If you’re worried about inflation, antitrust enforcement (or lack thereof) is a major driver of it. Inflation isn’t driven by single mothers on food stamps living high on the hog.
Of course, the FTC still has “prosecutorial discretion” on which mergers and acquisitions it will pursue for legal scrutiny. We won’t know that there’s real progress being made until we see meat packers, United Health executives, and Google in the dock.
intercst
Or not. In a 2022 survey of economists from America’s top universities, only 5% of respondents agreed that “antitrust interventions could successfully reduce U.S. inflation over the next 12 months.”
Also, only 7% of the economists surveyed said that “a significant factor behind today’s higher U.S. inflation is dominant corporations in uncompetitive markets taking advantage of their market power to raise prices.”
DB2
Who is Lina Khan?
Khan was born on March 3, 1989, in London, to a British family of Pakistani origin.[2][3] Khan grew up in Golders Green in the London Borough of Barnet. Her parents, a management consultant and an employee of Thomson Reuters, moved to the United States when she was 11 years old. The family settled in Mamaroneck, New York, where she and her two siblings attended public school.[10][11]
Image who Lina Khan would be had her patents not decided to leave their native land.
The Captain
Depends on where your “experts” get their funding. Oligopolists and Monopolists tend to dislike antitrust enforcement.
And obviously, antitrust enforcement isn’t going to solve the problem “over the next 12 months”. It took four decades to build our current “crony capitalism” regime.
intercst
95% of the professionals is pretty one sided.
Those surveyed were all academics, so in addition to their university salaries their research funding was likely from the government.
Their institutions:
MIT 19 Yale 18 Berkeley 21 Chicago 24 Princeton 6 Harvard 15 Stanford 21 Columbia 3 Northwestern 3
DB2
Exactly, and yet that is the time scale at which inflation works. Back at the beginning of the Biden administration annual inflation rates went from 1.2% to 4.7% to 8.0%.
DB2
Kiss any Intel deal goodbye.
Quite so. How do we know this is nothing more than a shakedown? Announce a formal investigation. Shake down management. Then announce the investigation has been dropped, just like the prosecution of the NYC Mayor.
Steve