3.28.2006

bundling and the incipiency doctrine

One of the main impetus for my paper was that I worked on some issues this summer where we couldnt quite make the Sherman (Donnelly) Act arguments for clear cases of consumer dissatisfaction, but when we looked at how they came about it was because of a steady stream of mergers and acquisitions. Its becomeing clearer to me now that if all the specifications of the Clayton act were meant to address a lower standard than the Sherman act, that these are precisely the cases that i am arguing for.

One clear example is bundling law. Its a mess. There are clear complaints in all sorts of concentrated industries of bundling being used as leverage by more powerful firms to get contracts with bigger buyers, but aside from teh hated LePages decisions, the commentary seems to be pulling for a predatory pricing standard, which is almost impossible to prove, makgin this yet another place where the incipiency doctrine would be the answer. Why struggle so much to make these arguments after the fact.

Furthermore, the entire entry and collosion analysis rest on the ideas of other firms responses to a merger. Why does that not carry over to other firms mergers?

3.26.2006

i have no clue how this came up

"Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veine in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flowr;"

corey: here's my "anticipated criticisms" section
corey: 8. corey, you're crazy. this model is unworkable. it doesn't even make any sense
a. touché.

the eminem show

The court in brown shoe, in all it merger theory forming brilliance and omnipotence, basically laid down in two pages the next 50 years of merge theory. Therefore incipiency rocks. Done.

WHAT IS THE INCIPIENCY DOCTRINE

It is important to articulate what the incipiency doctrine and how is should be considered in the oeuvre of antitrust law. Firstly, let’s start with what it is not. It is not a feature of the law and it is not a principle of economics. It therefore does not provide a threshold by which to judge either the legality or the economic effect of a merger. It is a doctrine that embodies the wishes and fears of the legislators who enacted the Clayton Act using the word that was best though to provide such encapsulation. Bearing that in mind, we must consider that the frequency and method of its application is a reflection of the legal and political climate of the times. Its lack of concrete meaning in application may lead to divergent results from two courts referencing its precedence in their decisions.

tonights agenda:

Faith No more on repeat and a teething ring.

3.25.2006

expect much more blogging as thesis continues


I have a page! I have a page! My cat is trying to eat my research! I have a page!

3.24.2006

why old friends rock

Ive been having trouble recently articulating a particularly abstract personality trait that i find annoying. I try to explain it to people who kno what Im referring to, and they're clueless and I seem petty.

So today in my A paper manic state i talked to Daniel for an hour. And i tried to explain it to him, a complete outsider.

Me: mumbles incoherently for a while and the AHA. "hey remember when we got in a fight outside that bar 9 years ago in rural rhode island?"
Daniel: "where you insulted the bartenders livelihood?"
Me: "Exactly! I cant even remember anything about it but the phrase 'insulted his livelihood'"
Daniel: "You were asking him about the pictures from when he was a WWF wrestling referee"
Me: "But Im me! Of course I was interested."
Daniel: "With strong undertones of mockery"
Me:"YES! I am living in a perpetual state of being you in that fight!"

Patronizing. One of those words that so hard to zero in on but when you do its perfect. Like endearing.

3.23.2006


: dude, the paper is about how legal academics are so freaking liberal that they manipulate history so that they have a cause to fight

me: i dont know if thats an a paper
: but sick idea

other person: well, you can toss in nice comparative stuff with the canadian internment
so i cover all my bases

me: id love if my a paper could be "why dr is the worst person ever"

other: i know a few people in his seminar
the consensus is that he's a nice man but just mindbendingly weird

me: w hatever
not nice
i judged

haha
yeah, he sounds like a flaming fag
fuck him
not literally
Famous Anus. Not a cookIe.

me: HAHAHAHAH

I rule.

i have no antitrust beliefs

Oligopoly Watch: "On the face of it, the acquisition of BellSouth would seem to violate every rule of antitrust and the history of the industry and its regulators. But clearly AT&T's strategy will be one of redefining market segments."

