Merger, merger, merger; we read about them with regularity. The most
recent is the merger of Office Depot and Office Max supposedly to better
compete with Staples. Then there was U.S. Airways merging with American
Airlines (airlines are always merging it seems and service gets worse and
worse.) We are all too well aware of bank mergers resulting in banks to big to
fail. Wall Street loves these mergers.
But they don’t always go through. For example, the government
stopped the merger of AT&T with T-Mobil; antitrust officials said it would
hurt consumers. Yeah. Also it stopped H&R wanted to absorb TaxAct a small cheap
rival.
The Justice Department has a new chief, William J. Baer who has
been described as “an antitrust attorney’s antitrust attorney.” This fits with
the Obama Administration promise to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement. There
was the promise of this in his first term, perhaps there will be meat in his
second term. I’d like to think so.
I'm tending to agree with you, in situations where there is little choice. I don't know of any other office supply stores than the ones you name. The airline market is so limited too.
ReplyDeleteI still find the "too big to fail" term to be invalid. No bank is too big for anything. Regardless, the big banks before the economic crisis, and after, remain for me and other Americans just a couple of choices available out of many.