Mark Carney also criticised "far-right populists" and Brexiteers for having a "basic misunderstanding of what drives economies". Ms Truss, who became the shortest-serving prime minister in history when she resigned last year, has defended her policies since leaving office.
It is inflation. Inflation is literally too much money chasing too few goods - if there’s sufficient supply of goods (or insufficient supply of money) price gouging literally cannot happen. Outside of illegal acts such as collusion, price gouging is a symptom of too much money chasing too few goods.
I agree inflation is caused by changes in the money supply.
QE is one way of doing that, but also is shifting the use of existing money, eg if you buy less derivatives, and more commodities.
To clarify, this is because purchasing derivatives has the effect of temporarily removing money from the money supply because the units are created, and destroyed, when purchased and sold. Derivatives are effectively infinite, as opposed to commodities which are finite.
As such you can cause inflation through changes in demand and/or supply of certain critical commodities which have onward effects. This is one of the factors we are seeing with the supply of gas, causing higher energy costs, causing higher manufacturing costs, higher transport costs, etc.
However, if you look at companies like ISPs, phone networks, etc, you see they have contractual terms which state RPI+x%. If we are generous and say that their costs do increase in like with others, aka inflation, then the x% extra is still pure profit. I would class this as price gouging, especially when so many companies in the same space have the same clauses, it’s almost tacit collusion.
I’m not saying that this is the only factor, but companies who are posting record profits are, by definition, increasing revenue faster than costs, meaning that inflation it is not just inflation. If it was, their costs would raise at the same rate and profit (as a %) would be flat.