February 17, 20223 yr Wells Fargo Supply Chain Pressure Check: Past the Turning Point but a Long Way from Victory Pressure Check: Volume: Moving more goods, and composition of spending less off kilter The building of unfilled orders has slowed as real goods spending has begun to subside. Domestic shipping volumes, however, remain choppy and shortages are still prevalent despite some improvement, as seen in the volume of semiconductor shipments. Time: Directional improvement, but still unusually long lead times Wait times for products remain long, but show signs of easing. The supplier deliveries measures of the ISM surveys have come down markedly. While still above the pre-pandemic days, the number of ships awaiting port space may be topping out. Price: Mixed in direction, but levels if not rates still indicative of crisis Price measures signal supply snarls are nearly as bad as ever. Container shipping rates have moved lower over the past five months, but remain well above prior norms. More broadly, however, the cost of shipping and storing goods around the U.S. economy has continued to climb at a dizzying rate. Inventory: Trend clearly improving, even if a lot of rebuilding still to do There has been initial improvement on the inventory front amid the second-largest quarterly increase in inventories on record in Q4-2021. Other measures of inventories remain low by pre-pandemic comparison but have improved somewhat in recent months. Labor: Worker shortages as dire as ever Firms are still struggling to find workers for key supply chain-related positions, suggesting little easing of overall pressure. The imbalance between the demand for and the supply of labor is clear, and while improving, nearly half of small businesses still report at least one job position they have that is hard to fill.
February 18, 20223 yr Add Porsches, Audis, VWs and Bentleys to the shortages, as a huge container ship of cars is on fire in the Atlantic. The fire spread so fast, the crew abandoned ship and were rescued by the Portuguese. The company is trying to get a tug to tow the burning ship somewhere.
February 18, 20223 yr https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-blame-supply-chain-inflation-obama-official Biden claim that supply chain is to blame for inflation is 'totally dishonest,' Obama-era official says Former Obama official: 'Overstimulated economy' is the root cause of inflation surge, not supply chains
February 18, 20223 yr https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2021/11/18/sawmill-profits-soared-bursting-lumber-bubble-bringing-them-back-down/amp/ Sawmill profits soared 2,000%—now the bursting lumber bubble is bringing back reality The lumber run wasn't kind to homebuilders and do-it-yourselfers. But buyers' misfortune was the timber industry's big payday. The lumber run wasn’t kind to homebuilders and do-it-yourselfers. At one point in May, lumber was up over 300%, meaning for a builder to frame one new home they’d have to spend what prior to the pandemic would be enough for four. But buyers’ misfortune was the timber industry’s big payday. The combined net profits of the five largest publicly traded North American lumber producers (Canfor in British Columbia; Interfor in British Columbia; Resolute Forest Products in Montreal; West Fraser Timber in British Columbia; and Seattle-based Weyerhaeuser) jumped a staggering 2,218% between the second quarter of 2020 ($160 million) and the same quarter in 2021 ($3.7 billion). Those historic earnings, of course, came before the lumber bubble burst in epic fashion this summer as DIYers finally got fed up with sky-high prices. Between mid-May to mid-August, the cash market lumber price crashed from an all-time high of $1,515per thousand board feet to $389 per thousand board feet. What did plummeting lumber prices do to sawmill profits? The party ended. For the third quarter of 2021—the period covering the collapse in lumber prices—the combined profits of the five largest publicly traded sawmills are down 69% to $1.1 billion. The biggest drop was posted by Interfor (which saw its third quarter profit fall 85% from the previous quarter), followed by West Fraser Timber (down 76%), Canfor (down 72%), Resolute Forest Products (down 70%), and Weyerhaeuser (down 53%). Given it’s a subsidiary of privately held Koch Industries and isn’t required to report earnings, we aren’t sure what hit Atlanta-based lumber titan Georgia-Pacific took. The good news for lumber producers: The latest round of profits is still fairly strong. Indeed, the aggregated earnings of those five producers in the third quarter of 2021 are up 34% from the same quarter in 2020. While lumber prices have come back down to earth, they’re still historically high. Since August, prices have shot up to $575 per thousand board feet. That’s well above the normal $350 to $500 price range they floated in prior to the pandemic. The reason? While DIYers have cut back, homebuilding has stayed relatively strong. The historically tight housing market—which saw home prices jump a record 19.9% between August 2020 and August 2021—has kept demand high for new construction, which, of course, requires lots of framing lumber. Where are lumber prices headed in 2022? Many industry insiders tell Fortune prices could remain elevated—or go even higher next year. But there are two wild cards. For starters, if supply chain issues and shortages don’t let up soon it could slow down homebuilding next year. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Commerce plan to double duties on Canadian softwood lumber next year is already shaking up the market. The industry is digesting some new developments, such as additional cutbacks in harvesting in British Columbia, and an expected doubling of duties later this month on Canadian mills’ exports to the U.S… The former is another longer-term supply-side worry, while the latter represents a near-term oversupply concern, as Canadian mills rush shipments into the U.S. market ahead of the duty increase,” Shawn Church, editor at Fastmarkets Random Lengths, told Fortune.
