The European antitrust regulator has announced last month that it will fine Intel Corporation $1.44 billion (1.06 billion euros) because it "harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for...
Antitrust
The Case Against Antitrust
Antitrust punishes the best companies The list of antitrust targets reads like a Who's Who of American business success stories. Standard Oil Company, Alcoa Aluminum Company, IBM, and Microsoft, are just a few. These companies were pioneers in developing new and...
Free Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! From Antitrust Fascism
Yahoo! has just released its first-quarter earnings numbers, and neither the market nor analysts are impressed. What will be the company's next move? Multiple suitors claim that they can leverage Yahoo!'s online products and talented employees better than Yahoo!'s...
More Microsoft Antitrust Suit Insanity
According to the Onalaska Life Newspaper, millions of dollars worth of vouchers that were part of Microsoft's settlement of a Wisconsin class-action antitrust case remain unclaimed. The settlement requires Microsoft to make available to class members up to...
Laying the Foundation for an Antitrust Assault on Google
Below is a quote from Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein excerpted a column he wrote on Google titled "How Much More Should It Be Allowed to Grab?" [P]recisely because of its success, it's fair to ask if Google should be barred from furthering its...
Microsoft and Science Education
Science education is a frequent topic in the news these days. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced a campaign to improve math and science education in the Seattle area. According to Brad Smith, a senior vice president and general counsel for Microsoft: "We're very...
Microsoft’s Tacit Surrender to Antitrust
In defense of its virtues, in exasperation of being cut down and cut down again, Microsoft should simply declare that it seeks the abolition of antitrust, and refuse to rest until these laws are repealed–or risk fading into obscurity. If Microsoft takes this righteous stand, it will be known for both leading the PC revolution, and for leading a far greater revolution in American business.
Antitrust Incentives for Legalized Looting
Antirust law creates huge financial incentives-for the people who file antitrust suits. Consider the case of Lloyd Constantine's recent award of $220 million dollars as lead plaintiffs counsel in the Visa International Service Association/MasterCard Inc. antitrust...
Presumed Guilty: The Injustice and Destruction of Sarbanes-Oxley
Sarbanes-Oxley is a moral and economic atrocity. It is past time to repeal this monstrous law and start treating businessmen as American citizens: innocent until proven otherwise.
Public Agencies Take Turn Suing Microsoft
Antitrust settlements are a lot like shark chum--they attract predators instead of staving them off. Consider the case of Microsoft. Microsoft chose to settle an antitrust suit brought by the California class action bar to the tune of $1.1 billion dollars in software...
Capitalism and (Microsoft’s) Freedom
According to Kenneth W. Starr in his Feb. 19 Washington Times Op-Ed column, "A stitch in crime," the Microsoft antitrust settlement contains loopholes that allow Microsoft to avoid competing in the marketplace on the merits. Yet rather than attack Microsoft, perhaps...
Persecution of Microsoft is Immoral
The government's persecution of Microsoft continues unabated. The U.S. appeals court is now considering whether the Bush administration and 19 states negotiated an adequate settlement in their antitrust case against Microsoft. It's time for the American public to...
Take No Half-Measures in Protecting Doctors from Antitrust
The following text is the June 10th oral testimony of CAC Chairman Nicholas Provenzo before the District of Columbia Council Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs regarding The Physicians Joint Negotiating Act of 2003. Madam chairman, members of the committee,...
Antitrust, Politics and the Media
On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on a new set of rules for media ownership. These rules dictate how many television stations can own, as well as cross-ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market. The FCC's changes...
Death by Antitrust: Mountain Health Care, R.I.P.
Last Friday, Mountain Health Care of Asheville, North Carolina, will close its offices for good. The 11 year-old company died not from bankruptcy or poor business judgment, but of antitrust poisoning. More accurately, the United States Department of Justice executed...
Defending the Indefensible: Nestles-Dreyer’s Ice Cream Merger
The FTC knows their actions are rationally indefensible, which is why they rely on smearing their opponents and tossing around floating abstractions like “consumer welfare” to justify what they’re doing.
Educating the Monopolists: Antitrust Prosecutor Klein Works to Reduce Competition in Education
When New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg first named Joel Klein to head the city's public school system, the irony was immediately apparent: an antitrust lawyer heading one of the nation's most infamous (and ineffectual) monopolies. Last month, however, Klein's tenure as...
The Antitrust “Shakedown” Racket: Abolish the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act
This Monday President Bush proposed a $2.2 trillion federal budget to Congress. Momentarily setting aside the sheer outrage over the destruction of such vast wealth in the pursuit of unconstitutional government programs, two items are of particular interest to those...
Price Check on Antitrust: WalMart’s Acquisition of Britain’s Safeway PLC
A battle is looming in London as three companies prepare to vie for control of Safeway PLC, a major British supermarket chain unrelated to the U.S. company of the same name. Last week, Safeway agreed to a $4.6 billion buyout from William Morrison Supermarkets. That...
A Letter to the Department of Justice Concerning the Microsoft Antitrust Case
I'm writing to oppose the antitrust case against Microsoft. Antitrust contradicts the free enterprise system and is a violation of the rights of business owners, their stockholders and consumers. No one is or ever has been forced to buy Microsoft products. And no one...
How History Repeats Itself: The IBM Antitrust Case of 1972
All Antitrust laws should be repealed, freeing every business to grow as big as ability, competence, and economic competitiveness will allow.
Microsoft’s Nose, Technology’s Face
When future policymakers want to understand the law and economics surrounding one of the most watched antitrust cases in history, they will look to "Microsoft, Antitrust and the New Economy," a recent compilation of essays published by the Milken Institute. The book's...
Microsoft’s Crimes Against Humanity: The Wild West World of Antitrust Litigation
A divided Iowa Supreme Court last week reinstated a class action lawsuit against Microsoft brought by Joe Comes on behalf of himself and his fellow Iowans who purchased computers that came pre-installed with Windows 98. As end-user licensees of the operating system,...
The History and Nature of Capitalism According to Microsoft’s Encarta
Most politicians and economists do not recognize capitalism's crucial characteristic. Given the state of the world today it's easy to see why. In his widely acclaimed speech of September 20, 2001, President Bush said, "Terrorists attacked a symbol of American...