the Market Soul © 1999 - 2011 Headlines

Saturday 30 July 2011

An Aggregated Challenge

[A forgotten article from mid 2010]


Conspiracy theories!  

Today we express an opinion on the phenomenon of ‘governmental’ economic landscape shaping.

Interference whether actively pursued or via involuntary actions heightens our sense of concern by the effects that the aggregation of supply and therefore the encouragement, either directly or indirectly of oligopolistic and monopolistic market structures, is having on the global competitive landscape.

It has occurred in the financial services sector and it happening in the oil industry too.

Even though the barriers to entry are relatively high, having fewer competitors on the scene cannot be a good thing.

The trends we are spotting in the competitive landscape are as follows:

Imperfect competitive firms (many market participants with differentiated products and services) are being deluged with over burdensome bureaucratic regulatory requirements, shifting some of these additional transaction costs onto the ultimate (final) consumers, whilst in strategically important industrial complexes, such as energy supply, the aggregation effect is indirectly encouraged to ensure that national strategic and security interests are promoted.

Funny old thing, economic theory then…

theMarketSoul ©2010


[An article we wrote in mid 2010 during the height of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, but somehow never published.  The theory is just as relevant today when we speak about the Debt Ceiling crisis...]

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