{"id":18482,"date":"2021-04-21T12:57:28","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T19:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=18482"},"modified":"2021-04-21T12:57:30","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T19:57:30","slug":"a-crossroads-for-biden-on-corporate-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/04\/21\/a-crossroads-for-biden-on-corporate-power\/","title":{"rendered":"A Crossroads for Biden on Corporate Power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

David Dayen, April 20, 2021 (info@prospect.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Franklin Roosevelt didn’t just leverage government’s spending capacity; he confronted corporate dominance. (FDR Library)<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
The Chief<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
\u201cThe economic royalists complain<\/strong> that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America,\u201d Franklin Roosevelt said<\/a> in1936. \u201cWhat they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.\u201d Challenging corporate power was at the heart of FDR\u2019s project. Joe Biden keeps getting compared to FDR and seems to be pleased with the comparison. But the Biden administration\u2019s record on corporate power is a big incomplete.

The administration has made a couple noteworthy hires, like Lina Khan and Tim Wu. Khan isn\u2019t installed at the Federal Trade Commission yet; her confirmation hearing is this week. And even once she gets seated, Democrats won\u2019t have a majority on the commission once Rohit Chopra shifts to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In the meantime, what\u2019s happening on that Commission? Acting chair Rebecca Kelly Slaughter announced in March<\/a>, to much fanfare<\/a>, an interagency \u201crethink\u201d of pharmaceutical mergers, after a decade of dealmaking. The expectation was for much more rigorous scrutiny of pharma mergers. But the first one that came up, a $39 billion acquisition of Alexion by AstraZeneca, went through within four months, without a \u201csecond request.\u201d That means that the FTC didn\u2019t ask for more time to consider the merger. No conditions were added. It was just waved through.

Another merger, creating a giant in the market for salt, was approved by the Justice Department<\/a> yesterday with a divestiture. Conditions-based mergers have fared quite badly in recent years. This would have brought us from three evaporated salt manufacturers to two, and instead there will be two big ones and one newfangled rival jury-rigged by DOJ to manufacture competition.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Dayen, April 20, 2021 (info@prospect.org) The Chief \u201cThe economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America,\u201d Franklin Roosevelt said in1936. \u201cWhat they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.\u201d Challenging corporate power was at the heart of FDR\u2019s project. Joe Biden keeps getting… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18484,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18482\/revisions\/18484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}