Economics

Dan O’Brien: What’s causing the inflation crisis if profiteering isn’t the culprit?

Core inflation in the US, where government intervention was excessive, has been rising at twice the rate of the eurozone

While it is true that competition in some industries has been declining in recent years, the notion that the corporate world suddenly cottoned to its greater pricing power early last year is fanciful. Picture: Bloomberg

Ideologues are nothing if not predictable, a fact that is true of the positions they take on all contentious matters. It is true, certainly, in the debate on the causes of soaring inflation, particularly in the United States, where excessive government stimulus has been a much bigger factor in driving up prices than elsewhere.

The most recent chapter in the inflation debate started more than a decade ago. Then, many free market ideologues predicted with ...