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The Loper-Bright Trap for the FTC

By Darren Bush
November 6, 2024
Image: Judicial power has contorted progressive law to support powerful business interests. The Court stands ready to do so again. Credit: Fred Schilling
“When the best reading of a statute is that it delegatesdiscretionary authority to an agency, the role of the reviewing court under the APA is, as always, to independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits.” –SCOTUS, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The quote above raises a tension between consideration of what Congress... Read More

The Federal Reserve Isn’t Responsible for the Soft Landing—Though to Understand Why, We Need More Than Econ 101

By Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
November 5, 2024
Image: Many have credited the Federal Reserve with achieving the once-mythical soft landing.
After years of inflation-driven concerns over the state of the economy, it seems that the mythical soft landing has been achieved; things aren’t perfect but inflation is down without the United States hitting a recession. The labor market has weakened some in recent months, but is still largely okay and the Federal Reserve has started... Read More

A New CFPB Rule Could Spark Competition in the Banking Industry

By Hal Singer
October 27, 2024
Image: JP Morgan’s Jaime Dimon is the Chairman of BPI, a bank trade association that sued the CFPB. Photo Credit: Al Drago for The New York Times
It’s always better to be a monopolist. “Ruinous competition” is a drag on a company’s profits, particularly when slothful incumbents are forced to compete on the merits. In the case of banks, competition on the merits means increasing rates on deposits for customers with sizeable savings or decreasing overdraft fees for customers with limited funds.... Read More

The Elephant in the Room in Google’s Antitrust Trials

By Emily Peterson-Cassin
October 20, 2024
Image: YouTube has been recognized as “the world’s second-largest search engine,” handling an estimated 3 billion searches per month.
As Google faces aggressive scrutiny from the Department of Justice—with the search trial moving to the remedies phase and the ad tech trial moving to closing arguments—there’s an elephant in the room that many antitrust watchers are failing to see: YouTube.  With the platform’s presence on our phones, the part it plays in our online... Read More

But What … If We Could! How Rob Lowe’s Character on The Grinder Explains the Stories Economists Teach Today

By David Berri
October 14, 2024
Each semester at universities around the world, students in introductory economic classes are generally told the same stories. Perhaps to the surprise of some students who have met human beings, economists teach their classes that human beings are rational creatures who primarily seek to maximize their own utility in making choices. These students are also... Read More

Revisiting Legal Standards for the Exchange of Confidential Business Information

By Peter Carstensen
October 12, 2024
Image: The DOJ sued RealPage for its information collection, processing, and rent recommendations to landlords. Photo by Sipa USA via AP Images.
In February 2023, Doha Mekki, the Principal Deputy AAG for Antitrust announced the withdrawal of the FTC-DOJ guidelines on information exchange. It had become painfully apparent that oligopolists had found exchanges of confidential business information to be an effective means of restraining competition without entering into overt conspiracies.  In December of that year, we published... Read More

Remedying the Google Dual Bottleneck Monopoly in Search and Text Advertising

By Peter Carstensen and Darren Bush
October 7, 2024
Image: This week, the DOJ is expected to file its proposed remedy in the Google search case.
In August, Judge Mehta of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., concluded in a careful and detailed opinion that Google had a monopoly in both the internet search market and the associated text advertising market. Google was found to have abused its market power by engaging in exclusionary conduct, including paying large sums of... Read More

The Post’s Ponderous Posturing on Progressive Policy

By Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
September 30, 2024
Image: The Washington Post has assembled a lineup of neoliberal pundits, including Eduardo Porter and Catherine Rampell.
Washington Post columnist Eduardo Porter, in his recent piece, “Corporations are not destroying America,” seems to be taking cues on economic policy from his colleague Catherine Rampell. To Porter’s credit, he, contra Rampell, seems to actually read the materials he’s writing about. Yet the entire piece is emblematic of columns favored by the Post: ones... Read More

A Flawed Divestiture, Dynamic Pricing on Steroids, and Worker Harms: Why the Kroger/Albertsons Merger Should Be Stopped

By Corey Lipton
September 27, 2024
The FTC is seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent two of the country’s largest supermarket chains, Kroger and Albertsons, from merging. The case was heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, where U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson, a former Oregon Supreme Court justice, will soon render a verdict. The merger would... Read More

