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Corporate & Securities Law

Truth on the Market

Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more.

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Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 00:51:38

Armentano in the WSJ, Abolition and Antitrust Fairy Tales …

Posted on December 28, 2009
Leading antitrust critic and abolitionist, Dominick Armentano, has a letter to the editor in the WSJ. The point of the letter to the editor is rather specific: that FTC’s attack on Intel is no outlier in the historical context of antitrust enforcement, contrary to the WSJ’s description...

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2009
Here’s hoping all our readers have a Merry Christmas. (If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope your new year is filled with joy and good fortune.) Since I can’t deliver a Christmas present via the Internet, my “gift” to you is a movie recommendation...

Are Republicans crazy?

Posted on December 23, 2009
My brilliant and beloved colleague Brian Leiter refers to Republican voters as ?sociopaths, villains, religious zealots, and crazies.? There is much to this ? the 50 percent or so of the voting population that traditionally vote for the GOP includes its fair share of misinformed nuts...

Diversity for Corporate Boards

Posted on December 23, 2009
In its latest rulemaking, the Securities and Exchange Commission has included a provision amending its rules to require the Nominating Committee of a company Board of Directors to disclose whether and how diversity is used as a factor in nominating director candidates to the Board of Directors...

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House Oversight Committee Hearing

Posted on December 23, 2009
Here is my testimony before the House Oversight Committee hearing last week regarding implications of the government as a shareholder in TARP recipients, particularly Citigroup, AIG and GM. It gave me a unique opportunity to continue discussing my Treasury Incorporated paper...

Regulating Local Food Out of the Market

Posted on December 22, 2009
The Nanny Brigade has once again descended on the Windy City. It previously sought to protect us from unhealthy trans fats, smoking in private establishments that we voluntarily patronize, and those oh-so-offensive theatrical depictions of smoking. The Nannies are now working to protect Chicago’s well-heeled from risks associated with the locally produced, artisanal [...

Paul Krugman is a partisan hack

Posted on December 22, 2009
Occasionally I read Mr. Krugman’s column for entertainment purposes — sort of like watching Project Runway or Animals Gone Wild. This morning was one of those occasions. The man is a partisan hack of the worst sort. Why does anyone take his political observations seriously? Some thoughts about this morning’s column...

FTC Nominee Hearings

Posted on December 22, 2009
Statements from Nominees Brill and Ramirez, respectively, from the December 15th hearings.

Rhetoric Versus Reality, Part III

Posted on December 22, 2009
President Barack Obama, June 1, 2009: What we are not doing, what I have no interest in doing, is running GM. GM will be run by a private board of directors and management team with a track record in American manufacturing that reflects a commitment to innovation and quality...

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste, Vietnam Edition

Posted on December 22, 2009
In light of economic worries in Vietnam, the WSJ reports that the country is soon likely to impose a widespread set of price controls and restrictions on political activity after an encouraging move toward freer markets: Carlyle Thayer, a veteran Vietnam watcher and professor at the Australian Defense Academy in Canberra, says conservative factions in the [...

Daubert and Antitrust Economics, Or When Should An Antitrust Economist Have Training in Economics?

Posted on December 22, 2009
Judge Saris’s district court opinion denying the motion to exclude one of the plaintiff’s economic experts in Natchitoches Parish Hospital v. Tyco International recently came across my desk. It is an interesting case involving allegations that Covidien, a leading supplier of “sharps containers” used for the disposal of various needle-involving medical products (syringes, IVs, etc...

Drawing lines

Posted on December 21, 2009
One of the first things law students learn is that law is mostly about drawing lines between acceptable and unacceptable conduct. Some lines are easy to draw: murder is out; giving money to charitable causes is in. But even in these cases, there are definitional and moral puzzles at the boundaries...

Henry Manne on Henderson on “Art and Politics”

Posted on December 21, 2009
Comes now a comment from the incomparable Henry Manne on my earlier post about whether I should buy “Sandinista!” by the Clash (See, Art and Politics post): “It is truly déjà vu all over again, and the doubling up is appropriate because the issue I have reference to took place mainly at the University of Chicago [...

Update on backdating

Posted on December 20, 2009
It’s been quite a while since we discussed backdating here at TOTM. But back when it was all the rage, we were substantial contributors, formulating (we believe) some of the first fundamental explanations of the issues. Some of the best posts from our backdating archive are here: I look pretty young but I’m just backdated, yeah [...

Art and Politics

Posted on December 19, 2009
When I first met my father in law, he spent hours trying to convince me of the cultural superiority of his tastes. Some of these were indeed triumphs. I’m thinking here of “Dr. Strangelove,” “The 400 Blows,” and the music of Richard Wagner...

