The proposed merger of the Union Pacific (UP) and Norfolk Southern (NS) railroads would consolidate ownership and control of a significant part of the central arteries or “trunk lines” of the rail network in this country. Currently, four railroads control most of these key components of the rail network, especially for the east-west service, and... Read More
One of the favorite jabs of the left-punching commentator community—from Matt Yglesias, Alex Trembath, and the abundance-flavored podcast “Everyone Gets Pie”—has been to accuse progressives of being “Degrowthers.” While degrowth as a framework has been around for a while, its extremely limited presence in the zeitgeist is a relatively recent phenomenon. Modern progressives are not... Read More
If I had a dollar for every New York Times business story that attributed an industry-wide price hike in the post-Covid era to an outward shift in demand—that is, a story that blamed consumers for higher prices—I’d have, like, 25 dollars. Since the post-Covid era, the Times in particular, and the mainstream business press in... Read More
Google’s August 2024 launch of AI Overviews has reshaped online search and upended the original bargain between publishers and Google. Google places its own AI Overviews at the top of its search results pages, providing the user with a synthesised answer to the query. That answer is provided by Gemini, Google’s large language model (LLM),... Read More
We are at a crossroads today in American law. It’s not just about Trump and his cronies clearing out the agencies that keep consumers, workers, and everyday people safe from corporate abuse. It’s not just about Trump refusing to enforce safeguards for corporate accountability—or worse, weaponizing them against working families. It’s also about the many... Read More
After nearly five years of intense litigation, the landmark United States v. Google antitrust trial is finally over. Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled last fall that Google illegally monopolized internet search for more than a decade by paying smartphone makers, wireless carriers, and web browsers to be the default—and sometimes exclusive—search engine for users. The... Read More
Antitrust restructuring of major corporations is on the table in a way it has not been since the Microsoft case in the late 1990s. Indeed, the historic moment may be comparable to the breakup of Standard Oil in the 1910s and AT&T in the 1980s, when courts reorganized those companies and freed the market from... Read More
On December 3, 2024, Chris Salinas officially entered a nightmare that would make Freddy Krueger proud—a nightmare in the medical industry known as prior authorization. Even I, as his gastroenterologist, didn’t know at the time that this one would become my biggest nightmare yet. Chris has given me permission to share the details of his... Read More
There is much discussion about what Hal Singer has dubbed “Gangster Antitrust,” the extraction of payments, bribes, or other concessions to allow passage of an otherwise anticompetitive merger. Gangster Antitrust can also take the form of conditioning the approval of a procompetitive merger on a seemingly unrelated remedy that advances the political interests of the... Read More
