I found Steven Chapman’s article interesting in that it took an updated look at the regulatory environment for anti-trust enforcement. It is ironic, for example, the Federal Trade Commission would even consider a merger between Whole Foods and Wild Oats to be anything other than a blip in the competitive landscape for organic and natural foods.

More ironic yet is what has happened to Microsoft—not by regulators, but by the marketplace—after literally two decades of anti-trust enforcement nationally and internationally. As it turns out, it was and is the disruptive force of the internet that has redirected billions of dollars of market cap from Microsoft to other companies, such as Google, not the FTC or Department of Justice.

An excerpt from the article Who’s afraid of mergers?:

Someone once said that the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it vigorously, thus making its flaws visible to all. Federal regulators may not induce repeal of the antitrust laws, but they show a talent for making the statutes look obsolete.

It’s widely accepted that one of the crucial functions of government is to protect against monopolists and cartels. Left to its own devices, many critics of capitalism believe, the market would allow voracious corporations to collude, joining forces to hold consumers upside down and shake the nickels out of their pockets. To ensure that free markets operate for the benefit of all, we are told, the government has to strictly police mergers to keep any company from gaining an unfair advantage.

That is what it claims to be doing in two different sectors. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin has expressed serious qualms about approving a wedding between the only two satellite radio companies, Sirius and XM. The Federal Trade Commission is going to court to block a merger between two organic grocery chains, Wild Oats and Whole Foods.

Read the rest of the article at: The Orlando Sentinel

Original writing date: June 25, 2007

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