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11 Feb, 16 tweets, 6 min read
1. Ok, so most people have a vague sense of frustration that the last Dem administration didn't do enough on the economy. But it's still just a vague sense. So my org wrote a report showing in detail, industry sector-by-sector, what policymakers did wrong. economicliberties.us/our-work/coura…
2. We also wrote one pager descriptions of every sector. For instance, in media and telecommunications, there were multiple massive mergers (Comcast-NBC, Disney's roll-up, Charter-Time Warner). economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-m…
3. Consequences were bad. The median weekly compensation of writer-producers on television and online series declined 23 percent between 2014 and 2016 despite record profits in the industry and peak demand for programming. economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-m…
4. Health care, consolidation was bad. "From 2010 to 2015, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and Eli Lilly raised their insulin prices by 168 percent, 169 percent, and 325 percent, respectively; the three are essentially the only manufacturers of insulin in the U.S."
economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-h…
5. Newspapers, same story. Since 2005, America has lost 2,100 newspapers, one fourth of its total, leaving 1,800 communities without any local news coverage whatsoever. economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-n…
6. Defense and aerospace - same story of the ill-effects of consolidation. "From 2008 to 2018, the average cost of a Pentagon weapons system jumped by 13 percent, without accounting for inflation."
economicliberties.us/our-work/coura…
7. Airlines, same thing. Obama admin fostered three big mergers, United-Continental (2010), Southwest-AirTran (2010), and American-U.S. Airways (2013), and allowed consolidation among online travel agencies. Prices, bag fees, complaints up, wages down.
economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-a…
8. Agriculture, same thing. Collapse in dairy farming, control of chicken contract growers, massive power of meatpackers, etc. economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-a…
9. Big tech, Google and Facebook both grew to utter dominance in online ads, social networking, search, maps, and video from 2009-2017, largely because of the dozens of significant mergers. Obama WH didn't block a single merger. economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-g…
10. Same thing for Amazon. Using predatory tactics, it grew from a retailer to a core infrastructure provider across multiple markets, including e-commerce, retailing, logistics, cloud computing, voice assistants, security, and government contracting. economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-a…
11. Finally there's labor and monopoly. Just a disaster. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission challenged zero mergers or acquisitions based solely on the mergers’ effects on workers. economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-a…
12. In 2016, a bipartisan FTC unanimously opposed the city of Seattle’s attempt to allow Uber and Lyft drivers to bargain collectively.
economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-a…
13. After DOJ settled charges against Silicon Valley companies for colluding not to recruit each other’s workers, a class action lawsuit won $415 million for the workers, though the suit estimated the damages at $3 billion. economicliberties.us/our-work/ctl-a…
14. People have a vague sense things got worse because they *did* get worse. Wages down, prices up, quality down. These changes just happen by themselves. Each happened because of a discrete *choice* by a policymaker. economicliberties.us/our-work/coura…
15. People distrust the government because our policymakers showed themselves worthy of distrusting. Joe Biden can win this trust back. And he is running a very different administration than either Obama or Trump did. And we are all learning.
economicliberties.us/our-work/coura…
16. @noamscheiber has an important piece on how Joe Biden thinks about the world. Biden wants an 'industrial policy' to finance the growth of domestic production. That's excellent, but he has to recognize the problem of corporate power as a complement. nytimes.com/2021/02/11/mag…

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
12 Feb
1. One of the best changes in recent years is the GOP abandoning libertarianism. Here's GOP Rep. Greg Steube: “I do think there is an appetite amongst Republicans, if the Dems wanted to try to break up Big Tech, I think there is support for that." washingtonexaminer.com/news/house-rep…
2. And @RepKenBuck, who offered a thoughtful Third Way report on antitrust law in 2020, weighed in quite reasonably on Biden antitrust frameworks. politico.com/news/2021/01/2…
3. I believe this change is sincere because it's so pervasive and beginning to result in real policy changes. Example: The North Dakota GOP is taking on Apple's app store.
Read 11 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
5 Feb
I'm a Wall Street reformer Democrat who likes Elizabeth Warren and I'm not loving that narrative, but I get it. The reason Wall Street reformers aren't trusted is because few of us will admit that Barack Obama's WH was corrupt on financial market problems.
I think Janet Yellen will do probably do ok, but she's a bad choice and her speaking fee corruption problem is real. Wall Street reformers aren't trusted because they (we?) have proven to be untrustworthy.
We have to *earn* the trust of the people, because last time we were in power we *lied* to them about Wall Street. We have no right to expect anyone to trust us.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
5 Feb
1. @amyklobuchar just introduced a major antitrust bill, so here are my thoughts. This bill reads to me reads more an announcement she's taking over the antitrust subcommittee than a finished product. Klobuchar is really smart and was an antitrust lawyer, she knows this area.
2. Most antitrust law is 'rule of reason,' meaning the judge gets to do what he wants. Under 'rule of reason,' a judge approved the obviously illegal Sprint-T-Mobile merger, and a circuit court egregiously overturned a decision against Qualcomm monopoly's. Just bad all around.
3. Klobuchar's bill both hits and misses this problem. The bill has, as @ZephyrTeachout notes, a bright line rule on mergers of companies worth more than $100B. Such a rule makes it hard for judges to protect monopolies (as they tend to do right now).
Read 9 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
27 Jan
The SEC really should look into the GameStop market-rigging, because this is shockingly blatant from Citadel, which is likely both market-making and doing side bets. The Reddit story is true and fun, but also a convenient cover.
Apparently at 1:32pm, a 587k shares of GameStop traded at $327 a share, which is $187 million. That's not coming from Robinhood. Wall Street is on both sides of this battle.

Ugly stuff.
Here's what's likely happening. Robinhood takes market orders where Redditers say they want to buy stock at 'the market price.' RH sells orders to Citadel. Citadel sees the orders, makes side bets on options. Citadel then sets an arbitrary 'market price' to cash in on options.
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
25 Jan
Good thread, though I would note that the other problem with the Obama WH on financial regulation was the lie that they sought to stop foreclosures instead of encourage them. Barr was knee deep in that horrific dishonesty, but it's not like any progressives were honest either.
Fundamentally the trade during the Obama era was to steal all middle class savings and create a new class of untouchable billionaires and lie about it, in return for an irrelevant consumer protection agency.

That was a bad trade and it's one few will acknowledge, even today.
Well, not all, but a lot of it. Obama had the chance to reorient the American political order towards a democracy. Instead of doing that, he orchestrated a plutocracy, and lied about it. Barr was a point person here. But progressives still haven't reckoned with it.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
25 Jan
There's no better way to destroy the idea of free speech than to pretend that the borderless sociopathic communication systems we have now are some beautiful paragon of an open society free from censorship.
This is not an argument for free speech or against censorship, it's an argument that all media and communication systems should be controlled by uncaring distant pools of capital. It's sociopathy dressed up with footnotes.
Community standards are public abridgments on speech, so arguing that we should have no public abridgments on speech is an argument against all community standards. That is not free speech, it's just sociopathy.
Read 4 tweets

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