On any given day, Groundwork's analyses, op-eds, reports, and commentary are featured in leading publications and on the most influential news programs and podcasts.
“Americans are really upset about this: The polling on this is substantial, particularly among independents. Everything suggests this is the right strategy for the White House both substantively and politically,” Lindsay Owens said.
“Pandemic-era supply chain disruptions enabled corporations to hike prices and juice profit margins to highs not seen in more than 60 years,” Kitty Richards, director of Groundwork Collaborative, an economic research and advocacy group, wrote in an analysis. “Now supply chains have returned to normal, but corporations in many sectors are still charging inflated prices and extracting exorbitant profit margins,” Richards said.
Inflation has fallen dramatically even as the economy grows rapidly and unemployment remains historically low. But today’s corporate profits data show that prices can still fall further even as wages keep rising. It’s time for corporations to bring down prices and share their windfalls with the workers who drive our economy.
"The Fed needs to think, are we responsible for what’s happened in inflation? Or are we actually just driving up the cost of housing and debt for families?"
Richards urged government agencies to use their power to regulate rents. “Unlike in Econ 101, where any regulation of what people can charge for their product is going to have the unintended consequence of reducing supply and driving up rents in the long-run, you have power to decide whether they are allowed to exercise it at the expense of tenants,” she said, pointing to members of Congress. “It is a policy choice.”
“Larry Summers has spent the past two years weaponizing fears of persistent inflation against American workers and families and our clean energy transition, and deriding the many economists who held a different view. Now, exactly two years after calling for ‘Team Transitory’ to ‘stand down,’ it is not enough for him to simply switch sides without reckoning with the damage these arguments have caused."
“It is absolutely true that inflation has fallen rapidly,” said Kitty Richards, acting executive director at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic policy think tank. “(Tuesday’s report) is a really good sign.”
The Federal Housing Finance Agency was urged at a Wednesday briefing to make immediate efforts to relieve pressure on renters via multifamily loan mandates.
“If you look at the path of inflation, we have rapid disinflation after a peak that was before the Fed’s interest rate hikes really got going. We’ve had that rapid disinflation in the context of a booming economy. Quarterly GDP growth last quarter in real terms was 4.9%, we’ve seen 21 straight months of unemployment below 4% – something many economists didn’t think would be possible."
Groundwork’s Acting Executive Director Kitty Richards joined CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning to break down today’s numbers, arguing that inflation is lower even than the headline number shows, the Fed’s interest rate hikes didn’t cause this decline, and that high-interest rates may actually be making life less affordable for workers and families.