February 21, 20223 yr On 2/17/2022 at 5:43 AM, Toastrel said: So the Freedom convoy folks are the same as the Iraq war protestors? Funny, when people blocked roads or buildings in protest then, the right didn't like it. I think maybe, as usual, you have no idea what you are talking about. Its usually cool when it doesnt involve breaking ****, raping other protesters, or burning everything to the ground.
February 21, 20223 yr 7 hours ago, lynched1 said: Its usually cool when it doesnt involve breaking ****, raping other protesters, or burning everything to the ground. Oh yeah, you tolerant of protest people never complained that blocking traffic or access to a business, was basically terrorism.
February 22, 20223 yr 14 hours ago, Toastrel said: Oh yeah, you tolerant of protest people never complained that blocking traffic or access to a business, was basically terrorism. If you stand in the street you take your chances. Personally I'd like my odds in a large vehicle but to each their own.
February 23, 20223 yr Thanks President Biden!! https://www.westernjournal.com/brace-expert-says-gas-prices-reach-7-per-gallon-bidens-america/ Brace Yourself: Expert Says Gas Prices Could Reach $7 Per Gallon in Biden's America
February 23, 20223 yr 4 hours ago, Procus said: Thanks President Biden!! https://www.westernjournal.com/brace-expert-says-gas-prices-reach-7-per-gallon-bidens-america/ Brace Yourself: Expert Says Gas Prices Could Reach $7 Per Gallon in Biden's America
February 23, 20223 yr 4 hours ago, Procus said: Thanks President Biden!! https://www.westernjournal.com/brace-expert-says-gas-prices-reach-7-per-gallon-bidens-america/ Brace Yourself: Expert Says Gas Prices Could Reach $7 Per Gallon in Biden's America Worse, per gallon prices have already nearly doubled in just two years. Gas was only $2.17 a gallon average at the end of 2020. And it is no coincidence that 2020 was the last full year we had a president who wanted the U.S. to be energy independent. As if we needed confirmation that this is a hackjob. Let's compare price of a commodity now vs when demand tanked I guess you need your dopamine hit of confirmation.
February 23, 20223 yr 4 hours ago, Procus said: Thanks President Biden!! https://www.westernjournal.com/brace-expert-says-gas-prices-reach-7-per-gallon-bidens-america/ Brace Yourself: Expert Says Gas Prices Could Reach $7 Per Gallon in Biden's America Just ride your bike.
February 23, 20223 yr 8 hours ago, DaEagles4Life said: Give me a break "Everything bad that's happening in the country is because of what's happening in Ukraine: the retarded ishlibs guide to excusing Sleepy Joe's disastrous presidency."
February 23, 20223 yr This will help LEETSDALE — After multiple destructive explosions shook the ground in Allegheny and Beaver counties, local firefighters successfully ended an emergency situation with no injuries on Sunday morning. The early morning fire took place at the Hussey Copper headquarters in the Leetsdale Industrial Park. According to live updates from the Leetsdale Fire Department's social media pages, the explosions are believed to have started after a malfunctioning valve on a hopper released 4,000 pounds of molten copper inside the industrial plant. "There were explosions of molten copper that blew holes in the roof, walls and windows," according to the Leetsdale Fire Department. "Fortunately, no one was hit by any of the hot copper when it came down after blowing holes through the building."
