The Capitol Forum Podcast
The Capitol Forum
Exploring Solutions to Monopoly ProblemsFollowing forty years of laissez-faire antitrust enforcement and industry consolidation, the White House is considering a fundamental rethink of how to interpret, enforce, and rewrite antitrust law, and many questions remain unanswered for the antitrust community. On the heels of federal and state litigation against Google and Facebook, is Amazon next? Will the new administration put big agriculture, big banks, and big pharma in its crosshairs? Will the courts stop antitrust enforcers in their tracks? Will the Biden administration get cold feet?The Capitol Forum Podcast provides in-depth discussions with antitrust experts about the answers to these questions and about proposed solutions to the biggest monopoly problems of our time. Backed by the investigative resources and intellectual rigor of The Capitol Forum, Executive Editor and host Teddy Downey examines the effects of the current concentrations of market power across a vast array of industry verticals as he and his guests analyze the potential responses from the federal government. Offering thoughtful conversations with analysts and decision makers, The Capitol Forum Podcast provides everyone from C-Suite executives to policymakers, and all those in-between, strategic antitrust insights at the intersection of law, policy, and markets.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Apr 21, 2022 • 46min
Antitrust Super Influencers with Baron Public Affairs
Baron Public Affairs recently issued a report naming the top 10 antitrust super influencers, and they share their findings in this episode.Baron Public Affairs is a unique firm that “combines objective strategy development with groundbreaking research platforms” to help corporate clients “identify, understand and surmount” regulatory threats. They developed their list of antitrust super influencers by sifting through “approximately 27,000 references made by members of Congress, executive branch officials, and others.”Baron’s top 5 antitrust super influencers are:1) William Kovacic, George Washington University2) Sarah Miller, American Economic Liberties Project3) Charlotte Slaiman, Public Knowledge4) Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress5) Matt Stoller, American Economic Liberties ProjectSee Baron’s full report for the top 10. The report is full of insights, and worth noting in particular are Baron’s conclusions that “antitrust super influencers prioritize practical achievements over intellectual purity” and that “economics is losing authority in the political arena.”
Mar 31, 2022 • 46min
Block the Spirit/Frontier Airlines Merger Argues Shahid Naeem
Shahid Naeem is a policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project and the author of a memo calling for the Department of Justice and Department of Transportation to block the merger between Spirit and Frontier.
Mar 17, 2022 • 46min
Fixing Pharma With Tahir Amin
Tahir Amin is an attorney with more than 25 years of experience in intellectual property law and the co-founder of I-Mak, which seeks to build a more just and equitable medicine system for all via patent reform.
Mar 10, 2022 • 41min
Big Tech Litigation Outlook, with Jason Kint
Jason Kint is CEO of Digital Content Next, the only trade association to exclusively serve the unique and diverse needs of high-quality digital content companies that manage trusted, direct relationships with consumers and marketers. Jason guides DCN’s diverse and powerful group of members — established brands such as The New York Times, Conde Nast and ESPN, and digital natives, such as Vox, Politico and Insider — into the future, setting the agenda on a range of issues. Jason produces must-read analysis of ongoing litigation against the big tech platforms, primarily Google and Facebook. In this episode, Jason tells us what he’s focused on in the tech platform battles in the courts, and what we can expect to see going forward.
Mar 3, 2022 • 48min
Amazon Vs. The U.S. Postal Service, a Ted Tatos Talk
Ted Tatos is Managing Director of EconOne and co-author of the recent report, “Protecting the U.S. Postal Service from Amazon’s Anticompetitive Assault.” In the conversation, we get into a lot of different aspects of Amazon’s ongoing effort to dominate the postal service. A quick note: Ted’s report was funded by a conservative group called The Family Business Coalition, which includes small family-owned businesses that ship parcels. For the report, Ted also interviewed a couple of prominent voices in the antimonopoly movement whom we’ve had on the show before—Matt Stoller from the American economic liberties project and Stacy Mitchell from the Institute for Local Self Reliance.
Feb 17, 2022 • 38min
Matthew Buck Explains How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded
Matthew Jinoo Buck is a fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and a first-year student at Yale Law School.His article in the American Prospect, “How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded” tells the history of how deregulation and consolidation gave us a railroad industry that is now a weak link in our supply chain. He also tells how the industry is more dangerous for workers and less reliable for customers even as it produces outsized profits for investors.
Feb 10, 2022 • 46min
Jeff Horwitz on The Facebook Files
Jeff Horwitz is a Wall Street Journal technology reporter who covers Facebook. He is the lead reporter on the groundbreaking series of articles titled The Facebook Files. The conversation covers myriad issues facing Facebook and we ask Jeff why, when facing choices between the public interest and growth on the platform, Mark Zuckerberg always chooses growth.
Feb 3, 2022 • 40min
Evan Starr on The Economic Benefits of Banning Non-competes
Evan Starr, an associate professor, delves into the economic benefits of banning non-compete agreements, highlighting the boost to wages and worker mobility. The podcast explores the challenges faced by the FTC in regulating these agreements and the implications for workers and businesses. The discussion also touches on the impact of non-compete agreements on worker mobility and wages, the exemption for lawyers, the ongoing debate on non-compete agreements, and the effect of market concentration on employee salaries.
Jan 20, 2022 • 41min
Inflation, Monopoly, and Predictions for 2022 with Matt Stoller
Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project, discusses the debate around monopoly and inflation. Matt also shares his predictions for the antimonopoly movement in 2022.
Dec 23, 2021 • 60min
Luke Herrine: FTC Should Reject the Conventional Folklore Around its Unfairness Authority
Luke Herrine, author of “The Folklore of Unfairness.” Herrine’s article, published recently in the New York University Law Review, argues that conventional wisdom – which holds that the FTC in the 1970s pursued an expansive notion of its unfairness authority but failed spectacularly – “gets the law and the history wrong.”Instead, argues Herrine, the commission’s actions in the 1970s were quite popular, and the FTC Act’s ban on “unfair…acts and practices” is therefore “more potent than commonly assumed.” That argument could take on new urgency as current FTC Chair Lina Khan seeks to push the boundaries of the commission’s authority.
