They forgot the biggest reason why prices will remain high, and that is because the media is agreeing with them with the supply issues.
When ever the media takes notice of a supposed supply issue, many companies use that as an excuse to boost profit margins because people will be more willing to accept the higher price.
But what many people don't notice is there are many products that do not change prices very often. instead what happens is for items not closely monitored by the media, a commodity price will increase for a short while and company that increased the price will have their stocks go down and they will lower their prices again.
Price increases from the top of the line can only take place if everyone down the line is willing to increase their prices. If any link in the chain/ line is unwilling to move, then the chain breaks if the other links push or pull too hard.
The media has the ability to act as a global push on the entire chain. For example, when ever the media goes and talks about a change that has a good chance at causing food prices to go up, then food prices go up whether impending doom takes place or not that the media bought up.
The media makes price increases a safer course of action for many businesses as it shifts blame away from the company that increases the price. (it is the equivalent to companies illegally getting together in order to fix prices. For example suppose you sell a product and make $10 profit. Now suppose you wanted to make $20 profit but increasing the products price by $10 would cause your customers to leave you for a cheaper competitor. This is where price fixing comes in. You could hold a meeting and agree to increase prices at the same time thus allowing everyone to keep their customers while at the same time, everyone having a profit margin increase, thus all involved companies benefit at the cost of the consumers)
(the second non illegal scenario is to get the media to weave a story of impending doom (eg look at the debt ceiling crap in the US it has 100% no bearing on reality as a country cant decide on it's own debt ceiling, instead it is based on how much money other countries are willing to lone you, but it allowed the government to scare people thus make them more willing to agree to a greater amount of centralizing the power held by government. The same can happen with hard drive prices. get the media to constantly cover it, then you get a global push that all companies can take advantage of which is an overall across the board price increase that benefits all of the companies at the cost of the consumers)
While it is clear that flooding did effect the supply, it is also clear that it does not take that long to convert a facility to produce a certain product thus it should take less time to repair a damaged one. I feel that the supply is just fine and the companies are just seeing how long they can keep this farce going before the market catches on and forces price down.
Another thing that supports my hypothesis is that companies like western digital saw net income increases in the quarters after the flooding that supposedly effected their supplies.
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