Drinking Together

ANHEUSER BUSCH Inc., which is owned by a European holding company, and the Miller Brewing company, are poised to become one, on two conditions. Busch must present an acceptable offer within a month, and the merger must be approved by anti-trust officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The first condition might prove a bit prickly; hard bargaining corporations frequently fail to reach financial terms. The second condition, on the other hand, seems easily surmountable. Corporate mergers are endemic; there has been an avalanche of them since 1980, when the neo-liberal, anti-regulatory economic philosophy took firm hold of the American economy with the election of Ronald Reagan. Actually, Jimmy Carter got the monopolistic ball rolling late in his first and only term as president; Reagan took it to new heights. If the alcoholic marriage is allowed to proceed, four fifths of the beer industry in the U.S. would be in the hands of a single corporation, and because of this there is speculation that the deal will never pass muster. But why worry? Yes, the telephone monopoly was broken up in the nineteen eighties, but anti-trust enforcement hasn't been heard from since, and in every major industry the number of competitors has dwindled to a vanishingly small few. In 1890 the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was legislated as a defense of free market capitalism against the rapacious business appetites of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Mellon. In 1914, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act reinforced the prior legislation and put teeth in it, closing loopholes. but over the past thirty five years, combinations in restraint of trade have largely been given a green light, as the feds looked the other way. Chances are we'll soon all be drinking from the same barrel, the barrel, unfettered by any large scale competition, will increase in price, and all the profits will be going to an elite few. Enter the era of micro breweries. Bottoms up.