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jury slaps the egg cartel.
turns out egg producers.colluded to artificially restrict supply
high egg prices are greedflation.
Instead of having a face to face cartel, landlords have outsourced pricing to an algorithm that functionally does the same thing.
The guy who designed it also designed software that ripped off airplane passengers for a cool billion dollars from 1988-1992.
https://www.propublica.org/article/y...-realpage-rentCamden’s turnover rates increased about 15 percentage points in 2006 after it implemented YieldStar, Campo, the company’s CEO, told a trade publication a few years later. But that wasn’t a problem for the firm: Despite having to replace more renters, its revenue grew by 7.4%.
“The net effect of driving revenue and pushing people out was $10 million in income,” Campo said. “I think that shows keeping the heads in the beds above all else is not always the best strategy.”
jury slaps the egg cartel.
turns out egg producers.colluded to artificially restrict supply
high egg prices are greedflation.
That's American Democracy.
https://www.propublica.org/article/d...al-estate-techThe U.S. Department of Justice late Wednesday stepped into a massive an rust lawsuit filed by dozens of tenants who are accusing a tech company’s apartment software of helping landlords collude to inflate rents.
The DOJ action comes after a ProPublica investigation last year found that Texas-based software provider RealPage used algorithms to recommend rents to landlords across the country to maximize profits — a practice that experts said may violate an rust laws.
“Put simply, RealPage allegedly replaces independent compe ive decisionmaking on prices, which often leads to lower prices for tenants, with a price-fixing combination that violates” federal an rust law, prosecutors wrote.
Not every use of an algorithm to set price violates federal law, they noted, but it is “unlawful when, as alleged here, compe ors knowingly combine their sensitive, nonpublic pricing and supply information in an algorithm that they rely upon in making pricing decisions, with the knowledge and expectation that other compe ors will do the same.”
GlaxoSmithKline bends the knee on asthma inhalers. When the FTC deigns to get out of its chair to enforce the law, monopolies shiver, markets get more compe ive and people benefit.
Monopoly Round-Up: How FTC Chair Lina Khan Cut Inhaler Costs to $35 (thebignewsletter.com)GlaxoSmithKline’s line of inhalers is the most prescribed in the United States, and this corporation’s cut to patient costs follows two other giant corporations - AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim - who recently did the same thing.
Despite being a very old type of product that is sold inexpensively abroad, inhalers are a big business in America, generating $178 billion in revenue between 2000 and 2021. Three firms - AstraZeneca, GSK, and Teva - had revenue of $25 billion in the past five years from this line of business. The high revenue is a result of high cost, with the list price of inhalers as somewhere between $200 to $600. A cut, therefore, is a big deal, especially for people with high deductible health care plans.
Why are inhalers so profitable? And why have three giant firms decided to forego this money? The short story is that pharmaceutical companies have been committing an extremely boring form of fraud that enabled them to maintain illegal monopoly protection for their products, and no one in government bothered to stop it. Last year, Chair Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission stepped up with some clever lawyering and removed their monopoly protection. And so these firms are preemptively choosing to cut what patients have to pay.
& you know what she'll do now, Winester? Go after some unfortunate schmuck and drive that er right into the ter.
Let us proceed...
Live Nation uses kickbacks and creative accounting to hide its profits, and also to screw artists, promoters, venues and customers.
Explosive New Do ents Unearthed On Live Nation/Ticketmaster (thebignewsletter.com)Earlier this month, an rust attorney Dan Wall wrote a blog post on behalf of his client, Live Nation/Ticketmaster, trying to rebut the scrutiny on his firm. And the tack he took was a bit surprising. “Concert promotion,” he wrote, “is not a highly profitable business, even for Live Nation.” Sure, Live Nation charges charges consumers a lot of money, and doesn’t pay much to artists. But they don’t, he wrote, set the ticket price. And even worse, for Live Nation shareholders at least, it’s just not a very good business, with the middleman giant affecting at most 2% of the price of a ticket for its trouble. “The narrative that Ticketmaster fees are responsible for high ticket prices makes no sense,” he added. “There is no way that’s true.”
