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.
4. And yet there's a problem. The GOP establishment is still pro-big tech. Trump, despite some of his instincts, appointed pro-monopoly antitrust enforcers. Antitrust chief Makan Delrahim helped big tech, and the antitrust case happened bc he was recused. nytimes.com/2019/03/06/opi…
5. At the other sleepy antitrust agency, the Federal Trade Commission, Trump appointed commissioners
@FTCPhillips and @CSWilsonFTC are both pro-monopoly. Both voted *against* the antitrust case on FB. That case was 3-2, with a GOP Chair and 2 Dems teaming up against 2 Rs.
6. Despite Trump's disdain for Jeff Bezos, his FTC, which has jurisdiction over Amazon, did nothing. Trump FTC Commissioner @FTCPhillips's advisors Jasmine Rosner and Amy Posner both left the Federal Trade Commission to go to... you guessed it, Amazon! linkedin.com/in/amy-posner-…
7. There's more. Morgan Kennedy, top advisor to Trump FTC Chair Joe Simons, helped structure the weak YouTube settlement over child privacy violations. Now she's a lobbyist at... Google! linkedin.com/in/morgan-kenn…
8. And Bilal Sayyed, Trump's Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, just joined Google/FB/Amazon trade association Tech Freedom. techfreedom.org/bilal-sayyed-j…
9. I don't have a problem with people working in the private sector. But I do have a problem with people in the public sector working on behalf of big tech monopolies. That's what happened under Trump. It's why antitrust cases only came in the waning days of his administration.
10. Pro-monopoly commissioners @FTCPhillips and @CSWilsonFTC are going to continue to advocate for monopolists in the pharmaceutical, tech, defense, and every other sector out there, even as Republicans in Congress rail against big tech.
11. That's something that needs to change, if the Republicans are going to make good on their new philosophy of opposing big tech monopolies. I think they will. But their libertarian lawyers are still standing in the way.
12. And another antitrust revolving door move from Trump. The Pentagon's head antitrust officer, Ellen Lord, just moved to mergers and acquisitions investment bank and consulting firm the Chertoff Group. chertoffgroup.com/press/the-cher…

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More from @matthewstoller

14 Feb
1. What happens if Congress repeals Section 230? It's a big question and no one knows the answer. Here's my guess. Section 230 lets firms avoid dealing with harm they cause by monetizing data and third party content. Social pollution would began to carry a cost to the polluter.
2. For most firm, nothing would change. Most firms don't use data to harm customers. For big firms who monetize data and have large third party user bases, they'd have to buy insurance and pay a little more attention to harm they might cause. Online products would get safer.
3. Product liability, harassment and negligence, defamation - all standard legal claims - would reemerge, and firms like Grindr and Facebook would have to stop knowingly letting people use their product for harassment and fraud.
Read 6 tweets
11 Feb
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…
Read 16 tweets
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
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
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
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

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