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Larry Summers’ “I Could’ve Had a V-8 Moment” on U.S. Regulators’ Persecution of U.S. Tech Companies
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who presciently warned the Biden Administration that blowout bills like the Inflation Reduction Act would actually generate inflation, is now slapping his head about the strange, perverse war that same administration is waging on America’s most innovative tech companies.
OP-ED
Progressive Antitrust’s Agenda Is a Perverse Rx for a Nation in Debt
Wildflowers are blooming, the sun lingers, and President Joe Biden believes the recent jump in employment means his economy is showing green shoots of renewal. But the American people are not buying it. A recent CBS News poll reveals that 59 percent of Americans believe the state of the economy under Biden is bad.
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Will Court Kick Lina Khan’s Case Against Meta’s to the Curb – Again?
What constitutes a market? Define it narrowly enough, and progressive antitrusters can find a monopoly anywhere. Draw lines around a market for “chicken sandwiches not sold on Sunday,” and you can charge Chick-fil-A with being a monopoly. Define a market for red-headed comedians who rely on props and you can charge Carrot Top … Okay, go ahead and charge Carrot Top. But you get the point.
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Mimi Walters Explains Why DOJ’s Apple Lawsuit Is an Attempt to Dismantle the Free Market
Former Rep. Mimi Walters writes in The National Review: “The Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple is weak, it seeks to substitute central planning for consumer preference, and it will threaten innovation.”
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What Larry Fink Misses About the Coming Social Security Crunch
This is rich, in every sense of the word.
BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink in his annual letter warned Baby Boomers that younger generations “believe my generation – the baby boomers – have focused on their own financial well-being to the detriment of who comes next. And in the case of retirement, they’re right.”
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Robert Bork Jr. on DOJ’s Taste-Setting Lawsuit Against Apple
Sometimes, when I wonder if I am right on the issues, I simply go to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Twitter-feed to make sure she’s taking the opposing view. Then I know I am right. This morning, Sen. Warren wrote: “It’s time to break up Apple’s monopoly.”
STATEMENT/RELEASE
Statement by Robert H. Bork Jr., President of the Antitrust Education Project, on Department of Justice antitrust action against Apple
Today’s announcement marks the capstone of the progressive attack on the last of our country’s most innovative tech companies. It also marks a return to the long-discredited antitrust era of “big must always be bad.”
OP-ED
Are we our own Manchurian candidate?
The two Super Bowl ads run by Chinese retailer Temu got me to thinking: Will future historians one day wonder why Western regulators worked so hard to degrade their most competitive multinational companies just in time to hand global markets to a predatory China?
OP-ED
ESG, Big Labor and Starbucks
Most controversies in the ESG arena concern the E, for environment. At center stage is ExxonMobil’s lawsuit against shareholder activists Arjuna Capital and Follow This for their campaign to force the company “to change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely.”
OP-ED
Internal emails show FTC’s Lina Khan is trying to win by losing
Critics of progressive antitrust have long wondered if Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan’s extraordinary losing streak in high-profile antitrust cases is the result of deliberate strategy rather than mere incompetence. Last summer, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) pointedly asked Lina Khan in a hearing: “Are you losing on purpose?”
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Khan and Mekki Still Wearing Blinders When It Comes to ESG
The progressive antitrust regulators of the Biden Administration often warn their fellow C-Suite progressives that environmental, social and governance promises don’t compute in antitrust. Early in her tenure, Lina Khan took to the pages of the enemy, excuse me, I mean The Wall Street Journal, to warn companies that the Federal Trade Commission cannot use ESG to buy a little extra consideration for a merger or an acquisition.
OP-ED
The NCAA Invites Another Antitrust Slap-Down
The legendary coach John Heisman began each season by holding up a football and asking: “What is this? It is a prolate spheroid, an elongated sphere in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing. Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”
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Antitrust, ESG, and the “Little Green Shoots” of Capitalism
The Anglo-American business law firm Norton Rose Fulbright released an international survey of 200 senior executives that portrays the 2024 deal-making environment in hopeful terms, portraying it as having “green shoots of optimism amid uncertainty.”
OP-ED
It’s Time to Release the Antitrust Hounds on ESG
The stock market’s recent rise and gentle subsidence has been something of a January-effect cliché. While the market flirts with historic highs, and happy talk about a “soft landing” is shared over cocktails, the U.S. economy continues to struggle against the weight of high national and consumer debt, reduced but persistent inflation, geopolitical turbulence … and lower investor returns from ESG funds.
