Big U.S. corporations see profits surge, passing on costs to consumers: The Guardian

LONDON, April 28 (Xinhua) -- While U.S. consumers came under huge financial pressure with raging inflation, many of the largest corporations in the country were enjoying profit increases as they passed on costs to customers, The Guardian reported Wednesday.

A Guardian analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings for 100 U.S. corporations found net profits up by a median of 49 percent.

Those increases came as companies saddled customers with higher prices and all but ten executed massive stock buyback programs or bumped dividends to enrich investors, the British newspaper added.

In March, the U.S. consumer price index surged 8.5 percent from a year earlier, which was the largest 12-month increase since the period ending December 1981. Meanwhile, corporate profit margins rose 35 percent during the last year and are at their highest level since 1950, it noted.

"It's obvious that corporations are trying to pass on any form of short-term pain they might be feeling... and that's serving the top, wealthiest class instead of those in need of fair wages or products that are affordable," the newspaper quoted Krista Brown, a policy analyst with the American Economic Liberties Project, as saying.

The newspaper continued to say that the American people are now "tired of being ripped off".

"The American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented corporate greed that exists all over this country. They are sick and tired of being ripped off by corporations making record-breaking profits while working families are forced to pay outrageously high prices for gas, rent, food, and prescription drugs," U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders was quoted as saying. ■