On the heels of Rupert Murdoch's humiliating but unindictable debacle concerning the unlawful bugging of telecommunications emerged an even more important secondary story about the power of one company to monopolize an industry and exert incredible economic and political power. Naturally, the reaction of the US Public (as well as the U.S. regulators in general, and the Department Of Justice, in particular) was righteous rage. Oh, how the public hates a monopoly.
Almost in a knee-jerk reflex fashion, the DOJ has filed a motion to block a merger of ATT and T-MOBILE because it felt "antsy" about having one combined entity control roughly 80% of the mobile marketplace in the United States.
If the DOJ were truly interested in an exciting target (or several), they might take a look at the United States Treasury, The Federal Reserve Banking System (which is actually a private enterprise operated much like an on-shore, intra-national cartel), and a handful of "too big to fail" deficit accumulators.
Near-Term Trend:
1) The regulatory agencies of the US Government will go through the motions of "trust-busting" and preventing "dangerous monopolies" for the next several months. This is a type of "common-man" appeasement, and will indeed be very temporary. ATT will eventually either 1) win its appeal, or 2) find a means, through a series of transactions, to accomplish what some court deems illegal;
2) The fusion of big government and big business will continue in its juggernaut despite any propagandist smokescreen to the contrary. The power and profits in this alliance will prove irresistable;
3) The next major US economic event (perhaps Mr. Bernanke's initiation of Quantitative Easing III) will provide a sufficient diversion to permit the resumption of business as usual amongst and amidst the power players in both the private and government sectors
An excerpt from a recent ZDNet blog follows for your information:
The Feds want to block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile. Here's a look at the winners and losers.
READ FULL STORYDouglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com]
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