The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division should be called in to investigate the increasing market share of major banks, the anti-competitive practices of some market leaders , and the broader increase in economic and political power of the biggest financial services players over the past 20 years and the last 6 months – this is potentially damaging to all consumers and, obviously, to all taxpayers.

http://baselinescenario.com/2009/04/16/bring-in-the-antitrust-division-on-banking/

You would think that perhaps “too big too fail” has something to do with this mess, and that “too big” is another way of saying “excessively concentrated”.

Now, if antitrust is not supposed to constrain a market’s concentration, then I don’t know why the word antitrust even exists.

I have no idea what you know or don’t know. All I know is that, in my experience, I do not see how antitrust applies. But I’m no expert on the topic (I’ve dealt with only a couple of narrow issues in the area), so I was hoping that the people who were advocating bringing antitrust laws to bear would be able to explain how it might apply.

FYI — I agree that the whole industry routinely rooks its customers with nonsense transaction fees, but I think that remedying that situation is a matter of consumer protection and not antitrust. I do not believe that financial institutions charge these fees because of how big they are (even the smallest players charge these fees) or because of any conspiracy among them. Rather, they charge these fees because they can, and consumers pay the fees because they feel they must. To me, this is an issue of unequal bargaining power best remedied through new regulations and/or better enforcement of the regulations we already have.

From my limited exeprience, antitrust laws are most concerned with competition within the industry and not at all with protecting the consumer. That is, antitrust focuses on undue market power, not undue bargaining power.

If you’ve litigated it, wouldn’t be reasonable to assume you know more than us (at least me)?

When an industry is able to cut for itself such immense privileges, including escaping fraud supervision (see link), there is a case for breaking these mammoths into smaller pieces or finding other ways to put a dam between them an congress ($450million in contributions in 2008 vs $17millions for the auto industry).

The Tobin tax, regulating trader compensation etc. all seem like beating around the bush to me.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

Big company breaking up cartel of smaller competitors: win
Smaller companies breaking up cartel of bigger competitors: loss
Domestic company breaking up cartel of foreign competitors: win
Foreign companies breakig up cartel of domestic companies: loss
Government breaking up a cartel: loss
Government stopping mergers to form monopolies: capture

How much do you guys know about antitrust? I’ve studied the issue and litigated it a few times, and I’m trying to understand how antitrust law can be brought to bear on transaction fees. Still, I’m not an expert by any means. I look forward to your thoughts.

If you consider how much I said in that little screed, you’d realize what I wrote WAS short. :-)

Still, to be fair, I did not give myself the time to pare things back to make a single point. There are at least three to five distinct points in that comment.

I do appreciate you overcoming your ADD long enough to find one of them, though. :-) I’ll try harder next time.

You forget sight facilitation ambiant lighting surcharge $15

“Let’s make ANTITRUST part of the equation.” Exactly to the point . However, go tell that to Summers (and the $1bn trading loss that he left behind at Harvard).

maybe there is no other growth sector promising immediate profits for the investors
- isn’t there a story out there that there is a capacity to build 9 mio or was it bn cars a year but there are only buyers for only 6 mio or bn ?
- maybe that’s a wide-spread thing, manufactured goods of all kinds having by all kinds of means (robots, outsourcing, just in time et al) become so cheap and so easily produced in huge masses that only by seducing people to discard beloved gadgets new ones can be pushed onto the consumer
if money is poured into infrastructure that’s a common good but does it generate immediate satisfaction of profit-hunger?