February 23, 20223 yr Graphs in original link: Quote Rising fuel prices and corporate profits — not wages — are chiefly to blame for inflation BY IRINA IVANOVA FEBRUARY 22, 2022 / 2:24 PM / MONEYWATCH With U.S. inflation surging at the fastest pace in 40 years, many companies are blaming higher prices on having to hike wages for their workers, including Amazon, Starbucks and Chipotle. Consumers are getting the message. As one reader of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote to the editor: "You wanted higher wages, products made in America? Then you better accept inflation," she said. "You asked for an increase in minimum wages. Which led to an overall increase in pay. That increase has been passed on to consumers." But while corporations may point fingers at rising pay, economic data show wages are far from the main driver of inflation. The prices growing fastest today — cars, fuel, housing and furniture — point away from wages and toward other explanations, such as goods shortages or companies padding their profit margins. More broadly, it has long been clear that the relationship between what workers earn and what consumers pay has been tenuous at best. Inflation highest in labor-light sectors If higher worker pay was truly the main driver of prices, it follows that more labor-intensive service sectors of the economy would be seeing the largest jump in consumer prices. Yet the inflation picture today shows the exact opposite: Price increases for goods are outstripping services by a factor of three. "Goods prices are the main driver of inflation," Julia Pollak, labor economist at ZipRecruiter, told CBS MoneyWatch. "Wages so far have not been the main driver of inflation at all. Inflation was higher at first in less labor-intensive industries." The most labor-intensive items tracked by the Consumer Price Index — eating out and personal services, a category that includes barbershops and beauty salons — have grown 6.2% and 4.7% from a year ago, respectively. "Both of those numbers are still below the average inflation rate of 7.5%, and there are other categories that are seeing much higher price increases — gasoline prices, housing, furniture," said Daniel MacDonald, economics chair at California State University at San Bernardino. "The reason those prices are going up is not because wages are going up for producing oil in the U.S. It's about oil markets, housing markets." Why gas prices have surged The price of energy has soared since last year, with natural gas, heating oil and gasoline all up sharply. That's adding about 2 percentage points to overall inflation, said Ryan Sweet, senior director of economic research at Moody's Analytics. "Higher energy prices are directly observable in the CPI for utilities, electricity, gasoline, heating oil, but then it also bleeds into other prices you and I pay. Businesses have to transport their goods, and they'll try to pass higher transport costs onto you and I," he said. 1960s economics in a 2020s world The belief that worker wages and consumer prices are inextricably linked and that raising one immediately leads to a dreaded "wage-price spiral" of ever-increasing costs is a legacy of the mid-20th century, when the U.S. economy looked vastly different. Major business sectors were regulated, a third of the workforce was unionized, globalization had not yet taken hold and companies weren't permitted to repurchase their own stock. In such an economy, workers were able to bargain for more pay, and the costs of labor rose in tandem with the costs of other inputs, explained Josh Bivens, research director of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Since the late 1980s, however, the link between labor costs and other costs has been severed. "It's not that workers wouldn't like to be able to achieve higher wages in response to rising price pressures, but instead a number of developments—most driven by intentional policy decisions—have sapped workers' bargaining power in the labor market for decades," Bivens wrote last month. "The relationship between wages and inflation is almost impossible to find," added Jonathan Millar, an analyst at Barclays. "The link tends to be much weaker than a layperson might think. It turns out that even during this pandemic, it's not true that prices have actually kept pace with wages." Normally, the lack of a wage-inflation relationship benefited consumers. Broad-based pay hikes, like minimum wage increases, didn't translate into higher prices. California State University's MacDonald, who coauthored a 2016 study on minimum-wage increases, found that a pay increase of 10% would lead to only a 0.4% increase in consumer prices. "We're talking about the cost of a $5 cheeseburger going to $5.04 — it's very, very low," he said. The problem is that cheeseburgers, like gas, happen to be a category where minor price increases are salient for shoppers. "There are certain goods and services that are very noticeable to consumers, and they notice when those prices go up. The price of things at McDonalds or Chipotle — people tend to internalize that pretty fast," said Barclays' Millar. So what's really pushing up prices? If wages aren't the primary reason prices have soared, why are consumers paying more for everything from food to rent? One key factor that companies tend not to publicize: higher corporate profits. Over the past year, despite the extreme economic upheaval of the pandemic, after-tax corporate profits have soared to record levels as a share of economic output, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. "Higher prices mean somebody is collecting more income. Over the past year, it has been employers in sectors where supply has been impaired — shipping companies, oil producers and food wholesalers, for example — who are collecting the extra revenue coming in through higher prices," Bivens wrote. Some corporate leaders have been blunt about their plans to pass companies' higher supply-chain prices to consumers. For example, consumer goods giants Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble and Unilever have been able to raise prices without losing sales. Nearly two-thirds of publicly traded companies report fatter profit margins than before the pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, surveys from Salary.com and the Conference Board show that corporations are planning on pay increases of 3% to 3.9% in the coming year — barely half the current rate of inflation. "Many companies we've spoken to have seen their overall payrolls barely budge at all," ZipRecruiter's Pollak said. Because of pandemic retirements, "They've lost their most experienced, highest paid people and replaced them with a younger cohort." And even when companies raise salaries substantially, they may still come out ahead if they get more labor value out of that person. "The productivity increase we're seeing with more work from home means that [labor] unit costs can stay pretty stable," Pollak said. So for now at least, higher pay isn't likely to be cutting into those higher profits. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/higher-wages-price-increases-inflation/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab&fbclid=IwAR0-3rRBDQ74xmCw0uxr9-x_V_FacMy0qgAoDwjqpPbaZrSVCe6pFhzGUKU#app
February 23, 20223 yr For the last effing time -- higher profits aren't a cause of inflation. That's the stupidest talking point in history.