It was a weird statement, considering Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino made $139 million in 2022. And according to new do ents released by Congressman Bill Pascrell today from litigation in 2019, it’s flatly untrue. The allegations in the do ents are “based upon Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s own financial data, do entation, and correspondence provided by Live Nation/Ticketmaster as part of discovery in a lawsuit that has been ongoing for well over a decade.” Live Nation, according to a lawyer facing the firm, “ins uted a scheme which essentially defrauds everyone involved, from the artists to the ticket purchasers.”
It's a in' cartoon, for Christ-sakes.Live Nation uses kickbacks and creative accounting to hide its profits, and also to screw artists, promoters, venues and customers.
Explosive New Do ents Unearthed On Live Nation/Ticketmaster (thebignewsletter.com)
Well, well...
American oil tycoon accused of trying to conspire with OPEC to inflate prices
Scott Sheffield, the founder and longtime CEO of a leading American oil producer, attempted to collude with OPEC and its allies to inflate prices, federal regulators alleged on Thursday.
The Federal Trade Commission said Sheffield exchanged hundreds of text messages discussing pricing, production and oil market dynamics with officials at the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, the cartel led by Saudi Arabia.
Regulators say Sheffield, then the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, used WhatsApp conversations, in-person meetings and public statements to try to “align oil production” in the Permian Basin in Texas with that of OPEC and OPEC+, the wider group that includes Russia.
Asked about reports that the FTC was considering recommending Sheffield face criminal charges, FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar told CNN: “The FTC has a responsibility to refer potentially criminal behavior and takes that obligation very seriously.”
Regulators acknowledged that Sheffield did not hide his efforts to “align” US production with that of OPEC, pointing to public comments he made urging US rivals to be “disciplined” about production.
“But Mr. Sheffield did not limit himself to public signaling to US counterparts — he has also held repeated, private conversations with high-ranking OPEC representatives assuring them that Pioneer and its Permian Basin rivals were working hard to keep oil output artificially low,” the FTC said.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/02/energ...eld/index.html
Old $5 a gallon Joe is comin. Comin' soon.
Stuff like this normally goes by the boards, for a judicial opinion to be attached to the fact pattern isn't nothing, but damn close.
Like shaved pussy.
Looks like the oil patch colluded with OPEC to goose gas prices, and inflation, in 2021.
Biden wanted a price gouging bill, but Republicans wouldn't allow it.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a...spiracy-causedLast Sunday, I wrote a piece alleging that U.S. shale oil producers colluded with the Saudi government from 2021-2023 to drive up gas prices. That essay was based on some reporting I had done, as well as a complaint from a savvy Kansas City class action law firm, Sharp Law, with special expertise in oil. The theory was that American producers, after a bitter price war from 2014-2016, got tired of competing on price with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or the OPEC oil cartel, and at some point from 2017-2021, decided to join the cartel and cut supply to the market. This action had the affect of raising oil prices, costing oil consumers something on the order of $200 billion a year.
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission released evidence confirming that collusion played a serious role in hiking oil prices at that time. Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, a leader in the fracking field, “exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing and output.” Sheffield was explicit about his goal, saying that “if Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC to cut production. Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow. That was our plan,” he said, adding: “I was using the tactics of OPEC+ to get a bigger OPEC+ done.” He talked to shareholders, publicly threatened rivals, and ultimately achieved output cuts across the industry regardless of price. “Even if oil gets to $200/barrel,” he said, “the independent producers are going to be disciplined.”
Big question is if FTC will charge Sheffield criminally sooner rather than later!
all they can to is refer it to LE, the FTC can't charge anyone criminally
You mean refer the case to the DOJ but it seems that FTC opposed the proposed acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources Company by ExxonMobile and convinced them not to let Sheffield join the executive board.
DOJ is law enforcement, profe
DOJ as in AUSA not LE as in FBI.
Is that what it was, Winester? I just thought it was North of $5 a gallon gas.
It's comin' again, daddy.
Let us proceed...
...who, did your ed around at Waco & found out scenario there at OKC. I'd do the picture of that there ground zero, but, they'd run me off again, eh?
l[your]controllinao!!!
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