How times have changed. Two decades ago, perhaps even a decade ago, Exxon and Mobil -- the number one and number two U.S. oil producers -- would not have dared to propose a merger. If they had so dared, the initial public reaction would have been uproarious laughter. If the companies had persisted in their marriage plans over the din of guffaws and snickers, the laughter would have quickly turned to outrage. Newspaper editorials would have denounced the merger. Members of Congress would have thundered about the threat to democracy and called for intensive and immediate hearings. Most importantly, the public would have risen in opposition. There is no chance that the antitrust authorities would have approved such a merger a mere two decades ago. Now, there is a disturbingly good possibility the union will be approved. The reason for the change has less to do with new economic analyses of the costs and benefits of mergers -- though a conservative, corporate-backed campaign has managed to overturn many common-sense insights on the costs of mergers in terms of price increases and the inefficiencies of giant, bloated corporations -- than with the altered conception of the political consequences of corporate conglomeration. When the Teddy Roosevelt-era trustbusters broke up the Standard Oil monopoly, they were motivated by political as much as economic concerns. They understood that concentrated economic power translates into concentrated political power, and that concentrated political power is incompatible with democracy. It is time for the U.S. antitrust authorities to recover that perspective -- and it is increasingly important that antitrust authorities in other nations do the same. A recent United Nations report highlights the importance of recognizing the political implications of mergers and acquisitions. Not only did mergers reach record levels in the United States in 1997, so did cross-border deals. In 1997, total cross-border mergers and acquisitions amounted to $342 billion, according to the United Nations Conference onTrade and Development's 1998 World Investment Report. With the Daimler-Benz takeover of Chrysler, BP buying up Amoco and Deutschebank acquiring Banker's Trust, the 1998 figures seem likely to exceed those from 1997. While it is the giant deals between megacorporations in the industrialized countries that get most of the attention, the hottest trend is multinationals buying up companies in developing countries. Since 1991, cross-border acquisitions of companies in developing nations have risen approximately nine times -- to more than $95 billion in 1997. (While companies are being bought up in the developing world, not many developing country companies are doing much buying. Companies based in the Third World acquired companies in other countries worth under $41 billion in 1997.) According to the UN report, two major factors now account for the rise in the firesale of developing country businesses: privatization, especially in Latin America and Eastern Europe, with national telephone, electricity and other enterprises coming under foreign corporate control; and the Asian economic crisis, which has given multinationals the opportunity to swoop in and buy Asian companies in financial trouble. While it may be the case in some instances that foreign corporate takeovers will lead to more efficient company performance -- for example, AT&T or other multinational telephone companies may improve customer service in some countries -- in general foreign takeovers offer none of the purported benefits of foreign investment. The acquisitions do not create new jobs, they do not generate new economic activity, they do not represent new investment -- they only change the company's name. But these takeovers do present serious problems. Where the takeovers create private monopolies or oligopolies, developing countries will face the standard problems of price-gouging and suppression of innovation. They will also face political problems of immense proportions. The multinationals are often larger in economic terms than the developing countries in which they do business, meaning Third World governments are routinely going to have a very hard time regulating the corporate goliaths.That the company's headquarters are outside of the country, and that the corporation has no allegiance to the country in which it is operating, will make the regulatory challenge that much more difficult. Although rich countries are more able to control foreign-owned economic powers operating in their borders, they too are likely to find foreign ownership to be a growing problem. U.S. history makes crystal clear the imperative of paying attention to the political consequences of merger mania. But if the U.S. antitrust agencies cannot seem to remember and draw lessons from that history, perhaps it should be no surprise that their counterparts in other countries seem equally oblivious. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Focus on the Corporation is a weekly column written by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman. Please feel free to forward the column to friends or repost the column on other lists. 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