The Breyer Mistake

From Matt Stoller's Big: Stephen Breyer's Legacy of Destruction

“President Clinton has been misled into making a grave mistake in nominating to the Supreme Court Judge Stephen Breyer,” wrote former FTC official Charles Mueller, the then-editor of the Antitrust Law and Economics Review in 1994, on the eve of Breyer’s confirmation. “On the basis of his antitrust record, he is an unjust man. He is also one who is intellectually and politically committed to a set of ‘economic’ theories that are demonstrably false and that will callously reduce the standard of living of the average American family in the decades to come.”

….

"There were a host of unanimous decisions following Trinko that gutted antitrust law. There was Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood Lumber, which privileged big businesses who wanted to drive their competitors out of a market by overpaying for supplies in high fixed capital industries (which is one reason there are shortages today!). There was Pacific Bell Telephone Co. v. linkLine Communications, Inc, in which monopolists were allowed to use a tactic called a ‘price squeeze’ in which they exploited control over a vital resource to destroy competition. It got so bad that Breyer served as the Democratic leader in what the New York Times came to call Supreme Court Inc, for its favoratism to big business. (If you want a full rundown of some of Breyer’s decisions on corporate power, this blog post is good.)

"Even Breyer’s ‘good’ decisions are a mess, because his faith in complex theoretical economics is overwhelming. Law professors joke about Breyer’s arbitrary ‘five part tests’ and weird attempts to clarify the law, which almost always makes things more complicated. In Actavis, for instance, Breyer wrote an opinion on whether pharmaceutical companies are allowed to pay competitors to stay off the market so they can keep their drug prices high, what is known as ‘pay for delay.’ Rather than just writing “No that’s a bribe and it’s a violation of antitrust law,’ Breyer said that every case had to be judged individually using an economic analysis of whether that particular arrangement might have some sort of efficiency benefit. It’s ridiculous, bribing someone to stay off the market should be the definition of an antitrust violation. Instead, Breyer’s sloppiness and unwillingness to state the obvious led to a decade of messy litigation, billions of extra costs in higher drug prices, and bitter unresolved Congressional debates."

 For more: A Brief History of Stephen Breyer Enabling Corporate Power

Bitcoin, Blockchain and NFTs are all scams

 

 

(From Tony Wikrent): This video is over two hours long, but one of the best summaries of the financial and economic derangements resulting from Obama’s catastrophic refusal to allow Great Financial Crash of 2008 to destroy its rich instigators. There is a Chapter 0, which focuses on the GFC. Lambert Strether [of NakedCapitalism.com] added in his introduction, “every interaction I’ve ever had online with crypto and NFT enthusiasts fully matches what is described here; the nature of the web3 'community' is important to understand. Well worth a listen, as scam after scam after scam is unraveled.” So, the best way to understand the cryptocurrency craze is as a financial mental disorder resulting entirely from the policy failure of not addressing the causes of the GFC. [GFC = the Global Financial Crisis, AKA the "Great Recession"]

Update: On the Inevitability of Trusted Third Parties. ("Trusted Third Parties" is exactly what cryptocurrency tries to bypass)

Excerpt: "if: problem + blockchain = problem - blockchain
then: blockchain = 0"....

“Did you know that 87% of all conversations about blockchain technology are nonconsensual?”

Room for defunding?

 

The country with the third highest military budget in the world is the United States police department. pic.twitter.com/t1O3jWQiYY

— Ryan Knight ☭ (@ProudSocialist) April 17, 2021

Good call

 

2017. pic.twitter.com/uR0EuFcOV2

— 💉💉💉 Dr Henry Madison (@RageSheen) January 30, 2022

Ukraine Links

Standard Lame-Stream Media reporting about Ukraine paints Russia as the villian, but is that really so?

 Is the U.S. Provoking War with Russia?

Excerpt: "In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.

"Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.

"The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place in part because the Russians underestimated the extent of U.S. and NATO determination. They roused themselves quickly however and Crimeans, who are mostly of Russian origin, voted to rejoin the nation they had been a part of until 1954. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries." 

The Ukraine Crisis is Just a Chance to Acknowledge Choices Already Made

Excerpt: "Putin isn’t insane, and he doesn’t expect to get everything he wants. But he is old, like me ... and he remembers that George Bush Sr. promised NATO wouldn’t expand past a reunited Germany....

"Given that US elites decided to give China their industrial core in exchange for a few pieces of silver so they could kick the shit out of the poor and the middle class internally, they’ve already made their choice. They got their money and their internal supremacy. The price is going to be their international primacy.

"That was always the price. American international primacy was based on power and benefit sharing at home. When American elites decided that they’d rather be oligarchs, they decided they’d also rather not rule the world.

Putin and Xi are just pointing out the consequences of decisions already made." 

Navigating Russia/Ukraine Warmongering Disinformation

Excerpt: "Russia does not want to occupy Ukraine. It is an economic basket case and would be a huge money sink, even apart from the high cost of holding the terrain. Russia wants Ukraine to be a buffer zone.

"We’ll address three issues: the claim that Russia has escalated in recent months and is on the verge of attacking Ukraine; the backstory of what Russia was and thinks it was promised by the West; and the lack of good next moves for the West."

Russian aggression in Europe is a fraud. The aggressor is the US which has ringed Russia with missiles and bases. That is the inverted reality of the relentless US/UK propaganda 'news'. Read this and know your true enemy.https://t.co/UNFQ5ZxaoG

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) January 27, 2022

 Invite Russia to Join Nato

Excerpt: "NATO was established in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, yet NATO did not disband. Instead, it added 12 member countries in the ensuing 31 years. Russia views NATO's continued existence and expansion as targeted toward itself. And it justifies its foreign policy moves as defensive reactions to NATO's actions."

