by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Inventories at retailers document this mess.
Turns out, when the US government spends $5 trillion in borrowed fiscal stimulus over 16 months, and the Fed hands out $4 trillion in monetary stimulus over the same period, causing asset prices to boom, demand for goods is going to wash over the land in tsunami-like waves, and supply chains that snake all over the world, amid finely honed just-in-time-inventory strategies, get tangled up. And as retail sales spiked in a historic manner, shortages of all kinds have been cropping up, including the semiconductor shortage that has slammed the auto industry with a vengeance.