Free Republic

Government control of the rents of houses and apartments is a special form of price control. Most of its consequences are substantially the same as those of price control in general, but a few call for special consideration. Rent controls are sometimes imposed as a part of general price controls, but more often they are decreed by a special law. A frequent occasion is the beginning of a war. An army post is set up in a small town; rooming houses increase rents for rooms; owners of apartments and houses increase their rents. This leads to public indignation. Or houses...

Barack Obama appears to have personally benefited from funds originating in Saddam Hussein's regime. It's a complicated connection, but one that deserves the consideration of Americans voters. Two similar figures, Nadhmi Auchi and Antoin S. "Tony" Rezko, served as the intermediaries. Both are Middle Eastern males of Catholic Christian heritage who left Baathist dictatorships for Western cities (Auchi from Iraq to London, Rezko from Syria to Chicago). Both became successful businessmen who hobnobbed with politicians and promoted Arab interests. Both have been convicted of taking kickbacks and both stand accused of other shady dealings. Auchi, born in 1937, is the...

UPDATE 2-EU raids Cargill, Bunge in food-price probe Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:58pm BST (Adds comments from Cargill, Bunge) BRUSSELS, July 10 (Reuters) - The European Commission raided agribusiness giants Cargill Inc [CARG.UL] and Bunge Ltd (BG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday in a sweep of traders and distributors of cereals and other agricultural products for human consumption and animal feed in two EU countries. The raids come at a time when grain prices have soared to record highs amid strong demand, production problems and the use of grain to produce biofuels that have lifted food prices. "The Commission has...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two major airlines were fined $300 million apiece Thursday after admitting they conspired to fix prices on international flights and agreeing to help prosecutors investigate other airlines. British Airways PLC, Britain's largest airline, and Korean Air Co., South Korea's national carrier, pleaded guilty to antitrust conspiracy charges. They acknowledged colluding with rivals over cargo rates and fuel surcharges, which were added to fares in response to rising oil prices. That meant higher costs for international shippers and passengers. U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said the case "involved considerable commerce and reflected long-term and widespread conduct involving...

A proposed order in a file-sharing lawsuit would force the recording industry to divulge closely-held details of their wholesale pricing arrangements. UMG v. Lindor is one of the highest-profile file-sharing cases in the news today, due in no small part to the efforts of Marie Lindor's attorney Ray Beckerman, who maintains the Recording Industry vs The People Blog along with Ty Rogers.Lindor, like hundreds of others, was sued by the RIAA after a John Doe lawsuit resulted in her ISP turning over information to the record labels tying an IP address allegedly used for illegal downloading to her. Lindor has...

I've been told to match a competitor's price at an upcoming event, in order to maintain "tranquility" among the vendors. I have a contract to sell our products at a local RV show and the promoter is insisting on this at the request of my competitor. Can she do this? Is it legal? Isn't she being asked to effect a price manipulation? I admit that my price is always lower than the complainer but I make it up in volume... I know someone out there knows more about this than I do. any advice appreciated.

Gasoline demand falls in first half of 2006 API: lofty crude prices hurt demand, gasoline imports at a record By Myra P. Saefong, MarketWatch Last Update: 10:00 AM ET Jul 19, 2006 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Record prices for crude oil contributed to lower U.S. gasoline demand in the first half of this year, but the nation imported the fuel at a record pace, according to the American Petroleum Institute Wednesday. U.S. gasoline demand fell by 0.4% in the second quarter of 2006, compared with an increase of 0.5% in the first quarter, the API said in its June statistical...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - As American drivers shell out more and more money at the pump with each passing day, some are asking whether big oil companies are scheming to withhold supplies in order to boost prices. New York Senator Charles Schumer, speaking in front of a Hess station in Manhattan, called Tuesday for a federal investigation to see if oil companies and refiners are deliberately withholding gasoline production, taking advantage of the normal switch from winter gas to summer gas in an attempt to bid up prices. "The bottom line is they are producing at 85 percent capacity when...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Tuesday he is "concerned" about high gasoline prices, and pledged that the U.S. government will keep a close watch out for profiteering. "I'm concerned about higher gasoline prices," Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference to name new staff appointments. "The government has the responsibility to make sure that we watch very carefully and investigate possible price-gouging, and we will do just that," Bush said in unprompted remarks about energy prices. U.S. crude oil futures hit a record of $70.88 a barrel on Tuesday on fears of supply disruptions in...

