Let's not pretend democrats are any more competent economic governers. It's a goddamn miracle that they trusted Khan to begin with and we still deserve better
Based on your profile, your existence as a commenter is to both-sides issues where Republicans are clearly doing wrong things.
You say "lets not pretend" and then your only next sentence is refutation of that first statement. If Democrats are incompetent economic governers (whatever that phrase means), then they would have not put in a competent person like Khan in the first place.
Regulation is literally there to compensate for these types of issues with unregulated capitalism. I don't see how you could draw the conclusion that the thing we've tried many times and that works a lot of the time can't work.
if it's not perfect, it's useless or destructive is a pretty common perspective in left-wing groupthink. Some examples are how everyone to the right of a left winger is a republican/fascist/etc or that it's Medicare 4 All or nothing.
Every socialist I’ve ever met has conceded that capitalism is a great mechanism for wealth generation. Just not for much else humans might value in their societies.
Yet despite that many residents in the wealthiest nations report increasing levels of unhappiness with the state of things. While there are other factors that play into this, it doesn't seem that wealth generation itself is a direct vehicle to the things people value / make them happy
Yea people report that. And then you let them go to Ghana for a week and you'll see their perspective shift real fast. That people have no historical perspective isn't an argument against capitalism, it's an argument for education. And the thing with education is that it's done by the state. So really it's the state that is failing capitalism, not the other way around.
What are those other qualities? And how would we foster them?
We've tried communism. That ends up with millions starving, artists and scientists brutally murdered, and human flourishing basically being utterly destroyed PLUS all wealth being destroyed. That's what communists need to concede.
I get who you're talking about, and I've encountered those tiresome people. The flavor of the week is that No Kings is a Disneyfied faux protest. This of course ignores the fact that large scale protest in the US attracts police beatings and widespread use of pain compliance techniques if it isn't presented as family friendly.
Avoiding those outcomes while attracting is steadily growing number of protesters, with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment. Way too big to ignore and within reach of overwhelming numbers.
Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.
> Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.
I'm not commenting on whether it's radical, just that if they had the choice between something like the ACA and nothing, many in these groups would rather have nothing. In fact, many would argue (as they would against other things they consider "incrementalism") that anything less than their demands would actually be detrimental somehow. Very much in opposition to "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". This is exemplified in the whole M4A "force the vote" nonsense.
> The flavor of the week is that No Kings is a Disneyfied faux protest.
It's strange to ignore all of the actual criticisms, such as that they are protests with absolutely no demands, and that they're arranged by Democratic Party insiders using spam farms. The reason they're called "No Kings" is because nobody knows what that's supposed to mean. It was consciously concocted as an alternative to fighting the "oligarchs" as Sanders constantly said, because Democrats support oligarchs.
> with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment.
It's not. They're just faithful movement Democrats walking together in the street trying to figure out different ways to yell "fuck Trump." They're a mockery of protests, they're just extremely ineffective marketing.
They wouldn't be tiresome if they were easy to answer for you. Accusing people of just complaining about people and things not being "perfect" is a sign of somebody who doesn't even have a dishonest argument to make, so they're resorting to making no argument at all, and instead calling you a snob.
> This of course ignores the fact that large scale protest in the US attracts police beatings and widespread use of pain compliance techniques if it isn't presented as family friendly.
That's largely a consequence of police being badly trained though. See stuff like Gracie Breakdown for a small glimpse of how horribly badly trained. Now, the people who complain about the violence are also the people who scream defund the police and want to ban body weight restraint, leading to cops only having ultra violence left as a tool. It's a pretty bad downward spiral of stupid.
Adam smith was hostile towards monopolies (which your link refers to - nothing to do with price fixing although the conclusion is the same) and his critiques being very apparent throughout Wealth of Nations. This is a common opinion with proponents of free markets.
So what specifically about capitalism makes this a "natural consequence"?
The main feature of capitalism is not free markets, it's capital. And capital accumulates leading to inequality that only ever gets bigger unless we actively take steps against it as a society. Being against monopolies doesn't help if you're not willing to actually punish them.
Free markets are great but to really work they need to come with competition enforcement (including total M&A bans in high risk industries), strong unions, support for worker ownership and a tax structure that rewards productive investment instead of executive payouts. Market socialism instead of capitalism.
They're commodity eggs in Costco packaging. They're even somewhat trackable; the USDA has databases[1] for this stuff.
