Vertical and Horizontal M&A: A Bias in Antitrust Policy?

The Obama Justice Department developed a track record in challenging horizontal mergers and acquisitions—those in which a company buys a direct competitor—in industries that are already highly concentrated. In deals that are not between direct rivals, such as those that occur in vertical integration, the Obama Administration approved the deals, albeit with the imposition of legally binding restrictions on the acquirer’s ability to use its “in house” supplier to engage in unfair competition.
As one example of unfair competition through the use of a purchased distributor, Standard Oil under John D. Rockefeller bought a company that owned and operated pipelines through which oil was transported. Besides using the company to obtain competitive information, he made sure that higher rates were charged to competitors—even though who had no other means of transport available. Where practicable, going by pipeline was preferable to barges and railroads from a cost standpoint—although Rockefeller obtained substantial rebates from the railroads (from his volume or market power—this point is subject to debate). In addition, the railroads granted Standard Oil drawbacks—a cut from the railroad’s business in servicing other customers, including competitors of Standard. Given Standard’s sheer volume, the rationale went, trains being used to haul others’ product were not available for Standard and thus represented a cost in terms of foregone volume transported. Even so, from the ethical standpoint of fairness, both the rebates and especially the drawbacks were subject to substantial critique—especially that of Ida Tarbell, whose text (History of the Standard Oil Company, 1904) on Rockefeller’s helmship of Standard was scathing.
More than a century later, the Obama Justice Department allowed Comcast to take control of NBC Universal and Google to buy travel software maker ITA Software. The government’s rationale is that companies can save money from synergies and thus lower prices for consumers (or increase salaries, retained earnings or dividends). Even in a competitive market, however, the “lower prices” scenario seems to have doubtful validity, given tacit collusion on price, non-price means of competing, and executive managers’ interests in increasing their compensation and keeping investors happy.  Similarly, by the way, reducing companies to being “job creators” is not only reductionistic; it also demonstrates an ignorance of what businesses are designed to do (i.e., earn profit by selling widgets—jobs being merely a means).
Moreover, the assumption that “legally binding restrictions on the acquirer’s ability to use its prize to unfairly harm competitors” are a sufficient means of checking or thwarting baleful consequences from what is an institutional or structural conflict of interest seems to be highly tenuous, in my opinion. Just as water in a stream “seeks” ways to go downstream even when temporarily blocked (and a cat obstructed from food laid out continuously seeks ways to get around the obstacles), the managers of company A that owns company B, which acts as a supplier or distributor for competitors of company A, will doubtlessly (and inevitably) seek ways around the restrictions. In the parlance of trade, such ways are known as “non-tariff barriers.” They are notoriously difficult to stop (think: stop the cat).

                                                                                WSJ

In conclusion, the Obama administration’s differential treatments of vertical and horizontal mergers and acquisitions evince a bias caused by understating the strength of a structural conflict of interest that is inherent in one company buying a distributor or supplier that services competitors of said company. Perhaps the underlying culprit is an understating of the more sordid aspects of human nature combined with an overstating of the efficacy of government regulation. If highly concentrated, massive stocks of capital, such as are evinced in banks or companies that are too big to fail, represent a risk both to competitive markets and to representative democracy, then not only should both vertical and horizontal mergers and acquisitions be subject to higher hurdles, but also existing companies that are too big to fail should be broken up, as the U.S. Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil a century ago.

Source:

Thomas Catan and Brent Kendall, “After AT&T: The New Antitrust Era,” The Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2011. 

The U.S. House of Representatives: An Aristocratic or People’s House?

“Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House rose by more than 2 ¹/₂ times, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity. Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.” This comparison excludes home equity because it was not included in congressional reporting.
These statistics support the view extant in the U.S. Federal Constitutional Convention that relative to all of the representatives in the legislatures of the several states, the “few” in the U.S. House of Representatives gave that body an aristocratic quality. This fear did not necessarily translate into a belief that the federal system itself would be consolidated as a consequence. Even so, aside from the growing economic distance between the U.S. House reps and their constituents, the increasing wealth can be taken as a baleful indication of a funneling of wealth and political power in ever tighter circles. In other words, the statistics support those who urge that more governmental power be shifted from Congress back to the semi- and residual-sovereign state legislatures.
While it is true that the delegates at the federal convention feared excess democracy, which was notably against the interest of creditors such as themselves, in the state legislatures (e.g. Massachusetts), it can be argued that his bias left them (and the constitution they drafted) vulnerable to political (and economic) consolidation, with Congressional power (and wealth) effectively setting its own limits. The statistics may give an unsuspecting public pause in taking seriously the proposition that the federal system should be readjusted so as to achieve better balance, which in turn enables more viable checks on the abuse of power—whether in Washington, D.C. or Topeka.

Source:

Peter Whoriskey, “Growing Wealth Widens Distance Between Lawmakers and Constituents,” The Washington Post, December 26, 2011.

Anti-Corruption and Federalism in India

At the end of 2011, India’s coalition government adjourned the upper chamber of the federal legislature without passing legislation that would have created an independent anticorruption agency. India was a the time rife with governmental corruption. A college wants its foreign students protected from crime? A payment is made to local police employees, who pocket the money for themselves. Someone wants a government contract? Well, that goes without saying.

