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Matt Stoller Profile picture
@matthewstoller
Aug 16, 2024 • 23 tweets • 9 min read • Read on X
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1. Ok why is Kamala Harris talking about price-fixing, gouging, mergers, and general pricing bullshit? Obviously it polls well. But why? Let's go over the *evidence* for why Americans are mad at big business over pricing. Let's start with rent. propublica.org/article/yields…
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2. A company called RealPage works with the biggest corporate landlords to hold apartments empty so they can increase prices. That's illegal. How important is this conspiracy to increased rents? “I think it’s driving it, quite honestly,” said Andrew Bowen, a RealPage executive.

propublica.org/article/yields…Image
3. There are private antitrust cases against RealPage. The Biden-Harris administration is investigating and will probably bring an antitrust suit soon. The FBI already raided one of America's biggest corporate landlords. finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-searc…
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4. Then there's pervasive price-fixing in the turkey, poultry, and pork industries through the big meatpackers and a data firm called Agri-Stats which tells these companies what to charge. There's even price-fixing clipart! thebignewsletter.com/p/the-price-fi…
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5. Agri Stats even puts out a statement on its website saying, in essence, 'we sell cartel pricing.' Image
6. Collusion on prices seems to be pervasive. The FTC is suing Amazon, for instance, for implementing an algorithm code named "Project Nessie" specifically organized to raise prices across markets. techcrunch.com/2023/11/02/unr…
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7. There are many more examples, which I'll get to. But is this phenomenon systemic? Yes. And is it new? Yes. As Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani showed, corporate markups have increased starting in the early 1980s, and skyrocketed during the pandemic. rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/upl…
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8. There's even something called 'pricing tech' from McKinsey using data to find ways to hike prices. thebignewsletter.com/p/the-banality…
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9. A frozen french fry scheme? As the @Capitol_Forum reported, "the 4 firms who produce 70% of fries nation-wide - Lamb Weston Holdings, Simplot, McCain Foods, and Cavendish Farms - raised prices by virtually identical amounts within a week of each other.”
10. There's price-fixing among plumbing supplies.
11. The problem goes far beyond just price-fixing, of course. For instance there are roll-ups and price hikes via private equity buy-outs in health care. A firm called U.S. Anesthesia Partners raised prices across Texas. thebignewsletter.com/p/cha-ching-li…
12. "85% of Americans “have experienced a hidden or unexpected fee for a service in the previous two years,” and 96% found them “highly annoying” and said they were paying more in hidden charges than they were five years ago."

thebignewsletter.com/p/ending-junk-…
13. Even the former head of the Consumer Bankers Association, one of the most powerful bank lobbies in D.C., got mad about junk fees. Image
14. 11. Remember when the CEO of Wendy's said the corporation would be using AI to set dynamic prices? That's the kind of bullshit Harris is talking about. Is that gouging? Who cares? We don't have a great word for it.
15. The FTC found evidence of price-fixing in oil markets, as domestic fracking firms worked with OPEC to lower production worldwide. Congress is now investigating. thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price…
16. And I know liberals might feel squeamish about this one, but ammunition prices are skyrocketing because of consolidation. thebignewsletter.com/p/concentrated…
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17. Honestly this kind of pricing bullshit is everywhere. Professional bass fishing? Yup.
18. And don't even get me started on pharmaceuticals in health care... thebignewsletter.com/p/inside-the-m…
19. There are monopolies and oligopolies where you don't notice, so-called 'economic termites.' Credit bureaus and FICO, Verisign, industrial gasses, architectural software, locks, entertainment data... thebignewsletter.com/p/economic-ter…
20. Basically, pricing in America today is deeply, immensely, hard-core messed up and unfair. There are tens of thousands of highly intelligent consultants and lawyers who make a lot of money finding out how to cheat you. And Americans have noticed. wsj.com/finance/invest…
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21. Hotels, Airbnb, restaurants, landlords, and lenders are all tacking on hidden weird fees. And some of them have middlemen which tack fees onto their businesses. Behind every fee is another fee, middleman on top of middleman. Image
22. The bottom line is that pricing doesn't just happen, prices are structured by rules. And because we stopped enforcing laws to make sure we had disclosed pricing in competitive markets, pricing is now a game in which more of us lose every day. Harris is talking about THAT.
23. And here we go.

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 26
Deepseek is forcing the entire Silicon Valley ecosystem to recognize that Lina Khan was right, even if they won’t admit it.
Here’s the point. ftc.gov/system/files/f…
American big tech firms are bad at building things because their focus is not on building things, it’s on monopolization and political power. No different than Boeing. This has been obvious for years. thebignewsletter.com/p/national-cha…
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 25
So an insane story by @musharbash_b, a private equity roll-up of fire trucks is why more than half the fire trucks in Los Angeles were out of service during the catastrophic wildfires in the Palisades and Eaton. Image
Link: thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-privat…
I do a lot on economic termites, this one's a big deal. Cities all over the country have to pay twice as much for fire equipment as they used to because there's now what appears to be some sort of fire equipment cartel. Image
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 23
1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is bad because it was a way of taking the civil rights movement - which was about prohibiting economic discrimination at its core - and corrupting it to serve corporate interests. Here are some examples, starting with UnitedHealth Group. Image
2. Biglaw's Latham and Watkins bragged their team keeping poultry price-fixers out of jail was a historic 'all-women team' of defense lawyers. Image
3. Here's financier Brian Regan - who rolled up anesthesiology and radiology practices so he could price gouge - boosting the Women's Private Equity Summit. Equity is awesome! Image
Read 16 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 17
1. Want some fun news before the Monday inauguration that you won't have heard anywhere else? The antitrust enforcers (Lina Khan et al) went full Tony Montana on big business this week before Trump people took over. Here's just part of what they did. Image
2. The FTC filed a monopolization claim against agricultural machine maker John Deere for generating $6 billion by prohibiting farmers from being able to repair their own equipment, a suit which Wired magazine calls a “tipping point” for the right to repair movement. Image
3. They also released another report on pharmacy benefit managers, including that of UnitedHealth Group, showing that these companies inflated prices for specialty pharmaceuticals by more than $7 billion. Image
Read 21 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 6
There’s a nontrivial chance that Trump’s new term is the actual catastrophe that liberals imagined his first one would be. I don’t mean authoritarian, I mean economic, military and social collapse.
Here's why I think there's a nontrivial chance of a serious dislocation under Trump. It's not because of him, per se, but structural things he won't fix.

Here are a few. The U.S. net international investment position is negative $23 trillion and sinking rapidly. That's crazy. Image
That doesn't mean the U.S. will go 'bankrupt,' that concept can't apply to nations. It means the U.S. is trading our entire productive capacity for finance. For instance, we're now a net food importer by value. What? Our farmland is awesome. And yet... Image
Read 13 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Dec 28, 2024
There's something off about all of the post-election recriminations among Democrats. It's not that any of the theories are wrong, it's that none of these pontificators actually know how to make government do anything.
Like, sure, use different language if you think that matters. The bottom line is Obama said you can keep your doctor and health costs would go down and that didn't happen and most Dems don't seem remotely curious why that is.
There are a few people in Biden-world who did CHIPS stuff, there's some export control people, there are some anti-monopolists, but that's sort of it for Democrats who have actually done anything with power.
Read 6 tweets

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