Who decides how much to pay?

Posted on December 18, 2009
What is the proper role for judges in deciding how much investment advisers to mutual funds should be compensated? This is the question the Supreme Court will answer in Jones v. Harris Associates, argued last month. At first, the question seems silly: courts don’t get a say in how much I get paid or how [...

“Diminishing the price of law”

Posted on December 18, 2009
The lesson from Jones, see my post below, is that law untamed can be very costly, and with little benefit. This is, of course, not a new idea. In a critical essay of “Southey’s Colloquies on Society,” Lord Thomas Macaulay wrote eloquently about the cost of law and government: “Our rulers will best promote the improvement [...

Debating Google

Posted on December 17, 2009
Apologies for the late notice on this. Last week I was on a Federalist Society panel discussing Google’s antitrust issues with Rick Rule, Susan Creighton and Scott Cleland. The event description follows, and you can find audio of the panel here...

Welcome new TOTM blogger Todd Henderson

Posted on December 17, 2009
We are delighted to announce the addition of another new permanent blogger here at TOTM: University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson. Like Thom, Todd is a member of the venerable University of Chicago Law School class of 1998 (second only to the most-venerable class of 1997!)...

It’s a Section 5!

Posted on December 16, 2009
The FTC brought its long-awaited case against Intel today. New York Times report here. Of course we’ve covered the various antitrust claims against Intel at great length on this blog, and have found all of the theories wanting. Chairman Leibowitz’ statement is here...

Features v. Bugs: Intel and the Relationship Between Sections 2 and 5

Posted on December 16, 2009
There will be much to say about the Federal Trade Commission’s Intel complaint in the coming months. And we’ve said quite a bit already. But having just read the complaint and the statements from Chairman Leibowitz and Commissioner Rosch discussing the various rationales for making Section 5 the primary hook for this case, I wanted [...

Another Mis-step in Reactionary Regulation

Posted on December 16, 2009
Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Senators Cantwell and McCain are preparing legislation to reinstate Glass-Steagall-type restrictions to create a “firewall” between commercial and investment banks. Apparently Rep. Hinchey is preparing a similar assault in the House...

The seeds of an antitrust disaster

Posted on December 15, 2009
If you live outside the farm belt (or you’re not an antitrust junkie) you might have missed what is shaping up to be one of the biggest antitrust stories of the coming year: The set of antitrust accusations and actions against Monsanto for its alleged anticompetitive conduct in the biotech seed market...

House Hearing on the Govt. as Shareholder

Posted on December 15, 2009
Wednesday, December 16 I will be testifying at 10am before Congressman Kucinich’s Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The topic will be The Government as Dominant Shareholder: How Should Taxpayers? Ownership Rights be Exercised? Also on the list to testify are Ralph Nader and a few experts from the GAO...

Not Going Anywhere For A While?

Posted on December 14, 2009
Try reading H.R. 4173. All 1300 pages of it. The portion of the bill creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency starts around page 665 for those keeping score at home.

Climate Change and the Non-Sensical Precautionary Principle

Posted on December 11, 2009
In his New York Times column, Thomas Friedman advocates “doing the Cheney-thing on climate — preparing for 1%.” He’s referring to Vice-President Cheney’s reported remark: “If there?s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms [...

Stossel Returns

Posted on December 11, 2009
An announcement from John Stossel: It?s finally here ? my new Fox Business show! Fox fittingly has titled it, Stossel. It premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. It will repeat Fridays at 10 p.m., where I?ll be up against my old program, 20/20. FBN has given me an opportunity to do 44 TV shows on what I am [...

Searle Center Preliminary Report on State Consumer Protection Acts

Posted on December 11, 2009
The Searle Center Civil Justice Institute has announced the release of its preliminary report on State Consumer Protection Acts: An Empirical Investigation of Private Litigation. You can read the Executive Summary here. As the Searle Center State Consumer Protection Acts Task Force Chair, I’ve been involved in the data collection, analysis, and drafting of this [...

Symposium Wrap Up

Posted on December 10, 2009
Thanks to all of our participants and readers for the blog symposium–both the posts and the comments were engaging and thoughtful, and I hope these entries will be helpful in the ongoing debate over credit cards and interchange fees. A concluding point or two: Credit card networks are incredibly complex, and no one fully understands the full [...

Robert Rhee on Nationalization in a Time of Crisis

Posted on December 10, 2009
I have spent the better part of the year studying the consequences of government ownership in the private sector, see Treasury Inc.: How the Bailout Reshapes Corporate Theory and Practice. I recently had the opportunity to read a new paper from Robert Rhee that examines the issue from a different point of view, Nationalization of [...

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