Don’t demonize inflationary profits: it has nothing to do with greed

The ECB has chosen to detach from the rest of the bulletin published yesterday the part on the analysis of the trend of corporate profits or, more predictably, of unit margins. A move that also served to curb a fairly widespread vein of political controversy and criticism of the central bank itself and taken up, among others, by the CGIL. And that is to rebuff the theses that blame the inflationary wave in Europe on the greed of companies, ready to act in concert to raise price lists. The ECB obviously does not deny that there has been a growth in corporate profits and that a significant share of the average increases in European prices have come from it. But it contextualizes the phenomenon and places it in an already visible phase of change.