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A comment on Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands. Parent comment

Re:Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to ... by deelowe on Friday September 15, 2023 @11:27AM (#37524498)
The parent is saying that these "increase in margins" are companies trying to get ahead of inflation. The media narrative has been to blame the corporations, despite the real issue being the economy. There are elections to worry about, so we can't have that.

Smart businesses don't wait until they start losing money to make adjustments. They plan ahead. These "margin increases" are literally increases due to inflation which will companies expect to take hold over the next 1-2 years. There could be a variety of factors for this. One such example is corporate bonds rolling over to new interest rates which are expected to start happening en masse very soon.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to ... by Loughla on Friday September 15, 2023 @11:58AM (#37525051)
>The media narrative has been to blame the corporations, despite the real issue being the economy.

This might be a really, really stupid question, but aren't corporate decisions sort of the economy?

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Re:Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to ... by username332211 on Friday September 15, 2023 @12:15PM (#37525338)
They are a part of it. Then there's government decisions. And there's your decisions as well.

But all those pale in comparison to Mr. Powell and his associate's decisions.

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Re:Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to ... by m000 on Friday September 15, 2023 @12:09PM (#37525241)
Manufacturers trying to get ahead of inflation and ending up with record profits. How convenient.

I'll buy the media narrative this time, thank you.

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Re:Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to ... by username332211 on Friday September 15, 2023 @12:32PM (#37525648)
Everyone tries to get ahead of inflation. In normal inflationary environment, intelligent consumers would stock on non-perishable goods to avoid rising prices. But that too would increase corporate profits, for a while.

Of course right now everything is complicated by the fact officials lied to us that inflation is "transitory". As you can imagine, corporations don't take officials at their word, they can hire economists that double check their claims[1]. The media is supposed to do that in service of ordinary people, but for some reason I don't think it did in this inflationary period.

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[1] And corporations who blindly take officials at their words, like the late Silicon Valley Bank, simply enter liquidation.

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Re:Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to ... by kortilla on Friday September 15, 2023 @12:17PM (#37525375)
They are only record profits when you don’t adjust for inflation. Companies in Zimbabwe were making record profits every year, what a booming economy!!!
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