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Press Release

Groundwork’s Lindsay Owens on Corporate Profits Data

“Even as supply chains have normalized and input costs have fallen, corporations are still padding their profits on the backs of families. Falling inflation has been a welcome sight, but it has more room to fall if corporations stop their excessive profiteering.” Groundwork's Lindsay Owens on new data showing that domestic nonfinancial corporate profits increased $136.5 billion in Q4, compared with an increase of $90.8 billion in Q3.

March 28, 2024 Groundwork Collaborative

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Corporate Greed Responsible For Massive Price Hikes Americans Believe

Recent analysis suggests that corporate profits have significantly contributed to inflationary pressures, with an estimated 53 cents of every dollar of price increases attributed to profits in recent economic quarters. This perspective, supported by the Groundwork Collaborative, highlights the substantial role of corporate profit margins in the inflation narrative.

March 27, 2024 MSN

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Federal Reserve expected to cut rates, lift Biden’s prospects

Lindsay Owens, head of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive Washington think tank, is skeptical that it will. With the unemployment rate low, the economy growing at a strong pace and inflation still a concern, the Fed will cut rates too slowly to aid Biden all that much politically, she said. "We're in a 23-year-high interest rate environment and getting another 25-basis point cut or two before November doesn't change the fact that mortgage rates are going to be high," Owens said.

March 25, 2024 Reuters

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Is Walmart screwing customers? Former Secretary of Labor says so

According to The Guardian, a report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative thinktank, found that corporate profits accounted for more than half of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. In the 40 years prior to the pandemic, profits drove just 11% of price growth, the report said.

March 24, 2024 NJ Advance Media

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Are Inflated Prices Due to Corporate Greed? This Report May Tell Us

I want to get into a bit of the nitty-gritty here with you and start with this gap that has started to open up between the Consumer Price Index CPI and the Producer Price Index PPI, which think tanks like Groundwork Collaborative and others, they say it shows that inflation is being driven by companies raising prices or as some of them refer to it, corporate greed.

March 24, 2024 The Wall Street Journal

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Trump’s Not-So-Secret Plan To Blow Up The U.S. Economy: Tariffs

The Fed spent a lot of its political capital in raising interest rates to get inflation under control and could have to raise rates again if tariffs boosted inflation. But Lindsay Owens, executive director of the liberal Groundwork Collaborative think tank, said Trump could interfere there, too. “The most likely thing you will see from Trump I think — we’ll see it on the campaign, but also you’d see in a Trump presidency — is just a very aggressive advocacy campaign against the Fed,” Owens said.

March 23, 2024 Huffpost

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Fed declines to cut interest rates, saying it’s not clear inflation has slowed enough yet

Rakeen Mabud, chief economist and managing director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, an economic think tank, said she is worried that the Fed could wait too long to cut rates and damage the economy. “All the Fed can do at this point is break this really strong recovery that we’ve had … I’m worried now because rate hikes are a really imprecise tool that acts with lags. I don’t know exactly when the full impact of these rate hikes are going to play out and neither does Jerome Powell,” she said.

March 21, 2024 States Newsroom

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In Pennsylvania’s Senate race, Casey puts ‘greedflation’ and corporations on the ballot.

The liberal economic advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative, for instance, compiled a list of times when corporate executives extolled their profits or price increases, and talked of issuing stock buybacks, increasing dividends or benefiting from high prices or high interest rates.

March 21, 2024 Associated Press

Press Release

Groundwork’s Rakeen Mabud Reacts to New FTC Study: “Bringing down costs at the checkout line requires tackling corporate greed”

Today, the Federal Trade Commission released a new study that found large grocery retailers took advantage of supply chain disruptions to raise prices on consumers and squash smaller competitors.

March 21, 2024 Groundwork Collaborative

Press Release

Groundwork’s Rakeen Mabud Praises European Central Bank’s Profit Test for Rate Cuts

“The ECB's approach to monetary policy, which acknowledges that inflation can come down without inflicting harm on millions of workers when it's being driven by the pricing power of big corporations, stands in stark contrast to Chair Powell's tactic of keeping interest rates at a 23-year high. The European Central Bank is exactly right to consider excessive profit-taking by big corporations when making monetary policy decisions."

March 21, 2024 Groundwork Collaborative