Vertical and Horizontal M&A: A Bias in Antitrust Policy?

The Obama Justice Department developed a track record in challenging horizontal mergers and acquisitions—those in which a company buys a direct competitor—in industries that are already highly concentrated. In deals that are not between direct rivals, such as those that occur in vertical integration, the Obama Administration approved the deals, albeit with the imposition of legally binding restrictions on the acquirer’s ability to use its “in house” supplier to engage in unfair competition.

The full essay is at "A Bias in Obama's Antitrust Policy?" 

The U.S. House of Representatives: An Aristocratic or People’s House?

“Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House rose by more than 2 ¹/₂ times, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity. Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.” This comparison excludes home equity because it was not included in congressional reporting.

The full essay is at "An Aristocratic or People's House?"

Anti-Corruption and Federalism in India

At the end of 2011, India’s coalition government adjourned the upper chamber of the federal legislature without passing legislation that would have created an independent anti-corruption agency. India was a the time rife with governmental corruption. A college wants its foreign students protected from crime? A payment is made to local police employees, who pocket the money for themselves. Someone wants a government contract? Well, that goes without saying.

The full essay is at "Anti-Corruption and Federalism in India."

Source:

Jim Yardley, “Bill to Create Anticorruption Agency Stalls in India,” The New York Times, December 30, 2011. 

Leadership Consulting: Stances on Scholarship

As the field of leadership consulting continues to proliferate, fringe-elements have developed that risk taking down the credibility of the field itself as well as its more solid practitioners. In this essay, my objective is to make those practitioners aware of the damage to their field (and indirectly to their own practices) that is being committed on the periphery. Relatedly, my task extends to making scholars of leadership aware of how leadership itself is being undermined as a concept used (and abused) in the business world. I contend that maintaining the distinction between consulting (including writing on it) and scholarship is in everyone’s interest, even if some “coaches” believe they have a momentary interest in blurring the lines for personal gain.

The full essay is at "Leadership Consulting."

See related essay: “Toward a Definition for Ethical Leadership: Disabusing the Pessimists”

Did Obama Press Israel to Compromise for Peace?

Seeing to “capture a moment of epochal change in the Arab world,” U.S. President Obama delivered a foreign policy speech on May 19, 2011 in which, according to the New York Times, he sought “to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” by “setting out a new starting point for negotiations.” In particular, he suggested that the Israelis go back to the 1967 borders, adjusted somewhat to account for settlements on the West Bank. Meeting with Obama on the following day, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “We can’t go back” to the 1967 borders, according to MSNBC.com. This put the U.S. at odds with one of its foremost allies. Considering the amount of financial and military aid involved, Netanyahu could have been accused of biting the hand that was feeding Israel. Yet due to lobbying no doubt, the Obama administration did not fully play its hand in pressuring the ally. 

The full essay is at "Pressing Israel." 

Contradictory Comments on Health Insurance as Unethical: The Case of Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich said on May 15, 2011 that people should be required to buy health-insurance. He added that he would like to see the mandate implemented at the state rather than the federal level. These comments unleashed a torrent of criticism from Republicans, so the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives spent the following week “walking” his comments back by denying that he had said that he was for a mandate.  The media was in a feeding frenzy, astounded that the former Speaker could simply deny that he might get away with the contradiction. However, in such cases, is it the person or logical contradiction itself that gets us so steamed?

The full essay is at "Health Insurance Mandate."

Too Big to Fail: The Trillion Dollar Club

Banks with assets over $50 billion are considered “systemically important” according to the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. The act is geared to shoring up protection against systemic risk. The U.S. Government deems certain banks (and companies) systemically important if they are big enough to threaten the entire financial system should they fail. Such enterprises are subject to higher capital standards and stricter rules. Roughly three dozen banks in the U.S. had been classified as systemically important by mid-May 2011.

The full essay is at "Too Big to Fail."

Lehman's Dick Fuld as the Antagonist in the film, "Too Big to Fail"

The reporter-author of Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin, expressed the following fear as his 600-plus-page book was being made into a movie: "I went into the process I think worried – as I imagine most writers would be – that it would be sexed up and hollywoodized in some other way." To be sure, putting the Dick Fuld (CEO of Lehman Brothers) character into any sort of sex scene would have been counterproductive at best.

The full essay is at "Lehman's Dick Fuld."

See related essay: "Leadership at Lehman: On the Failure of Richard Fuld"

Writing an Original Screenplay

Jay Fernandez of The Hollywood Reporter asks, “Who’s to blame for the lack of original movie projects being submitted to film studios these days?” He points to vertical integration and a bottom-line reliance on pre-branded franchises, plus diminished film slates, producer deals, and writing jobs. Indeed, in early 2011, spec submissions were down by more than half.

The full essay is at "Writing an Original Screenplay."

