Word: cartels
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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French sponsors of the Schuman Plan and American cartel-busters told a six-nation conference in Paris that the big combinations of Ruhr coal & steel producers must be broken up before the Plan can be put into effect. The German industrialists, supported by the German Socialists and trade unions, argued that the old cartel arrangements were economical and efficient, that any change would give...
...syndicate of seven companies, Sir Ernest also controls 95% of the world's supply of diamonds, and sees to it that the supply is always less than the demand. As always, war and inflation are now swelling the demand for diamonds, and Sir Ernest's cartel has opened up two idle mines to step up production. The wholesale price of gem diamonds has risen 20% in six months, and U.S. rearmament has sent the price of industrial diamonds (vital for cutting tools) soaring 100% since Korea. Not only capitalists buy diamonds; an "unknown buyer" thought...
Apart from these political objections, there were questions on the very economics of Schuman's plan. In England, and in the French socialist party itself, economists complained that the program might become, in time, merely a super cartel, one that could practically make its own laws. Others pointed out that the continent has seldom been without its earls in the modern past; this group feels that an organized monopoly might be better than the disorganized system that is now in existence...
Added Wilson: the U.S. must work out "an American solution of the relations of labor and industry, and not attempt to adopt the philosophy of class conflict from Europe ... on the one hand, or the cartel thinking of noncompetitive reactionaries on the other ... If the people of our country really understand this principle [of increased productivity] and stick to it, and are willing to work for the things they would like to have just as they have been willing to do in the past, I have no worries about our country being able to stand the costs of pensions, insurance...
...Quaint Idea. This radical proposal was promptly slapped down by the Wall Street Journal, which observed that "preserving competition by creating a Government-dictated cartel is ... a quaint idea." Big Steel's Chairman Irving S. Olds offered another kind of comment. In his annual report last week, he disclosed that profits in 1949 were the highest since 1929 and totaled $165,908,829 (v. $129,627,845 in 1948). But Olds carefully pointed out that U.S. Steel's slice of the nation's steelmaking capacity has declined steadily from 44.2% in 1902 to 32.2% today...