The Daily Warning

Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney today said that the Justice Department would more actively investigate potential antitrust violations, suggesting that the lax position of the Bush administration played a role in the economic collapse.

Which is obviously nonsense.  It’s just the Obama administration’s blanket justification for any interference they seek to pursue, claim that it’s to correct what caused the economic collapse.  It’s their means of avoiding actually having to pursue economic policies that make sense.

Monopolies are only destructive when they form as a product of external intervention.  And in these cases they aren’t destructive because they’re monopolies, but instead as a product of what made them monopolies, moral hazard.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are good examples.  They were essentially monopolies in the mortgage holding market, as a product of their access to unlimited supplies of capital (because of the implicit guarantee of a government bailout were anything to go sour).  It was that moral hazard that made them monopolies, and it was that moral hazard that led to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Google is not what caused this.  Monopolies like Google form as a product of superiority.  They tear down competing firms (which I know shocks the Democrats, someone winning and losing in competition!) and if they focus too much on that and not enough on providing the most up to date, best quality products they’ll eventually get eaten alive just like Microsoft.  And when you go after monopolies that form in the course of the free market, what you wind up doing is punishing the successful for being successful.  The last thing you want to do ever, but especially in a recession, is put extra disincentives on being successful, as it is the drive to succeed that enables the economy to grow out of the recession.  And I can understand an income tax, you have to pay for stuff, and I can even understand a progressive income tax, as typically the lower income brackets paying taxes is strictly symbolic (considering the actual % of the revenue that comes from them), but prosecuting naturally forming monopolies, that’s really just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Which is why I’m not surprised the Obama administration is pursuing this.  It’s class warfare backed up by piss poor economics, just like everything else in their economic policy.

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