You see having my own business, being a big believer in the free market system, and having taken many business coursed I understand profits, losses, and all of that.
What is going on here is nothing more than gouging. And before Pete thinks i am going liberal on him, let me explain.
Lets say a company tells it's stock holders that it is going to make a 20% profit margin. Lets again say they shoot for that profit margin every year and hit it. Then turbulant times come along, their profit margin goes down, so they have to do things to hit that number layoffs, price increases, all of that.
Now that very simplist view of business was done to to show what i am going to say next. Let's say at the end of the year, these companies make a 20% profit. Then bam they raise the prices on their customers, etc. They are now making a 30-40% profit margin. They claim they have to to hold them over when things are tough. But anyone with a brain knows that is b.s. because when times are tough they are still making 20%.
Yep their increase of 10-20% makes others fear for their jobs, families, lively hoods, etc. The sad thing is these fools who exploit the free market system like this are the ones who make it hard on the system itself, because now there are calls in come up with some kind of investigation, regulation, and all of that. Which as we all know is not good when uncle sam gets involved with anything like that.
Yeh I know, wordy. But I had to make my point. I have not changed my views on it. But damn. These companies doind this type of thing make all companies look bad. And hurt a lot of people.
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