Why is the US military ceding ground to China? As a new DOD report shows, big defense contractors are middlemen whose main purpose is stock buybacks and dividends. | Continue reading
The 3 big drug wholesalers who fostered the opioid crisis are now causing a shortage of a key medicine for children with behavioral disorders. Why? It's a problem called absentee ownership. | Continue reading
At a Goldman Sachs conference in December, Equifax CEO Mark Begor told investors that his company has a monopoly in an obscure but important area - selling data about your salary to third parties. | Continue reading
Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp own LastPass. They raised prices, and then fumbled security. You had one job guys! | Continue reading
Why does Wall Street still think that everything will consolidate? Probably because for the last forty years, it always has. Is that dynamic finally changing? | Continue reading
The Kroger-Albertsons supermarket deal is uglier than you might expect. The "special cash division" of $4 billion may be intended to get around antitrust enforcers. | Continue reading
The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act just moved through the U.S. House of Representatives, supported by a weird bipartisan coalition. This is very, very good news. | Continue reading
Antitrust enforcer Jonathan Kanter is reinvigorating merger law. This time, it's blocking monopolization in the lock industry. | Continue reading
A venture capitalist called Equal Ventures just says it straight-up, we seek to invest in monopolization. | Continue reading
Amazon is curtailing its private label business in response to regulatory pressure. But it's also promoting one of its more predatory executives. Two steps forward, one step back. | Continue reading
Why are football helmets in shortage? Blame a private equity roll-up of the main producers, Schutt and Riddell. | Continue reading
Apple CEO Tim Cook was personally lobbying Congress last week on privacy and antitrust. He's got a backup plan to beat back the biggest threat to his monopoly. | Continue reading
The rule of law does not apply to the powerful. It should. And Facebook is a good place to start. | Continue reading
In 1980, conspirators launched a secret plot to get rid of antitrust law. It worked. Now enforcer are asking for help from you and me to restore the law. Let's give it to them. | Continue reading
Margrethe Vestager gets a lot of headlines, but without results. It's time to stop taking her quest for headlines seriously, and to focus on whether there will be any impact from the new law. | Continue reading
Biden just tried to regulate CVS, United Health, and Cigna. Cigna struck back, and is now trying to wipe out independent pharmacies and harm patients. Plus, antitrust enforcers are getting real. | Continue reading
The biggest lobby in D.C. - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - has a reason to go after Lina Khan. Demonizing her sells. | Continue reading
The conservative justice issued a statement on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, in which he attacked the core business model of Silicon Valley giants. | Continue reading
Bad merger policy is why wealth and power is so consolidated in America. But last month, two government enforcers started to turn the table on the monopolies who run our economy. | Continue reading
With the FTC challenging the Lockheed-Aerojet merger, 30 years of consolidation could be at an end. | Continue reading
Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are demanding their minions in the Senate protect them. Will they? We'll see this week. | Continue reading
Higher prices aren't just a result of supply chain chaos or government spending. Inflation is being driven by the pricing power and higher profits of corporations, costing $2,126 per American. | Continue reading
Clogging up the ports is a $150 billion business, but a bipartisan bill to re-regulate the sector is moving through Congress. Why is Congress about to do the right thing? | Continue reading
We are now in a giant parking lot game that threatens the global economy. Thank deregulation and the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 1998. | Continue reading
Monopoly Supplier of Critical Pentagon Semiconductors Shuts Down Its Production. | Continue reading
Agricultural economists manipulated data to block Congress from acting on high beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching. Why? Because they think monopolies are good. | Continue reading
Frances Haugen got a lot right. But a digital regulator that legitimizes Facebook's power would be the worst possible outcome. | Continue reading
We tend to talk about infrastructure in terms of spending amounts. But infrastructure in a monopoly-dominated economy is not just about money, it's about who governs. | Continue reading
Why are we still facing shortages of masks and medicine a year and a half after the start of the pandemic? Because a buying cartel controls medical supplies, and has for 25 years. | Continue reading
How Fed Chair Jay Powell undermines antitrust enforcement. | Continue reading
The FTC's narrative is that Mark Zuckerberg isn't very good at developing technology, so he built a monopoly instead. Will that story lead to a break-up? And how long will a trial and appeal take? | Continue reading
An Afghan General blames defense contractors for the collapse of the Afghan army. A government inspector blames the "the pervasiveness of overoptimism" by U.S. generals. It's all that, and more. | Continue reading
Chinese strategists think the West is in permanent decline. Have Joe Biden and Angela Merkel proved them right? | Continue reading
Big law is a corrupting influence on our policymakers. The new FTC is dusting off an old legal tool to fight back. | Continue reading
Louis Rossmann has created a movement around right to repair. It's not just iPhones. It's everywhere. | Continue reading
"In the late 1930s, FDR’s Administration supercharged antitrust enforcement, increasing more than eightfold the number of cases brought in just two years." | Continue reading
Shein is dominating with ultra-low prices for Chinese made goods. The reason is a Trump-era tax loophole. | Continue reading
The Judiciary Committee voted 21-20 to split up Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. What happened was unbelievable. | Continue reading
The Amazon H2Q fight in 2019 woke up the anti-monopolists in New York. Now they are moving forward with a new stronger trust-busting law. | Continue reading
A new antitrust case shows that Prime inflates prices across the board, using the false promise of 'free shipping' that is anything but free. | Continue reading
Last week, the Biden administration asked for a global waiver on vaccine intellectual property protections. What is this waiver? Why does it matter? And why did Biden stand up to big pharma? | Continue reading
Joe Biden's tax changes will slow the merger boom. And it will hit private equity particularly hard. | Continue reading
Harvard, Yale, and the other top schools descended from an elitist Puritan tradition are wrecking the great post-World War II democratization of education. | Continue reading
The Senate Commerce Committee holds a nominating hearing for the most important scholar on antitrust since Robert Bork. She warns of potential criminal activity in the adtech world. | Continue reading
Antitrust lawyers filed a class action lawsuit against private equity-owned Varsity Brands, the organizing force behind competitive cheerleading. | Continue reading
Financiers thinned out our supply chains. That was a risky bet. | Continue reading
FTC documents show that antitrust economics establishment and Obama-era corruption led to a monopoly takeover of our economy. Joe Biden can undo the damage. | Continue reading