Last week, the House Antitrust Subcommittee grilled the CEOs of four large technology platforms – Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook – for five and a half hours, focusing on the market power these corporations have accumulated over the last fifteen to twenty years. Typically such hearings are superficial and partisan, with the Republicans and Democrats engaging in spats over annoying and largely irrelevant details. But this time, something unusual happened. The hearing was incredibly substantive, and members on both sides of the aisle focused on the market power wielded by these giants.
Continue readingCategory: Text
Congress forced Silicon Valley to answer for its misdeeds. It was a glorious sight (The Guardian)
The four-hour hearing on Capitol Hill offered a stunning illustration of the extent of misdeeds by Big Tech
Our founders would not bow before a king, we should not bow before the emperors of the online economy.” That’s how Congressman David Cicilline started the remarkable hearing on Wednesday in the Antitrust Subcommittee, where four tech CEOs – Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon – finally had to answer questions about how their businesses operated. And the answers they gave weren’t pretty. The word both Republicans and Democrats used to describe their corporations was dominance, and as members unspooled the evidence they had collected in an investigation over the past year, it’s easy to see why.
Continue readingInterview with Visible Hands: Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Corporation?
Why Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple are Bad for America (Politico)
We used to believe that monopolies harm the economy and democracy. They still do.
Wednesday, four big tech CEOs — Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — will come face to face with Congress, in a hearing held by Antitrust Subcommittee Chair David Cicilline. The hearing is one result of a yearlong investigation by Cicilline’s subcommittee into whether these four companies regulate more of the U.S. economy than our public officials do.
Continue readingWhither Corruption and Conservatism? (American Compass)
Oren Cass invited me to contribute to this site not as a conservative but as a lefty and Democrat who is fascinated by the project of intellectual revival in which this network of thinkers is engaged. The contributors share an important goal, which is to rebuild an economic and political consensus in favor of the national interest, and to discard the hollow promises of neoliberalism/libertarianism. I’m going to try to provoke and prod, to force this community to strengthen their thinking.
My own reason for participating is to both learn, and to encourage both parties to compete for votes based on a view of a moral society that situates power in the hands of local communities, families, and producers, and removes power from the middlemen on Wall Street and at McKinsey, who today organize our corporate state. My view is that it is monopolists, in industries as varied as candy to coffins to missiles, who control the commerce and politics of our nation, so building community sovereignty and a vibrant self-governing republic means taking on the central challenge of monopoly.
The Relief Package Ushers In Trump’s Planned Economy (Wired)
Our success in combating the pandemic and restarting the economy will depend on this administration’s choices—and political pressure from citizens.
LAST WEEK THE Senate voted 96 to 0 on a bill that fundamentally reorients American politics. The relief package includes direct cash payouts to families that run into the hundreds of billions, and corporate bailouts for casinos, aerospace companies, airlines, hotel chains, and Wall Street firms that White House adviser Larry Kudlow argues will total $6 trillion. There are loans and grants to small businesses, as well as money for hospitals, states and cities, real estate interests, and obscure guarantees of risky bank debt.
Continue readingRemote Control
A civil rights lawsuit highlights how Comcast’s monopoly crushes media divers (The American Prospect)
In October, hip-hop artist Curtis James Jackson III, better known as 50 Cent, went after a rival mogul on Instagram. His target wasn’t a fellow artist, but Brian Roberts, the billionaire CEO of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company. Comcast had just announced it was kicking 50 Cent’s show Power off the cable giant’s system. “This is the guy fu**ing up (Power) over at @Comcast,” 50 Cent wrote, showing a picture of a grinning Roberts wearing a wrinkled golf shirt.
Continue readingThe Crisis in Financial Markets Began Before COVID-19 (The American Prospect)
The Federal Reserve has been committing hundreds of billions to short-term lending markets for months. It’s time to make that power work for more than just Wall Street. Written by Graham Steele and Matt Stoller.
Last week, the Federal Reserve staged a large-scale intervention in short-term money markets, announcing that it would make $1.5 trillion in loans available in the coming days. It followed with a big rate cut. And this week, the Federal Reserve is going to start lending to any big corporation that needs it, an emergency measure it last took during the 2008 financial crisis. It will be lending essentially unlimited sums to hedge funds, banks, and brokerages.
Our Economic Model Is Making Us More Vulnerable to Coronavirus (Jacobin)
The coronavirus is making the argument for antitrust — single sources of supply for all kinds of suddenly essential medical needs are leading to shortages and could cause huge price jumps. An interview with Matt Stoller by Zephyr Teachout.
Continue readingHow Jack Welch’s Success Wrecked the Idea of the American Company
The recently deceased business icon pioneered mergers and acquisitions, stock buybacks, and offshoring (The Marker)
In early February of 1981, President Ronald Reagan picked his antitrust chief, William Baxter, whose arrival signified the reconstitution of monopoly power in America. Baxter restructured antitrust and merger law to prioritize economic efficiency and supercharged a merger trend already underway.
Continue reading