It's hard to understate the importance of policy staff in ensuring government works, or doesn't. This nifty story from Matt Stoller's BIG newsletter is helpful in understanding what happened to...
It's hard to understate the importance of policy staff in ensuring government works, or doesn't. This nifty story from Matt Stoller's BIG newsletter is helpful in understanding what happened to anti-monopoly enforcement in the U.S. over the last two decades, and why progressive action is so essential.
Also, read on through the story to the post-script about global supply chain chokepoints revealed through China's quarantines.
The key for today’s merger analysis is consumer price, so the crux of the complaint were these sentences: “Cheerleading uniform prices have gone through the roof due to Varsity forcing their company on to unsuspecting gym owners…. Competition costs are so high that many athletes have to quit the sport due to the cost. (Competitions and Uniforms are the largest fees any athlete pays in respect to being on a team.)” Enforcers should have recognized that higher consumer prices was a signal of market power, and so this merger was worth blocking. But they did not. Why? Who received the complaint, and who was in charge of the bureau of enforcement when Varsity formed its monopoly?
The answer, as far as I can tell, is a lawyer named Debbie Feinstein, who DOJ Antitrust was telling complainants to contact about the case. At the time of the merger, Feinstein was the head of enforcement for the FTC, and she has exactly the personality of the kind of person you want as an enforcer. She’s a very hands-on manager, with a forceful personality, deep knowledge of the law, and an aggressive advocate for her clients. She is a respected in the community; trade publication Global Competition Review called her “lawyer of the year,” and Obama DOJ Antitrust chief Bill Bauer said she is “one of the leading antitrust lawyers in the country.”
And yet, despite her eminent qualifications and personal grit, Feinstein comes from a world where enforcing the antitrust laws doesn’t mean protecting competition in markets. For her, it means protecting a specific pro-monopoly vision of the law.
It's hard to understate the importance of policy staff in ensuring government works, or doesn't. This nifty story from Matt Stoller's BIG newsletter is helpful in understanding what happened to anti-monopoly enforcement in the U.S. over the last two decades, and why progressive action is so essential.
Also, read on through the story to the post-script about global supply chain chokepoints revealed through China's quarantines.