51 Antitrust Enforcers: 50 Too Many
cato.org | at | by Mike
Thanks to ActiveWin for this link.
It's been 10 years since the Microsoft antitrust case began. The cost of the litigation - in time, money, and diversion of executive resources - has been enormous. With the nation transfixed by Enron's $60 billion collapse, it's worth recalling that Microsoft's shareholders suffered an $80 billion erosion in market value on a single day - April 3, 2000, when Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his conclusions of law.
If that sounds like two bites at the apple for the non-settling states, double jeopardy for Microsoft, and a waste of taxpayer resources, that's exactly what it is. Forty-one of 50 states accept the Justice Department's assessment that the settlement advances the public interest. Thirty of those states didn't even sue Microsoft, two others abandoned the suit, and nine more signed onto the settlement. That left the District of Columbia and nine seceding states asserting that Congress intended their view of the public interest to displace the view of the Justice Department. They would substitute themselves as enforcers of the federal antitrust laws.