In Fighting Amazon’s Alleged Monopoly, the FTC Finds Support from Other Courts

By Ron Knox
September 13, 2024
Just a few weeks shy of its one-year anniversary of the Federal Trade Commission’s landmark monopolization case against Amazon, the government and the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace await a crucial decision: Whether Judge John Chun will dismiss the case before it ever reaches trial.  Amazon’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit has been sitting in front... Read More

The Loper-Bright Trap for the FTC

By Darren Bush
November 6, 2024
Image: Judicial power has contorted progressive law to support powerful business interests. The Court stands ready to do so again. Credit: Fred Schilling
“When the best reading of a statute is that it delegatesdiscretionary authority to an agency, the role of the reviewing court under the APA is, as always, to independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits.” –SCOTUS, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The quote above raises a tension between consideration of what Congress... Read More

The Federal Reserve Isn’t Responsible for the Soft Landing—Though to Understand Why, We Need More Than Econ 101

By Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
November 5, 2024

After years of inflation-driven concerns over the state of the economy, it seems that the mythical soft landing has been achieved; things aren’t perfect but inflation is down without the United States hitting a recession. The labor market has weakened some in recent months, but is still largely okay and the Federal Reserve has started... Read More

Image: Many have credited the Federal Reserve with achieving the once-mythical soft landing.

A New CFPB Rule Could Spark Competition in the Banking Industry

By Hal Singer
October 27, 2024

It’s always better to be a monopolist. “Ruinous competition” is a drag on a company’s profits, particularly when slothful incumbents are forced to compete on the merits. In the case of banks, competition on the merits means increasing rates on deposits for customers with sizeable savings or decreasing overdraft fees for customers with limited funds.... Read More

Image: JP Morgan’s Jaime Dimon is the Chairman of BPI, a bank trade association that sued the CFPB. Photo Credit: Al Drago for The New York Times

The Elephant in the Room in Google’s Antitrust Trials

By Emily Peterson-Cassin
October 20, 2024

As Google faces aggressive scrutiny from the Department of Justice—with the search trial moving to the remedies phase and the ad tech trial moving to closing arguments—there’s an elephant in the room that many antitrust watchers are failing to see: YouTube.  With the platform’s presence on our phones, the part it plays in our online... Read More

Image: YouTube has been recognized as “the world’s second-largest search engine,” handling an estimated 3 billion searches per month.

But What … If We Could! How Rob Lowe’s Character on The Grinder Explains the Stories Economists Teach Today

By David Berri
October 14, 2024

Each semester at universities around the world, students in introductory economic classes are generally told the same stories. Perhaps to the surprise of some students who have met human beings, economists teach their classes that human beings are rational creatures who primarily seek to maximize their own utility in making choices. These students are also... Read More

Revisiting Legal Standards for the Exchange of Confidential Business Information

By Peter Carstensen
October 12, 2024

In February 2023, Doha Mekki, the Principal Deputy AAG for Antitrust announced the withdrawal of the FTC-DOJ guidelines on information exchange. It had become painfully apparent that oligopolists had found exchanges of confidential business information to be an effective means of restraining competition without entering into overt conspiracies.  In December of that year, we published... Read More

Image: The DOJ sued RealPage for its information collection, processing, and rent recommendations to landlords. Photo by Sipa USA via AP Images.

Remedying the Google Dual Bottleneck Monopoly in Search and Text Advertising

By Peter Carstensen and Darren Bush
October 7, 2024

In August, Judge Mehta of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., concluded in a careful and detailed opinion that Google had a monopoly in both the internet search market and the associated text advertising market. Google was found to have abused its market power by engaging in exclusionary conduct, including paying large sums of... Read More

Image: This week, the DOJ is expected to file its proposed remedy in the Google search case.

The Post’s Ponderous Posturing on Progressive Policy

By Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
September 30, 2024

Washington Post columnist Eduardo Porter, in his recent piece, “Corporations are not destroying America,” seems to be taking cues on economic policy from his colleague Catherine Rampell. To Porter’s credit, he, contra Rampell, seems to actually read the materials he’s writing about. Yet the entire piece is emblematic of columns favored by the Post: ones... Read More

Image: The Washington Post has assembled a lineup of neoliberal pundits, including Eduardo Porter and Catherine Rampell.

A Flawed Divestiture, Dynamic Pricing on Steroids, and Worker Harms: Why the Kroger/Albertsons Merger Should Be Stopped

By Corey Lipton
September 27, 2024

The FTC is seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent two of the country’s largest supermarket chains, Kroger and Albertsons, from merging. The case was heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, where U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson, a former Oregon Supreme Court justice, will soon render a verdict. The merger would... Read More

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