America is in the grips of another of those fashionable delusions. Inflation is the result of an outbreak of greed among the capitalist and management classes. They’re raising prices in order to feed the bottom line and it’s nothing, nothing at all, to do with excessive government spending, the soared deficit or incontinent money printing. No Siree, it’s them, over there:

Target, a retailer with almost 2,000 stores, lost a quarter of its market value, falling $53.67 to $161.61, after warning of higher wage and fuel costs, as well as supply chain disruption. It came a day after Walmart, the world’s biggest bricks-and mortar-retailer, cut its profit forecast.

Oh. Umm, you mean that profits and margins at these retailers - the two together are a measurable portion of the entire retail spend of the US - are down? Lower than they were?

Gosh:

Operating profit will amount to only about 6% of sales this year, 2 percentage points below the previous forecast

Umm:

Neverthless, the company’s net income fell to $2.05 billion, or 74 cents per share. That’s down from $2.73 billion, or 97 cents per share, from a year ago.

Oh Woes and deary us. Profit margins are decreasing, meaning that it’s not the greed for increased profits pushing up inflation then. So dies another of those economic fashions - or as we’d put it, delusions.

Don’t forget, when theory, or even political artifice, disagrees with reality it is always, but always, reality that wins.