High Standards … an East Bay guitar-organ-drums trio. Nice groove. Young players who can channel Grant Green’s funky 70s sound as perhaps here  Live at Club Mozambique

The Clayton Act and the Dow settlement

This made the headlines today. The staggering sum of 1. ish billion made me look just a bit further. Apparently there’s something called ‘treble’ under the Clayton Act (of 1914!) which allows the judge to triple the fine for anti-trust violation. $400 worth of damages were estimated by the buyers of the urethane from the price-fixing cartel which included Dow. About $200 mil has been already returned to the plaintiffs from other members of the cartel (including BASF and Bayer). The lawsuit was originally filed in 2004 and has since gone through appeals and was in the holding pattern at the supreme court ( ‘urethane antitrust litigation’ ).

To see a 100 year law in action makes me delight in continuity of the legal system in the US. The 10-12 year time frame from suit to settlement is sobering and indicative of how enforceable this law is today. To think that I almost ended up in Midland, MI about 4 years ago …