Companies Warn That Higher Prices Are Looming

DoomFinch wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/business/15prices.html?_r=2&hpc

Hi Doom Finch

I would like to read your article but there is a log - in on the site.

Is it possible that you could post some of it so that we can read it please.

You are allowed to post upto 50% so just take what is relevant

Thankyou hun

OK...that must be because you're overseas...I had no idea it was blocked to you guys there.

None of this should be big news to anyone here, but it's interesting to see MSM address these issues.


"A package of Oscar Mayer cold cuts. A pair of Nine West boots. A Whirlpool washing machine.

By the fall, people will most likely be paying more for each of them, as rising prices hit most consumer goods, say retailers, food companies and manufacturers of consumer products.

Cotton prices are near their highest level in more than a decade, after adjusting for inflation, and leather and polyester costs are jumping as well. Copper recently hit its highest level in about 40 years, and iron ore, used for steel, is fetching extremely high prices. Prices for corn, sugar, wheat, beef, pork and coffee are soaring. Labor overseas is becoming more expensive, meanwhile, and so are the utility bills to keep a factory running.

“There are cost pressures from virtually everywhere,” said Wesley R. Card, the chief executive of the Jones Group, whose brands include Nine West and Anne Klein. After trying to keep retail prices flat or even lower during the recession, Jones says prices for its brands will climb 15 to 20 percent by autumn.

When commodity prices started to rise last summer, many manufacturers and retailers absorbed the costs, worried that shoppers would not pay higher prices during the competitive holiday season or while the economy was still fragile.

Many big companies, including Kraft, Polo Ralph Lauren and Hanes, say they cannot hold off any longer and must raise prices to protect some profits.

Whether shoppers will pay is unclear. “Consumers are not exactly in the frame of mind or economic circumstances to say ‘Oh, pay whatever they ask,’ ” said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR Inc. “There’s going to be pushback.”

Economists say the increases may eventually show up as inflation, though they are not yet projecting rates that would set off alarms. Despite some fears, inflation has been extremely low, at a rate of just 1.4 percent annually in December. Data for January will be released Thursday, but economists expect inflation will run about 2.5 percent this year.

Some do see the creeping signs of higher inflation, and warn that the Federal Reserve will need to raise interest rates or at least stop pumping more money into the economy. Others argue that such moves would choke off economic growth sorely needed to get companies hiring again.

For consumers, higher prices in stores means there will be a little less extra cash to spend. For companies, profits may be squeezed, making them a little less likely to invest in equipment or to hire aggressively."

This is good news for those of us who believe that rampant consumption of pointless crap is a root cause of our increasingly sick society. Stripping the earths resources for nothing more than profit deserves a shot in the chops occasionally if only to slow it down.

As prices rise and fewer people are able to pay them, consumption will be curtailed, and resources under historic stress will get a break, adding a few more minutes to the end point where they disappear completely. A knock on effect is the loss of more jobs of course, but those were bogus jobs to begin with. Eventually there will have to be a "fix" for unemployment that can occur without the need for consumption of useless junk, a fix that to this point has been invisible behind a wall of efforts to simply keep the whole machine moving as it has been.

Necessity is the mother of invention as they say, and this now permanent economic free fall is just the medicine required to create and discover new ways of thinking about our societies.

Aetius Romulous wrote:This is good news for those of us who believe that rampant consumption of pointless crap is a root cause of our increasingly sick society. Stripping the earths resources for nothing more than profit deserves a shot in the chops occasionally if only to slow it down.

Frankly at this juncture I am rooting for a crash and dieoff. We have managed ourselves horribly as a species and our situation is intractable. We are at the point of the exponential curve where our upward trend in population is met by an exponential decline in resources, and to continue this way will pretty much destroy EVERYTHING.

And if I happen to be included in that dieoff, I'm OK with it. I already have an exit age planned if the collapse of industrial civilization doesn't get me first.