Let’s Milk That Cash Cow — Apple and the Government
1st March 2014
The U.S. Department of Justice has not only successfully sued Apple for arguably non-existent anti-trust violations in the e-book market. It has even demanded – and gotten – a court-appointed “monitor” placed inside the company to supervise the company’s pricing decisions.
This is a company that went from an $18 billion market value in 2000 to a $455 billion market value in 2013. During the same period, Microsoft’s market value fell from $603 billion to $290 billion. Should anyone expect the success story to continue now that the government is meddling with all the company’s pricing?
Apple appealed the anti-trust judgment this Tuesday but was unable to get the government “monitor’s” work suspended while the case is under appeal. Among the interesting facts that have come out about the “monitor,” Michael Bromwich, it has been revealed that he bills for his time at $1,100 an hour and charged $138,432 for his first two weeks of “work.”
Apple has labeled Bromwich’s appointment “unprecedented and unconstitutional.” We wish it were unprecedented. This form of government price interference and intimidation has become increasingly common.
Joseph Covington, who headed the Justice Department’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Division in the 1980s, told Forbes, in reference to monitors appointed to enforce that act, “This is good business for Justice Department lawyers who create the marketplace [for monitors] and then get… a job there [after they leave government].”
‘Hm. Over $100 billion in cash. Ought to be a way we could get a taste of that.’