The lower house having passed the legislation, the inaction of the upper chamber was particularly frustrating, particularly to the supporters of Hazare, whose hunger strike  during the summer had led to a promise by the government that the legislation would be introduced. It would have been impractical, and even anti-democratic, for the government to have sidestepped the legislative process simply because a demonstrator of Hazare’s stature was undergoing a hunger-strike. Even heroes should not be lionized too much. Lest it be thought that the federal parliament’s inaction would provoke Hazare to renew hunger-strike, he had actually attempted during the week leading up to the anticipated vote to rally public support against the government’s bill—calling it too weak—by undergoing a hunger-strike, but the large crowds of the summer did not materialize so he called off his hunger-strike “prematurely,” according to the New York Times, “blaming poor health.” It is odd that a person who risks his or her life in a hunger-strike would call it off on account of poor health. “I’m risking death, but I don’t want to get too sick” belies the claim to authenticity and thus undermines the credibility of the movement itself. Ironically, Hazare’s lobbying against the government’s bill may have contributed to the eventual inaction, so the inaction does not necessary constitute a failure for Hazare.

Furthermore, concerns other than corruption legitimately contributed to the inaction. Specifically, the New York Times reports that “(m)uch of the argument centered on an often-technical discussion about India’s federalist structure and whether the provision concerning the creation of state-level anticorruption agencies was unconstitutional.” As the example of the United States suggests, the encroachment of a general government of a federal system on the state governments can compromise the sovereignty retained by the latter, and thus the “checks and balances” feature of federalism between the two government systems (i.e., that of the states and that of the general government). In the case of the anti-corruption bill, whether the federalist arguments were a smokescreen or not, it is significant and highly valuable that federalism was raised as a factor explicitly. In the U.S., the factor is not typically raised even where it is relevant and even vital; typically, the federalism being affected is simply compromised.

Therefore, both with regard to Hazare’s anti-corruption crusade and federalism, the inaction of the upper federal legislative chamber is complex. Ideally, corruption should be rooted out systemically while federalism should be fortified rather than enervated. Both objectives can be achieved—meaning that federalism need not be compromised in riding the society of corruption.

Source:

Jim Yardley, “Bill to Create Anticorruption Agency Stalls in India,” The New York Times, December 30, 2011. 

Contradictory Comments on Health Insurance as Unethical: The Case of Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich said on May 15, 2011 that people should be required to buy health-insurance. He added that he would like to see the mandate implemented at the state rather than the federal level. These comments unleashed a torrent of criticism from Republicans, so the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives spent the following week “walking” his comments back by denying that he had said that he was for a mandate.  The media was in a feeding frenzy, astounded that the former Speaker could simply deny that he might get away with the contradiction. However, in such cases, is it the person or logical contradiction itself that gets us so steamed?

Although we tend to point to the person who has made a contradiction without acknowledging it, ascribing possible sordid motives, it could be that the logical contradiction itself lies at the source of the angst in the beholder. More specifically, the logical contradiction itself may be in its substance an uncomfortable emotion rather than reason. In other words, violating logic may be an emotion that appears in the form of twisted reason.

Otherwise, it would be a case of reason causing an emotion. For example, “You logically contradicted yourself and that makes me mad” is typically taken as something of reason causing a particular emotion. It is difficult to link reason and emotion because we take them to be different things. It is a bit like Descartes’ mind-body problem.  Were logical contradiction itself an emotion, however, then to say that a contradiction caused anger might be easier to explain as one emotion would be giving rise to another—both being of the same type of thing (i.e., emotion).

Going even further, the observation that logical contraction is an emotion distinct from the anger may be an illusion.  Because the anger comes so quickly and naturally, it could be that what we take as the anger is simply part of the complex emotion of experiencing a logical contradiction. Similarly, when a person says that he feels confused, a cognitive condition is really an emotion because it is felt. Like confusion, experiencing logical contradiction does not feel good.

In general terms, talking about logical contradiction as an emotion of disapprobation reconciles Kant’s first formulation of his categorical imperative to Hume’s psychological theory of morality.  To Kant, moral principles are universal because of the role of universality and necessity in reason, so maxims that involve a logical contradiction if they are universalized cannot be moral. To Hume, moral judgment just is the sentiment of disapprobation.

Typically, Kant’s ethical theory is viewed as rationalist, whereas Hume’s is portrayed as psychological. However, if logical contradiction is itself an emotion having the form of reason, then it could be said that the moral sentiment of disapprobation applies to the uncomfortable emotion that the experience of logical contradiction. Reason turned against itself only seems to be cognitive rather than emotion. If what we have in a logical contradiction is essentially an emotion (or even an emotional reaction), then Kant’s rationalism and Hume’s sentimentalism are no longer antipodal. To say that logical contradiction is unethical is to say that it gives a rational and emotional being a sentiment of disapprobation. Logical contradiction itself naturally gives us a bad feeling; indeed, the contradiction may simply be a way of labeling a particular emotion.

So when we say that Newt Gingrich should not have contradicted himself (or he should own up to having contradicted himself), the basis of our moral judgment could be the emotion that we feel when we are confronted with a logical contradiction—the contradiction being that sentiment of disapprobation.

