The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. BUSINESS
The Federal Trade Commission tries to block the merger of the Whole Foods and Wild Oats supermarket chains.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Center for Entrepreneurship Director John Berlau on the potential winners and losers in the deal:
“If the Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger is stopped, the main beneficiary would be not small organic stores, but a certain company called Wal-Mart. Yes, that Wal-Mart! The one that everyone complains is so big and powerful. But it would benefit from antitrust laws in this case and probably in others involving retail mergers. It is one of the biggest sellers now of organic food, as it is of many things, and if it didn’t have a powerful Whole Foods competing against it, it would likely have even more of this market.”
2. SAFETY
Federal and state officials prepare for the Atlantic hurricane season.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer on how the states have reacted differently to the storm threat:
“[I]n the wake of soaring post Hurricane Katrina rates, nearly every hurricane-prone state implemented insurance reforms. In most places, these reforms involved states taking on liability for their citizens: Florida, as I write about in the current Weekly Standard, could well go bankrupt. While states like Texas and Mississippi won’t go bankrupt, they will likely need to raise taxes on everyone to pay for the massive bailouts of mostly well off homeowners. South Carolina, on the other hand, has decided to provide some immediate relief and otherwise get out of the way.”
3. ENVIRONMENT
Greenpeace commissions a photo shoot of 600 volunteers lying naked on a Swiss glacier, to bring attention to the alleged perils of global warming.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on what we really know about glaciers:
“First and foremost, people assert we know a lot about glaciers, but we don’t. We know next to nothing about glacial activity, but what we do know suggests there are as many expanding glaciers as there are shrinking ones (this even happens with two glaciers within a few miles of each other) and that there is no universal trend either way. There are more than 160,000 glaciers on the planet. Scientists have good, long-term (20-year or more) mass balance measurements on a comparative handful of them.”
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
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