Word: cereality
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Last month, in perhaps the clearest example of its Rooseveltian approach to trust-busting, the government decided to drop its nine-year effort to break up the three great ready-to-eat breakfast cereal manufacturers, who together control 80 percent of the market. The Federal Trade Commission had argued that there had been a "tacit understanding" between the three firms to keep prices up, but the government had been unable to prove the cereal companies had gained illegal profits, and the case remained soggy. In refraining from prosecuting successful corporations simply because they are successful--and large--the Reagan Administration...
During 1981, Shcharansky was often kept on a 1,300-to 1,400-calorie meatless diet consisting of some fish, cabbage, potatoes, bread and cereal, plus minute amounts of flour, oil and tomato paste. On alternate days he received only bread, hot water and salt. Shcharansky, who weighed about 134 Ibs. at the time of his arrest in 1977, was down to about 110 Ibs. He was hospitalized for 33 days at the end of the summer. According to his mother, Shcharansky was subsequently sentenced to spend three more years in prison instead of spending this time in labor camp...
While not claiming that there was any active collusion, the FTC attorneys contended that Kellogg, as the industry price leader, determined cereal prices, and General Mills and General Foods simply followed along. Moreover, the Big Three allegedly thwarted the emergence of new competitors by controlling the amount of shelf space in groceries allotted to various cereals. The FTC staff also charged that the companies promoted a bewildering profusion of trade names like Trix, Kix, Froot Loops and Fruity Pebbles and thus made it prohibitively expensive for smaller firms to introduce their own brands. According to an FTC study, these anticompetitive...
...hearings before two FTC administrative law judges, the Government's case grew as soggy as the last Rice Krispies in a bowl of milk. Despite spending almost $6 million and compiling 40,000 pages of testimony with 2,900 supporting documents, the Government never proved that the cereal makers had reaped illegal monopoly profits. Last September FTC Judge Alvin Berman recommended that the suit be dismissed...
...commission chairman under President Carter, was just as adamant to keep it going. In December the two other commissioners, Patricia Bailey and David Clanton, both moderate Republicans, voted with Pertschuk to hear more arguments. By last week, however, Bailey and Clanton had switched sides. Clanton concluded that no cereal monopoly exists. Bailey decided that, monopoly or no, the proposed punishment was inappropriate. "To carve new cereal companies from the hides of existing ones," she said, would be "draconian...