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To: Perspective who wrote (240839)	5/15/2003 5:50:50 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

>>The huge print-fest by Easy Al raises the general price level, but the price response goes primarily to services with fairly inelastic demand (health care) and to basic commodities (food, metals). It should be noted that this exacerbates the squeeze on corporate America, as they become caught between an inability to raise prices for finished goods and rising costs of inputs. << good response -- the inelastic demand part is key -- and I would submit that energy demand for transport and the home are both less elastic than they used to be. last few months I think PPI was up a bit more than the CPI -- maybe not great measures (massaged a lot for calc of benefits) -- but I think the observation you make is generally true -- lack of pricing power, but higher cost of inputs, remains a problem for corps -- Fed can fix the debt service or temporarily prevent it from getting worse, but not the former problem.