A Letter So Useless I Almost Don’t Want To Link To It
On Tuesday, the heads of the FTC and the DOJ sent a letter to state attorneys’ general, asking them to “work with us and, with respect to your local markets, to enforce vigorously the laws of you State against any anticompetitive, anticonsumer conduct in the petroleum industry.” The letter concludes: “We stand ready to investigate and prosecute any violations of the federal antitrust laws that are revealed during the course of your State’s law enforcement investigations.”
I hate to sound cynical but couldn’t you read this as “States, could you go investigate this and then, if you find anything, let us know, so we can then prosecute and take credit”?
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April 27th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
There’s another reading, I think: We know that there is nothing the antitrust laws can do about the price hike for gasoline (and the antitrust laws shouldn’t be able to), but we’ve got to be seen as doing something. Please, dear States, do something, or at least give the impression of doing something.
April 27th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
[...] Jacob Weisberg has an excellent article in Slate titled “I Smell Gas: A subject that makes congressmen stupid.” It concerns the very issue Manfred noted in his comment to my recent post on the “useless” DOJ/FTC letter. With gasoline prices now spiking around $3 a gallon—near their inflation-adjusted 1981 peak—we are witnessing stupidity on wheels. Republicans, who as incumbents fear that they will be blamed, are in a kind of frenzy to abandon free-market principles, basic economic reasoning, and increasingly, reason itself. [...]