So, for instance: The package of 24 large grade AA Kirkland-branded eggs from Costco that is in my fridge right now is stamped P3447. Plant 3447 is registered as being Daybreak Foods, 2127 110th Street, Otsego, Michigan (not Costco).
Milk is the same way: One can read the printing on the bottle and determine where it was processed.
> On Wednesday, Hickman saw evidence that Urner Barry was taking in data that would lower prices — “pull the market down,” in the words of one executive — and goaded his erstwhile competitors to respond. “As a group,” the executive followed up, “we need to bid like they vote in Chicago, early and often.”
So while they were actively breaking the law, colluding to screw over the free market, they soothed themselves with jokes about non-existent voter fraud.
> “The reason, in this case, not to pursue litigation is that the conduct had already been resolved, right?” [U.S. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr.] went on, referencing the decline in egg prices.
They stopped this particular instance of it after the horse already left the barn and did nothing to dissuade future anticompetitive collusion.
Well, the "something" the Trump adminstration landed on (with an investigation started by Biden's team) I think for OP wasn't enough. A small monetary settlement without jail time of the executives involved is hardly the "something" that needs to be done in order to curtail this behavior and stop it in the first place. When the people who committed a crime still gets to keep any amount of their stolen money, that, to me, is less than "something".
So she can lose more lawsuits related to her anti-silicon valley obsession? I'd rather get someone who is actually objective and takes a holisitic look at every industry.
Her blinders kept her from focusing on truly monopolies and anti-trust behavior like cable and broadbrand providers, regional hospital systems, etc.
She was quite active, which is more than we can be said about some of her predecessors.
Also she was hated by the right people, that's always a good sign.
When there are only so few suppliers and the federal government is controlled by Republicans whose entire philosphy is "free" markets (which in their mind allows for collusion and monopolies as corporate Darwinism) and will look the either way in not enforcing anti-trust, price collusion will be inevitable.
> The fear that Huffman and other anti-monopolists share is that companies will read the Justice Department’s pursuit of the defendants not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to manual.
Settlements instead of jail time will only cause this behavior to continue. Economic white collar crimes need far higher punishments it seems when the only downside is you return only some of the higher profits you made.
There are two types of advocates for efficient markets: the true believers & the people who manipulate markets. The latter create and fund institutes & academic departments stocked with the former to convince and/or intimidate moderately educated people to disbelieve their lyin' eyes.
"and not even for the lovingly cared-for, cage-free variety"
Which oddly did not increase in price much. I was in a discussion once on a forum and brought up that eggs around me (PNW) were still in the $6 for 18 when everyone else was complaining about $10 for a dozen. Next time I bought eggs, the ones I buy were the same price as always but the normal white eggs were in fact $10 a dozen...
I'm also in the PNW. The egg thing seemed weird to me when the local organic eggs didn't budge at all. We had bird deaths in the wild from the flu as well, so I know it was out here.
Not weird. In general egg demand is very inelastic. Businesses selling products containing eggs do not change their output based on egg prices.
However, specialty eggs sold to consumers rather than businesses will be much more elastic, and thus there will be much less price change with supply changes.
This reminds me of a big fraud in my country: a bunch of farmers sold normal eggs as organic. As you know the difference in price is big enough to make it worthwhile.
My friends in the midwest always tell me egg prices have actually never been lower. They've been tracking them for a while now, and they were low during 2014-2020, then had a massive, unexpected jump, then another massive decrease starting 2025. Curious to know what the reasons are here.
I had the same experience on the east coast-- farmers market eggs continued to be $5-$8/doz (depending on size) even as the normal white eggs raced to $10. I think the "conventional wisdom" was that these small farmers weren't hit by the flu in the way that the big industrial farmers were, and that their living conditions made them hardier or less susceptible. I guess I now assume that these small farms relying on direct sales were simply oblivious to the bidding shenanigans.
In many places, farmer markets aren't a thing. I live in South Florida and there is just one farmer's market near me that's open on weekends. I tried the organic eggs at $3 each, or geese eggs at $5, meh, stinky and gamey. So I get my eggs through Publix or Winn Dixie and they charge what they want to. It's pure price gouging, a dozen of eggs was under a $1 6 years ago, now it's $4. I wonder how the things compare in Europe, eggs there taste on another level better.
