谁是通货膨胀的罪魁祸首？情况很复杂

经济学家说，现实是所有这些事情。和更多。

周五，消费者价格指数显示通胀触及近四年高位。上个月商品和服务价格同比上涨 6.8%，为 1982 年以来的最快增速。

通货膨胀本质上并不是一件坏事。在美国，在过去 40 年左右（以及本世纪的大部分时间），我们一直生活在理想的低通胀水平，伴随着良好的消费驱动型经济，如果那样的话，价格每年上涨 2% 左右。当前的价格飙升反映了经济正在恢复其战斗力。经济学家和政策制定者关心的是什么时候物价持续上涨，而什么时候工资没有实物上涨。

尽管工资总体上也在上涨，但到目前为止还没有跟上食品、能源、住房和日常消费品成本上涨的步伐。可以理解，人们感到沮丧。虽然没有一个罪魁祸首，但这里有一些力量——Covid-19、贪婪的企业、供应链危机、政府——你可以发泄怒火。

大流行

这是个简单的。大流行颠覆了我们生活的一切，当世界在 2020 年春天关闭时，就像拔掉了全球经济的插头。

但到了那个夏天，对消费品的需求开始反弹。重要时刻。国会和拜登总统在 3 月份通过了一项历史性的 1.9 万亿美元刺激法案，将现金直接放入美国人的钱包。我们没有花钱在旅行或外出就餐，而是花钱买东西。很多很多。

需求从零增加到 100，但供应无法轻易反弹。工厂处于封锁状态或应对 Covid-19 的限制，由于需求突然激增，原材料更难获得。几乎所有东西都出现短缺，尤其是卸货并将货物运到目的地的工人。我们仍在解决世界各地港口的混乱局面。

美国企业

指责美国企业在道德上令人满意，在政治上也很方便。毕竟，即使生产成本上升，各行业的利润率也在上升。

据《华尔街日报》报道，今年迄今为止，约有三分之二的美国最大上市公司报告的利润率高于 2019 年同期。换句话说，即使原材料、劳动力和运输成本因大流行而增加，但许多大公司仍在通过提高消费者价格来抵消这些成本。

尽管分析师表示几乎不可能验证价格上涨在多大程度上反映了生产成本上升与榨取利润的愿望，但公司并没有完全隐藏他们的价格弹性。事实上，有些人公开吹嘘他们的“定价能力”——企业用更大的账单来吸引客户。

民主党人和消费者权益倡导者正在呼吁这些公司退出。本周早些时候，参议员伊丽莎白沃伦抨击赫兹斥资 20 亿美元回购股票——这是一种常见但有争议的回报股东的方式——而不是将多余的现金投资于重建其车队，这可能会为消费者带来创纪录的价格。

尽管企业正在加剧通胀的论点有一定道理，但有一个更大的结构性问题支撑着这个问题：几十年来，反垄断执法不严已经将经济权力集中在几个巨头手中。

“从这个角度来看，根本问题不在于通胀本身。而是缺乏竞争，”美国前劳工部长罗伯特·赖克 (Robert Reich) 上个月在《卫报》的一篇专栏文章中写道。 “企业正在以通胀为借口抬高物价，赚取丰厚的利润。”

拜登政府

共和党一直在抨击民主党和拜登白宫的通胀问题。

周五的价格指数报告出炉后，参议院少数党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔 (Mitch McConnell) 立即指责。他在推特上说：“难以想象参议院民主党人会在几天内通过另一项大规模的社会主义支出计划来试图回应这份通胀报告。”

政府支出确实会推高通胀，但经济学家驳斥了拜登雄心勃勃的社会安全网扩张将加剧物价飙升的观点。穆迪分析公司首席经济学家马克·赞迪 (Mark Zandi) 在 7 月份表示：“担心该计划将引发不受欢迎的高通胀和经济过热，这有些过头了。”

穆迪分析师指出，政府在为低收入美国人出租房屋、降低处方药成本和使儿童保育更负担得起等项目上的支出旨在冷却价格并缓解短缺。

将通胀归咎于拜登的共和党人也很方便地忘记了 2020 年由共和党支持并由当时的总统唐纳德特朗普签署的数万亿美元的支出，经济学家称这些支出也助长了通胀。

美联储

在过去的一年半里，资金基本上是免费的，这要归功于美联储对经济刺激采取双管齐下的方法——利率接近于零，以及大量投资债券使收益率保持在最低点附近。

这种刺激措施避免了很多金融和经济痛苦，而且总是暂时的。但几个月来，美联储对通胀担忧置之不理，在这个词变得几乎可笑地毫无意义之前，模糊地将价格飙升称为“暂时的”。

美联储终于抓住了突破口。上个月，主席杰罗姆鲍威尔告诉国会“经济非常强劲，通胀压力很高”，因此考虑更积极地缩减资产购买规模是合适的。

请继续关注：美联储下周开会并可能宣布它正在这样做。

Who's to blame for inflation? It's complicated

New York (CNN Business)President Joe Biden and other politicians will tell you inflation is Corporate America's fault. Corporate America blames the administration's pandemic assistance programs for putting too much cash into the economy.