See related essay: "A Health-Insurance Mandate Consistent with Federalism."

Sources:

Kant’s Groundwork of Metaphysics and his Critique of Practical Reason.  See also David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature.

Naftali Bendavid and Jonathan Weisman, “Medicare Revamp Exposes Divisions Within the GOP,” The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2011, p. A6.

Too Big to Fail: The Trillion Dollar Club

Banks with assets over $50 billion are considered “systemically important” according to the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. The act is geared to shoring up protection against systemic risk. The U.S. Government deems certain banks (and companies) systemically important if they are big enough to threaten the entire financial system should they fail. Such enterprises are subject to higher capital standards and stricter rules. Roughly three dozen banks in the U.S. had been classified as systemically important by mid-May 2011.

A major flaw in the law is its failure to sufficiently distinguish the banks having assets at just over $50 billion (the floor of systemically important) from the banks with assets over $1 trillion. For example, Bank of America ($2.28 trillion), J.P. Morgan Chase ($2.2 trillion), Citigroup ($1.95 trillion), and Wells Fargo ($1.24 trillion) can be clustered and distinguished from Huntington Bancshares ($52.95 billion), CIT Group ($50.85 billion), Zions Bancorp ($50.81 billion), and Marshall & Ilsley ($49.68 billion). If just one of the institutions in the over $1 trillion club fails, the financial system worldwide could be toast. In contrast, the system would be more likely to remain viable if just one of the banks with assets of around $50 billion were to fail.

Of the $50 billion club, Stephen Steinour, chair and CEO of Huntington, stresses, “We are not vital to the economic system of the U.S.” The chair and CEO of Bank of America could not make the same claim. However, Steinour is ignoring the possibility that Huntington could be a domino in a line of similar banks whose failures altogether could challenge the viability of the financial system; yet even this risk can and should be distinguished from the inherent systemic risk in just one of the banks in the $1 trillion plus club.  Furthermore, those big banks have grown even larger since before the financial crisis—meaning that their systemic risk is higher rather than lower after the crisis. At the end of 2010, the top ten banks in U.S. had 77% of the banking assets in the U.S.

In 2007, Bank of America had assets of $1.54 trillion; by 2011 that number had moved to $2.28 trillion. J.P. Morgan Chase had gone from $1.46 trillion to $2.20 trillion, and Wells Fargo went from $539 billion to $1.24 trillion. Citigroup bucks this trend, moving from $2.22 trillion down to $1.95 trillion. Generally speaking, this cluster of banks represents more rather than less systemic risk after the crisis of 2008.  Were one of these banks to founder, a government-arranged orderly liquidation as per the Dodd-Frank law might not be sufficient to keep credit markets from freezing up. The very existence of a bank with more than $1 trillion in assets should be questioned. Ironically, efforts to evade financial catastrophe in the fall of 2008 contributed to the increase in size. That is to say, staving off the crisis may have made another more likely in the future.

So especially after the scare in 2008, it is incumbant on us to question the sheer existence of the banks that have been allowed and in fact encouraged to get bigger. If a bank having more than $1 trillion in assets is deemed necessary for corporate capitalism to function in spite of such a bank's inherent systemic risk, one might ask how the system got along without them before they had grown so big. After all, it is not unheard of for a syndicate of banks to package financing on a mega-LBO (leveraged buy-out); one mega-bank is not necessary. Indeed, mega-LBOs themselves may result in unacceptable systemic risk. Finance itself, and particularly the increasing role of leverage, can also be subjected to question. 

Although distasteful from the vantage-point of the financial interests vested in the status quo, the trillion-dollar-plus club of banks could be treated differently than the banks of around $50 billion. Whereas the latter could be more strictly regulated, the former could be broken up not only in terms of management, but also in ownership (rather than the spin-offs having the same fractional owners, as was the case with Standard Oil after its “break-up”).  Considering that obviating financial collapse in 2008 included the byproduct of even larger banks, a second systemic-risk law delimiting a maximum size could complement existing anti-trust laws. Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank law does not address this point, and is thus insufficient from the standpoint of obviating the systemic risk of firms being too big to fail.

Sources:

Robin Sidel and Jean Eaglesham, “Vital? Not Us, Say Small Banks,” The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2011, p. C1.

2007 Bank Assets, ForbesAdvice.com.

Lehman's Dick Fuld as the Antagonist in the film, "Too Big to Fail"

The reporter-author of Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin, expressed the following fear as his 600-plus-page book was being made into a movie: "I went into the process I think worried – as I imagine most writers would be – that it would be sexed up and hollywoodized in some other way." To be sure, putting the Dick Fuld (CEO of Lehman Brothers) character into any sort of sex scene would have been counterproductive at best.

As it was, the director of the tv-movie based on Sorkin’s book let the drama inherent in the historical events to lead the narrative. The only quibble I may have with the historical veracity has to do with Bart McDade replacing Joe Gregory as President of Lehman. According to Larry McDonald, a former distressed-bonds trader at Lehman, the replacement also relegated Fuld even as he remained as CEO only to quell the markets. Specifically, on June 11, 2008, “Fuld was effectively deposed,” according to McDonald, “by Bart McDade with the support of the executive committee” (McDonald, p. 297). In the movie, however, Fuld was still in charge even in September of that year, with McDade still bowing to him in front of the Koreans.

