Supply chain bottleneck: corporate panic buying

We are a full-orbed panic buy culture, and current behavior would indicate this will be the post-pandem norm as noted the other day:

But now it is bleeding over into corporate panic buying due to supply chain restraints. From Yahoo Finance, The World Economy Is Suddenly Running Low on Everything:

A year ago, as the pandemic ravaged country after country and economies shuddered, consumers were the ones panic-buying. Today, on the rebound, it’s companies furiously trying to stock up.

Mattress producers to car manufacturers to aluminum foil makers are buying more material than they need to survive the breakneck speed at which demand for goods is recovering and assuage that primal fear of running out. The frenzy is pushing supply chains to the brink of seizing up. Shortages, transportation bottlenecks and price spikes are nearing the highest levels in recent memory, raising concern that a supercharged global economy will stoke inflation.

Copper, iron ore and steel. Corn, coffee, wheat and soybeans. Lumber, semiconductors, plastic and cardboard for packaging. The world is seemingly low on all of it. “You name it, and we have a shortage on it,” Tom Linebarger, chairman and chief executive of engine and generator manufacturer Cummins Inc., said on a call this month. Clients are “trying to get everything they can because they see high demand,” Jennifer Rumsey, the Columbus, Indiana-based company’s president, said. “They think it’s going to extend into next year.”

The difference between the big crunch of 2021 and past supply disruptions is the sheer magnitude of it, and the fact that there is — as far as anyone can tell — no clear end in sight.

An end in sight is yet to be determined but these constraints are certainly related to some of the short-term inflation that is currently being somewhat over-reported but still exists, “essentially what people are telling us to expect is that it’s going to be hard to get supply up to a place where it matches demand.”