While we were preoccupied with trying to stop the Inflation Acceleration Act, this headline appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. We are still haunted by the economic implications:
We warned that this woman was a dangerous nutcase, and our worst fears have been confirmed. Lina Khan is a 30-something left-wing university professor who has zero real-world business experience. Now she is passing judgment on multi-billion dollar deals?
The most worrisome revelation in the WSJ article is how Ms. Kahn’s hostility to mergers is changing behavior in the marketplace. Why bother to spend millions on a merger and millions more litigating with the FTC just to get shot down by someone whose greatest business responsibility may have been a childhood lemonade stand? It’s a chilling example of how Biden’s unelected regulators can stunt business growth by their presence.
Ms. Kahn seems completely ignorant of the economic reality that on balance mergers and acquisitions are critical to American economic competitiveness and the sprouting of new businesses. Mergers add value to firms (and the 100 million plus Americans who own stock) and in most cases, it is the shareholders of the acquired companies, not the acquiring companies that come out way ahead. We are now living in a global marketplace where Lina Kahn’s concerns about monopolies are as outdated as trolley cars.
She is blocking mergers in airlines, restaurants, publishers, tech companies, auto dealerships, service stations, and on and on.
Starting around Labor Day Joe Biden is going to barnstorm across the country to celebrate the $750 billion IRA. Will anyone participate in the festivities?
Latest NBC poll: 71% of Americans believe the "Inflation Reduction Act" will either make things worse for them or not make any difference.
Yes, we know things are bleak in Washington, but is anyone noticing that Republicans are dominating at the state level? Ballotpedia just updated the charts on The partisan composition of state legislatures. This refers to which political party holds the majority of seats in the State Senate and State House. Altogether, there are 1,972 state senators and 5,411 state representatives.
The breakdown of chamber control after the November 2021 election is as follows:
In the state houses the partisan breakdown is:
Alec predicts that after this year’s November elections Republicans could control two-thirds of all state legislative chambers. The majority of states could have the Republican trifecta: a GOP House, Senate, and Governor.
Note , Fauci stepping down in December just before any GOP takeover of Congress.
Liz Truss, the clear frontrunner to become Britain’s next Prime Minister, has ruled out imposing new lockdowns during future pandemics.
The current Foreign Secretary told voters she privately opposed Boris Johnson’s call for lockdowns but they were “presented as a fait accompli” in Cabinet and not open for discussion. “Every single time I was given the chance to express a view I was on the side of doing less,” Truss said.
Truss has also energized grassroots conservatives by putting tax cuts at the heart of her campaign: “I will get the private sector growing faster than the public sector, with a long-term plan to bring down the size of the state and the tax burden…. including bold supply-side reform.”
Her political prospects look bright. She has a clear lead over Rishi Sunak, a former Treasury secretary, to win the Conservative balloting. And a new poll gives her a small lead over the opposition Labor Party if a new election were called in the new future.
She’s no Margaret Thatcher, but could lead Britain out of its economic doldrums.