While it could be that Sorkin and McDonald have different sources of information on whether there was a coup within Lehman, the film’s director and screenwriter could have kept Fuld in charge to maintain the character as the principal antagonist. Even so, McDonald’s description of McDade confronting Fuld in Fuld’s office and the subsequent decision of Gregory in the conference room to take the stunned CFO, Erin Callan, down with him in front of the executive committee would have made excellent scenes in the movie.

The other change I would have made to the screenplay would give the viewers an improved insight into how the sub-prime crisis could have been allowed to get so bad. Specifically, the Fuld character could have had a flashback to Mike Gelband’s warning on June 7, 2005 in defiance of Fuld that Lehman should get out of the housing-related CDO market; the bank was then leveraged twenty-two times its net worth (McDonald, p. 136). Meeting with Gelband and other senior executives on the 31^st floor on that day, Fuld and his allies insinuated that Gelband had some kind of attitude problem that needed to be changed “real fast” (McDonald, p. 138).  As a flashback, this scene would have shown the viewer Fuld’s recklessness in terms of risk (and leverage), and thus how the financial system could have been put in such peril by the “experts”. In fact, in the spring of 2007 Fuld decided to bully and belittle Gelband publically at the bank in order to get him to take on even more risk (McDonald, p. 235). This could have been fused into the “attitude problem” meeting, showing the viewer Fuld’s pathology, which goes beyond a bad temper.

Whether one points to Jim Cayne at Bear Stearns or Dick Fuld at Lehman, the role of pathology in the near-demise of Wall Street could uncover for us how recklessness could have gained such traction. In other words, HBO’s Too Big to Fail could have delved into Fuld’s character beyond having him drop some F-bombs. Speaking on Charlie Rose on the evening of the movie’s premiere, Sorkin marveled that it must be difficult for actors to convey their respective characters in just a few scenes. That is true; however, the director and screenwriter could have brought out Fuld’s pathology (beyond his anger) by a few well-chosen additional scenes. Sometimes what a character says, and to whom, can be more damning than how loud he or she says it. Concerning Fuld, the viewers could have been shaking their heads in utter disbelief rather than simply concluding that the guy is arrogant and has a temper.

See related essay: "Leadership at Lehman: On the Failure of Richard Fuld"

Sources:

Kamelia Angelova, “Andrew Ross Sorkin: I was Worried that ‘Too Big to Fail’ Will Be Sexed Up or Hollywoodized as a Movie,” Business Insider, May 24, 2011.

Lawrence McDonald, Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers (New York: Three River Press, 2009).

Did Pandora's IPO Eclipse Fiscal Gravity?

Pandora, an internet-based radio company oriented to music, sold its initial public offering at $16 per share late on June 14, 2011. The shares opened the next day at $20 and rose as high as $26, only to fall into the teens before market close. At $26, the company had a market value of $4.2 billion, more than the value of AOL at the time. Just two weeks earlier, Pandora’s management had been looking at the $7 to $9 range.  Despite offering only 9 percent of its shares to the public, the company raised twice as much money as it had expected.

Astonishingly, Pandora had not made a profit in its 11 year history. On June 15^th  when the share price was over $20,  Pandora’s CEO, Joe Kennedy, refused to say whether the company would make a profit in the next five years. Instead, he pointed to the operating margin and cash flow, and to the business model, as reasons to invest long-term in the company. "Our focus has always been to build a great company. That’s our dream, that’s our passion, that’s our focus," he said, according to CNBC. It can be asked whether investors were engaging in irrational exuberance or on the rational expectation that it can take time for a company to begin showing profits.  

With all the attention typically paid to quarterly earnings, it is refreshing to hear a CEO stress the long-term nature of investing in his company. It would be nice if Pandora’s owners also had had a passion in Pandora as a going concern pushing along the technological wave by providing music tailored to individual listeners’ tastes. Such long-term investment would have bode well for corporate governance as owners take more of an interest in holding their management accountable through directors and stockholder referendums.

At the same time, Pandora’s reliance on advertising revenue even as an increasing proportion of use on smart phones may suggest a flawed business model. For internet companies in general (as well as bloggers!), it is difficult to turn non-paying users into subscribers. At the time of its IPO, Pandora had 94 million registered users, most of which were non-paying customers. "The excitement for Pandora is driven by people's usage of the service and the enjoyment of the service," said Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research. "But in order to justify a high valuation, they need to get far more advertising, and they need to get more people paying for the service." But this can be difficult in a marketplace where users can simply switch to a free service. While a nice set-up for us users, I’m not sure the business model is viable, given how much internet advertisers pay for clicks of their ads (which in turn is a reflection of users being able to ignore ads).