Update (from nakedcapitalism.com): The Reason Putin Would Risk War Anne Applebaum, Atlantic (Kevin C). The projection, it burns, since at least the time the US (wellie along with the UK) arranged for the installation of the dictator the Shah of Iran. More recently, it was the US that sponsored the successful coup against Yanukovich….a mere six weeks before elections where his poll numbers were so low that he was assured to be defeated and there was no indication he intended to scupper the election. And before you object to the word “coup” the incoming bunch tore up the current Constitution and implemented a different one…with no democratic process. 

Related (same source): Richelieu’s ghost almost solves America’s problems Asia Times.

 “Why do you think the Germans have all but dismantled their military?” continued Richelieu. “Because you Americans turned NATO into a bloated, indefensible swamp. You are as stupid as the Austrian Hapsburgs, who acquired Spain, Flanders, Naples and Sicily with clever dynastic marriages. They had twice the population of France during the Thirty Years War, and all the silver of the Indies, but France bled them dry and erased Spain for all time from the list of great powers.”

 

 

The "Crime Surge" that wasn't

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Sacramento News & Review, one of the last supposedly “lefty” publications in the region just published an article (A winter of worry: Sacramento’s violent crime rate in January puts a chill on the community) decrying a recent “crime surge”--a constant worry among conservatives. Among other things, the article cites “independent researchers who have been tracking crime rates in California for nearly a decade acknowledge that overall violence in the state is on the rise.”

But is crime really surging? Compilations of property and violent crime (from cityrating.com) seem to disagree.

True, the above graphs predate the reported recent "surge," yet clearly, even with the more recent "surging" crime, overall crime has been on the decline for decades and any recent increases would have to approach 100% (they don't) for that decline to be interrupted. 

Unfortunately, the reporting about crime is generally distorted, too. The FBI's published crime stats do not include “white collar” crime like wage theft and violations of the Clean Water Act. Despite recent protests from the Chamber of Commerce about pursuit of corporate criminals, "white-collar crime likely costs the American economy between $300 and $800 billion per year, while street crimes like burglary and theft cost around $16 billion." SN&R's hand-wringing is a very old rhetorical tactic, known as "straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel."

And thanks to reporting like SN&R's, despite the decades' decreases in arrests and crime, the county jail remains full. Why? (Pre-COVID-19) roughly 60% of those in County jail were not convicted of anything, except being unable to afford bail. That's right! Poverty is illegal in Sacramento! Meanwhile, the nationwide average jail population for those incarcerated without conviction is 20%, so Sacramento is three times more cruel than even the extraordinarily vengeful U.S. incarceration system.

How bad is U.S. incarceration? With five percent of the world's population, the U.S. is the world’s "champion" incarcerator, jailing 25% of the world's inmates--more in absolute or per-capita numbers than any other nation. The demographically-identical Canadians cage one-seventh as many people, per capita.

So is Canadian crime greater than in the U.S.? No, it's about the same. Similarly, medical treatment (rehab) has a far better cure rate for addiction, and costs about one seventh as much as incarceration. What we do now with addicts and the self-medicating mentally ill is like incarcerating diabetics because they’re dependent on insulin. It’s not just ineffective and expensive, it’s medieval.

Typically "crime surge" reporting supports more "tough on crime" talk from public officials. California Assemblyman Kevin Kiley gets a lot of mileage about his attempts to repeal Prop 47, which reduced some penalties recently. After all, who can be too safe? 

Yet recent attempts to reduce our prison populations may be just a sideshow in any "surge" of crime. For example, being confined in close quarters because of the pandemic may have some influence on the recent crime rise, and the Fed's report that 40% of U.S. population can't handle a $400 emergency without selling something or borrowing may be more important than how draconian are our punishments. But...the beatings will continue until morale improves.

The American public is supposed to be consoled by the law, which in its magnificent equality, forbids rich and poor alike from begging in the street, sleeping under bridges and stealing bread.

Incidentally, for some perspective about "police defunding" consider this: Between 1981 and 2017 U.S. population increased 42%. During that period, funding for the police increased 187.5%. Could there be room to reduce police budgets? Gosh, I wonder!

Like the workman who has only a hammer, the U.S. apparently sees all problems as nails, and all crime as a good excuse to make punishment even more severe. Perhaps it's time to explore alternatives rather than wringing our hands about crime "surges" or our desire for infinite safety. Otherwise, it's not the land of the brave, and the home of the free, it's the land of the fearful, and the home of the incarcerated.

Update: (from Cory Doctorow) "Despite what you may have heard, cops have a relatively safe job. Cops are injured and killed with less frequency than roofers, truckers, fishermen, and pizza-delivery people"

$2.7 Billion in Credit Default Swaps Blew Up One Day Before the Fed Launched Its Repo Loan Bailouts in 2019

Here. First paragraph:

"On September 16, 2019, exactly one day before the Federal Reserve would embark on its first emergency repo loan operations since the financial crisis of 2008, $2.7 billion in credit default swaps (CDS) on a single name blew up. The dealers in those credit default swaps were the very same trading houses on Wall Street that sought, and received, tens of billions of dollars in repo loans from the Fed in an operation that grew to a cumulative $11.23 trillion before its conclusion on July 2, 2020. (In just the last quarter of 2019, the Fed pumped a cumulative $4.5 trillion in repo loans into Wall Street’s trading houses, according to the transaction data it released on December 30 of last year. That was before even one case of COVID-19 had been reported in the U.S.)"