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Matt Stoller Profile picture
@matthewstoller
Jan 17, 2025 • 21 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
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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
4. The FTC, along with along with Colorado AG @pweiser, sued corporate landlord Greystar, which owns 800,000 apartments, for misleading renters on junk fees. Image
@pweiser 5. The Consumer Financial Bureau sued Capital One for cheating consumers out of $2 billion by misleading consumers over savings accounts. Image
6. The CFPB forced Cash App purveyor Block with its weirdo owner Jack Dorsey to give $120 million in refunds for fostering fraud on its platform and then refusing to offer customer support to affected consumers. Image
7. The Antitrust Division filed a complaint against seven giant corporate landlords for rent-fixing, using the software and consulting firm RealPa Image
8. Honorary mention goes to @PeteButtigieg at the Department of Transportation for suing Southwest and fining Frontier for ‘chronically delayed flights.’ Image
@PeteButtigieg 9. The FTC forced health care private equity powerhouse Welsh Carson to stop monopolization of the anesthesia market. Image
@PeteButtigieg 10. The CFPB sued Experian for refusing to give consumers a way to correct errors in credit reports. Image
@PeteButtigieg 11. The Antitrust Division sued $600 billion private equity titan KKR for systemically misleading the government on more than a dozen acquisitions. Image
@PeteButtigieg 12. More stuff keeps dropping. Image
@PeteButtigieg 13. FTC went after Pepsi and Walmart for conspiring to hike prices at smaller stores with illegal preferential pricing. Image
@PeteButtigieg 14. Left a roadmap for parties who are worried about consolidation in AI by big tech by revealing a host of interlinked relationships among Google, Amazon and Microsoft and Anthropic and OpenAI. ftc.gov/news-events/ne…Image
@PeteButtigieg 15. Not just Experian, but Equifax got nailed for screwing people in their consumer credit reporting.
@PeteButtigieg 16. Say hello to my little friend.
@PeteButtigieg 17. Debanking!

The CFPB proposed a rule to prohibit take-it-or-leave-it contracts from financial institutions that allow firms to de-bank users over how they express themselves or whether they seek redress for fraud. @SohrabAhmari unherd.com/newsroom/did-t…Image
18. Antitrust Division and FTC filed two amicus briefs with the FTC, one supporting Epic Games in its remedy against Google over app store monopolization, and the other supporting @ElonMusk in his antitrust claims against OpenAI, Microsoft, and Reid Hoffman.

ftc.gov/legal-library/…

ftc.gov/legal-library/…
@PeteButtigieg @SohrabAhmari @elonmusk There's more! It's important to realize each of these action took years of preparation, and are important changes to industry structure that help ordinary people. A small corner of Bidenworld worked hard for you, even if most of the administration did not. Let that be a lesson.
Oh wow didn’t see this one coming Image
For more… thebignewsletter.com/p/out-with-a-b…

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
Apr 1
The reason Democrats have no position on the war is because no one has a coherent view on what to do. It’s not on them.

The U.S. is basically the bank account and army for global oligarchs. This positioning is not good for Americans and it’s not good for the world. But it’s also impossible to imagine an alternative.

The foreign policy establishment sees their work as a hobby. The U.S. is so endlessly rich and heroic that it’s all a game. They don’t think that the realm of foreign affairs should be good for ordinary people; that’s a rhetorical afterthought. To them the deindustrialization and erosion of the middle class at the heart of the destabilization of the world is sad but necessary, if they bother to notice it at all.

The left foreign policy world is not actually that different. They are libertarian and hostile to Americans, and they don’t care about economics. Foreign policy to them is a hobby of the rich, it’s just the U.S. is the central villain instead of central hero. They do not understand or care about deindustrialization as a result of Chinese overcapacity, which is a central and fundamental foreign policy challenge. To them that’s handwaving away as ‘economics’ and boring. Let’s just do ‘care’ work, they imagine, as if a nation that makes nothing and imports food can afford to have its young people do nothing but wipe the asses of the old.

What does a non-oligarch driven America actually do? What does it look like? Well for starters we pull back dramatically from the rest of the world. No troops in Europe, maybe offer some defense weapons to East Asian nations. No presence in the Middle East. Cut Israel loose entirely. Total revamp of our bloated and incompetent military and its corrupt establishment. Fire most admirals and generals and put in a new generation capable of actually thinking.