My understanding is that the phenomenon wherein a very high proportion of customers can use a product for free is pretty much limited to the internet. Tangentially, free wifi at coffee shops and even some restaurants (e.g., McDonalds) has given rise to customers “camping out” for hours to use the free service long after finishing their drink.  Incidentally, as I write this essay, I’m using Starbucks’ wifi long after my ice tea and slice of coffee cake. I’m watching the 100-minute full lunar eclipse live (just showed the video feed to the store’s manager and another customer—both of whom are amazed) as I contemplate Pandora’s business plan relative to fiscal gravity here on earth. It is just such amazement at the marvels of technology that a long-term investor in a company like Pandora can have while participating in the innovation; but lest we lose too much perspective, it is well to observe that a business model is trite, artificial and even profane next to the translucent liminality of the eclipsed rock otherwise known as our moon.

If Pandora’s advertising revenue is not sufficient to pay for the rights to the music the station plays, then not being allowed by the market to charge most users can mean eventual financial ruin for the company, especially given the extent of the competition facing the company. According to Msnbc.com, “Pandora is going up against traditional radio companies, satellite radio provider Sirius XM, music services such as Rhapsody, not to mention services from Apple, Google and Amazon that allow users to access music from anywhere.” The internet platform itself can mean not only relatively low advertising rates, but also low barriers to entry for future competitors.

According to The New York Times, Pandora had just 3 percent of the market at the time of the company’s IPO and had lost $92 million cumulatively since it began. In 2010, revenue of $137.8 million was more than double from the previous year, but the company’s 2010 loss was at $1.8 million. Most significantly, the company had never earned a profit and yet investors were rushing to invest in the company’s IPO. "I think it's heavily overvalued," Anupam Palit, an analyst with GreenCrest Capital, said according to Msnbc.com. "It's a great company but what we're seeing right now is incredible investor demand for Internet IPOs and a lot of dollars chasing very little supply." In rushing to invest, investors may have been ignoring a fundamentally flawed business model—in effect defying fiscal gravity.

An unsustainable imbalance between relying on on-line advertising revenue rather than subscribers and having to pay labels substantial fees for content mean that Pandora may never earn a profit. According to The New York Times, “the fees [Pandora] pays to record labels for songs remain its largest expense. The cost to acquire content more than doubled last year to $69.4 million. ‘As the volume of music we stream to listeners increases, our content acquisition expense will also increase, regardless of whether we are able to generate more revenue,’ the company warned.” According to The Wall Street Journal, “The company faces hefty payments to music labels and publishers, similar to traditional radio companies, and has yet to offset such expenses with advertising revenues and user fees.” It would seem that the labels and publishers were not making a sufficient allowance for the discounted nature of internet-advertising revenue relative to that of brick-and-mortar radio stations.

I would be remiss if this business analysis did not place Pandora in historical context. In the closing years of the twentieth century and during the first decade of the twenty-first century, managers of “dot.coms” grasped at how to monetize the internet wherein the norm was free content. That norm had such gravitas and the internet itself was so new that business practitioners had trouble simply grasping how to get a handle on the platform. Indeed, the internet itself was changing—prodded along by the likes of companies such as The New York Times that led the way to confining their internet-users to a subscription-basis. At the time, no one knew whether the momentum would shift to this basis across the internet; no one knew whether the free access to stuff on the internet would continue unabated or suffer a decline.

Theoretically, a movement toward “subscription-only” access could pass a threshold-point beyond which businesses (and bloggers) could discount the impact of alternative free vendors and the monetization trend would be irreversible. The more traditional, more financially-solid business model could then be applied by internet companies. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, internet-company managers could not even be sure that such a threshold would be crossed. At the same time, relying on advertising revenue seemed to be an insufficient basis for sustained profitability.

In other words, the uncertainty in the air at the time of Pandora’s IPO was not limited to the company. Fundamentally, the world was still grappling with how to make money using a completely new platform. It takes years for such novelty to be understood and thus ably used, even if in hindsight it seems simple. The human mind is indeed quite finite, particularly as it struggles to make sense of a new environment.

 Those people willing to invest in Pandora in its IPO on the ides of June 2011 were indeed taking a risk, and the CEO was correct to stress the long-term (which is the best perspective for stock-ownership anyway). Unless or until the monetization threshold point is hit on the internet as a whole, Pandora’s management (and investors) ought to have been taking seriously the possibility that the company’s business model was not in balance. Content should be in balance with ad revenue, and negotiating with labels and publishers ought to reflect such a balance as even the suppliers cannot earn money from defunct distributors such as Pandora. A viable business model is indeed possible for internet companies before the threshold point unless they face an overwhelming amount of free-content by competitors and ad revenue is tiny (e.g., blogging). The question at the time of Pandora's IPO was whether the company would go down this route or be able to adjust its business model even without the internet itself reaching a monetization threshold-point. 

Sources:

Margo D. Beller, “Pandora Soars, Then Falls in Market Debut,” CNBC, June 15, 2011.

“Pandora Shares Surge at Their Debut,” msnbc.com, June 15, 2011.

Lynn Cowan and Don Clark, “Pandora IPO Is High Note,” The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2011.

Evelyn M. Rusli, “Pandora Prices Its I.P.O. at $16 a Share,” The New York Times, June 15, 2011.

