They need to come clean about inflation next.
Did anyone think interest rate hikes to fight inflation wasn't going to come with consequences? Necessary setback to fight inflation.
When you look at stuff like gas prices and the prices of basic commodities like utilities it seems pretty clear that price gouging is a bigger issue than inflation and it started with deregulation of industries, which allowed them to buy up and buy out their competitors and it got worse during COVID when companies used the disease to justify price increases on their product. The price increases never rolled back at the end of the pandemic even though underlying commodities prices like gasoline eventually returned back to normal and have even become cheaper in some cases than pre-pandemic prices.
The uncontrollable pricing is most prevalent in 4 industries (there are more but these 4 just jump off the page and impact people on a daily basis). The 4 industries are housing, food, Healthcare and insurance. All 4 of those industries are the easiest to control, but they are the most out of control and it is on purpose. In housing and food the manufacturers use illegal workers to help lower their bottom line costs, yet they continue to sale houses and food at premium prices to the end consumers which means that they are not passing those savings from illegal workers along. On top of that the price of gasoline has remained relatively stable, which means that cost of transportation of food has been about the same as it was pre-pandemic; so what explains the cost of grocery prices sky rocketing and not returning back? Those industries are not regulated as closely as they need to be. There is collusion occurring in grocery pricing for sure and they should not be allowed to buy out their competitors, because that is only making it worse. As for housing there needs to be a limit on allowing foreign investors and domestic investors to buy into the US housing market because it is causing single family homes to be unobtainable for regular citizens.