{"id":278383,"date":"2025-11-23T04:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T04:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/278383\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T04:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T04:54:09","slug":"the-analyst-who-once-predicted-the-end-of-capitalism-sees-zohran-mamdani-as-a-day-of-reckoning-coming-in-and-corporates-only-have-themselves-to-blame-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/278383\/","title":{"rendered":"The analyst who once predicted the \u2018end of capitalism\u2019 sees Zohran Mamdani as a \u2018day of reckoning coming in\u2019\u2014and corporates only have themselves to blame"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Albert Edwards, the long-standing strategist at Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale known for offering the \u201calternative view\u201d within the institution, believes the recent political successes of figures like Zohran Mamdani signal the corporate sector\u2019s self-inflicted backlash against \u201cgreedflation.\u201d Edwards, whose career in finance dates back to 1982 and who hasn\u2019t been aligned with the \u201chouse view\u201d of his investment bank for many years now, has gained a sort of cult following for his skeptical approach to market narratives, once famously writing a note about how appalled he was by \u201cgreedflation,\u201d or record profit margins against the backdrop of post-pandemic inflation. He described it as the \u201cend of capitalism<\/a>\u201d in 2023, and in conversation with Fortune, absolutely stood by his point.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

At that time, Edwards said, inflation was generally being blamed on raw material prices because of the Ukraine war, as well as the labor market, with very few people saying there was profit-driven inflation, but he took a different view: \u201cThis is unprecedented.\u201d He pointed out \u201cwhen unit costs rise, always, unit margins fall, always, in history.\u201d He said that shouldn\u2019t have happened, and the reason it did was because of so much stimulus from the government that \u201ccompanies could get away with doing it, using [inflation as] cover.\u201d<\/p>\n

The consequence of this money printing and fiscal expenditure was a \u201cbonanza for the corporate sector,\u201d resulting in corporate profit margins soaring \u201coff to infinity\u201d after the pandemic. Edwards noted specific sectors benefited enormously, recalling a St. Louis Fed study<\/a> that showed corporate profits as a share of national income surging as a share of national income since the inflation spike, a total outlier compared to the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

This period of corporate excess laid the groundwork for severe political instability and public outrage, Edwards argued. Just look at the election in New York, Edwards said, which was all about the cost of living. Zohran Mamdani\u2019s election is \u201can indication that this still is a big issue.\u201d Edwards agreed \u201caffordability\u201d is a major topic of the moment, along with the U.S. housing market: \u201cIt stands out as, like, what\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n

This latest twist in the populist turn isn\u2019t necessarily something to celebrate, Edwards said. As an economist, he said he considers Mamdani\u2019s policies, deriving from his democratic socialist background, such as rent controls and price controls, to be \u201clunacy,\u201d having experienced them himself in the 1970s. Still, dysfunction in capitalism means that society will \u201ccome back full circle to this.\u201d The increasing intergenerational strife, driven by young people being shut out of the housing market<\/a> and out of wealth concentration, has created a primal sense of betrayal, especially among Americans who no longer feel they are better off than their parents.<\/p>\n

Story Continues <\/p>\n

Edwards was speaking as the first-time homebuyer hit an average age of 40 years old,<\/a> a stark symbol of how the largely youthful voter base that elected Mamdani is shut out of the market. The Amherst Group CEO Sean Dobson<\/a>, one of America\u2019s largest institutional landlords, recently estimated the same post-COVID economic landscape that so outraged Edwards meant \u201cwe\u2019ve probably made housing unaffordable for a whole generation of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coming back to his critique of capitalism, Edwards argued Mamdani\u2019s election is \u201cpart of the consequence \u2026 the corporates, by being excessively greedy, hence \u2018greedflation,\u2019 have laid the seeds for their own destruction\u2014and backlash.\u201d Edwards added that \u201cmore and more people are identifying corporate excess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking about what he called \u201cintergenerational strife,\u201d Edwards said he thinks this is \u201cthe first generation where people are not seeing themselves as better off than their parents were.\u201d Everywhere you look in modern capitalism, \u201cyoung people can\u2019t get on the housing ladder, they see wealth extremely concentrated \u2026 it takes the incentivization out of the economy if young people don\u2019t feel they\u2019re participating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edwards\u2019 argument here has some strange bedfellows, as none other than Peter Thiel has been warning about this incentivization problem for years Mamdani\u2019s election seemed to send a shiver through Silicon Valley\u2019s right-wing contingent, as Chamath Palihapitiya shared Peter Thiel\u2019s 2020 email to Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen<\/a>, warning of a \u201cbroken generational compact\u201d and reasoning, \u201cif one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.\u201d In a follow-up interview days later, Thiel told The Free Press<\/a>, \u201cif you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn\u2019t be surprised if they eventually become communist.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the left wing of legal thought, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu recently told Fortune<\/a> that he wrote his new book, The Age of Extraction, about a similar feeling. \u201cMy understanding of America is that it\u2019s the place where things are supposed to get better,\u201d Wu said, but instead we\u2019re living through a time with \u201can economy-wide problem\u201d where \u201ceverything kind of just creeps. It\u2019s that weird feeling of something you like becoming worse.\u201d He added that American politics right now are \u201cvery angry\u201d and \u201ceconomic resentment,\u201d but also a general feeling that \u201cwe let things go a little too far\u201d and we \u201cjust kind of lost touch with the tradition of broad-based wealth that was the American way.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the subject of greedflation, Edwards was philosophical but insisted that what happened in 2023 was a mistake. \u201cOkay, I can understand this is capitalism, this is how it works\u201d he said about pursuit of the profit motive, \u201cbut if the government doesn\u2019t step in,\u201d then a backlash is bound to happen. Edwards declined to say this was a particularly Democratic or Republican issue, but he said \u201cthere\u2019s a reluctance\u201d in American culture to dictate to the corporate sector. At any rate, the consequence of it is \u201cthere\u2019s a day of reckoning coming in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Edwards, who is also convinced artificial intelligence (AI) is in a bubble, said he views his role as similar to \u201cCaesar\u2019s slave<\/a>,\u201d referring to the story from antiquity about the Roman emperor ordering someone to follow him around and always whisper in one ear: \u201cYou are mortal.\u201d (This is also commonly referred to by the Latin phrase \u201cmemento mori<\/a>.\u201d) Edwards said he sees his role as similar, for the often overly optimistic market. He warns while the macro-level excesses might not be visible in aggregate, drilling down reveals \u201cthings are pretty crappy under the surface.\u201d The political reaction embodied by Mamdani\u2019s focus on affordability is a clear sign that the economic consequences of corporate greed are now driving mainstream political change.<\/p>\n

Edwards concluded there\u2019s a fitting phrase for the dysfunctions of capitalism in the 2020s: \u201cYou reap what you sow.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Albert Edwards, the long-standing strategist at Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale known for offering the \u201calternative view\u201d within the institution, believes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[68833,84,31882,113920,1294,52716,15187,113921,56,54,55,5012],"class_list":{"0":"post-278383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-albert-edwards","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-capitalism","11":"tag-corporate-sector","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-edwards","14":"tag-housing-market","15":"tag-profit-margins","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom","19":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}