IMO price fixing is a lot more common than most people assume. The normal textbook economics say that in a pure commodity market like eggs, the average producer should make near zero profit. There are a few ways to make a profit in these industries, such as economies of scale or innovative use of byproducts, but it is very tough.
On the other hand, price fixing is relatively easy, and as long as the players don’t get too greedy and don’t leave a paper trail, they’re unlikely to be caught. The only way it usually happens is if there is a whistleblower.
The ADM lysine case years ago also threw a lot of cold water on whistleblowers when the whistleblower ended up getting more jail time than any of the other conspirators.
Anyhow, the fact you even see any successful prosecutions given how hard it is prove, and the paradoxical fact that in some commodity industries, you actually do see decent profit margins tells me that this sort of thing is actually probably very common.
> The ADM lysine case years ago also threw a lot of cold water on whistleblowers when the whistleblower ended up getting more jail time than any of the other conspirators.
"Whitacre was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for embezzling $9.5 million from ADM at the same time he was assisting the federal price-fixing investigation."
Not that I trust Wikipedia, but I tnink if the common narrative is wrong it'd probably behoove you to pre-empt it because anyone who looks it up is going to come away feeling deceived by your statement as written.
I guess during one of the last surges the question I had was: Isn't a big egg company damned if they do or don't? If I'm a massive egg farmer in an area that's untouched by bird flu, and I keep my prices low: then I'm the bad guy who's running struggling operations out of business. If I raise my prices to stay in line with those operations, now I'm colluding in some way. If we break up big companies so they don't have the kind of power over the market, we trade lower prices for more resilience since the lowest prices are going to come from the highest scale.
I dunno. It's a weird situation. And eggs are particularly weird because, as the article notes, people are definitely willing to pay more for them; the low prices have less to do with true demand and more to do with competition.
For most of my life eggs were a loss leader and could always be found for under $2 a dozen. Why would they suddenly get the idea to form a cartel? Wasn't it always obvious they should do that? Did they used to be paragons of virtue, then decided to get evil for no reason?
Seems to me there must have been some new incentive structure in place.
Sometimes it all boils down to someone saying "what if" and trying something and seeing if it sticks. I guess the avian flu was a good excuse to hide the crime just like what happens in die hard 3 with the distractions of bomb in schools.
The story covers this. An oligopoly of producers and market makers has formed. Where once there were many small players, now small players are few, and the bulk of egg supply is passing through a few huge producers and brokers.
> [Urner Barry] also collects bids that egg producers make for each other’s surplus inventory on an exchange called Egg Clearinghouse, Inc. [It] takes in those bids even before they lead to any sale, as a signal of demand.
> they had the ability to create the illusion of [consumer demand] through bids on the surplus exchange for purchases they had no intent of completing
This seems like a system tailor-made for collision. It seems like the consumer protection agency should force changes. Too bad they've been made toothless.
> This seems like a system tailor-made for collision. It seems like the consumer protection agency should force changes. Too bad they've been made toothless.
It's a system that is vulnerable to fraud, which is why it's good to have regulators who go after fraudulent actors.
It's a perfectly fine system if the egg producers are using it genuinely, it's only a problem when they start submitting fraudulent bids to accomplish illegal market manipulation.
So after the surge in prices from normal market forces, they tried to keep prices up by placing high bids on eggs that they never intended to actually purchase. This briefly worked, then the market re-asserted itself and prices cratered. Now, after the fact, the justice department is investigating the bidding shenanigans. Is that a fair summary of the situation?
I guess the thing I'm confused about is how bidding above market rates for eggs didn't just result in these companies being stuck with a bunch of eggs that they grossly overpaid for? How did the scheme actually work?
It sounds like the exchange consumes bids, not just closed transactions. So these companies were basically publishing fraudulent bids that never completed.
I can’t tell from the article if they were bidding on each others eggs or bidding on other farmers eggs and then canceling.
well if you keep reading, the investigation has concluded and they are declining to pursue any charges, alleging that the return of egg prices to pre-collusion levels is the desired outcome. there may be a $3 million fine, which is of course microscopic compared with the profits created from collusion. surely a years-long price fixing conspiracy costing consumers billions deserves more than that, but under this administration we are unlikely to get it.
fair enough, this kind of thing hasn't been a strong suit for a while - I had hopes for Lina Khan but she didn't have the time or backup she needed. but right now is an especially laissez-faire moment when it comes to criminal enrichment
There are a lot of market manipulation techniques that follow this type of pattern. Usually the perpetrator does some combination of
1) Putting in the out of market bid and immediately cancelling so the high bid doesn't get filled. Sometimes they might make this bid in small size so it doesn't matter too much if they do get filled (but this only works if the market is relatively thin or illiquid). Depending on the market, you might be able to put order flags or abuse the matching algorithm to make it less likely to be filled even though your order seems to cross the spread. So for example sometimes people will put in an order, cancel and then place it again so they go to the back of the queue at that level for example.
