*There are a number of things, for instance, America’s sanctions against Russian oil and food exports. It blocked Russia’s exports of oil and Russian accounted for 40% of the world’s oil trade and an even larger proportion of its gas trade, and much of its agricultural crop trade — grain trade — as well.
Well, once this oil and gas and food is taken off the market, energy prices have gone up, food prices have gone up, and that’s one major cause.
Another major factor is the fact that the economy in America and Europe is becoming much more monopolized, and the monopolies have simply been raising their prices, especially the agricultural distribution monopolies that buy from the farmers and sell to the grocery stores and the other big distributors.
The monopolies, really their costs are not going up very much. But they say, — Well the Fed’s talked so much about inflation being a problem that we’re anticipating that inflation is going to be another 10% next year, so we’re just raising the prices.*
I've been finding Michael Hudson's recent interviews to be helpful on this topic -
https://michael-hudson.com/2023/04/all-or-nothing-foreign-policy/
*There are a number of things, for instance, America’s sanctions against Russian oil and food exports. It blocked Russia’s exports of oil and Russian accounted for 40% of the world’s oil trade and an even larger proportion of its gas trade, and much of its agricultural crop trade — grain trade — as well.
Well, once this oil and gas and food is taken off the market, energy prices have gone up, food prices have gone up, and that’s one major cause.
Another major factor is the fact that the economy in America and Europe is becoming much more monopolized, and the monopolies have simply been raising their prices, especially the agricultural distribution monopolies that buy from the farmers and sell to the grocery stores and the other big distributors.
The monopolies, really their costs are not going up very much. But they say, — Well the Fed’s talked so much about inflation being a problem that we’re anticipating that inflation is going to be another 10% next year, so we’re just raising the prices.*