The list goes on, industry after industry, across the economy.Īntitrust has been ambushed by the giant companies it was designed to contain.Ĭongress has squeezed the budgets of the antitrust division of the Justice Department and the bureau of competition of the Federal Trade Commission. Result – in real harm to consumers and to innovation.”ĭecided against the lawsuit, perhaps because Google is also the biggest lobbyist Three years ago the staff of the Federal TradeĬommission recommended suing Google for “conduct has resulted – and will Monsanto alone owns the key genetic traits to more than 90 percent of the soybeans planted byįarmers in the United States, and 80 percent of the corn.īig Agribusiness wants to keep it this way.ĭominant “google” has become a verb. Why does food cost so much? Because the four largest food companies control 82 percent of beef packing, 85 percent of soybean processing, 63 percent of pork packing, and 53 percent of chicken processing. Into a handful of giant carriers that divide up routes and collude on fares. Ticket prices have remained so high even though the cost of jet fuel has And these corporations are among the most politically potent in America (although, thankfully, not powerful enough to grease the merger of Comcast with Time-Warner). More than 80 percent of Americans have noĬhoice but to rely on their local cable company for high capacity wired dataĬomcast, AT&T, Verizon, or Time-Warner. Highest broadband prices among advanced nations and the slowest speeds? Consolidating into a few large national firms and operating across many different states, they’ve gained considerable economic and political power. Regulated by state insurance commissioners.īut America’s giant insurers outgrew state regulation. Markets, and collude over the terms of coverage, on the assumption they’d be Decades ago health insurers wangled from Congress anĮxemption to the antitrust laws that allowed them to fix prices, allocate Such “pay-for-delay”Īgreements are illegal in other advanced economies, but antitrust enforcement hasn’t laid a finger on them in America. They cost you and me an estimated $3.5 billion a year. A big reason is the power of pharmaceutical companies to keep their patents going way beyond the twenty years they’re supposed to run. Though the typical American takes fewer prescription drugs. Medications per person than do citizens in any other developed country, even Similar upward distributions are occurring elsewhere in the economy. That means higher fees and interest rates on loans, as well as a greater risk of another “too-big-to-fail” bailout.īut politicians don’t dare bust them up because Wall Street pays part of their campaign expenses. Wall Street’s five largest banks now account for 44 percent of America’s banking assets – up from about 25 percent before the crash of 2008 and 10 percent in 1990. It’s a hidden upward redistribution from the majority of Americans to corporate executives and wealthy shareholders. The result has been higher prices for the many, and higher profits for the few. Now, giant corporations are taking over the economy – and they’re busily weakening antitrust enforcement. It was a “brazen display of collusion” that went on for years, said Attorney General Loretta Lynch.Įxecutive will go to jail, the banks can continue to gamble in the same currency markets, and the fines – although large – are a fraction of the banks’ potential gains and will be treated by the banks as costs of doing business.Īmerica used to have antitrust laws that permanently stopped corporations from monopolizing markets, and often broke up the biggest culprits. Their self-described “cartel” used an exclusive electronic chat room and coded language to manipulate the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency exchange market. Price-fixing conspiracy in modern history. Last week’s settlement between the Justice Department and five giant banks reveals the appalling weakness of modern antitrust.
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