Pandora: An IPO Eclipsing Fiscal Gravity?

Pandora, an internet-based radio company oriented to music, sold its initial public offering at $16 per share late on June 14, 2011. The shares opened the next day at $20 and rose as high as $26, only to fall into the teens before market close. At $26, the company had a market value of $4.2 billion, more than the value of AOL at the time. Just two weeks earlier, Pandora’s management had been looking at the $7 to $9 range.  Despite offering only 9 percent of its shares to the public, the company raised twice as much money as it had expected.

The full essay is at Pandora

Could a Middle Eastern Union Cool the Isreali-Palestinian Conflict?

I contend that thinking outside the box can go a long way in getting past the stalemate on Israeli-Palestinian relations.  The key, I believe, lies in relativizing the conflict by shifting the paradigm by looking outward, at the region as a whole. If the autocracies in the Middle East are indeed on the way out--to be replaced by true republcs not in name only--then, at least according to federal theory, they could form a federal union somewhere on a spectrum with the AU, EU, and US. For example, one would not expect it to be as consolidated as the EU. Even so, Israel might just feel more comfortable with there bieng other democracies in the region, such that it might agree to join a union as long as there are strong minority rights (yet without too many areas subject to vetos, which tend to render a union impotent).  

The full essay is at "Could a Middle Eastern Union Cool the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?"

Free Speech in the EU: On the Judgement on John Galliano's Anti-Semitism

On March 1, 2011, Sidney Toledano, CEO of the French fashion house Christian Dior, wrote that he was dismissing its chief designer, John Galliano, after the surfacing of a video that showed "his anti-Semitic outbursts at a Paris bar." The word choice of outbursts by The New York Times is interesting, for the actual video shows him in a rather mellow, notably intoxicated, "well you know" mood. The article's writer admits that the designer had used "a slurred voice." Galliano was telling a Jewish couple that they should feel lucky that their ancestors were not killed by the Nazis because so many did not survive. He said ‘‘people like you would be dead,’’ and  ‘‘your mothers, your forefathers’’ could have all be ‘‘gassed.’’ Although applying a rational criterion to a drunk man, I wonder in what sense he meant ‘‘I love Hitler.’’ Considering that Galliano is gay and Hitler sent homosexuals to concentration camps, I suspect that Galliano was lying simply to hurt the couple in what was undoubtedly a back-and-forth in a verbal fight.  Indeed, it takes two to tangle, and the rest of us might do well to recognize the difficulty in interpreting a snipet without having observed the entire contest.

The full essay is at "Free Speech in the E.U."

Financial Sector Lobbyists Put the Republic at Risk: The Case of the U.S. Senate Bill on Financial Reform in 2010

Considering the gravity of the risk in Wall Street banks being too big to fail, the financial reform bill passed by the US Senate in 2010 may have been influenced too much by the financial interests. It can thus serve as a good case study for how a republic can be subject to too much influence from the moneyed interests. It could be asked, moreover, whether there is an inevitable trajectory that a polity undergoes from being a republic to becoming a plutocracy (ruled by the wealthy).

The full essay is at "Anti-regulatory Wall Street Lobbyists After the Financial Crisis."

Sources:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/us/politics/23lobby.html?scp=2&sq=financial%20lobbying&st=cse ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/business/24reform.html?hp ; WSJ (May 26, 2010).

Betraying an Electorate: On President Obama's Deal with Drug Companies

While campaigning for the U.S. presidency in 2008, U.S. President Obama decried the greedy Republican lawmakers acting at the behest of the drug companies to keep drug prices artificially high. A year later, those same drug companies wanted Obama to oppose a Democratic proposal that was intended to bring down the prices of medicine. Beyond betraying those voters who voted for him based on his campaign rhetoric on drug prices, Obama belied the trust that is necessary for a viable republic to function democratically.

The full essay is at "Betraying an Electorate."

Religion and Politics: Russian Orthodox Patriarch Helped Syria’s Assad Regime

In the wake of yet another Syrian massacre of civilians, including families being shot at close-range in their own houses, the New York Times published a report in 2012 that claimed that Russian priests and theologians commiserated with diplomats from Damascus at the opening of an exhibition devoted to Syrian Christianity in a cathedral near the Kremlin. While it is understandable that the Kremlin would not want to lose its “longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East,” it is perhaps less palatable for Christian prelates and doctors of the Russian Orthodox Church to essentially look the other way on atrocities so the Syrian Christians, many of whom are Orthodox, won’t be pushed under the bus in a wave of Islamic fundamentalism that could be unleashed should Assad fall from power. The Syrian Christians were reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition to Assad for fear of being persecuted by the Sunnis should they gain power.

                                     Clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church                                  NYT

The full essay is at "Russian Patriarch Helped Assad."