Word: cereality
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...drops its effort to crunch the Big Three cereal makers...
...encore to the spectacular wind-ups to the A T & T and IBM antitrust suits, the Government last week dropped its nine-year effort to break up Kellogg Co., General Mills and General Foods, three breakfast champions that control 80% of the ready-to-eat cereal market. The case was the last of Washington's marathon antitrust battles against Big Business, which have clogged courts and enriched lawyers for more than a decade...
...Federal Trade Commission's decision to halt the cereal suit was another example of the Reagan Administration's antitrust philosophy. The Government still intends to block mergers that significantly reduce competition, but it will no longer try to dismantle existing firms simply because they are big and successful...
...cereal case was also a landmark setback for the Government's novel antitrust theory that a group of companies can "share" a monopoly. The FTC's staff had charged that the three firms had a "tacit understanding" that kept cereal prices high and stopped competitors from entering the business. If the cereal makers had lost their case, the shared monopoly doctrine might have been used against autos, aluminum and other industries dominated by a few firms...
Long familiarity enables the three to talk in a kind of clipped shorthand, and on occasion they even finish each other's sentences. Over the second course (cold cereal for Baker and Meese, a Western omelet for Deaver) the breakfast talk turned to a prospective White House order allowing striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization to be hired for some Government jobs (though not again as controllers). Meese suggested some precise lawyerly language. Said Baker: "I think the PATCO stuff came out . . . " Deaver finished: ". . . just the way it should have...