Bad Eggs: How Big Egg cracked the market interface and scrambled prices

Like many other staples of the American diet, eggs enjoyed relatively stable pricing until the post-COVID era. However, ever since Americans began feeling squeezed financially, they’ve become ground zero for the political battleground around inflation. The fight over egg prices is a microcosm of a broader debate between greedflation (or more narrowly excuseflation)[1]1 versus market fundamentals. Opponents of the excuseflation view argue that prices have been rising in an era where market distortion—from stimulus checks in the COVID-19 pandemic to bird flu—is prevalent. But excuseflation proponents have recently been handed new evidence in the form of a Department of Justice complaint that alleges the three largest egg producers in the country colluded to raise prices.Rather than conjuring images of seedy characters in a backroom, the complaint indicates that these producers gamed a pricing benchmark that was referenced in their contracts with distributors. Many of the tactics…