2) Stuffing the order book lower down with (larger) passive sell orders that will get hit as the market followers start bidding up in anticipation of the price move caused by the very high bid.
I'm not as familiar with the regime in the US markets but in UK/EU markets this behaviour is absolutely market abuse and can result in criminal prosecution and disgorgement of profits.
It seems the system was prone to manipulation. Having prices for high volumen transactions be set by low volume transaction in another market looks pretty silly. If they don't fix that there'll be worse troubles than price gouging by the big producers.
> There’s a big market (egg producers selling eggs to supermarkets etc.), and there’s a small market (egg producers selling extra eggs to each other on an electronic exchange). The price in the small market determines the price in the big market. Participants in the small market are also participants in the big market. You can spend a little money in the small market to move the price, which can make you a lot of money in the big market.
There is a good story in here about how economics as a profession is intellectually bankrupt. But at the same time, there is also a story about how the only hard data the economics profession can actually offer is actual transactions completed by disinterested, non-colluding, and independent individuals. Supply and demand curves only make sense when there is a genuine conflict between the supply and demand sides. LIBOR-like arrangements, where it's suppliers selling to each other, do not form a valid market because the demand side is also the supply side.
The magic Latin words to ward away CAC farmers[0] are "straight tender-to-tender transaction", aka "you're just moving money around, it's not a real transaction". I am wondering if we need a similar kind of mind-numbing rhetoric to refer to exchanges that are not valid markets: i.e. do not have opposing supply and demand. These exchanges nominally serve some kind of purpose - they balance supply across suppliers - but they should not be allowed to participate in price discovery as they are not a market.
[0] "Customer acquisition costs" refer to any money paid by a business to attract new customers only. A lot of business risk management is put into making sure your customer acquisition costs are not functionally a straight-up discount or giveaway.
An egg trader is motivated to find the lowest buy price and the highest sell price, whether they’re buying/selling through an exchange or privately. The issue is collusion between buyers and sellers to manipulate the market price. Telling a trader that they’re not allowed to use an exchange price as part of their price evaluations seems like it would be very difficult.
It is so bizarre to publish a story like this months after the egg cartel has been prosecuted over years, totally exposed, seen its day in court, settled for a big fine.
There are a certain group of people who don't know anything unless it is publicized in certain approved outlets, and they are a problem.
edit: and to be less laconic, if these outlets, which are all owned by plutocrats, all collude to simply not report on a story, you can't convince these people of anything.
big fine? they paid 3 million plus 50 million eggs at cost - they probably made on the order of 2-3 billion on this criminal scheme.
I'm confused by your aspersions. should or should not Politico have written this piece? and what is this group of people, and what "approved" outlets do you refer to? are they the ones who naysaid the allegations to begin with or the opposite? have the conviction to name those you accuse.
It's likely the cartel was only <1% of the egg price increase. It's good to go after, but it wasn't the main cause of price increases.
Some background for the <1% estimate:
- The fine was for 3M vs a 13B egg market
- The only quotation I could find covering how much the cartel raised prices was "placed bids at a price that was two cents greater" from Matt Levine's piece: https://emailshot.io/p/LKaQi73kHN4uv5sVMUbfSXNQdm3ELgy9j. That's ~1% of the Northwest Large White benchmark price of $5.43
At this point, "conspiracy theories" (the ones that check out logistically. not the actually crazy ones) are just factual news that made it far to early into the news cycle.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
93 comments
[ 0.33 ms ] story [ 11.3 ms ] threadYou say "lets not pretend" and then your only next sentence is refutation of that first statement. If Democrats are incompetent economic governers (whatever that phrase means), then they would have not put in a competent person like Khan in the first place.
http://concentrationcrisis.openmarketsinstitute.org/
We've tried communism. That ends up with millions starving, artists and scientists brutally murdered, and human flourishing basically being utterly destroyed PLUS all wealth being destroyed. That's what communists need to concede.
