Tim Cook warns of US crisis: ‘I’ve never seen anything like it’ and Musk agrees. Shockproof your hard cash today
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When the CEOs of trillion-dollar companies issue the same warning, investors may want to pay attention.
First, it was Tim Cook, the former CEO of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).
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“This is a hundred-year flood,” Cook told The Wall Street Journal in an interview in June (1). “I’ve never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years.”
The warning came as Apple prepared to raise prices on its products to offset surging costs for memory and storage chips used in <a href="https://myappsplus.com/gurman-iphone-duo-max-with-bigger-display-likely-in-apples-plans/” title=”Gurman: 'iPhone Duo Max' With Bigger Display Likely in Apple's Plans”>iPhones, Macs, iPads and other devices.
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook said. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”
Then came Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), who openly backed Cook’s assessment.
“Tim Cook, who told The Wall Street Journal that the jump in costs was unlike anything he had seen ‘in any area in over 40 years,'” Musk wrote in a post on X, adding, “Biggest price jump in anything I’ve ever seen too” (2).
Musk also shared a Wall Street Journal article titled, “The Data-Center Boom Is Sparking a Third Wave of Inflation” (3). The article, which was published in late June, warned that America’s artificial intelligence buildout is pushing up prices on everything from smartphones to electricity.
One chart in the article showed consumer prices for computer software and accessories have surged about 15% from a year earlier.
Cook declined to say exactly when the increases would hit, how large they would be or which Apple products would be affected. But consumers did not have to wait long for an answer.
What’s actually going on
On June 25, Apple announced (4) price increases for Macs and iPads by hundreds of dollars.
And Apple isn’t alone.
Other major device makers, including Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), Dell (NYSE:DELL) and Nintendo, have already raised prices. The Wall Street Journal reported that prices for memory and storage chips have quadrupled since last year as demand surged.
