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
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.
Dec 16, 2021 • 34min
Amazon’s Toll Road with Stacy Mitchell, Co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Stacy Mitchell is co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and directs its Independent Business Initiative, which produces research and designs policy to counter concentrated corporate power and strengthen local economies. ILSR’s new report, Amazon’s Toll road, finds that “Amazon is exploiting its position as a gatekeeper to impose steep and growing fees on third-party sellers” and that “even as these exorbitant fees bankrupt sellers, they are generating huge profits for Amazon, a fact that the tech giant conceals in its financial reports.”
Dec 9, 2021 • 49min
Jeff Hauser: Cracking Down on Monopolies is Winning Politics
Jeff Hauser is the founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, which is an influential organization that scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they serve the public interest rather than large corporations’ interests. The Revolving Door Project’s newest polling and analysis memo, “Corporate Crackdown” concludes that there is broad, bipartisan support for a President who is willing to stand up to entrenched corporate power and illegal corporate conduct.
Dec 2, 2021 • 31min
The “No Collusion” Rule by Brendan Ballou, DOJ Trial Attorney
Brendan Ballou is a trial attorney at DOJ’s antitrust division and author of “The 'No Collusion' Rule,” published earlier this year in the Stanford Law & Policy Review. In that article, Ballou proposes that the FTC, under its unfair methods of competition authority, should pursue a “no collusion” rulemaking , which would seek to prevent companies from raising prices simply because their competitor has done so.
Oct 28, 2021 • 40min
Barry Lynn, Executive Director of the Open Markets Institute
Barry Lynn has literally written the book on two of the hottest economic and policy topics right now—monopolies and supply chain fragility. His book on monopoly is called Cornered: the new monopoly capitalism and the economics of destruction and his book on supply chains is called End of the Line. On a previous podcast, former FTC Chair Bill Kovacic said that Barry Lynn’s work on launching the antimonopoly movement is “one of the most successful efforts to develop a new intellectual framework and to get it into the bloodstream of the policymaking process.” In this episode, Barry talks about the importance of the President's executive order on competition and where the antimonopoly movement is headed next.
Sep 30, 2021 • 46min
The Honorable Bill Kovacic
The Honorable Bill Kovacic gives his outlook for antitrust enforcement in the Biden administration and distinguishes between antitrust Transformationalists and Traditionalists and their struggle for influence. He also discusses antitrust rulemaking, antitrust legislation, and Robinson-Patman enforcement.
