1. Ok, time to talk about Pandemic Profiteers. This will seem like an arcane fight but it is about who is in control during an emergency - Wall Street or the public. Certain pro-monopoly GOP corporate lawyers are trying to sneak a merger provision into the next Coronavirus bill.
2. Backstory. Before a big merger, merging parties have to tell the FTC that they are merging. If the government doesn't object within a certain number of days, the merger goes through. But during an emergency, the government *can't respond.*
3. What should happen is during an emergency or lapse in agency capacity all mergers are automatically paused. However some antitrust insiders are trying to slip language into the next bill to force the FTC to de facto let all mergers go through during an emergency!
4. Imagine that the first priority in a pandemic is... to allow corporate mergers! The worst is the GOP FTC commissioners, @JoeSimonsFTC, @FTCPhillips, and @CSWilsonFTC are in on it. This is an outrage! They are acting as though any delays on merger review is itself an emergency!
5. It's evil anyone would think M&A should be a priority when we are facing economic collapse and prospect of mass deaths. The right approach is to just stop M&A during a crisis or lapse in agency capacity. Let's not invite companies to exploit the crisis and go on buying sprees.
6. This is called the premerger notification provision for emergency authority in antitrust proceedings. The House and Senate need to put a stop to this nonsense now. The antitrust insider world is just out of touch and straight-up monstrous in their behavior.
7. It's hard to convey the ridiculousness. Let's say enough FTC commissioners get sick. Then all mergers just start going through immediately. And during a crisis that means a massive cheap roll-up opportunity for a monopolist, thousands of choice assets going for cheap.
8. The people pushing this are antitrust insider Republicans, even as it's a moment when the GOP more broadly is reconsidering its approach to political economy. It's those at the FTC who opposed Trump's own Made in American policy. nytimes.com/2019/04/17/us/…
9. The Democrats who know about it are opposed, and I suspect that most Republicans in Congress don't even know about it. There's going to be a lot of this opportunism, so it's time to say no to Pandemic Profiteering. #pandemicprofiteers
10. Bottom line, Congress needs to just make it so that mergers in a crisis automatically pause. Otherwise a crisis becomes a monopoly making moment.
