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Image: Charlie Baker, president of the NCAA, recently negotiated the television rights for a bundle of college sports.
Back in 2011, ESPN and the NCAA agreed to a $34 million per year media deal that gave ESPN the right to broadcast championships in 29 different college sports. The list of sports included every single college sport played by women. As time went by, it became increasingly clear this media deal dramatically undervalued the... Read More
Image: Sadly, all the charged rhetoric surrounding the UHG CEO shooting has distracted attention away from the real diagnosis here. What ails the American health care system is structural.
The shooting of its CEO has flung UnitedHealth Group (“UHG”) into the American zeitgeist, and there’s been no shortage of heated opinions on what to make of it. With the tragedy nearly two months behind us, perhaps we can now reflect, dispassionately, on the real diagnosis here: UHG has been monopolizing and “monopsonizing” American health... Read More
Image: Long lines form at Park City amid a ski patrol strike on Dec. 29, 2024. (Mariah Maynes/KSL NewsRadio)
Skiers are an admittedly unsympathetic crowd. At least the jetsetters who fly around the country chasing the toniest resorts like Park City.  Local skiers, on the other, might not earn the same incomes as the jetsetters, but nevertheless must pay the same, lofty lift prices. Setting aside the welfare of locals, one can partly understand... Read More
Image: Free trade deals caused many U.S. factories to close, sending jobs oversees and voters away from the Democratic Party. (Image: Getty)
The election results present a puzzle of sorts. On the one hand, voters expressed deep resentment towards inflation, under the belief that Biden contributed to rising prices, failed to address them, or both. On the other hand, Trump’s signature economic policy is tariffs—on imports from Mexico to Canada and now Israel—which most economists believe will... Read More
Image: For the coming merger wave, here’s our antitrust affirmative defense starter pack.
Many Americans are still in shock because our worst fears just came true: European regulators fined an American Big Tech firm a whopping one half of one percent of its annual revenue for violating some kind of “law.” To add insult to injury, radical American enforcers slipped loose from the adult supervision of the defense... Read More
Image: Judicial power has contorted progressive law to support powerful business interests. The Court stands ready to do so again. Credit: Fred Schilling
“When the best reading of a statute is that it delegatesdiscretionary authority to an agency, the role of the reviewing court under the APA is, as always, to independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits.” –SCOTUS, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The quote above raises a tension between consideration of what Congress... Read More
Image: Many have credited the Federal Reserve with achieving the once-mythical soft landing.
After years of inflation-driven concerns over the state of the economy, it seems that the mythical soft landing has been achieved; things aren’t perfect but inflation is down without the United States hitting a recession. The labor market has weakened some in recent months, but is still largely okay and the Federal Reserve has started... Read More
Image: JP Morgan’s Jaime Dimon is the Chairman of BPI, a bank trade association that sued the CFPB. Photo Credit: Al Drago for The New York Times
It’s always better to be a monopolist. “Ruinous competition” is a drag on a company’s profits, particularly when slothful incumbents are forced to compete on the merits. In the case of banks, competition on the merits means increasing rates on deposits for customers with sizeable savings or decreasing overdraft fees for customers with limited funds.... Read More
Image: YouTube has been recognized as “the world’s second-largest search engine,” handling an estimated 3 billion searches per month.
As Google faces aggressive scrutiny from the Department of Justice—with the search trial moving to the remedies phase and the ad tech trial moving to closing arguments—there’s an elephant in the room that many antitrust watchers are failing to see: YouTube.  With the platform’s presence on our phones, the part it plays in our online... Read More
Image: Charlie Baker, president of the NCAA, recently negotiated the television rights for a bundle of college sports.
Back in 2011, ESPN and the NCAA agreed to a $34 million per year media deal that gave ESPN the right to broadcast championships in 29 different college sports. The list of sports included every single college sport played by women. As time went by, it became increasingly clear this media deal dramatically undervalued the... Read More

The shooting of its CEO has flung UnitedHealth Group (“UHG”) into the American zeitgeist, and there’s been no shortage of heated opinions on what to make of it. With the tragedy nearly two months behind us, perhaps we can now reflect, dispassionately, on the real diagnosis here: UHG has been monopolizing and “monopsonizing” American health... Read More

Image: Sadly, all the charged rhetoric surrounding the UHG CEO shooting has distracted attention away from the real diagnosis here. What ails the American health care system is structural.

Skiers are an admittedly unsympathetic crowd. At least the jetsetters who fly around the country chasing the toniest resorts like Park City.  Local skiers, on the other, might not earn the same incomes as the jetsetters, but nevertheless must pay the same, lofty lift prices. Setting aside the welfare of locals, one can partly understand... Read More

Image: Long lines form at Park City amid a ski patrol strike on Dec. 29, 2024. (Mariah Maynes/KSL NewsRadio)

The election results present a puzzle of sorts. On the one hand, voters expressed deep resentment towards inflation, under the belief that Biden contributed to rising prices, failed to address them, or both. On the other hand, Trump’s signature economic policy is tariffs—on imports from Mexico to Canada and now Israel—which most economists believe will... Read More

Image: Free trade deals caused many U.S. factories to close, sending jobs oversees and voters away from the Democratic Party. (Image: Getty)

Many Americans are still in shock because our worst fears just came true: European regulators fined an American Big Tech firm a whopping one half of one percent of its annual revenue for violating some kind of “law.” To add insult to injury, radical American enforcers slipped loose from the adult supervision of the defense... Read More

Image: For the coming merger wave, here’s our antitrust affirmative defense starter pack.

“When the best reading of a statute is that it delegatesdiscretionary authority to an agency, the role of the reviewing court under the APA is, as always, to independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits.” –SCOTUS, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The quote above raises a tension between consideration of what Congress... Read More

Image: Judicial power has contorted progressive law to support powerful business interests. The Court stands ready to do so again. Credit: Fred Schilling

After years of inflation-driven concerns over the state of the economy, it seems that the mythical soft landing has been achieved; things aren’t perfect but inflation is down without the United States hitting a recession. The labor market has weakened some in recent months, but is still largely okay and the Federal Reserve has started... Read More

Image: Many have credited the Federal Reserve with achieving the once-mythical soft landing.

It’s always better to be a monopolist. “Ruinous competition” is a drag on a company’s profits, particularly when slothful incumbents are forced to compete on the merits. In the case of banks, competition on the merits means increasing rates on deposits for customers with sizeable savings or decreasing overdraft fees for customers with limited funds.... Read More

Image: JP Morgan’s Jaime Dimon is the Chairman of BPI, a bank trade association that sued the CFPB. Photo Credit: Al Drago for The New York Times

As Google faces aggressive scrutiny from the Department of Justice—with the search trial moving to the remedies phase and the ad tech trial moving to closing arguments—there’s an elephant in the room that many antitrust watchers are failing to see: YouTube.  With the platform’s presence on our phones, the part it plays in our online... Read More

Image: YouTube has been recognized as “the world’s second-largest search engine,” handling an estimated 3 billion searches per month.

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