Seriously, i have no beliefs in any direction. do you hear that corporate world, you love me! I am equally enamored with the idea of pushing the incipiency doctrine, which would greatly raise merger enforcement, and the idea that AT&T is gladly fulfilling its manifest destiny at the behest of the previous great *triumphs* of the regulators, The baby bells and the telecom act.

My only wish is that they were eating verizon instead of bell south, because ive always had a sorta crush on bell south, but thats akin to when my brother would use me to seed basketball teams in the ncaa tournament he would play in the den with himself, and i would choose by uniform.

Let me explain how i choose favorites: one of two ways. Either ABSOLUTELY ARBITARILY, or in concert with one of the larger themes that govern my life (industrialism, recursivity, infrastructure, all things shire).

Don and Erin learned this quickly when 20 years later they were asking for my NCAA picks and Erin wisely observed that I was obvioulsy rooting for the Thomas and Mack center.*


* the UNLV arena, where phish plays. terribly. except the 10.30.98 stash>manteca>tweezer.**

** we gave this phish kid a ride home from biloxi and now im exploding with phish knowledge. Right after i was complaining that my brain was full, and probably because i have more phish knowledge that i forgot the access code to than most people ever have knowledge in general. But then i found the key.***

***hows that for nesting suckah!

3.21.2006

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3.20.2006

magic hour, again

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magic hour

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3.19.2006

overwhelmed

3.07.2006

my brain is full

enough electronics already! its madness. i had to buy another laptop. My phone is too big and plays mp3's for some reason. which i dont need because i had to buy a new ipod and if you want any space you need to get fucking video. So now i have a video ipod that doesnt fit in my case and an old one with a broken click wheel that only lets me listen to 2 skinnee j's and is esssentially a backup drive. and i have like 19 cameras. the new one, the slr, bill and reesa's and my old one. but im gonna trad emy new one for my moms new ones to take pictures of rust in nola. so NO MORE...i mean, after i fix my dat deck. thank god i dont own a tv.

3.03.2006

slave to the traffic light

I cant believe its taken me this long to wonder if there is now a random bangkok cabbie out there raging the 12.13.99 sand. I hope it blew his mind.

We're going to New Orleans!


I dunno if ive mentioned this before, but next week David and I are going on a roadtrip. We're going with the school to volunteer, but me being me has taken the travel money to work in a road trip filled with friend chicken, pictures of broken down appalachia, and possibly pittsburgh. Then we get tyvek suits and masks to wear while we gut sad houses :(

But first, in a last gasp before midtems, wednesday was super fun. Aside form the fact that i couldnt competently speak in class to save my butt, Eddie came to class with me. I brought a rock star to the colloquim, which would have been absurd, but some guy brought a baby. again. And we have a chicago professor talk about how its exclusionary amenities is its required membership is collective nerdiness. "We just are huge nerds. We all like to hang out together and tlak about law constantly. Law Law Law. Unlike Stanford, where they go out in diads." Seriously, and somehow this made Eddie want to go to law school.

Then we played dressed up to go to the Tibet House benefit at Carnegie Hall featuring Sufjan Stevens. Which i knew was a hippie event of years passed and everyone else would be in flannel. And the person I ran into was AMY! So awesome. And she wound up sitting across the aisle from us (with not noah). The show was amazing. Although Sufjan was short, seeing Phillip Glass play the hours theme with a tibetan fiddler, who then when all tribal with the digeridoo, was incredible. Music is definately the best art form. Aside from the fact thats its just fun, its so easy for people of all styles and background to just get together and synergize their arts on a moments notice. And if the closing everybody on stage song, following alan toussaint ("How do you get to carnegie hall? Get a booking agent named Katrina'), and Sufjan *rocked* the triangle.

Afterwards we went to Carnegie deli, and made the best menu call ever, Matzoh Brei! Posted by Picasa