Richard Morrison throws in with Jeremy Lott and William Yeatman to bring you Episode 69 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start by pigging out on swine flu statistics, putting off action on global warming and wagging our finger at a corrupt judge. We proceed with the fight between Intel and AMD and wrap up with an interview with CEI Senior Fellow Gregory Conko on how to end world hunger.

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Over at the Washington Examiner’s Opinion Zone, Wayne Crews and I explain why New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s antitrust lawsuit against Intel is a mistake.

Calling Intel’s business practices “bribery” and “coercion” is little more than argument by assertion. Rebates and exclusivity deals are normal competitive behavior. Not only is Intel facing increasing competition in its home turf, that small segment is hardly the extent of the relevant competitive market. Intel faces an uncertain future as consumer tastes shift to smaller…

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Intel and AMD have announced a settlement in their 4-year legal antitrust battle. As per the agreement, Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion, an amount that’s likely far less than what they would have owed had Intel lost it’s case in court. Intel claims that it will not change its business practices because they were never illegal in the first place.

Hopefully, this agreement between private companies will send a signal to the Federal Trade Commission, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo,…

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The European Commission is once again targeting an American tech company with an antitrust investigation. This time the EC has its sights set on Oracle and it’s $7.4 billion bid for Sun Microsystems. In short, the worry is that if Oracle acquires Sun, along with it’s popular open-source database software MySQL, that somehow competition in the database market will become nonexistent.

But as Matt Asay at Cnet.com pointed out this week, competition is alive in well in the database market. Amazon recently announced…

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A statement from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo this morning announces the launch of an antitrust lawsuit against chipmaker Intel. Intel supposedly is “bribing” and “coercing” computer manufacturers like Dell, HP into using its chips.

Intel gives them money and rebates to use Intel chips. Think about that; they don’t have to pay as much, and get paid themselves, to use Intel chips rather than AMD ones.

I like it when I get rebates and cash, myself, but I’m just crazy.

Let’s…

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Rumors abound that graphics chip maker Nvidia is getting set to enter the x86 processor market. Recall that, according to AMD’s lawyers, the processor market is uncompetitive and being unfairly monopolized by Intel.

Now, if the antitrust lawyers are correct, and the CPU market is uncompetitive and needs government intervention, then there must be some barriers to entry that are keeping other competitors out of the market, allowing Intel to reap outrageous profits. However, if Nvidia can and does enter the processor market…

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Rep. Diana DeGette is, without any apparent cognitive dissonance or trace of irony, proposing:

1) Require, by law, that people buy health insurance.

2) Remove health insurers’ antitrust exemption. But only after legally requiring everyone to buy their product.

You figure it out. Insurers are set to receive one of the largest coroporate welfare grants in history. No wonder so many firms are salivating over this year’s health care legislation. But they may pay an antitrust price for their legally mandated windfall.

Perhaps this…

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The lawyers at the US Department of Justice must be getting bored around the office. This week, antitrust regulators launched an investigation of IBM’s business practices. The probe was launched after the Computer and Communications Industry Association (which represents several of IBM’s competitors) filed a complaint against IBM, claiming that it has abused its dominance in the computer mainframe market.

This marks the third time in the last sixty years that IBM has had the antitrust dogs on its trail. In 1956…

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Over at the Detroit News, Hans Bader and I explain why corporations have human rights despite not being human. The reason why? Transaction costs.

This has implications for everything from Intel’s EU antitrust battle to newspapers’ free speech rights.

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Journalists have a tendency to present overly-simple explanations of current events that often turn out to be completely false as well. Part of this is due to journalists trying to present a clear, digestible story to readers, and part is due to the fact that most of them have no formal training or particular expertise on the subjects they write about. Case in point is Barry C. Lynn’s latest piece in The American Prospect, which alleges that concentration of the auto…

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Intel is in the news again, this time for fighting the European Commission’s record-shattering $1.4 billion fine against the company. In its appeal, Intel accuses the Commission of having failed to prove that Intel’s allegedly anticompetitive tactics actually harmed consumers in any way.

Recall that it wasn’t a consumer group that brought this case against Intel. Rather, this case was pushed by its rivals. In fact, both Intel and its closest competitor, AMD, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying in…

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Intel’s defense in its EU antitrust case has taken the surprising line that the company’s human rights were violated. Over at Real Clear Markets, CEI colleague Hans Bader and I take a closer look. We conclude that Intel actually has a pretty good argument.

Corporations have human rights because doing so greatly reduces transaction costs: “suppose your company wants to buy some computer chips from Intel. You could have each shareholder sign the sales contract - good luck finding them all -…

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Want to be a barber in Nevada? You’ll need to get a license first. One of the requirements is a chest X-ray, of all things. And a blood test.

More onerous is the 18-month apprenticeship under a licensed barber, which requires its own license – plus another chest X-ray and blood test.

Occupational licensing regulations are rarely in place to benefit consumers. Their primary purpose is often to limit competition by putting up barriers to entry. Why do this? Because keeping the…

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Bryan Caplan says there are only two ways for a monopoly to form: government protection, or being the best.

“If the firm has a monopoly because the government made competition illegal, the solution isn’t antitrust; it’s legalizing competition. If the firm has a monopoly because it’s the best, the solution isn’t antitrust; it’s a little freakin’ appreciation.”

Read the whole thing.

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Antitrust laws are intended to prevent anti-competitive practices. And if anything qualifies as an anti-competitive practice, fining and jailing people for competing with you certainly would. Which brings us to this little tidbit from the Code of Federal Regulations:

It is generally unlawful under the Private Express Statutes for any person other than the Postal Service in any manner to send or carry a letter on a post route or in any manner to cause or assist such activity. Violation may result…

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As expected, The Department of Justice is launching an antitrust investigation into the Microsoft-Yahoo search engine partnership.

As I’ve said before, this is not an antitrust issue.

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In today’s Seattle Times, CEI Information Policy Analyst Ryan Radia and CEI Policy Fellow Jonathan Hillel talk about the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee’s threat of “careful scrutiny” over the recent Microsoft-Yahoo deal.  Read the piece here or see below.

MICROSOFT and Yahoo want to join forces in Internet search to better compete against Google. But first, they need the blessing of government antitrust enforcers. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., already has threatened “careful scrutiny” of the deal. But trustbusters should not…

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Your host Richard Morrison welcomes back returning guest co-host Jeremy Lott and distinguished special guest David Mark of the Politico for Episode 55 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with reports of unrest over health care in the provinces, the U.S. Postal Service’s death spiral and the globe trotting ways of members of Congress. We continue with some sadly familiar antitrust murmurs regarding Apple and Google, a classic union corruption scandal out of New York City and some inspiring and heroic…

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Intel alleges that its due process rights were violated by a massive $1.45 billion fine recently imposed as a result of a one-sided antitrust investigation that excluded evidence of its innocence. It says that a biased investigation by the European Commission violated the European Convention on Human Rights. Despite its title, the Convention protects not just humans but also “non-governmental organisations” like corporations, as its text and many court rulings confirm.

I think Intel has a strong case. But some commentators have…

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The antitrust laws currently on the books are so vague, judges and regulators have essentially had to make up their own policies. In other words, they can pretty much do whatever they want.

Look what just happened in Europe. The EU’s ombudsman recently discovered that the EU’s antitrust regulators intentionally suppressed “potentially exculpatory” evidence in their case against Intel.

That case, remember, resulted in a €1,000,000,000 fine against Intel. Unfortunately, the ombudsman’s finding will not affect the case’s outcome. The prosecutor lied…

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