Free Speech in the EU: On the Judgement on John Galliano's Anti-Semitism

On March 1, 2011, Sidney Toledano, CEO of the French fashion house Christian Dior, wrote that he was dismissing its chief designer, John Galliano, after the surfacing of a video that showed "his anti-Semitic outbursts at a Paris bar." The word choice of outbursts by The New York Times is interesting, for the actual video shows him in a rather mellow, notably intoxicated, "well you know" mood. The article's writer admits that the designer had used "a slurred voice." Galliano was telling a Jewish couple that they should feel lucky that their ancestors were not killed by the Nazis because so many did not survive. He said ‘‘people like you would be dead,’’ and  ‘‘your mothers, your forefathers’’ could have all be ‘‘gassed.’’ Although applying a rational criterion to a drunk man, I wonder in what sense he meant ‘‘I love Hitler.’’ Considering that Galliano is gay and Hitler sent homosexuals to concentration camps, I suspect that Galliano was lying simply to hurt the couple in what was undoubtedly a back-and-forth in a verbal fight.  Indeed, it takes two to tangle, and the rest of us might do well to recognize the difficulty in interpreting a snipet without having observed the entire contest.

While hurtful and inappropriate even in the midst of a disagreement, Galliano's aversarial comments hardly constituted an outburst, as if he had lost control of himself and thrown his bar table against a wall. Why, one might ask, would a journalist at a major New York paper use a word that (deliberately?) overstates the case against the designer?  Perhaps even in a free society, there is a tendency to gang up on an unpopular, even loathed, minority opinion in a way that distorts the story in order to give occasion for further fulminations. We don't know, for example, what the couple might have said to Mr. Galliano that sparked his vitriole.  Lyes Meftahi, a 38 year old Parisian who runs an audiovisual company, said that Mr Galliano was certainly drunk, speaking slowly and slurring his words. So much for any outburst. Furthermore, the witness said that the designer was keeping to himself and was ‘‘provoked’’ by a woman, who had called Mr. Galliano ‘‘ugly.’’  Mr. Galliano himself was threatened with violence at one stage during the altercation according to Mr. Meftahi. It is difficult for the rest of us to know what happened based on an objectionable snipet.

Rather than defending the designer, whose comments I concur were highly inappropriate (note that I'm applying rationalism again to a drunk person),  I want to contend that the rush to judgment against him had a certain amount of presumption attached. That is to say, we as human beings may tend to presume we are in a position to judge when in fact we are not. Taking ourselves as gods on earth in effect, we tend to assume omniscience rather than limited creatureliness as our mantle. For a part to take itself as the whole is to truncate reality itself into a mere projection of the part. Lest we forget, we are all fallible, even when we judge with apparent certitude.

For example, that Mr. Galliano had "helped to energize Dior after he joined it in 1996 as creative director, increasing sales and making it a jewel of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury-goods empire" was wantonly or unintentionally tossed aside by Mr. Toledano in what bears all the signs of a rush to judgment. In its statement, Dior said it had ‘‘immediately suspended relations’’ with Mr. Galliano and ‘‘initiated dismissal procedures.’’ It cited the ‘‘particularly odious comments’’ contained in the video. It is as though the weight of history came slamming down on the star designer, suffocating him from even proffering a self-defense before the fall of the guillotine. In the face of this injustice, it might be quelle dommage pour M. Galliano were it not for his own choice of weapon. He undoubtedly esteemed his own faculties too much in assuming he could handle being drunk. Again, human beings do not have as much pith as we tend to think.

To be sure, anti-semitism and racism ought to be relegated to the ash heap following the twentieth century. For all its technological progress, that century was remarkably decadent and stagnant.  In early 2011, the world dared to hope that popular protests sweeping the Middle East might have been ushering in a new progression of freedom in the establishment of republics in what had been autocracies for centuries. Would that region sport the tolerance that is necessary for a free society to truly be free? Can it look to Europe, where certain speech, even in a small group, can get one thrown in prison? According to The New York Times, "French law makes it a crime to incite racial hatred; the statute has been used in the past to punish anti-Semitic remarks."  Yet to incite seems to connote a public broadcasting or speaking format, as in inciting the mob to storm the Bastille (or, as in 1792, the republic's prison filled with aristocrats and clergy--a massacre that Robbespierre denounced as a travesty of the rights of man). Does a person incite hatred against a particular group simply be giving his opinion in a dispute with another person?  The dubious applicability of the French law seems to hinge in this case on treating a private gathering, albeit in a public establishment, as a public (political) event.  Of course, in the United States, even the latter is protected by the first amendment on free speech, but even there hate crimes exist. In the European Union, where speech is punished on account of the Nazi experience, the society looks overly restrictive and unfree, at least from an American perspective. To be sure, the reverse has also been the case. In 1948, for example, the U.S. Government banned showings in the U.S. of the American documentary, Nuremberg: Its Lessons for Today, even as Germans were free (and encouraged) to see it in Germany. The American military did not want Americans seeing the Soviets as allies (and the Germans, whose help the American govenment was then seeking against the Russians, as enemies). It is precisely such a proclivity that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to thwart. The human species is insufficiently equipped to be able to curtail innate freedom effectively.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/fashion/02dior.html?pagewanted=1&sq=john galliano&st=cse&scp=2

Financial Sector Lobbyists Put the Republic at Risk: The Case of the U.S. Senate Bill on Financial Reform in 2010

Considering the gravity of the risk in Wall Street banks being too big to fail, the financial reform bill passed by the US Senate in 2010 may have been influenced too much by the financial interests. It can thus serve as a good case study for how a republic can be subject to too much influence from the moneyed interests. It could be asked, moreover, whether there is an inevitable trajectory that a polity undergoes from being a republic to becoming a plutocracy (ruled by the wealthy).