February 23, 20223 yr 7 minutes ago, vikas83 said: For the last effing time -- higher profits aren't a cause of inflation. That's the stupidest talking point in history. How would raising prices to increase profit margins not be a driver of inflation? When most people talk about inflation, they're talking about the increasing price of goods and services. The article points out that wage increases as a percentage are nevertheless only a fraction of inflation (about half of it), so it can't be attributed to wage increases alone. These businesses are more than just offsetting the increased cost of labor.
February 23, 20223 yr 46 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said: How would raising prices to increase profit margins not be a driver of inflation? When most people talk about inflation, they're talking about the increasing price of goods and services. The article points out that wage increases as a percentage are nevertheless only a fraction of inflation (about half of it), so it can't be attributed to wage increases alone. These businesses are more than just offsetting the increased cost of labor. I really don't have time to teach a finance class right now, but the article somewhat answers it. The main driver of inflation is the price of inputs other than labor -- materials. Companies raise their prices enough to cover that AND maintain margins. So let's say I used to sell a widget for $10, with a profit of $2. Of my costs, $3 is materials, $2 is labor and $3 is fixed overhead (we'll use EBITDA for now). Now, assume the material cost goes to $4, raising my total cost to $9. In order to keep my 20% profit margin, I have to raise the price to $11.25, leading to $2.25 per widget in profit vs. $2 previously. OMG, corporate profits have increased. As for profit margins, those gains are being driven mainly by gains in efficiency mainly from capital spending.
February 23, 20223 yr On 2/18/2022 at 9:33 AM, Toastrel said: Add Porsches, Audis, VWs and Bentleys to the shortages, as a huge container ship of cars is on fire in the Atlantic. The fire spread so fast, the crew abandoned ship and were rescued by the Portuguese. The company is trying to get a tug to tow the burning ship somewhere. Did Pirates get to the ship first? It was free game since it was abandoned
February 23, 20223 yr 5 minutes ago, DaEagles4Life said: Did Pirates get to the ship first? It was free game since it was abandoned I heard there was finally a tug or something spraying it down with water.
February 24, 20223 yr 5 hours ago, vikas83 said: I really don't have time to teach a finance class right now, but the article somewhat answers it. The main driver of inflation is the price of inputs other than labor -- materials. Companies raise their prices enough to cover that AND maintain margins. So let's say I used to sell a widget for $10, with a profit of $2. Of my costs, $3 is materials, $2 is labor and $3 is fixed overhead (we'll use EBITDA for now). Now, assume the material cost goes to $4, raising my total cost to $9. In order to keep my 20% profit margin, I have to raise the price to $11.25, leading to $2.25 per widget in profit vs. $2 previously. OMG, corporate profits have increased. As for profit margins, those gains are being driven mainly by gains in efficiency mainly from capital spending. Thank you. I appreciate your perspective, and I don't really have any issue with your explanation. Obviously, we can't just look at the raw dollar figures of profits, it really is margins that are in question here. Now, I don't necessarily discount the validity of your claim related to efficiency, although I would like to see a source indicating that the main reason to increasing profit margins is due to increased efficiency and not corporations padding the margins and then underhandedly blaming it on the increased labor costs. How can you even really prove such a thing when the figures are often closely held? To be clear, I don't really fault a corporation for increasing their profit margins, because that's what a corporation is supposed to do: Make more money. I mainly posted this here just as a pushback against the right-wing narrative that higher wages are mainly responsible for causing higher prices for consumers (i.e., inflation). It's obviously a factor, but it seems that margins are vastly outstripping the cost of labor and materials. Basically, when you add up the increased costs of labor, materials, and transportation, the companies are still increasing their profits massively beyond the increased costs of production and distribution.
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