This change will require us to be a LOT more protectionist. We put up huge trade barriers so that we can rebuild our industries. We also impose capital controls and confiscate or tax assets held by foreigners. No foreign ownership of land. We are not your bank account, Mr. Saudi Prince or Chinese money launderer.

Finally, we crush capitalism. Rebuild our farms and factories. No more driving our corporations for shareholders. Lots of public utility regulation or nationalization of assets. No more private equity. No more crypto or corporate gambling. If you want to make money, you do something useful. Otherwise it’s poverty or handcuffs.

America needs to be run for its people, not for the Epstein Class or for weirdos who can’t go over the Iranian overthrow of the shah or for lefty hobbyists funded by Koch industries to deindustrialize what’s left of what we have.
I was a China hawk because the U.S. was a possible balance to their power. No longer. We are too weak and must go into an emergency posture to protect ourselves.
Americans do not feel sovereign in their communities or as workers, so they do not see value in US sovereignty. It’s critical to crush Wall Street to regain American independence.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Dec 11, 2025
1/3. A good day for antitrust. The Ninth Circuit mostly upheld the injunction against Apple for screwing app developers in the lawsuit vs Epic Games. Apple can charge, but only for its actual costs. fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/…
2/3. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued medical health care records monopolist Epic Systems. texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/…
3. Senator Blumenthal asked for an update on the FTC's dialysis investigation. blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Oct 7, 2025
In her oversight hearing today, Attorney General Pam Bondi got a surprising number of questions about corruption at the Antitrust Division. Here's @amyklobuchar.
Here's Senator Mazie Hirono asking about corruption in the Hewlett-Juniper merger case, Bondi responds by saying that Hirono was out protesting with Antifa.
And here's Senator Cory Booker asks about Bondi's chief Chad Mizelle, asks if she'd come before the antitrust subcommittee to talk about the topic. Bondi dances around, basically says no. "I will let Gail Slater handle all antitrust" matters.
Read 6 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jul 31, 2025
I'm baffled by @DKThomp's piece on Dallas housing.

He claims that Dallas builds so many houses that there can't be an oligopoly fostering a lack of housing.

He also claims Dallas doesn't build enough houses because of zoning choices.

Which is it?
Here's where @DKThomp is wildly inconsistent.

Either there are restrictions on supply in Dallas driving up housing prices, or there aren't. Thompson wants to have it both ways. Image
Image
@DKThomp I'd also note that he mischaracterized the argument, which is about financing and not antitrust. And he didn't address most of the evidence, or the purchase of housing by investors. He also misrepresented at least one of the people he interviewed.
Read 9 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jul 22, 2025
1. The discussion over 'AI taking all the jobs' has been bothering me for awhile. In 2013, Jeff Bezos was asked about bookselling. "Amazon isn't happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling." Blaming abstract forces is what monopolists ALWAYS do.
2. Anthropic's CEO says that AI may 'cure cancer' but also eliminate entry-level jobs. Policymakers need to get a hold of that, he says. Weird he doesn't want to talk about how his firm's models are trained on massively pirated content. thebignewsletter.com/p/why-are-we-p…
3. The Economist writes, "AI is killing the web." But that's not true! Google forces publishers to let it train on their content or they don't show in search results. It's a legal problem! thebignewsletter.com/p/why-are-we-p…Image
Read 8 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jul 7, 2025
1. Ok so let's talk about socialism, aka the state taking over from private industry. Here are some examples you haven't heard of - Kentucky and Ohio - replacing their pharma pricing middlemen with state agencies. Image
2. In 2018, the Columbus Dispatch revealed that pharma middlemen CVS Caremark and UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx were ripping off the state Medicaid program, destroying pharmacies, and hurting patients. So Ohio... fired them. And built its own state PBM. thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-rou…
3. It launched in 2022, run by Ohio's Department of Medicaid. It did pharma pricing for Medicaid, rebates for pharmacies, ran call centers, managed a drug list, a network of pharmacies et al. No more conflicts of interest. Caremark predicted DOOM FROM FULL COMMUNISM....
Read 14 tweets

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