The Monopolization of America

You walk into your local convenience store and head to the cold walk-in beer
room in the back.

The
choice is overwhelming.

Budweiser,
Michelob, Bud Light, Busch Light, Stella Artois, Grolsch, Kirin,Tsingtao, Corona,
Negra Modelo, Rolling Rock, Widmer, Miller and Coors.

In
fact, all of these beers are controlled by two companies.

MillerCoors
under the direction of South African Breweries (SAB) and AnheuserBusch In Bev.

Two
multinational corporations controlling the beer choices of 300 million Americans.

And
it's not just beer.

One
single multinational corporation dominates the world supply of eyeglass stores.

One
dominates the milk supply.

Barry
Lynn goes down the list of industries.

And
he finds a similar story across the board.

A handful
of multinational corporations controlling each industry - or the supply
chains of each industry.

Such
dominant monopolies were illegal just thirty years ago.

But
that all changed with Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork.

A corporatist
oligarchy took hold.

President
Obama has promised aggressive antitrust enforcement.

But
Lynn says it's pie in the sky.

"It
will take more than a lawsuit or two to overthrow America's corporatist
oligarchy and restore a model of capitalism that protects our rights as property
holders and citizens," Lynn argues in his new book - Cornered:
The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (Wiley, 2010).

Antitrust
law was developed to protect the political economy from extreme concentrations
of corporate power.

Then
came Reagan and Bork.

In
1978, Bork said we should have a consumer welfare test.

If
economic concentration is good for the consumer - think Wal-Mart -
then let it be.

Never
mind the citizen.

In
1981, William Baxter, head of Reagan's Antitrust Division, announced that
he would be guided by "an efficiency test."

"When
Baxter first talked to the press in 1981, he said - we are going to impose
an efficiency test," Lynn told Corporate Crime Reporter last
week. "Those were the words he used. It was only a little bit later that
they framed it as a consumer welfare test. And Robert Bork came up with that.
Bork's book - The Antitrust Paradox - came out in 1978 and
he floated this idea of a consumer welfare test."

"It
took Baxter a couple of years to get the messaging together. They locked into
the consumer welfare test. And it helped to bring along so many folks in the
consumer movement. And for some reason, after focusing on safety, which is a
fantastic thing that Ralph Nader did, they began fixating on prices. And there
is a whole political analysis as to why they began fixating on prices. What
groups were they targeting with that fixation?"

"In
1981, that marked a revolutionary change in how we applied our anti-monopoly
laws. No longer was the primary consideration political. The primary consideration
was prices and consumer welfare."

Lynn
says that Bork didn't understand why the consumer movement didn't
come after him on the consumer welfare test.

"In
1993, Bork put out a second edition of the Antitrust Paradox," Lynn said.
"And in the introduction, he says - I don't understand what
happened here. I thought the socialists were doing to come out and fight us
tooth and nail on this. And they never did. We didn't think we were going
to get this through. And we did."
Mention the word "socialist" in this context, and Lynn sees red.

"In
this country, the group that tends to point its finger and calls the other people
socialists most effectively tends to win," Lynn said.

"And
when they win - they get to socialize their own risks."

"So,
you have this elite in this country that for a generation has been raving about
socialism."

"And
what were they doing in the meantime? They were socializing all of their risks."

"As
was laid bare to us in September 2008. Larry Summers put it best - what
the bankers did, he said, was they privatized all of their profits and socialized
all of their risks."

"You
really have to target the other people and call them socialists."

"We
have just seen the most massive era of socialization in this country that we've
ever seen."