Dear Dale Wharton: The case against the investment bankers discussed by
Seldes was eventually dismissed in 1953 in a famous decision by the
infamous judge Harold Medina, who found that the 17 investment banking
defendants "went their own and several ways" and that no conspiracy was
every carried out by the defendants. Medina completely ignored the
evidence of tacit collusion and the ways in which oligopolists lead,
follow, meet prices and evolve systems of "conscious parallelism of
action" to avoid crude conspiracy and to allow establishment hacks like
Medina to protect their oligopolistic behavior. The decision was no
surprise--the system works.
Sincerely, Ed Herman
