This is the On The Media Midweek podcast, I'm Michael Lohinger.

In 2021, when inflation started to rise rapidly, economists and pundits tried to get a handle

on what exactly was happening and what exactly would fix it.

But as 2022 rolled around, one data point stuck out.

Prices were up, sure, but profits and some sectors were skyrocketing far past post-COVID

predictions.

So Pepsi's prices last quarter were up 17% from a year ago.

Profits were up 21%.

Chipotle's prices last quarter, up 13%, profits up 26%.

Which gave birth to an idea that quickly moved from the halls of academic research and left-leaning

think tanks to the political arena.

This has been a criticism from the left and politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth

Warren.

The companies are engaging with their dubbing greed flation.

Everyone is talking about this, whether you call it greed flation, excursion, profit-led

inflation, sellers inflation.

Sellers inflation.

That's the preferred term of Isabella Weber, an economist from the University of Massachusetts

Amherst who helped popularize the idea.

She argues that companies like Pepsi have actually contributed to keeping inflation alive by

keeping their prices high, even as the cost of production has started to come down.

The theory was dismissed as either imprecise or unfounded by some economists and dubbed

...