Avoiding those outcomes while attracting is steadily growing number of protesters, with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment. Way too big to ignore and within reach of overwhelming numbers.
Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.
I'm not commenting on whether it's radical, just that if they had the choice between something like the ACA and nothing, many in these groups would rather have nothing. In fact, many would argue (as they would against other things they consider "incrementalism") that anything less than their demands would actually be detrimental somehow. Very much in opposition to "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". This is exemplified in the whole M4A "force the vote" nonsense.
It's strange to ignore all of the actual criticisms, such as that they are protests with absolutely no demands, and that they're arranged by Democratic Party insiders using spam farms. The reason they're called "No Kings" is because nobody knows what that's supposed to mean. It was consciously concocted as an alternative to fighting the "oligarchs" as Sanders constantly said, because Democrats support oligarchs.
> with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment.
It's not. They're just faithful movement Democrats walking together in the street trying to figure out different ways to yell "fuck Trump." They're a mockery of protests, they're just extremely ineffective marketing.
They wouldn't be tiresome if they were easy to answer for you. Accusing people of just complaining about people and things not being "perfect" is a sign of somebody who doesn't even have a dishonest argument to make, so they're resorting to making no argument at all, and instead calling you a snob.
That's largely a consequence of police being badly trained though. See stuff like Gracie Breakdown for a small glimpse of how horribly badly trained. Now, the people who complain about the violence are also the people who scream defund the police and want to ban body weight restraint, leading to cops only having ultra violence left as a tool. It's a pretty bad downward spiral of stupid.
Adam smith was hostile towards monopolies (which your link refers to - nothing to do with price fixing although the conclusion is the same) and his critiques being very apparent throughout Wealth of Nations. This is a common opinion with proponents of free markets.
So what specifically about capitalism makes this a "natural consequence"?
Free markets are great but to really work they need to come with competition enforcement (including total M&A bans in high risk industries), strong unions, support for worker ownership and a tax structure that rewards productive investment instead of executive payouts. Market socialism instead of capitalism.
If you live near a Costco, you can. The one near me is opening in a week, and I can't wait.
So, for instance: The package of 24 large grade AA Kirkland-branded eggs from Costco that is in my fridge right now is stamped P3447. Plant 3447 is registered as being Daybreak Foods, 2127 110th Street, Otsego, Michigan (not Costco).
Milk is the same way: One can read the printing on the bottle and determine where it was processed.
[1]: The interface is genuinely awful, but: https://publicdashboards.dl.usda.gov/t/MRP_PUB/views/AMSLPQA...
> On Wednesday, Hickman saw evidence that Urner Barry was taking in data that would lower prices — “pull the market down,” in the words of one executive — and goaded his erstwhile competitors to respond. “As a group,” the executive followed up, “we need to bid like they vote in Chicago, early and often.”
So while they were actively breaking the law, colluding to screw over the free market, they soothed themselves with jokes about non-existent voter fraud.
They stopped this particular instance of it after the horse already left the barn and did nothing to dissuade future anticompetitive collusion.
So she can lose more lawsuits related to her anti-silicon valley obsession? I'd rather get someone who is actually objective and takes a holisitic look at every industry.
Her blinders kept her from focusing on truly monopolies and anti-trust behavior like cable and broadbrand providers, regional hospital systems, etc.
Settlements instead of jail time will only cause this behavior to continue. Economic white collar crimes need far higher punishments it seems when the only downside is you return only some of the higher profits you made.
The title uses the word Maybe. What does this mean in legal terms exactly?
Efficient markets are impossible without regulation.
Which oddly did not increase in price much. I was in a discussion once on a forum and brought up that eggs around me (PNW) were still in the $6 for 18 when everyone else was complaining about $10 for a dozen. Next time I bought eggs, the ones I buy were the same price as always but the normal white eggs were in fact $10 a dozen...
However, specialty eggs sold to consumers rather than businesses will be much more elastic, and thus there will be much less price change with supply changes.
On the other hand, price fixing is relatively easy, and as long as the players don’t get too greedy and don’t leave a paper trail, they’re unlikely to be caught. The only way it usually happens is if there is a whistleblower.
The ADM lysine case years ago also threw a lot of cold water on whistleblowers when the whistleblower ended up getting more jail time than any of the other conspirators.