A report released this week by attorneys general from four Midwestern states suggests that natural gas prices have been artificially inflated by energy trading companies and by the system that local utilities use to buy gas. Many of the purchasing practices and price-setting mechanisms identified as unfair to consumers in the Midwestern report are used by Mobile Gas Service Corp., the Mobile Register has discovered. "Obviously there are issues there (in Alabama) that need to be examined," said Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, after discussing Alabama buying practices with Register reporters. She compiled the Midwestern report with her counterparts in...

One music industry source said some subpoenas may have been issued already in connection with the probe, while other labels had been tipped off that subpoenas would likely be coming in the next few days. It appeared that Sony BMG had already received a subpoena, the second industry source said. The major record labels are Warner Music Group, EMI Group Plc, Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group and Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann Ag. Executives from the labels were not available or declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the DOJ was not immediately available for comment....

ALBANY, N.Y. - State investigators have subpoenaed several major music companies as part of a preliminary inquiry into whether the digital music services have engaged in any illegal price-fixing activity. Darren Dopp, a spokesman for state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, said the office was seeking information on wholesale prices the music labels charge for digital music files that can be downloaded. Dopp said Tuesday that it would take months for the office to launch a full investigation, if one is warranted. Warner Music Group Corp. said in a regulatory filing Friday that the subpoena it received is part of "an...

McBride Pleads Guilty to Gouging Livingston, Ala. Andrea Williams Recently, 42-year-old Jason McBride was indicted for alleged gas price gouging. Initially he pleaded not guilty. Monday morning his attorney stated in Sumter County Circuit Court that he's changing his plea to guilty. Although prices at McBride's stores are dropping now immediately after Hurricane Katrina McBride is accused of selling store in Sumter County. To this accusation McBride had said that right after the storm he charged $3.49 per gallon for gas due to the fact that he paid $3.29 per gallon for it. Meanwhile, McBride is listed as secretary treasurer...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Samsung, the world's largest maker of memory chips for computers and other electronic gadgets, will plead guilty to price fixing and pay a $300 million fine, federal officials announced Thursday. The penalty is the second-largest criminal antitrust fine in history and caps a three-year investigation of the largest makers of "dynamic random access memory" chips, a $7.7 billion market in the United States. The guilty plea by South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., was to be entered Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The Justice Department already has...

Nationally, the average price for regular gasoline around $2.50 per gallon. Are gasoline prices high? That's not the best way to put that question. It's akin to asking, "Is Williams tall?" The average height of U.S. women is 5 foot four. For men, it's 5 foot 10 inches. Being 6 foot four, I would be tall relative to the general U.S. population. Put me on a basketball court, next to the average NBA player, and I would be short. So when we ask if a price is high or low, we must ask: relative to what? In 1950, a gallon...

And regarding news media, begin here: They should not subtract from the public's understanding. Yet subtract they nowadays do with endless headlines and talk about "record" oil and gasoline prices. For example, a recent headline in the Financial Times proclaimed: "New York investors take flight after price of oil hits record high." But the story's fifth paragraph read: "West Texas Intermediate for September delivery settled $1.83 higher at $64.90 a barrel—a new nominal record ..." The real meAnd regarding news media, begin here: They should not subtract from the public's understanding. Yet subtract they nowadays do with endless headlines and...

A group of large supermarket and drugstore chains has sued Visa International and its Visa USA unit, accusing the credit card association of price fixing, restricting competition, and keep companies from negotiating lower rates. In the lawsuit, filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the retailers contended Visa's restrictions allowed it to extract fees that were "artificially inflated." Visa is on a "never-ending quest to extract higher revenue" from retailers through "unchallenged market power," the retailers said. The stakes are significant because consumers are increasing their reliance on cards, even on small purchases....

