The economic crisis of the 1970s spurred corporations and high-income individuals to increased levels of activism, giving vast sums of money to promote conservative think tanks, conservative economists, and conservatives in law. We believe the memo is but a piece of a larger puzzle ignored by the authors above. Paul Tucker claims the memo is “more akin to a piece of political punditry than a careful policy note weighing the pros and cons of transforming antitrust policy, or asking what might plausibly go wrong.” He laments that those writing the memo did not perhaps seek to disperse political power. Peinert points to the Horizontal Merger Guidelines revisions as proof that “Reagan officials knew their revised guidelines were out of step with the original intent of the Clayton Act, Congressional understanding of its purpose, judicial precedent, and popular sentiment.” Hovenkamp argued the transition was not so dramatic and that “the memorandum and Reagan era antitrust policy is…a continuation of policies that originated in the Nixon administration.”Įrik Peinert pushes back against Hovenkamp’s view. Herb Hovenkamp responded to Stoller, arguing that the memo was not the “smoking gun” that Stoller thought. In April, Matt Stoller argued that a 1980 memo from George Stigler and Richard Posner to Martin Anderson, an economist serving on then-President-elect Reagan’s transition team, was the start of a conspiracy to derail antitrust enforcement. It was more of an association with a singular purpose.
Matt Stoller argues there was a conspiracy.
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