Anti-Trust Law Analyze and criticize the statement: The strategy of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and other U.S. antimonopoly legislation is to ensure that each company has meaningful competitors in every product market in which it participates. This strategy works to prevent monopoly pricing of products but unfortunately it is inadequate to prevent the development of quasi-political control of entire societies by oligopolies whose member corporations share a quasi-political agenda. Therefore, as the world becomes a single market, some new strategy must be developed to control the reach of the corporate oligopolies.

The statement is illustrating how the Sherman Anti-Trust Act needs to be updated. This is because globalization has created situations, where multinational corporations can own a variety of assets around the world. The problem is that many foreign-based firms could avoid the different provisions of this law based upon: the properties, resources and assets that they control. This means that they can have a major impact in what happens to the U.S. economy and markets.

A good example of this can be seen with the Citigroup merger. For years, many proponents claimed that the Glass Steagall Act was preventing banks from competing internationally. This is a Depression era law that required strict segregation between: banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies. The basic idea was to limit their exposure to the economy from: excessive risking taking during times of economic prosperity. (Hardaway, 2011, pp. 85 -- 114)

However, once this...

This allowed them to market subprime mortgages as safe investments around the globe. Yet, in reality these were very risky and one of the main causes of the financial crisis. Once this happened, is when a firm became too big to fail. (Hardaway, 2011, pp. 85 -- 114) This is illustrating how the Sherman Anti-Trust Act needs to be updated, to reflect the large international oligopolies that have been created. If this were to occur, it will limit the total amount of assets that a particular firm can own (overseas and domestically). This will reduce the exposure of a company's activities on: the economy and consumers.
What about personal wealth? Does the high degree of effective control of the world economy by the "corporate tribe," along with the extreme concentration of personal wealth in the United States in the hands of the same individuals, who control the largest corporations, mean that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Clayton Act have been failures?

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Clayton Act are not failures. This is because they were designed to monitor the kinds of activities corporations were involved in. As time has gone by, these laws were regularly updated to reflect the changes in: technology, business and address any kind of loop holes. However, when there have not been any kind of new regulations imposed, both laws will become ineffective. (Gerber, 2010, pp. 31 -- 44)

A good example of this…