Organized Money

With the federal government largely stepping back from antitrust enforcement, who's picking up the slack? California Attorney General Rob Bonta makes the case that state attorneys general are filling the void,  and he's got the caseload to prove it. David and Matt speak with Bonta about his remarkable portfolio of active fights: the Ticketmaster/Live Nation trial (which the states pressed forward with after the DOJ settled), a price-fixing case against Amazon, social media addiction suits against Meta and TikTok, and a challenge to the Nexstar/TEGNA local TV merger that could give a single broadcaster control over news in 70% of American households. Bonta doesn’t shy away from describing what he sees in DC as corruption. He also has a direct message for anyone in Hollywood nervous about the Paramount/Warner Brothers investigation: it's not illegal to talk to his office and they want to hear from you.

As bombs started to fall on Iran, some Americans cashed in by placing bets on prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi. These bets paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to users who almost certainly had inside information about the exact timing of the attacks. Similar bets were made on the assassination of Iran's Ayatollah, turning an act of murder into a commodity.

As these markets have come to embrace acts of violence, often rife with insider trading, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has introduced legislation to curb betting on government actions and similar events. His bill, Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and Federal Functions, or the BETS OFF Act, was introduced this past Tuesday.

Today on the show, Matt and David talk to Sen. Murphy about the problem of prediction markets, both political and moral. They also get into the war in Iran, its rudderless trajectory, and the Pentagon’s $200 billion request to continue fighting, perhaps indefinitely. Finally, they discuss how to get out of the morass we have found ourselves in as a country that seems to keep making big, bad decisions, and ask whether Trump and the war are just symptoms of a larger problem plaguing America.

In a shocking turn of events, the federal government settled their longstanding anti-trust action against Live Nation after a week of in-court proceedings. This process was described as “mind-boggling” by the judge, and surprised counsel on both sides along with many states’ attorneys generals who are also suing Live Nation. 

Today on the show we break down the case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster (which it acquired back in 2010) with two guests: Gigi Liman, who is reporting on the trail for bigtechontrial.com, and Tommy Dorfman, a live music promoter who has been in litigation with Live Nation for over a decade. Together with Matt and David they break down the proceedings, how Live Nation uses mafia-like tactics to secure its monopoly, and where the case goes from here as states pick up the prosecutorial baton from a compromised federal justice department. 

This week we discuss the recently rediscovered history of midcentury lighting, the elegant modernist style of lamps and fixtures that emerged in small design firms and flourished from the 1940s through the 70s. By that point, they were being consumed by megacorporations that flattened their products’ quality and style, and they gradually drifted out of fashion, and memory. 

This style was spearheaded by a company called Modeline, but until recently dealers and scholars alike often misattributed their work and the work of similar designers. Our guest today is Nick Ferrell, a dealer, author of Modeline of California: Pioneer of Modern Lighting, and proprietor of Estheticvintage, who has been instrumental in correcting the record. Together we discuss the history of these nature-inspired lamps, how a spirit of artistic openness and economic solidarity fostered these beautiful objects, and how greed and consolidation spelled their end. 

In a shocking move this week, Netflix declined to raise its bid against Paramount for control of Warner Bros. After months of corporate tug-of-war, Paramount and David Ellison have taken a giant step towards controlling Warner Bros’ linear television assets, including CNN, its streaming service HBO Max, and its film studio, which just had a blockbuster year. Without question, this deal will lead to mass layoffs, fewer shops to sell work to in Hollywood, and leverage massive debt against Paramount: so why is Paramount and Trump-World so desperate for it, and why did Netflix get cold feet? Today on the show, Matt and David dig into the deal, its questionable legality, and how antitrust objections may play out from both federal and state attorneys general. 

Besides data centers, climate change, and regulatory capture, there is yet another reason utility rates are far outpacing inflation: private equity! On this episode, we try to understand why investor-owned utilities, which provide electricity to the majority of Americans, continue to reap profits at the expense of their customers. These entities are supposed to be regulated by state governments, but why is enforcement often so toothless? And why does venture capital want to get involved in something as thin-margined as utilities?

To answer that, we are joined by Marissa Gillett, a former utility regulator and senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, along with James Baratta, a writing fellow at The American Prospect. Together, we try to untangle some of the regulatory spaghetti and dig into James’ recent reporting on the venture capital firm Blackstone’s bid to acquire a New Mexico utility, and the stock deal that could undo it if regulators are brave enough to follow the law.

The Epstein files lay bare the impunity the rich and powerful possess as a social class: The Epstein class. Today on the show, Matt and David dig into the Epstein files with one of the congressmen responsible for their release: Representative Ro Khanna. We discuss what the Epstein files tell us about the influence that wealth affords the people who run our economy and institutions: People like Bill Gates, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and countless less-famous people who structure the world we live in, but are seemingly accountable to no rules at all. They also discuss Khanna’s recent decision to name some of the men listed in the unredacted files, how it feels to work with victims seeking justice, and how the government can restore trust with Americans in a post-Epstein world. 

After the government announced new regulations for Medicare Advantage, the market-based alternative to traditional Medicare, the stocks of healthcare companies that participate in the program plummeted. But why is this popular program in the crosshairs? And are these new Trump Administration rules actually...good?

Today on the show, Olivia Kosloff, senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and creator of the newsletter Acute Condition, joins Matt and David to discuss Medicare Advantage and how a program that was intended to be cheaper for the government than traditional Medicare has become far more expensive. In addition to problems that have plagued the program since its inception, AI is now being used as a new tool for insurers to extract money from the government. They also discuss how insurers are reacting to the new rules, the future of the program, and whether we need Medicare Advantage at all.

As The Department and Homeland Security and ICE see their budget balloon, anything unrelated to to immigration is getting short shrift. Today on the show, Matt and David talk to Richard Powers, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at The Justice Department, and the former Acting Assistant Attorney General at the Antitrust Division, to discuss the consequences of ignoring antitrust and white collar crime. They discuss the post-DOGE state of The Justice Department, the culture of prosecution (or lack thereof) that dominated the antitrust division through the Obama and first Trump era, and how to make budgeting antitrust a priority. 

We tend to think of the law as a public asset - centuries of statutes, common law, and legal precedents that shape how society governs itself. So why is the law itself so hard and so expensive to access? 

Matt and David talk with Mike Lissner of the Free Law Project about the quiet duopoly that controls legal information, how Westlaw and LexisNexis turned public court records into pricey commodities, and why even the federal government charges by the page to read your own laws. Along the way, they uncover a system that drives up legal costs, shuts regular people out of justice, creates real security risks, and stifles innovation and explore how a scrappy nonprofit might finally crack it open.