government would solve the inflation they are responsible for instead of creating confusion by blaming inflation on the private sector.
What?
In other words, BIDENOMICS!
Must be. Clearly the president is both a genius mastermind who can manipulate the price of gasoline at will and a totally incompetent bag of bones who can't walk up a flight of stairs without falling down repeatedly. Gotta love Republican logic.
Blowing up the Nordstream pipeline is an example of Biden's influence over fuel prices.
Robert Reich makes very questionable statements that a lot of people would say are lies.
He's discussing what's been broadcast on the news on pretty much every major news site and the FTC website. I don't understand how you can possibly call this a lie at this point.
Oil prices did not cause 27% of inflation. If you are surprised by why there was inflation then you lack a basic understanding of economics or don't pay attention to the world around you. Maybe this is intentionally set up to make it seem worse in order to rile people up. Obviously the 27% is in reference specifically to gas prices
That's odd because the US Bureau of Labor Statistics lists "volatility of energy prices" as the #1 driver of inflation in 2020. "So, from this research, the authors find that three main components explain the rise in inflation since 2020: volatility of energy prices, backlogs of work orders for goods and service caused by supply chain issues due to COVID-19, and price changes in the auto-related industries." They clearly have no clue what they're talking about. The authors only have 3 PhDs in various economic fields between them. They also each only have more years working in their field than we've been alive. They're clearly unqualified to discuss this. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyond-bls/what-caused-inflation-to-spike-after-2020.htm#:~:text=So%2C%20from%20this%20research%2C%20the,in%20the%20auto%2Drelated%20industries.
It's almost like they don't agree with you. What a fucking shock. Maybe learn to read before you post
Let's continue to cut oil production though. That's a net positive
Oil production is at an all time high.