Just got out of Kroger/Albertsons hearing day one. Too early to tell how judge is leaning. But there's definitely public interest in this hearing. Main courtroom and overflow courtroom were both completely full for opening statements, so about 90-100 people besides parties.

Motions hearing over. As expected, Google, and its Chief Legal Officer, Kent Walker, had an incredibly bad day as Court heard arguments over its abuse of privilege in the USA v Google adtech pre-trial motion. Scorched (imho) from the bench, “a very big problem for Google” /1

“Kroger Co. hiked prices on milk and eggs more than needed to account for inflation, the company’s top pricing executive testified” The thing is, execs all over the economy were saying this stuff on their earning calls back in 2021. This was not a secret. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

why does kroger want to merge with albertsons? so they don’t have to lower their prices in response to albertsons’ price cuts anymore!

This is an encouraging step, ensuring that workers' perspectives and interests are understood and considered in federal agencies' decisions about whether companies are allowed to merge.

From me: Since Kamala Harris announced her priority of lowering costs in food & rent, the biggest merger of the year was proposed between food giants, a grocery merger challenge yielded admissions of price gouging, & DOJ indicted an algorithmic rent-fixer. prospect.org/economy/2024-0…

Testimony from union leaders yesterday cemented the fact that the Kroger-Albertsons merger would unequivocally harm workers. Laurel's Day 3 recap of the K/A hearing.👇 economicliberties.us/press-release/…

My book Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States will be out on December 3. If you are interested in cooperative and public power, economic democracy, climate policy, or the New Deal, consider pre-ordering! UChicagoPress press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book…

McGregor, Iowa has some solid street naming going on.

Any friends out there with a sub to MLex, hmu!

Workers at Amazon's KSBD airhub in San Bernardino, California are continuing to hold management accountable for our safety with dangerous wildfire smoke from the Line Fire in and around our warehouse. #IEAmazonWorkers

In addition to continued leading coverage from Bloomberg, mlex Capitol Forum as we saw with search trial, I strongly recommend digging into the media industry press who showed up to cover in person. They’re each finding different ways to record history with a wealth of evidence.

Interesting report. Two things in here. 1) Court already ruled the prior approvals of Google's acquisitions are irrelevant to her. And 2) the notion that Google's adtech business is too big a market cap to order its structural separation is borderline silly town.

🚨INVESTIGATION: How a private equity firm is barging into local communities and taking over minor league baseball - all with the help of tax subsidies. Fantastic narrative deep dive into the newest Wall Street plot for yet another monopoly. levernews.com/monopoly-leagu…

Must read. AAG J Kanter Antitrust Division delivered this at Fordham Law Conference, to the gasps of the defence complex in the room. “We have a crisis of expertise in our antitrust and competition community, and it is growing”. Because of wall-to-wall “experts” doing client advocacy in

As a federal judge considers whether the FTC's monopoly lawsuit against Amazon should survive the company's attempt to dismiss the case, the FTC finds support for its lawsuit in courts around the country. New from me in The Sling thesling.org/in-fighting-am…

Check out ron knox's latest The Sling! #Antitrust #Econtwitter

This is a scandal