Executives and political action committees from Wall Street banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and related financial sectors showered Congressional candidates with more than $1.7 billion in the last decade, with much of it going to the financial committees that oversee the industry’s operations. In the 2010 election cycle before the financial reform bill passed the Senate, members of the financial committees far outpaced those of other committees in fund-raising parties by holding 845 events. The 14 freshmen who serve on the House Financial Services Committee raised 56 percent more in campaign contributions than other freshmen. And most freshmen on the panel, the analysis found, are now in competitive re-election fights. In return, the financial sector has enjoyed virtually front-door access and what critics say is often favorable treatment from many lawmakers. But that relationship, advantageous to both sides for many years, is now being tested in ways rarely seen, as the nation’s major financial firms seek to call in their political chits to stem regulatory changes they believe will hurt their business.

Even after the passage of the Senate’s bill, the financial industry was confident that a provision that would force banks to spin off their derivatives businesses would be stripped out, but in the final rush to pass the bill, that did not happen. The opposition came not just from the financial industry. The chairman of the Federal Reserve and other senior banking regulators opposed the provision, and top Obama administration officials said they would continue to push for it to be removed. Such officials could include Larry Summers, who along with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin pushed for derivatives to be left unregulated in the late 1990s while Summers and Rubin were in the Clinton Administration.

Not missing a beat, Wall Street lobbyists  began an 11th-hour effort to remove it just as House and Senate conferees were preparing to meet to reconcile their two bills. Lobbyists said they were already considering the possible makeup of the conference panel to focus on office visits and potential fund-raising.  Rep. Barney Franks, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, signaled on May 25th that the prohibition on banks trading in deriviates using their own funds could be dropped. “I don’t see the need for a separate rule regarding derivatives because the restriction on banks engaging in proprietary activities would apply to derivatives as well as everything else,” Mr. Frank said according to The Wall Street Journal (May 22, 2010, p. A6).  However, if this were the case, why would Sen. Dodd, the White House, and the banks be so set against removing the derivative langauge?  Is redundancy really that big of a deal?  Something is rotten here; I can smell it. With Sen. Dodd retiring, I wouldn’t be surprise if he made a deal with Wall Street concerning his financial future–it being so odd how he has mellowed so much on reform. Not surprisingly, the Chamber of Commerce had already spent more than $3 million to lobby against parts of the bill, including the derivative provision, and as the Senate was passing its bill the Chamber was planning to keep fighting for a loosening of the regulatory restrictions — first in the House-Senate conference, then in the implementation phase after final passage of a bill, and “if all else fails,” in court. With all these avenues, it is no wonder that the money of Wall Street banks has such ease in Washington.

There are so many points along the line of a bill becoming a law that a provision with teeth can be targeted by well-funded parties with a vested interest against it, it would appear that no change can happen in the US that is not in an industry’s interest.  Because wealthy firms have presumably done ok under the status quo, it is not clear why they would have an interest is supporting systemic change even if systemic risk warrants it. In the case of financial reform,the financial houses have a rather obvious conflict of interest. Furthermore, the behavior of the big bankers in September of 2008 suggests that they do not view rescuing a financial system in crisis as their job.  There is no reason to suppose that the legislation that they support would be geared to repairing the system when it is in crisis. The real problem is apt to manifest on the crest of the next bubble, as the industry had already gotten much of what it wanted even with the derivatives language in the Senate bill.

According to The New York Times, “Despite the outcry from lobbyists and warnings from conservative Republicans that the legislation will choke economic growth, bankers and many analysts think that the bill approved by the Senate … will reduce Wall Street’s profits but leave its size and power largely intact. Industry officials are also hopeful that several of the most punitive provisions can be softened before it is signed into law.”  This is dangerous because so many bankers, including those at Goldman Sachs, have been in denial as to how they should behave.  According to The Wall Street Journal, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and Citigroup have continued their practices of “window-dressing”: temporarily shedding debt just before reporting their finances to the public. This suggests that “the banks are carrying more risk most of the time than their investors or customers can easily see.”   As of 2010, this activity had actually increased since 2008, “when the financial crisis brought actions like these under greater scrutiny.”  For ten quarters ending March 2010, the three banks lowered their net borrowings in the repo market by an average of 41% at the end of the quarters (as compared with during them). This represents a significant misstatement, which the banks’ auditors should have highlighted. The Wall Street Journal reported in April 2010 that 18 large banks, as a group, had routinely reduced their short-term borrowings in this way.

