Is it okay to to to sort of so the populist discontent do you think Doug. I mean, I guess we shouldn't be surprised, but it's just so easy not to connect the dots between all the prosperity that a country enjoys [00:00:17] based on the private sector. And it's just really it's really easy to bash corporations is greedy profit mongers and that need, you know, price controls and, you know, should be precluded from buying back stock and need [00:00:32] to pay their fair share when no one. If you were to really pin them down, no one wants the government to be the main provider of jobs. Is it just trying to win elections? You know, saying that it is wrong to accuse corporations of being [00:00:52] profit mongers is kind of hilarious. When you live in a country where corporations have the fiduciary responsibility to provide a return on investment to their shareholders. But anyway, of course, that was CNBC anchor Joe Kernan, who is not a fan of a vague statement that Kamala Harris made in regard to price gouging. [00:01:10] And so that has led to this ongoing domino effect in the media, where they've just been attacking her relentlessly over something that she's not going to do, and they're accusing her of wanting to do price fixing. There's no evidence of that. But let's get into the details. [00:01:27] So, so far, Harris is again, incredibly vague plan to ban price gouging as it pertains to grocery stores and food prices has in fact ruffled some feathers. So to discuss the topic, CNBC brought on the former Kellogg CEO. [00:01:44] His name is Carlos Gutierrez. His feelings on the matter, probably won't surprise you. I thought we would have learned by now that price controls do not work. It is an abstract concept and very hard to enforce. And I think if anything, it perhaps it will create some intimidation that we [00:02:03] shouldn't be raising raising prices or. But it's not it's not sound policy. And I'm just very surprised. It seems like they have momentum. Harris. Well, they have momentum. They've got, they've got polls on their side. [00:02:21] They don't need this. Some people are left wing and they believe it. And they believe in, you know, they believe that billionaires and millionaires and CEOs are the enemies of this economy. We want to compete against the world. We want to compete and beat China. [00:02:40] Yet we are holding back our companies, not just with this. You know, let's just say they do put on price controls, try to get a merger across in the FTC, across the FTC. It will take months and months and months. [00:02:57] In the meantime, your competitors are getting stronger Business is not the enemy, but it's an easy target. Mergers lead to an increase in prices. Lack of competition in the market. [00:03:17] And so I am against price controls, as we've talked about on this show. We're very much left wing when it comes to economic policies. Price controls typically lead to even more inflation, shortages, things like that. That's certainly what happened back in the 1970s. [00:03:34] But what I'm certainly in favor of is ensuring that we have Federal Trade Commission that is hyper focused on ensuring that there's competition in the market to ensure there is lower prices. And, you know, without the competition. [00:03:50] I mean, he was just he was just complaining about how long it takes for mergers to take place in America. Hey, don't scroll away, come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to tight U power our honestreporting. [00:04:05] You do it at Titcomb team and we love you for it. And that's because he's in the middle of a $30 billion merger. Kellogg and Mars Company, I believe, are considering merging. And that would, mainly really limit the supply. [00:04:23] Not the supply, but the the number of companies within the snacks and candy industry. ET cetera. Of course, Kellogg's and more things as well. But that's that's what they're worried about. And they want to make sure that they want that they guard [00:04:39] against monopolies and oligopolies. And if you're a capitalist monopoly, monopoly power is one of the first things that you read about and that you understand is an enemy of the free markets. Monopolies and oligopolies, which is a number of small, limited companies, [00:04:56] small number of companies, which is exactly what we have in America. Dominating almost every industry greatly hurts competition prices and free markets so that these executives get massive payouts when they do these mergers. So oftentimes they'll be golden parachutes. [00:05:12] They'll be extra incentive incentives to merge, they'll get stock options from both companies, etc.. So they have all the incentive in the world to do these mergers. But it hurts consumers. And that's why the government is supposed to look out for you like they're a cop on the on Main Street. They also needs to be a cop on Wall Street. [00:05:28] Now, a couple of interesting things he said there, though. He said, number one, this looks like an intimidation. Well, it partly is. And that's what the government is supposed to do. They're supposed to say, hey, we're going to put a check on you. So if you think you're going to abuse this