Senate Panel Ponders Long-Term Effect of Mergers nytimes.com
As promised, the good gray Times on Greenspan's statement, but
WASHINGTON -- Confronted with a merger wave that is reshaping industries like banking, communications and military contracting, the Senate Judiciary Committee began debating Tuesday whether the trend was going too far and putting workers, consumers and the economy's long-term health at risk.
The initial answer, from the White House and from Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Board chairman, was that despite the headline-grabbing deals, there is little evidence so far of excessive consolidation. But the session highlighted some continuing political tensions.
Greenspan, a champion of unfettered markets, questioned one of the tenets of current antitrust policy: the idea that the government could determine in advance which planned mergers would prove to be anti-competitive and head them off. Given the speed of technological change, Greenspan said, it might be better to wait and see which mergers actually create competition problems.
I wouldn't dispute Gerald's point that Greenspan don't hold with network externalities. As I said, I'm sure he'd be willing to stand tall for Bill if he thought it appropriate. But I'd also say again that the context is clearly federal review of mergers, which isn't the issue involved with Microsoft. At least this time. Also, an additional bit of rebuttal:
"The problem is that if you challenge the merger before it happens, it's not very expensive to remedy it," [FTC chairman] Pitofsky told the senators. "After the merger, after the assets are scrambled, the employees have been fired, the management has gone elsewhere, the factories have been sold for junk in some other country, then putting the company back in business is enormously expensive."
A little inflammatory there, but also a valid point.
Cheers, Dan. |