So it appears that Wall Street went on in its old ways even after the crisis, and there was relief that financial reform would not rock the boat. According to The New York Times, “If you talk to anyone privately, there’s a sigh of relief,” said one veteran investment banker who insisted on anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “It’ll crimp the profit pool initially by 15 or 20 percent and increase oversight and compliance costs, but there’s no breakup of any institution or onerous new taxes.” In other words, incrementalism rather than systemic change.  Washington, in other words, had been bought–even the “real change” agent himself, Barak Obama.  Mr. Obama is not unaware of the powerful friends he will need in 2012. He received just under a million dollars from Goldman Sachs for his 2008 campaign.  How difficult it is to let go of power, and say that one term will be enough, even better, for that is what seems to be necessary for one to fight against the entrenched culprits of the status quo.  In actuality, Andrew Jackson showed in 1832 that standing up to a large bank (in his case, the Second Bank of the US) can actually be consistent with winning reelection.  But absent such faith in the people to come through, saying to hell with reelection seems to be necessary for a president to be an authentic agent of real change.  If anything called for such change, it was the financial crisis of 2008. Yet as the House and Senate compared notes on their respective bills, Wall Street was actually relieved.  That really says something.  The culprits have an effective veto on what safeguards will be put in place to keep the banks from risking the world economy again. The wolves have to accede to the design of the new chicken coop. To my fellow Americans, I say: this is our system.

Even though the financial crisis far outweighed any health-care crisis, the financial reform is far more incremental–though both are within that rubric. “The health care bill is going to transform the structure of health care exponentially more than this legislation on financial regulation is going to change Wall Street,” said Roger C. Altman, the chairman of Evercore Partners and deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. “It’s not even close.”  It could be that the added incrementalism in the health-care legislation was in the interest of the health insurance companies and hospitals, whereas less was in the interest of Wall Street.

Of course, it could be that regardless of the regulation, financial bubbles are bound to come and go, and the sheer scale of financial deals today requires large banks. Donald B. Marron, the former chief executive of Paine Webber, avers, “Despite these new rules, Wall Street will continue to provide the same important business services because the same needs are still there — creating liquidity; financing governments, corporations and individuals; and providing financial advice and products.” So perhaps the financial leverage of Wall Street in Washington doesn’t keep us from achieving a solution because the financial markets and their players are going along a trajectory that is being defined by the progression of the financial market.  Consider, for example, the pressure on banks from globalization to amass more and more capital for bigger and bigger deals.  In other words, the “too big to fail” phenomenon could be a necessary part of an increasingly globalized financial market.  Of course, this could point to the need for greater international financial regulation.  But with Europe embroiled with a debt crisis of its own and China wearily watching its own housing bubble, there were at the time of the passage of the Senate’s bill more financial bush-fires in the world than firemen.  The problem is that the fire chiefs are too often paid off (and intimidated) by the profiteering arsonists, so we are left woefully unprotected even if the veneer of regulatory reform has the looks of an effective profilactic.

Sources:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/us/politics/23lobby.html?scp=2&sq=financial%20lobbying&st=cse ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/business/24reform.html?hp ; WSJ (May 26, 2010).

Betraying an Electorate: On President Obama's Deal with Drug Companies

While campaigning for the U.S. presidency in 2008, Barak Obama decried the greedy Republican lawmakers acting at the behest of the drug companies to keep drug prices artificially high. A year later, those same drug companies wanted Obama to oppose a Democratic proposal that was intended to bring down the prices of medicine. Beyond betraying those voters who voted for him based on his campaign rhetoric on drug prices, Obama belied the trust that is necessary for a viable republic to function democratically.

 “On June 3, 2009,” according to the New York Times, “one of the lobbyists e-mailed Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s top health care adviser. Ms. DeParle sent a message back reassuring the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she wrote, she and other top officials had ‘made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation on the bill.’ Just like that, Mr. Obama’s staff abandoned his support for the reimportation of prescription medicines at lower prices and with it solidified a growing compact with an industry he had vilified on the campaign trail the year before.” 

As per the quid pro quo, the industry sponsored its own advertising campaign in favor of Obama’s health-insurance proposal. It was not just the guys’ constructiveness that had convinced Obama’s staff to “make the deal.” To be sure, the staff could have been supposing that the subsidies enabling middle-income Americans to afford health insurance and the expansion of Medicaid to cover 30 million uninsured Americans would relieve people from having to pay high prices for medicine (though everyone, even if only as payers of higher taxes, would be paying the price in the form of higher insurance premiums). However, there would be no guarantee that the government would pick up the tab when needed. Furthermore, the higher prices could widen government deficits.

Beyond health-care and budget policy, moreover, is the contradiction between Obama’s campaign speeches and his staff’s decision to oppose the bill. The implication is that Obama went back on his word, essentially betraying anyone who voted for him because he promised to support lower drug prices. Beyond Obama’s public credibility lies the mechanism of democracy wherein voters trust that a candidate’s campaign bears some relation to the candidate’s governance. Otherwise, the “will of the people” breaks down and mistrust sets in on a societal basis. In other words, when representatives say one thing on the trail and quietly do the opposite behind their desks, democracy itself suffers.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, it was said that trust is vital to the financial system. The same can be said of a viable republic. The question, therefore, is how candidates can be held accountable for the assumed congruence when so much of governance is done behind closed doors. In an electoral system where not voting for one candidate benefits the candidate even further from the voter’s preferences, it can be difficult indeed to hold an office-holder accountable at the ballot box. 

Source:

Peter Baker, “LobbyE-Mails Show Depth of Obama Ties to Drug Industry,” The New York Times, June 8, 2012.