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The Dunkin’ Donuts Suit and Economic Illiteracy
The most striking – and risible – feature of recent federal antitrust lawsuits is their paucity of economic logic. This is on display from the self-contradictory arguments of Lina Khan’s FTC antitrust case against Amazon, to DOJ’s illogical suit against the JetBlue-Spirit merger. Both would reduce consumer choices and raise prices in the name of protecting the consumer.
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Are Follow This and Arjuna Capital Violating Antitrust Law in ExxonMobil Case?
ExxonMobil is exercising its legal right to put the kibosh on an ESG effort to force the company out of its main business of producing oil and gas, which the last time I checked is a legal business. After being overrun in 2021 when activist-investment firm Engine No. 1 succeeded in placing three directors on Exxon’s board, the company is showing that it remains uncowed by the ESG movement and its Rube Goldberg approach to the environment.
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Investing in Lawsuits: Falling Short on ESG Claims Is Now a Major Class-Action Business
Bloomberg Law reports that investors are securing 25 percent returns or greater (up to hundreds of times) in funds that back litigation against major international corporations that are deemed to have failed in their E or their S or their G responsibilities.
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Consumer Benefit – the Missing Ingredient in the Amazon and Google Antitrust Complaints
The economic reasoning in the Department of Justice antitrust complaint against Google is weak. In the Federal Trade Commission complaint against Amazon, it is nonexistent. Lina Khan’s FTC has 80 economists on staff – but somehow the economic modeling typical of an FTC complaint are nowhere to be found in her filing.
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George Will Bites into Progressive Busybodies
George Will has an entertaining piece on FTC’s and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s war on Big Sandwich.
He dissects the antitrust freakout over Roark Capital’s bid to acquire Subway. Between the barbs, Will notes that “Subway is basically a brand,” with sandwich stores that are small businesses owned by people who buy franchises, benefiting from the chain’s national advertising.
OP-ED
Lina Khan Is Between a BlackRock and a Hard Place
Early in her tenure, Lina Khan took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to pledge that good intentions would not protect corporate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) proponents from antitrust scrutiny. At the same time, the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission has seen any merger or acquisition of size as a red flag for antitrust scrutiny and sometimes lawsuits.
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Is One Antitrust Agency a Good Idea?
When Rep. Mike Johnson became speaker, it unleashed a furious search by the media, lobbyists, and political researchers to unearth every position the Louisiana Congressman has ever taken. What has been Rep. Johnson’s position on tax reform? On defense spending? On high school students who stick chewed bubble gum under their desks?
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The ISS-Glass Lewis Duopoly: It Takes Two to Mangle
The Wall Street Journal reports that the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) reveals that companies hit the ISS-Glass Lewis duopoly with at least 64 complaints to the SEC about inaccurate proxy adviser recommendations.
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Jordan’s ESG Antitrust Subpoena: “So Shall You Reap!
Some headlines write themselves. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Wednesday subpoenaed As You Sow, one of the powerful NGOs at the heart of the spider’s web of non-profit activists, investment funds and asset managers that have been colluding behind the scenes to use ESG mandates for self-dealing and ideological domination.
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What’s Missing in CNN’s Lina Khan Profile
The media just cannot help but remain in the thrall of Lina Khan, even as the legacy the FTC chair is trying to establish fails to get traction. Case in point, CNN’s profile of Khan as she struggles to convince court after court to adopt her antitrust theories. The story by Brian Fung and Catherine Thorbecke has a quote (from a former Bush FTC chair no less, et tu?) that while “it’s a tough row to hoe” Khan is attempting, the “upholders of the status quo look old and tired.”
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Protecting Consumers from… Themselves?
A short essay in the American Institute for Economic Research from Dr. Kimberlee Josephson, an associate professor of business, spells out in stark detail the oddity of the Federal Trade Commission trying to protect consumers from companies and services they continue to use.
OP-ED
Liberal Antitrust Targets Amazon but Ignores the ESG Cartel
The Federal Trade Commission ’s antitrust law against Amazon is cementing Chairwoman Lina Khan ’s reputation as someone who, when she sees big, sees red. Yet when Khan, who develops novel theories to launch antitrust actions against Big Tech companies, sees clear antitrust violations by big entities in other sectors, she fails to act.
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FTC Charges Amazon with Driving Higher Prices for Consumers, Despite Amazon Prices Being 13 Percent Less than Other Leading U.S. Retailers
You’ve got to give credit to the FTC and its Chair Lina Khan – in their Tuesday filing of their blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, this time they managed to round their argument to fully include the needs of consumers, not just the protection of other, less efficient competitors.
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Why Bother to Confirm Two Republican FTC Commissioners?
