Yeah obviously a lot of companies’ costs went up, which is what started the ball rolling. But my buddy who was a director for an industrial lighting company told me they raised prices three times last year and their costs hadn’t gone up. They just knew they could raise prices because their customers were expecting it.
So that’s one anecdotal data point, nothing more. But corporations should always look to charge whatever the market will bear, right?
Corporate profits don’t seem to be suffering at all right now, which would suggest they aren’t cutting to the bone on their margins, and actually might be fattening them.
They talked about this on Odd Lots a month or so ago. The guy on the show predicted this and thought it was a real change. I don’t remember the details, but the upshot was that health insurance inflation is determined on basically an annual cycle, and COVID effects made the adjustment very high for last year.
Every tech job I’ve ever worked at could trim 10% and be much better off for it. 10%/year like Microsoft used to do is when it gets stupid. But 10% every now and then is probably good. 1% is nothing.
I wonder how many they lay off on a regular week or month. 10k is ~0.5% of their total employees and I think the turnover for warehouse + delivery positions is likely pretty high
I don’t understand why Google, Facebook, Microsoft or hell even Yahoo doesn’t roll out a Twitter clone right now. They make clones of everything else even though they’re horrible. I bet the Chinese are working on the US Twitter market.
So basically, with that now baked in, it appears less likely that we are going to see the downward movement in inflation going forward? That was kind of low-hanging fruit in the number last time?
Well, it was losing money before Elon started running it into the ground… But I agree that one or more of them should go for it. FB might be worried about cannibalizing their own business, though. Google incorporating a new tab next to Google News that’s basically a Twitter clone and then starting an app would be interesting.
“ Credit card balances hit $866 billion in the third quarter, up 19% from the same quarter in 2021, according to TransUnion’s Quarterly Credit Industry Insights (CIIR) report. Among Gen Z and Millennial borrowers, credit card balances increased 72% and 32%, respectively. Balances for private label credit cards, or store-branded cards, were up 7% to $122.1 billion.
Meanwhile, total personal loan balances climbed to $210 billion, up 34% from the third quarter in 2021. Much of that growth was fueled by increases in lending to borrowers with subprime credit. The total number of personal loans hit 26.4 million, up from 21.6 million in the second quarter.”
Eventually lenders will have to reign them in. It may not feel like it, but behind the scenes banks are in fact more restricted in their lending than they were before 2008. If consumers start defaulting on consumer debt banks will hear from regulatory about it.
Should I take that news to mean that revolving debt is increasing, and in a rising interest rate environment, those people will start getting clobbered and deeper in debt?
Or, does it mean that inflation is so high and stuff costs so much more that people are financing their lifestyles to cover the spread from what they used to spend and what they spend now?