The reality, economists say, is that it's all of those things. And more.

On Friday, the consumer price index showed inflation hitting a nearly four-decade high. Prices for goods and services rose 6.8% last month compared with a year earlier — the fastest pace since 1982.

Inflation isn't inherently a bad thing. In the United States, for the past 40 years or so (and the better part of this century), we've been living with an ideal low-and-slow level of inflation that comes with a well-oiled consumer-driven economy, with prices going up around 2% a year, if that. The current surge in prices reflects an economy roaring back to its fighting weight. What concerns economists and policymakers is when prices keep rising, and when wages don't rise in kind.

Although wages broadly are also going up, they so far haven't kept pace with the rising costs of food, energy, housing and everyday consumer goods. People are, understandably, frustrated. Although there's no one single culprit to blame, here are some of the forces — Covid-19, greedy businesses, the supply chain crisis, the government — you can take your rage out on.

The pandemic

This is an easy one. The pandemic upended everything about our lives, and when the world shut down in the spring of 2020, it was like pulling the plug on the global economy.

But by that summer, demand for consumer goods started to rebound. Big time. Congress and President Biden passed an historic $1.9 trillion stimulus bill in March that put cash directly in Americans' wallets. And rather than spending money on travel or dining out, we spent on stuff. Lots and lots of it.

Demand went from zero to 100, but supplies couldn't bounce back so easily. Factories were on lockdown or navigating Covid-19 restrictions, and raw materials were harder to get because of the sudden swell in demand. Shortages of just about everything cropped up, especially workers to unload goods and drive them to their destination. We're still untangling the mess at ports around the world.

Corporate America

It can feel morally satisfying and politically convenient to blame Corporate America. After all, profit margins are up across industries even as the costs of production have risen.

About two-thirds of the largest publicly traded US companies have reported fatter profit margins so far this year than in the same period in 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal. In other words, even as costs for raw materials, labor and transportation have increased in response to the pandemic, a lot big corporations are offsetting those costs by raising prices on consumers.

Although analysts say it's almost impossible to verify how much price increases reflect rising production costs versus a desire to juice profits, companies aren't exactly hiding their price flexes. In fact, some are on record bragging about their "pricing power" — corporate-speak for sticking customers with a bigger bill.

Democrats and consumer advocates are calling these companies out. Earlier this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted Hertz for spending $2 billion on a stock buyback — a common but controversial way to reward shareholders — rather than investing its excess cash in rebuilding its fleet, which could bring down record-high prices for consumers.

Although there's some truth to the argument that corporations are making inflation worse, there is a bigger structural problem underpinning the issue: for decades, lax antitrust enforcement has put the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few giants.

"Viewed this way, the underlying problem isn't inflation per se. It's lack of competition," wrote Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, in an op-ed for the Guardian last month. "Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits."

The Biden Administration

Republicans have been hammering Democrats and the Biden White House on inflation.

After Friday's price index report came out, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time when it came to pointing fingers. "It is unthinkable that Senate Democrats would try to respond to this inflation report by ramming through another massive socialist spending package in a matter of days," he tweeted.

It's true that government spending boosts inflation, but economists have pushed back on the idea that Biden's ambitious social safety net expansion will inflame price surges. "Worries that the plan will ignite undesirably high inflation and an overheating economy are overdone," Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said in July.

Moody's analysts noted that government spending on items such as rental housing for low-income Americans, reducing prescription drug costs and making childcare more affordable is aimed at cooling off prices and easing shortages.

Republicans blaming inflation on Biden are also conveniently forgetting the trillions of dollars in spending passed in 2020 supported by Republicans and signed by then-President Donald Trump, which economists say have also contributed to inflation.

The Fed

Money has essentially been free for the past year and a half, thanks to the Fed's double-barrel shotgun approach to economic stimulus — interest rates near zero and a massive investment in bonds that keeps yields near rock-bottom.

That stimulus has staved off a lot of financial and economic pain, and was always meant to be temporary. But for months the Fed brushed off inflation concerns, vaguely dubbing price surges "transitory" before that word became almost comically devoid of meaning.

The Fed is finally tapping the breaks. Last month, Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress "the economy is very strong and inflationary pressures are high," so it would be appropriate to consider tapering its asset purchases more aggressively.

Stay tuned: The Fed meets next week and could announce it's doing just that.