Key point. This hearing is not just a one-off, it is *part* of an investigation. @davidcicilline says they have millions of documents from both the companies as well over a hundred competitors. #bigtechbarons
Now @JimPressOffice is giving the GOP opening statement. So far it's a reasonable statement, talking about dominance, making the point that "big is not bad." Serious statement discussing data and market structure. Bipartisan, this is good. #BigTechHearing
This is the stock price of #bigtechbarons since this investigation began. Trillions of dollars in an increase of market capitalization. #BigTechHearing
Love @RepJerryNadler bringing Emanuel Celler and his anti-monopoly subcommittee into the conversation. #BigTechBarons
This is amazing, just like the hearings I read when I researched Goliath.
Time for @Jim_Jordan. "Big tech is out to get conservatives." Talking about the World Health Organization and China, Amazon banning Trump and Twitch. #bigtechbarons
So far hearing nothing about monopoly or competition.🤔🤔🤔
What's so irritating about @Jim_Jordan is that everything he's talking about is *a monopoly problem* but he's here to defend monopoly and then harangue the monopolists for not being nicer to what *he thinks.* #BigTechHearing#BigTechBarons
It's kind of funny that @Jim_Jordan doesn't get to the defense of #BigTechBarons because it just doesn't fit in his haranguing of #bigtech for conservative bias. Jordan is now being a clown and being disruptive. @davidcicilline shuts him down hard.
It's so great that @davidcicilline made it 100% clear that this hearing is serious and that you don't fuck with him. #BigTechBarons
Jeff Bezos is now up talking up how awesome his Mom and Dad are. #BigTechBarons
"It is still Day One for this country." - Jeff Bezos
That's very much a 'what is good for General Motors is good for America' answer.
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1. You learn a lot about politicians when the spotlight is not on them. So I want to offer an observation about something Kamala just did - a quiet and almost wholly unnoticed favor to big business and Mitch McConnell - suggesting she would have been a problematic President.🧵
2. In late November, after the election, the Biden White House nominated two people for something called the International Trade Commission. The ITC is the body designed to address cheating by foreign companies who dump products to destroy US producers.
3. The ITC is one of those places where free traders have run the roost for decades, crushing industry after industry by refusing to uphold anti-dumping law. It's also a place that few in D.C. care about. Domestic producers? Pffeh, who cares about steel and mattress imports?
1. This is a useful response in terms of how to understand the Abundance theory of politics. Yglesias is making a *policy* argument about private equity. It's not bad! It depends! We have to be nuanced! Ok, that's true. So what's the problem?
2. People increasingly hear 'private equity' and associate it with pillaging. It's not always true; KKR has done a great job with Simon & Schuster. But it's often true. So demonizing private equity is like demonizing Wall Street - it's a symbol of a society with haves/have nots.
3. That's the *political* story that populists like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump tell. It's a true political story, private equity billionaires are doing horrific things and corrupting politics. We all know that's true. But anti-populists don't like that political story.
1. There's a fascinating dynamic among Trumpy venture capitalists trying to manipulate the right-wing for their own purposes. For example, here's vc Marc Andreesen saying the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau forces conservatives to lose their bank accounts.
2. Andreesen says the CFPB 'terrorizes' financial institutions and denies them access to the banking system, and says it is going after conservatives. But is that true? Well, as @dorajfacundo points out, the CFPB is doing the opposite.
Trump is a lot like Obama. He is about to destroy the Republican Party as badly as Obama destroyed the Democrats, and for the same reason. He's promised a realignment for the people, he's going to deliver a realignment for Wall Street.
Trump is also a godsend for Democrats the way Obama was for the Rs. In 2024, the Democrats are a spent force, dominated by horrible Obama retreads. By 2028 MSNBC will be gone and a wave of populists will have redefined the Dems as a renewed faction.
Obama and Trump jointly and fully buried the post-Cold War era of domestic politics. Obama took the moral currency of the civil rights movement and openly spent it on Wall Street, Trump proved that voters don't buy into the moral myths of the 20th century anymore.
1. Identity politics is bad because it's fundamentally a con, a way of ensuring plutocrats control our society. It's the inversion of 'rights' to support authoritarian corporate power. Here are some examples.
2. Regulating trillion dollar social media and search monopolists to protect children from addiction is actually an attack on gay people. wsj.com/politics/polic…
3. Another... Getting paid $1500/hour to help steal from chicken farmers is about women's empowerment.
1. Since the new line on why antitrust is bad is the Spirit Airlines bankruptcy, let's talk about what is really happening. Here's a hint. The CEO of Spirit was paid a $3.8 million bonus the week before the bankruptcy. But you don't hear about that. wlrn.org/business/2024-…
2. What's really going on isn't a bad enforcement regime, it's a bunch of greedy incompetent airline executives blaming the government for not letting them violate the law for money. Let's start at the beginning. npr.org/2024/11/18/nx-…
3. In 2022, there was a bidding war between Frontier and JetBlue over Spirit Airlines. Spirit's board hired a consultant to evaluate, who told execs/shareholders that the JetBlue deal was *illegal." They accepted it anyway since it was more money. financierworldwide.com/jetblues-38bn-…