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The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

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Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#171

Post by elil17 »

abeppu wrote: post #167

Ok here's maybe a dumb or maybe a crazy question or maybe not: - the Fed has price stability as part of its dual mandate, and in its normal operation does this at the level of manipulating the money supply for everyone, through changing the interest rates given to large banks (IIUC, I'm def not an expert here) - the FTC has as its primary mission anti-trust enforcement and consumer protection. During the last adminis…

I don't think this makes sense for two reasons:

- The ways the Fed pursues price stability and the FTC produces antitrust may have a similar effect, but they have a completely different set of skills required by the employees and they lend themselves to different management structures. One is essentially economics research, the other is essentially law enforcement.

- If the cost of doing a crime was higher interest rates, then anyone with low debt could freely commit the crime. Why not simply make the fine proportional to the price impact on consumers (e.g. if you collude to raise prices and make an extra $1 million, you pay a $3 million fine)?

Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#172

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

a123b456c wrote: post #124
joe_the_user wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most true small businesses can't exist in markets with a lot of competition. Highly competitive markets have a lot of fluctuation and businesses with little capital fold when there's a downturn. In fact, most markets naturally go from high competition to monopoly or oligopoly. You can see this in chips, cars, airplanes, steel, ecommerce(Amazon) and beyond. Indeed, many oligopoly situations only fail to be monopolies…

False. There is no Economic Law of Consolidation such as you posit here. Haircuts are a mature market, yet plenty of small providers thrive. Counterexamples to your extraordinary claim abound. The actual economics in highly competitive markets depend on what is known as the Minimum Efficient Scale, which in turn depends on the shape of the cost function.

Haircutting doesn't scale. It is labor intensive and there is no way to increase productivity.

Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#173

Post by elil17 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #138
throwway120385 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major egg supplier for most of the grocery stores decided not to buy as many pullets to replace the ones they culled from Avian Flu, and then the second and third largest also followed suit. As a result there was a bug supply crunch that coincided with Avian Flu cullings. Unless Biden was there making command decisions about how many pullets to buy that year he had nothing to do with it.

Not disagreeing, but all I heard was Biden-flation (or whatever they called it) was why we needed a new President.

Perhaps people were lying to you in order to make you want that new president...

Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#175

Post by autoexec »

I've known about Cal-Maine's scammy practices for years. It's difficult to know which brands are associated with a group like Cal-Maine, but I did my best at one point to get a list which I still check before buying eggs.

The brands I've been avoiding are:

    4Grain Cage Free
    Egglands Best
    Farmhouse Eggs
    Land O'Lakes
    Fassio Egg Farms
    Southwest Specialty Eggs LLC
    Rocky Mountain Eggs
    Meadowcreek Foods
    Specialty Eggs LLC
    Red River Valley Egg Farm
    ProEgg Inc. 
    Dixie Egg Co. 
    American Egg Products LLC
    Texas Egg Products LLC
    Wharton County foods
    Benton County Foods
    Sunups
    Sunny Meadow
    Mahard Egg Farm
    Maine Egg Farms
Other Cal-Maine associated brands: Ralston-Purina, Pilgram's Pride, Adams Foods, Dairy Fresh Products, Foodonics Int'l,

Versova is new to me, but I'll try to avoid them too. It looks like their brands include:

    Center Fresh Group
    Centrum Valley Farms
    Iowa Cage FRee
    Hawkeye pride
    Ovation Farms
    Trillium Farms
    Willamette Egg Farms

Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#176

Post by foolswisdom »

DaedalusII wrote: post #47
tancop wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we dont need new punishments, the system is just backwards. for things like shoplifting and vandalism it should be double or triple damages with no prison. corporate fraud, cartels, pollution, big time tax evasion has to come with 20+ year sentences and fines based on your income like a traffic violation in norway. flat fines just dont work when the criminal is rich. in general we should be a lot more strict on sexua…

[flagged]

I recently read Economic Policy and Law in America (by William Letwin) and he discusses a bit (in the context of the early slow enforcement of the Sherman act) the fact that ultimately a prosecutor has limited resources, and any allocation comes at the expense of something else, so priorities absolutely do matter. And the prosecutor's office will coordinate with other law enforcement of course...

Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#177

Post by foolswisdom »

WarmWash wrote: post #148

Seems ripe for civil litigation at least. Even if criminal charges are a slap on the wrist, civil damages could easily get into the billions. And good luck finding a jury that doesn't remember the national outcry about egg prices back then. I think the craziest part of the story is how brazen the execs were. Although what they were doing (price steering in an illiquid market) might well not be illegal, it pretty blat…

Maybe so, but the DOJ is not releasing lots of the evidence. I wonder if there's a solid enough case without that.

Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#178

Post by khriss »

gruez wrote: post #68
khriss wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the trick seems to be to kill thousands rather than one. Then you have the full might of the law out to protect you. Exhibit A is the Sacklers family.

Again, no. If some drug company killed a single person with a weird side effect that they buried, do you think it'll be discovered, much less prosecuted? The Sacklers got prosecuted because the opiod epidemic was huge, not because they passed some magical threshold so it's magically fine.

> The Sacklers got prosecuted because the opiod epidemic was huge

Sure, but which one of them is in prison? Now compare the prison time an avg person would get for theft.

Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#179

Post by pstuart »

jackb4040 wrote: post #120
pstuart wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I give Dems a partial pass -- in that their leadership engages in what I consider to be genteel corruption like being soft on monopolies and other less palatable but "business as usual" type of bullshit. This is versus and administration that is aggressively doing no-bid contract to family and friends, complete disregard for the emoluments clause of the constitution, etc. Note: the nature of a 2-party system, along w…

That aggression is a powerful political force. If democrats had used the same aggression to go after this type of corruption that Trump uses to go after latin americans, they would have ironclad popular support. The problem is that all their donors would withdraw. That contradiction is destroying them, they don't have an answer for it. It lost them the 2024 election, and will continue to do so until they invent anoth…

The news recently said that numerous Democratic Socialist candidates have been successful -- I think that's the necessary future of the party as a whole. The DNC is corrupt as fuck and gives substance to the "both sides are the same" complaint (in regards to craven subjugation to their corporate overlords).

The real enemy of change is campaign financing, which the current SCOTUS has continued to erode any possible protections. FFS, "money is speech and therefore protected" -- that it was accepted without being subjected to pitchforks and torches is mind-blowing.

Re: The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

#180

Post by autoexec »

Aurornis wrote: post #166
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #91

I did not realize the egg crisis was found to be price fixing operation. As I recall during the whole thing the news was non-stop about how it was related to broad-based inflation, chicken culling for avian flu, etc. Seems like all that was a lie, or at least merely a half-truth.

The avian flu pandemic started in early 2022. I looked up old news articles and a lot of them are dated February 2022. It really did increase egg prices. The collusion quotes in this article start in October 2022, though it doesn't say exactly when the collusion started. As far as I can tell, avian flu did create a supply shock, which did raise prices. When the avian flu problem started going away, the egg companies…

According to one lawsuit, Cal-Maine wasn't impacted at all by the avian flu, they just jacked prices up 270% anyway while using the avian flu as an excuse.

> Meanwhile, in context and during the class period, egg producers like Cal-Maine increased egg prices by as much as 270% in 2023 despite having zero Avian Flu outbreaks in their egg laying hen layers on Cal-Maine affiliated farms (https://www.classaction.org/news/antitrust-lawsuit-says-prod...)

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