system and abuse the the voters [00:05:44] and the average American, well, you're not going to get away with it. So if you do price gouging in the middle of a natural disaster, you charge $200 for a bottle of water because there was a hurricane hit and your kids need water. Well, we're going to come after you for that. That's because that's the government protecting you in a time of need. So he then said, oh, well, this is really vague. [00:06:01] Now wait a minute. If you thought it's price controls, then it's not vague at all. Price controls are very clear. Hey, I'm going to set the price of bananas at $0.20 a pound. Super clear. No, price gouging is big. So you don't think it's price controls? You think it is a and actually an effort to limit price gouging. [00:06:20] That's why you called it big. So look, that brother is speaking from his perspective as a CEO of a massive multi-billion dollar company. And in their world, they really believe the mythology that they put out there in the propaganda that they do. And if you notice, he said, well, they had all this momentum, but, you know, they in [00:06:39] the polling, this shows that it's popular and they've added to their momentum. But what he really meant was the business community thought we could trust him. And you had momentum with the donors, but now you're cutting into your momentum. So now we can't trust that you're corrupt enough. [00:06:55] Awesome. You can't do a better ad, right? And just to be clear, you know, former Kellogg CEO, but has the mentality of a CEO who's, by the way, Tasked with maximizing profits. So. Right that that is the job that they are focused on. [00:07:14] And so it makes sense that they're going to push back against any type of government regulation that would go after any type of predatory behavior. Right. And in the case of price gouging, that has been a problem. And look, they have been denying over and over again on cable news shows that, [00:07:31] no, no, no, there was no price gouging. None of that happened. But if you want to know the truth, the best way to get it is to listen in on the calls that these executives have with their shareholders, which is public. You can actually join those calls and listen in to what they're saying, [00:07:46] and they cannot lie to the shareholders. Otherwise they could be liable for fraud prosecution. So with that in mind, let's actually read some of the transcripts from some of these calls. Okay. Let's start with the CEO of Iron Mountain Inc., who told Wall [00:08:04] Street analysts at a September 20th, 2022 investor event that the high levels of inflation of the past several years had helped the company increase its margins, meaning increase their profits and that for and that. [00:08:21] For that reason, he had long been doing my inflation dance. Praying for inflation. Yeah. Praying for inflation. Okay. There's more. Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said on an earnings call with analysts back in 2021. [00:08:38] Our business operates the best when inflation is about 3% to 4%. A little bit of inflation is always good for in our business. Yeah, okay. Because they can piggyback off of that inflation messaging that we see in the media and justify increasing their prices even though they really don't need to. [00:08:59] Yeah. So I want to get to the politics of this because it's just absolutely brilliant. But but first I want to emphasize one thing that Anna said. So when that CEO says that they're praying for inflation. Remember, the current CEOs are saying, oh no, no, we're really worried about [00:09:14] inflation because it drives up our prices. We're afraid of inflation. So when a CEO says, no, no, no, we're secretly praying for inflation, what he's saying is I'm going to use that as an opportunity to drive up my profits even more. So that's where he gives away the game. They're not afraid of that. [00:09:33] You know, it depends on the industry. It depends on the company. But for a lot of these consumer goods, especially because of the extra money that people had because of the Covid relief, they thought, oh, they're going to be less likely to move to a competitor or to a non-brand, consumer goods like sugar or etc. [00:09:52] Or even a detergent. It's all of those things that you find in a grocery store. So we got them where we want them. And inflation allows us to charge past inflation to make a bigger problem. So now the politics of it so this was an incredible, [00:10:10] Is incredible populist jiu jitsu maneuver, and more effective than almost anything that I could remember in covering presidential politics because Donald Trump was was perceived wrongly but perceived as the more populist candidate. [00:10:25] So he would speak like an average guy in that he didn't use prompters. He didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Right. Like, not that an average guy doesn't, but he didn't look studied like a normal politician does. And that gave him the feeling of authenticity without the actual [00:10:41] authenticity or the actual populism. Meanwhile, he's saying in words like, oh, I'm going to give corporations everything an even bigger tax cut, etc. But he had that momentum. Now it's switched completely. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz look more, populist. The more they are called communist, the more they look populist. [00:10:57] Because now Trump, the Republicans and all of cable news is dug into. No, Kamala Harris is hurting big corporations. She's trying to you know, you know, please the average person in America unfairly and taking it out on big business. [00:11:17] You can't ask for better ads than that. This is beautiful. This is exactly what you should do. Now, nobody's talking about how Trump's a populist. He never was anyway. But that veneer is gone when they start defending big business. Exactly. And so I want to give you more examples, [00:11:33] because it wasn't just 1 or 2 corporate executives who openly bragged about how how they were taking advantage of the inflation narrative in order to jack up their prices for no reason at all, other than to increase their margins and their profits. AutoZone, which sells car parts and accessories, saw earnings jump 13%. [00:11:52] CEO Jamere Jackson called inflation a little bit of our friend in terms of what we see in terms of retail pricing. There's more. Coca Cola Coca Cola Co's CEO James Quincey said in February of 2023 [00:12:09] the company had earned the right to push price hikes on the consumers because it's classic Coke and Fanta sodas led the beverage category. And so look, because of Covid, it is undeniable that there were [00:12:24] supply chain disruptions. So there were areas in our economy, sectors of the economy that certainly saw prices jump because there was limited supply, increased demand. However, companies and sectors of the economy that were not impacted [00:12:41] by these supply chain issues decided to take advantage of that and argue that they had to raise their prices as well. And look, I do think that there's value, even though I don't think Kamala Harris is going to do a damn thing about price gouging. And to be fair, you know, inflation has slowed down a little bit [00:12:59] when it comes to grocery prices. Prices are still coming up, but the inflation has slowed down considerably. I do think that the threat of doing something has an impact. We certainly see that with Lina Khan as the head of the FTC. You know, when the threat of FTC lawsuits could potentially stop a merger [00:13:18] from happening. Sometimes those proposed mergers are never even proposed. Yeah. So that's why when he said, it seems like they're trying to intimidate us. Think about the message that sends to the average voter. They're saying Kamala Harris would bully big business interests to fight for you. [00:13:37] Oh, my God, that's beautiful. All right, so please keep saying that all over television. I know that the big business community is like verklempt over it. And they're like, oh my God, we won't give you as much as we were going to. Okay, fine. But at this point, I don't think that that makes much of a difference at all. [00:13:54] What makes a difference is appealing to these voters. And this is why you attack on your moral high ground, because it invites the other side to accidentally help you by continuing this discussion, which frames you as the fighter for the average American. [00:14:10] Exactly. Now I have to give credit to one CEO. And I'm sure you'll be very proud of this, Jake. He's a fellow Turk. - Oh, yes. - So he's the Chobani founder and CEO. Hamdi Ulukaya. [00:14:26] - Yeah. - Hamdi Ulukaya. Obviously. And here's what he's had to say about the price gouging that has been taking place. He says that this is irresponsible. People who depend on food are paying the price. Yeah, well, look, that makes two Turks that didn't raise their price. [00:14:42] During inflation, we also didn't raise the price of membership here on Young Turks. Hit the join button below. Still the same low price, but seriously. I look, I think Hamdi is a super smart guy. I love that he called it Greek yogurt when he's Turkish. He just did it for marketing. [00:14:58] It worked and it worked and it was brilliant. And nothing wrong with that. That's another long story. But here he is sticking up for the average consumer, saying, no, we're not going to raise prices and you don't have to raise prices. It's all about profit margin guys. If you have a tiny margin digital media okay. [00:15:15] Well then that. You're in trouble and you need as much margin as you can possibly get to survive in the tough times, right? But a lot of these companies have giant margins, so it's just a matter of how much in profits they're making, how many billions in profits that they're making, etc.. [00:15:30] Now, grocery stores are not the best example of that. Grocery stores do have kind of low margins, but that's why all of this is a little bit of more optics than reality, because she's not going to go after grocery stores, and I doubt she'll ever even do this. I think that all they're doing is falling right into her trap [00:15:48] of painting her as the populist person fighting for the average guy. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. [00:16:05] But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.