O Lord let's bust OPEC but not yet

Tough talk in Congress about prosecuting the illegal cartel will go nowhere. But when the current crisis passes we'll have every reason to act against this blatant violation of U.S. antitrust law.

It seems odd not to recognize Columbus Day on the West Side of New York City, where I’m staying for a few days to see family and take in assorted cultural offerings. Twenty blocks south there’s a circle named for the Genoan born Cristoforo Colombo and known to his Spanish sponsors as Cristóbal Colón. Four blocks to the east there’s an avenue named for that same Genoan, and 40 blocks to the north there’s a distinguished university named for him that doesn’t, interestingly, take Columbus Day off, not even by renaming it Indigenous Peoples’ Day. So happy Columbus Day to all who celebrate, and Happy Indigenous People’s Day to all who do not.

I’ve been writing for two decades that OPEC is an illegal cartel, first in Slate and now in the New Republic. My latest for TNR endorses, once again, NOPEC, the proposed law that would free the courts to prosecute OPEC as a violation of U.S. antitrust law. I further explain that the courts actually possess that power now, but refuse to exercise it on the flimsiest possible legal grounds—grounds that NOPEC is designed to remove. I relate (trigger warning) the grisliest aspects of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder at the hands of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by way of expressing sympathy for those who were appalled by President Joe Biden’s friendly fist bump with the crown prince in July. Still, at the risk of echoing St. Augustine* (“O Lord make me chaste but not yet”), I submit that Biden didn’t really have much choice, and that the time to bust OPEC is not now, when Vladimir Putin is waging war on Ukraine and we can’t risk a complete oil cutoff. The time to bust OPEC is when oil prices are low and there’s little prospect of their rising again soon. We have been through many such times during the past two decades. Unfortunately, whenever it happens we forget all about the illegal oil cartel and let OPEC off the hook. You can read my piece here.

Last week I wrote that it’s no longer sufficient to say that CEO pay, far from rewarding performance at an individual company, rises along with the stock market. It actually rises well in excess of the stock market. Capitalists, grotesquely, now out-earn capitalism itself, and there’s no end to this plunder in sight. I propose laying in four new top marginal income-tax brackets. Jacking the corporate tax rate above today’s pathetic 21 percent would be helpful, too. You can read that here.

*An earlier version of this piece misattributed this quotation to Thomas Aquinas, prompting much ridicule from Backbencher’s very brainy audience.