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"The cartels are out to get you"

19 Comments -

1 – 19 of 19
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting that the cartels fail mainly due to members trying to cheat each other. No honor among thieves I suppose. I imagine a cartel composed of individuals with the same ethnicity, language and values would last longer than the "multicultural" coalition cited in the article.

9/20/13, 4:50 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wguFY0DDoAU

Sport Science Happy Gilmore

9/20/13, 5:16 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The potash (fertilizer) cartel broke up just this month due to squabbling b/w the Russians and Belarussians.

9/20/13, 5:53 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When I was an engineer in a wafer fab in the mid-80s, we suspected a cartel was in control of pricing for silicon-carbide susceptors used in silicon epitaxy and chemical vapor deposition. A really niche market but basically every silicon wafer had to touch one at some point in its manufacture. Low profile and high profit.

9/20/13, 6:26 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

India, Kenya, Indonesia, Malawi, Rwanda and Sri Lanka, which account for more than 80 percent of the world's tea output, agreed in Colombo to form the International Tea Producers Forum, an organisation they said was aimed at stabilising prices, promoting the beverage and ensuring sustainable production.

9/20/13, 7:05 PM

Anonymous David said...

The hick philosophy is that you don't criticize job creators. In Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, this man would be considered a communist.

9/21/13, 12:52 AM

Anonymous jody said...

interesting.

9/21/13, 1:03 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

But Connor seems to have created a job or two at the Porsche factory and in the Martha's Vineyard summer home construction industry, so two can play this game.

9/21/13, 1:25 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

re potash - which as I understand was a plain view cartel like OPEC - I believe Belarus has not taken the Russian action lying down - they invited Russian potash execs to a meeting - and arrested the only one who turned up as he got off the plane.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/business/global/potash-dispute-heightens-tension-between-russia-and-belarus.html?_r=0

Better to investigate cartels in the US than in either of those places.

9/21/13, 2:49 AM

Anonymous Unanimous said...

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as a commodity cartel?

9/21/13, 3:58 AM

Anonymous Cail Corishev said...

It's always seemed to me that businesses are able to run virtual cartels without doing anything as obvious as meeting to discuss it.

In a small town near me, there are two gas stations. They sit at opposite ends of town, out of sight of each other. Yet every day, the south-end station's price on gas is exactly a penny less than the north-end station's.

Is that because the south-end station's manager drives by the other station on his way to work in the morning, makes a note of their price, and sets his own a penny lower to compete? Or do they both set their price according to some daily price that comes down from corporate headquarters, meaning that the collusion is happening up at that level? I don't know, but such price matching doesn't happen on accident. If there are a dozen different people selling sweet corn by the roadside in different parts of town in the summer, some may be charging twice as much as others. Gas stations would be the same way if they were really setting their own prices based on what they paid the last time they got a shipment, what they need to profit to pay overheads, and so on.

For that matter, isn't price matching, where a business says, "If you find a better price elsewhere, we'll match it," an open form of collusion? At first glance, it would only serve to lower prices; but that's not really true, because it also allows me to keep my prices higher to begin with. I can set my prices a little higher and have that policy, rather than trying to undercut the opposition. But if all my competitors do that, we all end up with higher prices, basically winking at each other through our advertising by saying that we won't go lower.

Maybe that's why interest in cartels waned: people realized that even if you do your best to ban them, it's not hard for corporations -- especially when there are only a few and their prices are very visible to everyone -- to find ways to cooperate toward higher prices without any actionable collusion.

9/21/13, 4:40 AM

Anonymous David said...

When labor does it, it's the destruction of Western Civilization. When management does it, it's economic progress. Labor produces nothing; even management, as a form of labor, produces zip. The fountainhead of wealth is stockholders.

So boo hiss for unions and hooray for cartels!

What we really need is pure free enterprise for labor (e.g., end the minimum wage) and an all-powerful government run by stockholders.

I've just saved you from having to read people like Thomas Friedman again, or listen to half the people on cable. Think of all the time I've saved you.

9/21/13, 6:18 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is someone able to get past the pay wall for the full article?

9/21/13, 12:10 PM

Anonymous Philip Neal said...

There would seem to be something paradoxical about a monopoly on cartel busting. But as 'Screaming Lord Sutch', the perennial joke candidate at British by-elections, used to ask, 'Why is there only one Monopolies and Mergers Commission?'

9/21/13, 1:24 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What I don't understand is why the trust busters didn't seem to distinguish between the cartels that were primarily exporters vs cartels that were primarily domestic markets. (Cartels that are in another country your government can't do anything about.)

If the cartel is primarily an exporter, then to my way of thinking the cartel ought to be encouraged, if anything. If it is extracting the maximum profit from whatever good the cartel controls by extracting that wealth from foreign countries, it is making your country richer.

9/21/13, 4:02 PM

Anonymous fnn said...

The hick philosophy is that you don't criticize job creators. In Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, this man would be considered a communist.

But apparently not in Louisiana.Find out who Huey Long was.

9/21/13, 8:06 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bush dropped the anti-trust suit against Microsoft. So, we complain here about Big Biz wanting guest workers. W helped the big Biz being more powerful like Microsoft.

9/22/13, 10:22 AM

Anonymous David said...

It isn't 1928. Huey Long couldn't be elected hall monitor today. Read Joe Bageant.

9/22/13, 4:36 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are a lot of IO economists who work full-time on litigation and academic economists who serve as expert witness in price-fixing and antitrust trials. Connor is more unique for doing well on the plaintiff side. There is a lot more money in serving as an expert witness for the defense, as these companies have deep pockets and desperate to resolve these issues.

Also, the commenter above who said you can't go after cartels in other countries is incorrect. Obviously you can't do anything about OPEC, but most of the conspirators in the LCD panel cartel were Asian companies.

9/22/13, 6:01 PM

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