The Intercept headline says it all:
“CEO SAYS HE’S BEEN “PRAYING FOR INFLATION” BECAUSE IT’S AN EXCUSE TO JACK UP PRICES.”
THE CEO OF Iron Mountain Inc. told Wall Street analysts at a September 20 investor event that the high levels of inflation of the past several years had helped the company increase its margins — and that for that reason he had long been “doing my inflation dance praying for inflation.”
The comment is an unusually candid admission of a dirty secret in the business world: corporations use inflation as a pretext to hike prices. “Corporations are using those increasing costs – of materials, components and labor – as excuses to increase their prices even higher, resulting in bigger profits,” Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Clinton, recently argued. Corporate profits are now at their highest level since 1950.
There has been so much evidence that this has been happening that it’s sort of ridiculous to make a big deal out of another CEO being stupid and greedy enough to say it out loud.
But it’s worth repeating, if only to counter the right-wing narrative that Democrats and Biden are to blame for inflation despite the fact that we know — and evidence for it continues to pile up — that American industry has been raking in record profits despite alleged problems with supply chains and employees demanding increased wages.