Thread by @matthewstoller

The Federal Trade Commission's open meeting is starting in 10 minutes. Get ready for angry pro-monopoly Republican commissioners who will try to explain why their opposition to investigating monopolies shows Lina Khan is partisan or something.

ftc.gov/news-events/ev…

FTC staff is going to present findings on big tech acquisitions of small firms. This should be interesting.

Big tech had 660 undisclosed acquisitions between 2010-2019.

Interesting, there were 94 undisclosed acquisitions by big tech that were above the threshold required for disclosure.

More than 75% of smaller acquisitions by big tech had deferred compensation and non-competes for founders. Locking up talent.

Sorry I misheard this, it was 616, not 660.

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1438162430098649092

Now @chopraftc is attacking the longstanding practice of the FTC giving interpretive letters to firms to let them sidestep merger reporting requirements, like letting them not count debt when considering the size of acquisitions for reporting purposes.

Finally comes Lina Khan's motion to withdraw the lax 2020 vertical merger guidelines, which allow firms to merge based on speculative theories about efficiencies, and based on the false notion that such mergers allow lower consumer prices.

Oh that's interesting. Republican FTC Commissioner @CSWilsonFTC approvingly cites the Obama judge who dismissed the Facebook antitrust suit originally brought by Trump. It's fascinating how it's the GOP commissioners who opposed breaking up Facebook.

FTC Commissioner @chopraftc is talking about vertical mergers and the crisis of shortages in the economy. "Unfortunately merger analysis has come to focus on efficiencies. No one wants to be inefficient. But... this means cost-cutting to reduce productive capacity."

"Perhaps its raw materials are wedged in the Suez Canal." - @chopraftc

Someone in government gets it!

"We cannot ignore situations where firms in many sectors are becoming too big to fail and their short-term rationalization and cost-cutting leads to systemic risk and shortages." - FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra
🔥🔥🔥

Republican FTC Commissioner @FTCPhillips is praising Disney's consolidation of the film industry. "If you watched a Pixar film during the pandemic, you benefitted from a vertical merger." Noah Phillips should start the club Republicans for Big Hollywood...

The best part of the FTC hearings is always when the public gets to talk. So far we've heard from pharmacists, supply chain experts, franchisees, and diabetes patients.