Despite the endless blathering and squirming to the contrary on the part of Wired Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute and other institutions that normally proclaim the truth of free-market economics, the Law of Supply and Demand applies to labor as much as to any other thing that is bought and sold.  That is to say, if one increases the supply of labor relative to demand, its price will fall. That price is your salary, friend.  And mass immigration is inexorably driving it down. Well, maybe not your salary personally, if you are lucky enough to work in...

update European regulators raided the offices of Intel and a number of PC-related companies early Tuesday as part of an antitrust investigation into the chip giant. As part of the dawn raid, European Commission officials and national competition authorities from member states descended on several Intel offices, as well as a number of IT companies that manufacture or sell computers, a Commission representative said. "These inspections are carried out within the framework of an ongoing investigation," the representative said. An Intel representative said the chipmaker is cooperating fully with investigators. "Our normal business practice is to cooperate, and we are...

<p>MOSCOW -(Dow Jones)- TNK-BP (TNKB.YY), the joint venture that incorporates BP PLC's (BP) operations in Russia, may stop exporting crude oil to Ukraine, the Vedomosti daily reported Tuesday.</p> <p>Ukraine decided on April 14 to put a cap on retail fuel prices until May 1. TNK-BP agreed reduce its prices in April, but the Ukrainian authorities now want the initiative to continue until June 1, the paper says.</p>

COVERING CUBA 4: The Rats Below © 2004 ABIP All Rights Reserved AB INDEPENDENT PRODUCTIONS/CC4 distributed by www.CubaCollectibles.com running time: 105” Color/B&W VIDEO DVD & VHS HI-FI Stereo producer/director Agustin Blazquez interviewer/assistant producer Jaums Sutton This is the fourth documentary of the series COVERING CUBA. The first COVERING CUBA was released in 1995, followed by COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation in 2000 and COVERING CUBA 3: Elian in 2002 COVERING CUBA 4: The Rats Below exposes to the American people how the mighty power of a corporation influences the U.S. government – in this case the corrupt Clinton administration...

Given what I had written about them, I had no right to expect my lunch companions to be friendly. But apart from one fraught moment (of which more later), the spokesmen for the international music industry were perfectly amicable. I had written several columns and editorials arguing that the internet had deprived the record companies of their purpose, that the bullying of teenagers who downloaded free music smacked of desperation and that the industry's only hope of survival was finding a new business model. Determined to convince me that I was wrong were Jay Berman, chairman of the International Federation...

A year after a law change designed to get prostitutes off the street, a price war driven by teenage sex workers has flared up on the streets of South Auckland. Market forces appear to be driving street prostitution as teenagers, some as young as 12, compete alongside seasoned sex workers - with tumbling prices the result. Rather than pushing sex workers into legalised brothels, a Weekend Herald inquiry has found the new legislation has done little to discourage street prostitution. This is especially true in pockets of South Auckland, where the Manukau City Council has been forced to shelve plans...

When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1932, the American economy was already in a depression, banks were failing, people couldn't find jobs, people were hungry. FDR believed that depressions were caused by unchecked, "greedy," big corporations, unregulated free markets, and individuals accumulating what he considered as 'too much wealth'. He promised America that he would wage war on big business, and during his presidency, assumed unprecedented powers to prosecute that war. Historian Jim Powell, author of "FDR's Follies," relates the history and development of the massive New Deal programs, brief political biographies of the men who administered them, and...

Millions of music buyers will receive a check for about $12.60 in the mail if a settlement of a price-fixing lawsuit wins court approval today. U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby will hold a hearing to determine whether the $44 million settlement is fair. Roughly 3.5 million U.S. residents who purchased music between 1995 and 2000 registered for claims in the price-fixing suit against major record labels and large music retailers. Hornby also will determine whether registrants who failed to sign penalty of perjury documents will be allowed to share in the settlement and whether petitions of Canadian residents who...

WASHINGTON -- As part of an uphill battle against Internet movie piracy, entertainment industry lobbyist Jack Valenti offered university students a lesson in morality Tuesday. "Too many students don't believe it's wrong to steal these movies," Valenti told students at Georgetown University Law Center. "It is fracturing the moral contract to take something that does not belong to you." The appearance was one of several that the president of the Motion Picture Association of America plans at prominent universities over the next few months. Students are among the heaviest online traffickers of illegally copied material. Since the late 1990s, a...

The AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER #207 December 10, 2002 Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness From a Public Interest Perspective EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V. Krebs ADDRESS: PO. Box 2201, Everett, Washington 98203-0201 E-MAIL: avkrebs@earthlink.net WEB SITE: http://www.ea1.com/CARP/ TO RECEIVE: Name and e-mail address CONTRIBUTION$ WELCOME !!! BOOK REVIEW: RATS IN THE GRAIN: The Dirty Tricks and Trials of Archer Daniels Midland, the Supermarket to the World. By James B. Lieber. ROBERT SHERRILL, THE TEXAS OBSERVER: Anyone who had the misfortune to watch the presidential debates may have noticed that the moderator, Jim Lehrer, one of the most overrated journalists of our era, went out of his way...

A class action lawsuit has been brought against Jewel Food Stores and Dominick's Finer Foods, alleging that Jewel and Dominick's conspired to fix, raise or maintain the retail price of fluid milk at their Chicagoland-area stores. Jewel and Dominick's deny all allegations of wrongdoing, and maintain that they set their prices independently and lawfully.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — The European Union's head office said Friday it had raided five companies, including European offices of Koppers Industries Inc., in its investigation of possible price fixing of tar pitch, creosote and naphthalene products. Koppers Industries said Thursday that EU investigators had visited their offices at its wholly owned subsidiary in Nyborg, Denmark and in Scunthorpe, Britain. It also said the U.S. Justice Department also served a subpoena for similar documents at Koppers headquarters in Pittsburgh. The company said it is cooperating in the investigation. EU officials have...

Record industry attempts to stop the swapping of pop music on online networks such as Kazaa will never work. So says a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for software giant Microsoft. The four researchers believe that the steady spread of file-swapping systems and improvements in their organisation will eventually make them impossible to shut down. They also conclude that the gradual spread of CD and DVD burners will help thwart any attempts to control what the public can do with the music they buy. Doomed disksThe paper was prepared for a workshop on Digital Rights Management, (DRM), at...

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Three South Carolina landowners filed suit Tuesday against International Paper, alleging the forest products giant violated antitrust laws by conspiring to keep Southeastern timber prices artificially low. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Columbia, seeks three times the amount lost because of the alleged price fixing. The losses were not specified in the complaint. The suit also seeks class-action status against International Paper, among the largest purchasers of harvested pulpwood timber in South Carolina. The action could potentially involve thousands of landowners. "International Paper's illegal conduct has caused landowners in South Carolina and adjacent states...

Despite Commissioner Varney's comments on vertical price restraints, the FTC's current official position is that a minimum advertised price (MAP) policy in a co-op program does not, by itself, constitute a per se violation of the FTC Act. The key words here are "current", "by itself", and "per se". The Commission could decide that a MAP provision in a co-op program was part of a pattern of price restriction that taken together violated the law, or could in certain circumstances determine, under a rule of reason approach, that such a provision by itself was sufficiently anticompetitive. And they could just...

The Novartis Warning America's growing pharmaceutical industry got another boost Monday, when Switzerland's Novartis announced it would shift its center for global research to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There's a lesson here for Members of Congress who want to use drug companies as political piñatas. The Novartis departure is only the latest sign of flight from Europe's once-proud drug industry. French-German drug maker Aventis brought its research center to New Jersey in 1999. Formerly Swedish Pharmacia moved its base of operations from London to New Jersey after merging with Upjohn in 1995. In 1990 the U.S. had only 70% of the investment...

The United States Probation Department has recommended no prison time for A. Alfred Taubman, the 78-year-old principal owner of Sotheby's who faces sentencing on Monday for his Dec. 5 conviction for fixing commission prices paid by auction clients. But the Justice Department, which prosecuted Mr. Taubman, took strong issue, arguing to the sentencing judge, George B. Daniels of Federal District Court in Manhattan, that under federal guidelines Mr. Taubman deserved the maximum three-year term and a fine of at least $1.6 million to $8 million for leading a six-year antitrust conspiracy with Sotheby's rival, Christie's. The scheme, which rocked the...