GALACTIC MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

 How many times must a person look up / Before they can see the sky? ~ Bob Dylan 

For some time now - beginning very early Wednesday morning on November 6th - the sun has been setting on the Biden administration.  

Since then, the Dems have been conducting extended post-mortem finger-pointings on why and how the Repubs and president-elect Donald Trump (the Lyin’ King) successfully captured the federal government trifecta. Triple ouch! Unlike the Dems, the Repubs are understandably licking their chops. 

Nevertheless, the federal government continues operating despite challenges by MAGA radicals. During the remaining 13 days before Donald Trump assumes the presidency, Joe Biden and his cohorts appear to be doing what they can to get some satisfying stuff done, especially if it will complicate Mr. Trump’s presidency. One example is Biden’s prohibiting future oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of US waters in parts of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and even the Northern Bering Sea. Take that Donald! 

But why didn’t President Biden and Congress pass a law giving citizenship to Dreamers, as they were promised long ago? A fine question. Should we be pleased that most of the prior federal government trifectas have only lasted 2 years? Maybe. 

So we can lament that congressional Dems haven’t managed to appoint even more liberal-ish judges to our federal courts; something they should have been doing way before now but didn’t find time for. And bemoan that the president hasn’t somehow reduced the almost stratospheric price of arabica coffee beans – a 30% wholesale price increase in just the last several months – that has us coffee drinkers in a tizzy. We’re again remined (thankfully) that presidents have next to no power to reduce individual goods’ prices, despite their sometime claims. 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has principal federal responsibility for sustaining market competition by prohibiting anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and other business practices that could lead to higher prices, fewer alternatives and/or less invention. Ms. Lina Kahn was appointed by President Biden as Chair of the FTC on June 15, 2021. Although she’s been running the FTC a relatively short time, Ms. Kahn has aggressively pushed to reduce market concentration held by giant US businesses. However, Chair Khan’s remaining tenancy as FTC Chair is now expected to be quite short, assuming the 47th president wants to bother with the FTC. 

Under her leadership the FTC has strengthened its pro-consumer emphasis, with particular focus on M&A deals. Unfortunately, the FTC’s efforts to limit large M&A activities, have been decidedly mixed with more legal losses than wins. 

One recent success was the FTC’s opposition to the merger of two large grocery store chains – Kroger’s efforts to purchase Albertsons. Last month a US judge in Oregon blocked the merger in a ruling agreeing with the FTC that this merger would end up harming consumers and lead to higher prices. Kroger is the second largest grocery store chain in the US, behind the behemoth Walmart; Albertsons is the fourth largest. Will egg prices – the recently-discovered talisman of consumer well-being – dramatically decrease as a result? Unlikely, but it’s the thoughts that count. 

At this point, it's too late for Dems to do any more about promoting reductions in US market concentration. Soon-to-be President Trump’s heart and soul believes that concentration of corporate power should be promoted, not stymied. 

Ms. Kahn should focus her attention on something far more consequential – very large-scale M&A. I’m talking about President Biden appointing her to lead a new agency perhaps akin to the recently created and wholly unformal, Trumpian Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It’s headed by the conceitedly-focused duo of Elan Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (M&R). Let them begin their promised, Sisyphean attempt to reduce the federal government’s budget by $2 trillion (29.6% of total FY2024 federal spending). A little trimming would probably be useful. But don’t hold your breath. Reducing the federal budget by almost 30% ain’t gonna happen. Why? Because M&R will fiscally need to step on too many influential political toes to cut even 10% of discretionary federal spending over a multi-year period. 

Instead, Ms. Kahn should evoke Bob Dylan’s stalwart Blowin’ in the Wind lyrics (see above), swiftly resign as Chair of the FTC and look skyward to observe the vast amount of M&A happening in the heavens. President Biden will promptly create the Transgalactic Trade Commission (TTC) and have Ms. Kahn serve as its initial Grand Leader. It will be an opportunity of a lifetime for her, given her interest in combating M&A. This time on a galactic scale. 

Sure, there’ll be a starship’s worth of challenges in crafting the TTC, but potentially it will be worth far more than the efforts that has been invested in its creation. If the Biden administration can commit to providing $8 billion in last-minute aid to Israel’s defense, offering a tiny fraction of additional funding to create the TTC should work. Assuming no unexpected challenges (who’s kidding whom, but …), I hope in several years the TCC will be able to tender 25% of the FTC’s current average number of legal case submissions in federal courts. 

Is there heavenly M&A? For sure. The image below from the Hubble Space Telescope shows 2 galaxies in the process of merging to eventually form another, even larger galaxy. 

NGC 6040 & LEDA 59642 merging to create ARP 122

This image shows the tilted, warped spiral galaxy on the left (NGC 6040) merging with the round, face-on spiral galaxy on the right (LEDA 59642) to form the combined ARP 122 super-galaxy. This cosmic merger is taking place 570 million light-years away from Earth’s spot in in the Milky Way galaxy. Referencing the galactic scheme of things, 570M light-years is considered a significant distance even by astronomers. For comparison, the closest major galaxy to us, Andromeda, is a mere 2.5M light-years from Earth. But reducing M&A activity on a galactic scale no matter where it’s located can be a worthy effort. 

The Milky Way, our neighborhood in the universe, is a small-ish barred spiral galaxy spanning more than 100,000 light-years. Its disk contains 100-400 billion stars and at least that number of planets. The Earth and our solar system is perched about halfway from our galactic center, along one of its spiral arms. 

According to recent cosmological calculations based on observations from the Hubble and others of the more than 40 space-based telescopes now circling the earth, there are at least 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. From this appraisal, astrophysicists think that between 5% and 25% of these galaxies are merging with or being acquired by other galaxies. 

Because there’s an incomprehensively vast number of galaxies twinkling in our skies, even a relatively small number of those actively merging with one another (say, 5%) translates into a gigantic number of galaxies merging or being acquired. OMG! This grandiose, heavenly M&A activity that may produce even more dark matter desperately needs to be managed by none other than Ms. Kahn. Rather than drift in the amorphous realm of what I might do for my next job, is Lina Kahn willing to up her game and become the initial Grand Leader at the TTC, and rise above the challenges to reign in transgalactic M&A? I hope so.