Inflation, firing Powell, and why Costco may not be a real value | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Americans have been deluged by reports and the reality of higher consumer prices. What has been confusing is figuring out exactly what prices have gone up and how that has impacted you.

In some cases, prices increases have been widespread and across the board. Egg prices, for example, went up nationally due to supply reasons.

Exactly how much more eggs cost varied by store as some retailers opted to eat some of the increases, while other passed them on to consumers. It has been a confusing situation given that most people only really know what they spend each week on groceries, not how much each item costs.

In addition, Americans have also opted to trade down, maybe picking chicken instead if beef, or ground beef over steak.

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Inflation, of course, isn’t just groceries. It has also hit hard in housing and the car market.

Daniel Kline, Todd Campbell, and Maurie Backman dived into prices, and why Costco (COST) may not be the answer for most people, on the first edition of the Street Smarts podcast.

Inflation, firing Powell, and why Costco may not be a real value (5:47)

Why Costco may not be the answer for high prices

Transcript:

Dan Kline: You are listening to the first episode of Street Smarts. This is the podcast from TheStreet.

This is the soon to be biggest business podcast in the world. I will lay down that gauntlet right now. Todd Campbell, editor-in-chief of TheStreet, my partner here.

You wanted to talk about inflation, the GDP numbers. Trump is going to fire Powell. There is so much going on.

Remember, this is a short forum podcast as we head into this segment. I know, and I get talking. I could go on forever.

Todd Campbell: I think, like Maurie, maybe I’m a little naturally caffeinated. I don’t need to have too much added. But, you know, I think that, you know, there’s all of this confusion and just like, yeah, everybody’s like, oh, what’s going to happen?

And you look at what happened from the high in February when all these tariffs started getting announced and the stock market was making all-time highs and then fell 19% through early April when President Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs and all that stuff in April 2nd. Liberation Day. Hey, freedom.

Freedom to lose money for a couple days until he paused them on April 9th and then off to the races. I think that just really surprised everybody because the reality is that a lot of the same reasons that the stocks, the stock market declined, they still remain. You know, I mean, you know, GDP is only expected to grow 1.4% this year, down from 2.8% last year.

We just got the latest CPI inflation data and it shows inflation rose year over year from May into June. Not a lot, but it’s still in the high 2% range. And, you know, kind of like Maurie was saying before, I mean, inflation is kind of this insidious beast, right?

You know, people forget, oh, it’s only 3% year over year. Yeah, but it’s cumulative. So, that 3% is coming on top of 5%, which is coming on top of 2002, 8%.

More Retail:

Kline: Let me jump in here, Todd. First of all, you can find my album, Reciprocal Tariffs, at Tower Records, on MySpace, every place albums are no longer sold. But before we do that, so let’s talk about inflation.

Because here’s how I view inflation. I know it’s high, and I know certain people have to buy certain products, but I’m not sure how you shop. But when I go into the grocery store, and I’m going to name the grocery store I shop at, because it’ll tell you sort of where I am.

I go to Fresh Market most days. And when I walk into Fresh Market, I look at what’s on sale. And if I don’t hate that, that’s probably what I buy.

So, if I’m going to buy, you know, a rack of ribs, and it’s $3.99 a pound, it doesn’t matter to me that salmon’s up 50%.

Maurie Backman: Yeah, but Dan, I have to interrupt you here, because that is spoken like someone with a 21-year-old. And maybe by then, they’ve gotten over their picky eater habits. But I’m going to tell you that if I try to pull that tactic, and I say to my kids, all right, today, we’re walking into ShopRite, or Costco, and we’re buying the food that’s on sale, they’re going to look at me and say, great, Mom, then we will be dining on popcorn this week.

So, you know.

Kline: I understand the challenges. I understand when egg prices were high, and milk prices were high, that people can’t make substitutions. But also, you just mentioned Costco.

And Todd, isn’t one of the inflation busters, can’t you just go to Costco? They barely mark things up. And again, I don’t want to downplay the person living paycheck to paycheck.

I totally understand something’s a little bit more money you’re going to notice. But aren’t there things you could do that are self-mitigating? Yeah.

Campbell: mean, if you’re struggling, trying to figure out how am I making rent, how am I making this, how am I paying this, you’re not going to Costco and buying the supersized stuff and sticking it in the closet. You just can’t afford a $200 grocery bill, right? You’re literally going down and saying, where’s my Ramen Pride?

Where’s my Kraft Mac and Cheese? It’s like the old, I’m in my early 20s diet. So I think that, yeah, that’s true.

I mean, there’s another side of the Costco expert, but this whole other side of thinking that Costco, you don’t really end up saving money because you end up spending more than you would normally because you’re buying all 13 pallets worth of toilet paper.

Backman: I mean, I do think you end up saving money over time. But the point is, stores like Costco are actually very unfriendly to people living paycheck to paycheck because to get that savings, you have to have money to lay out for a larger quantity of product. And I mean, we all know that, sure, you can put it on a credit card, but then what you’re going to pay in interest, you lose in the savings.

So I think it really all goes back to the fact that people of a certain income level are just not going to have an easy time in this economy.

Kline: No, it’s really hard. And I mean, wages are growing faster than inflation, yay. That’s good, right?

I mean, that’s actually good for the stock market too, right? Whenever incomes rise faster than inflation, it gives you discretionary income. Mortgage rates and housing prices offset that.

I mean, things are great now if you don’t need to buy a house or a car. A lot of things have come back to earth. But if you’re locked into a 7% mortgage, now, Todd, I’m locked into the house I’m in because my mortgage was like three and a quarter, right before they say, we bought a house because we could see the writing on the wall.

And more, I’ve fallen for that Costco thing. I may or may not own an eight-foot teddy bear and a kayak and a winter coat that I don’t need here in Florida.

Backman: I mean, no one’s judging you, yeah.

Kline: Or there may have been a time where Amazon sold me four pounds of toffee that I bought at like three in the morning because it was a good price. In my head, I think the toffee arrived much sooner than it did because I was hungry right then. But we’re going to move on to one other topic that relates very much.