Anyhow, the fact you even see any successful prosecutions given how hard it is prove, and the paradoxical fact that in some commodity industries, you actually do see decent profit margins tells me that this sort of thing is actually probably very common.
"Whitacre was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for embezzling $9.5 million from ADM at the same time he was assisting the federal price-fixing investigation."
Not that I trust Wikipedia, but I tnink if the common narrative is wrong it'd probably behoove you to pre-empt it because anyone who looks it up is going to come away feeling deceived by your statement as written.
I dunno. It's a weird situation. And eggs are particularly weird because, as the article notes, people are definitely willing to pay more for them; the low prices have less to do with true demand and more to do with competition.
Seems to me there must have been some new incentive structure in place.
> they had the ability to create the illusion of [consumer demand] through bids on the surplus exchange for purchases they had no intent of completing
This seems like a system tailor-made for collision. It seems like the consumer protection agency should force changes. Too bad they've been made toothless.
Elections have consequences. This is one of them.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/t/hatching-a-conspiracy
It's a perfectly fine system if the egg producers are using it genuinely, it's only a problem when they start submitting fraudulent bids to accomplish illegal market manipulation.
I guess the thing I'm confused about is how bidding above market rates for eggs didn't just result in these companies being stuck with a bunch of eggs that they grossly overpaid for? How did the scheme actually work?
I can’t tell from the article if they were bidding on each others eggs or bidding on other farmers eggs and then canceling.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57573604-naked-short-and...
https://www.dtcc.com/products-and-services/clearing-settleme...
As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. Lol.
1) Putting in the out of market bid and immediately cancelling so the high bid doesn't get filled. Sometimes they might make this bid in small size so it doesn't matter too much if they do get filled (but this only works if the market is relatively thin or illiquid). Depending on the market, you might be able to put order flags or abuse the matching algorithm to make it less likely to be filled even though your order seems to cross the spread. So for example sometimes people will put in an order, cancel and then place it again so they go to the back of the queue at that level for example.
2) Stuffing the order book lower down with (larger) passive sell orders that will get hit as the market followers start bidding up in anticipation of the price move caused by the very high bid.
I'm not as familiar with the regime in the US markets but in UK/EU markets this behaviour is absolutely market abuse and can result in criminal prosecution and disgorgement of profits.
No, the price drops at the exact moment the DoJ starts looking into it.
Reported also here by Matt Stoller:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/crime-pays-the-egg-bandit...
> There’s a big market (egg producers selling eggs to supermarkets etc.), and there’s a small market (egg producers selling extra eggs to each other on an electronic exchange). The price in the small market determines the price in the big market. Participants in the small market are also participants in the big market. You can spend a little money in the small market to move the price, which can make you a lot of money in the big market.
“Egg LIBOR was also manipulated” (Paywalled) https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-07-01/egg...
The magic Latin words to ward away CAC farmers[0] are "straight tender-to-tender transaction", aka "you're just moving money around, it's not a real transaction". I am wondering if we need a similar kind of mind-numbing rhetoric to refer to exchanges that are not valid markets: i.e. do not have opposing supply and demand. These exchanges nominally serve some kind of purpose - they balance supply across suppliers - but they should not be allowed to participate in price discovery as they are not a market.
[0] "Customer acquisition costs" refer to any money paid by a business to attract new customers only. A lot of business risk management is put into making sure your customer acquisition costs are not functionally a straight-up discount or giveaway.
There are a certain group of people who don't know anything unless it is publicized in certain approved outlets, and they are a problem.
edit: and to be less laconic, if these outlets, which are all owned by plutocrats, all collude to simply not report on a story, you can't convince these people of anything.
I'm confused by your aspersions. should or should not Politico have written this piece? and what is this group of people, and what "approved" outlets do you refer to? are they the ones who naysaid the allegations to begin with or the opposite? have the conviction to name those you accuse.
Some background for the <1% estimate:
- The fine was for 3M vs a 13B egg market
- The only quotation I could find covering how much the cartel raised prices was "placed bids at a price that was two cents greater" from Matt Levine's piece: https://emailshot.io/p/LKaQi73kHN4uv5sVMUbfSXNQdm3ELgy9j. That's ~1% of the Northwest Large White benchmark price of $5.43
There's lime, avocado, milk, oil and corn cartels. Why not eggs?
Adam Smith - "The Wealth of Nations"