Two nominees for the Federal Trade Commission – Andrew Ferguson, Solicitor General of Virginia and former chief counsel to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Melissa Holyoak, Solicitor General of Utah – had a Senate confirmation hearing this week that, like the best of airplane flights, was uneventful.
OP-ED
Will Khan Break Amazon – or Will Her Lawsuit Break Her?
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is by all accounts preparing to file her long-anticipated antitrust case against Amazon. There are rumors and reports of tail-chasing and internal angst within the FTC over the drafting of this complaint.
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Politico Lacerates Kanter and Khan
Ankush Khardori has a brilliant – and lacerating piece – in Politico about the Jonathan Kanter-Lina Khan progressive antitrust revolution, and the 13 merger guidelines the Department of Justice antitrust chief and Federal Trade Commission Chair released in July.
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For Google and Pending Amazon Antitrust Suits, the Consumer Welfare Standard Will Still Decide
September is wishing well month for progressive antitrusters. Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan is expected to soon file her long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, Khan’s obsession since she was a law student and first made her case against the online retailer in a law review piece.
SPEECH
Remarks at the SFOF 2023 National Meeting and Economic Summit
You’ve heard over the course of this day-and-a-half about the legal pitfalls of progressive antitrust, as well as the mounting costs ESG heaps on your state funds, your taxpayers, your state retirees, and all investors. I will reiterate some of those points. But I will do so to point to a larger concern – that this controversy is about more than the right application of the law, the best returns for funds, or the responsibilities of a fiduciary.
OP-ED
While FTC’s Khan Draws the Fire, DOJ’s Kanter Advances Radical Agenda
Mention progressive antitrust in Washington, and the discussion turns to Lina Khan – who rose in half a decade from Yale Law School student to become the most powerful, and controversial, Federal Trade Commission chair in history.
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What Does it Mean to Be a Fiduciary?
The Wall Street Journal reports that Rep. Bill Huizenga, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight, has fired off letters of inquiry to BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity and other firms before hearings scheduled for the fall on what it means to be a fiduciary.
OP-ED
How ESG will hurt your retirement
A few years back, a Nevada man made millions of dollars selling lots on the moon , complete with “lunar deeds” to be framed and displayed. It turned out to be a strong business plan. At $24 an acre, lunar lots were snapped up by many eager buyers, including A-list movie stars and former U.S. presidents.
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Another Federal Judge Kicks Khan to the Curb
In another stunning loss for Lina Khan and her radicalized FTC, a federal judge in Northern California played sheriff and threw Khan’s case against Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision through the saloon doors and out into the dusty street.
OP-ED
Seeking Her (Whale) Bones, Lina Khan Aims to Kill Amazon In Its Present Form
In well-placed leaks to the media, Lina Khan is signaling that the depth and breadth of her long-anticipated antitrust lawsuit against Amazon will exceed anything the ambitious, ideology-driven Federal Trade Commission Chair has yet attempted.
OP-ED
The Left Takes Notice of the ESG Oligarchy
Like metal filings between magnets, issues today line up with the “blue/progressive” pole or the “red/conservative” pole. But ideological simplification can disguise underlying currents where the lines of force touch and many on the Left and Right agree.
Take the case of ESG , or environmental, social, and governance standards devised by non-governmental organizations and imposed by asset managers in proxy challenges and orders on how to vote on corporate boards.
OP-ED
The ‘Policeman at Your Elbow’ Is Drunk
Tim Wu, who worked from the White House to coordinate the antitrust agenda of the early Biden Administration, explains the role of the government regulator as the necessary “policeman at the elbow” to restrain corporations from unfairly squeezing out competition. President Biden’s enforcers, Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and Jonathan Kanter, head of the Department of Justice antitrust division, push progressive policing of the economy with enthusiasm.
OP-ED
Bork on Report Analyzing ‘Doomsday Mergers’: ‘The Doom and Gloom Predictions That Seem to Go Hand-in-Hand with Reports of Potential Mergers Have Been Overblown Time and Time Again’
New reports by the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE) show that many high-profile mergers have been highly criticized, saying they will do major harm to both competition and consumers.
According to the International Center for Law and Economics, critics like Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said that Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 would crush competitors in physical retail.
OP-ED
Bork: FTC Continues to File Antitrust Lawsuits Despite ‘Near-Perfect Record of Striking Out in Court’
Lina Khan and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) she chairs are pursuing multiple cases against Google for alleged antitrust violations. Federal courts have ruled against the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in these types of cases much more often than not in recent months. However, while they have a track record of losing in court, these cases have fomented an atmosphere of regulatory uncertainty which some experts argue is by design.
