Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction

This is a must read. The two main points that impacted me are: 1. I was once a US Citizen, I'm now a US Consumer. Ronald Reagan took care of that and 2. The "Tea Party" movement is attacking the US Government when it should be attacking Corporate America. Currently, Corporate America is running the US Government as opposed to its citizens (consumers).

Besides being a terrific read, Cornered is a profoundly important and powerfully disturbing book. In the area of pharmaceuticals, the industry I know best, intense competition still exists, and thus Pharma might not seem to fall into the category of a monopoly. Even so, this book captures much of what has gone wrong in that particular corner of American capitalism. I now understand better why the drug industry has become larger and larger with fewer and fewer companies, and that other industries also substitute marketing for real innovation. Most disturbing of all is the out-sized political power that huge profits and consolidation provide. The founders of this country were very clear about the need to balance the power of branches of government in order to curb the tendency toward authoritarianism and tyranny, but excessive corporate power can be just as dangerous. Cornered offers a strong argument against the prevailing and near-religious faith in the power of the so-called "free market" to make us all rich and cure all our social ills.

This is one of the best books I have ever read AND I believe it is one of the most important books that we will see in many years. Our world has changed and Lynn is the first to tell us how.Ron

As Thomas Frank of the Wall Street Journal put it (3/3/10) . "Barry C. Lynn's recent book, "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction," has about it the feel of a secret history. It arises directly from the old antitrust tradition, and it presents us with an amazing catalogue of present-day monopolies, oligopolies and economic combinations. Its subjects are, by definition, some of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world. And yet almost none of it was familiar to me.... Mr. Lynn tells us, for example, about the power of single companies or small groups of companies over such disparate fields as eyeglasses, certain categories of pet food, washer-dryer sales, auto parts, many aspects of food processing, surfboards, medical syringes--and that the same situation would almost certainly exist in the sacred beer market were it not for the peculiarities of local alcoholic-beverage regulations.... This is, we are often reminded, a populist age, with fresh flare-ups of fury every time Wall Street bonuses hit the headlines. And in Mr. Lynn's combination of outrage against "the rich" and reverence for the country's democratic tradition, he seems to capture the sensibility of the times perfectly. "Cornered" could well become a sort of manifesto for our time, a road map for a revival of the old antitrust sentiment." This book is a must read. Run don't walk to your local bookstore.

Every American needs to read this book. Especially the tea party types. The massive consolidation of corporate America has led to virtually all of our recent problems. Among them: rapid offshoring, loss of product safety, the squeezing of small business and the middle class, the corruption of government and especially congress, the too big to fail syndrome, the routine corporate corruption, etc. These problems will continue until we strongly reassert our anti-trust laws that Reagan decided to ignore and every president since has refused to enforce including Obama. If we don't fix this, plan on the US assuming third world status soon.