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salvorhardin

(9,995 posts)
Thu Jul 5, 2012, 10:15 AM Jul 2012

Reuters’s Chesapeake Energy drumbeat: Internal emails scheming to lower bids on drilling rights

But last week’s report, by Brian Grow, Joshua Schneyer and Janet Roberts, is the biggest yet—one that surely means the end of the road for McClendon. Reuters got hold of internal emails that show a stunning level of proposed coordination between Chesapeake and Canadian competitor Encana Corporation, which were the two biggest bidders for drilling leases in Michigan:

In one email, dated June 16, 2010, McClendon told a Chesapeake deputy that it was time “to smoke a peace pipe” with Encana “if we are bidding each other up.” The Chesapeake vice president responded that he had contacted Encana “to discuss how they want to handle the entities we are both working to avoid us bidding each other up in the interim.” McClendon replied: “Thanks.”


Reuters has no difficulty finding experts to quote on how this is a slam-dunk antitrust case, including a former Justice Department lawyer who calls it a “smoking H-bomb.” This is textbook anticompetitive behavior (emphasis mine):

In subsequent months, the emails show, top officials discussed ways to prevent land prices from escalating. The solution they proposed: dividing up Michigan counties and private landowners between them.


Full post: http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/reuterss_chesapeake_energy_dru.php?page=all
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Reuters’s Chesapeake Energy drumbeat: Internal emails scheming to lower bids on drilling rights (Original Post) salvorhardin Jul 2012 OP
K&R. Useful look into how corporations collude. Overseas Jul 2012 #1
And more incontrovertible evidence that Chesapeake is thoroughly corrupt salvorhardin Jul 2012 #3
Colluding to lower bids on municipal bond management, colluding to lower LIBOR alcibiades_mystery Jul 2012 #2
I don't see it as black and white as that salvorhardin Jul 2012 #4
In Alaska the oil corporations just buy the State government. Arctic Dave Jul 2012 #5
This message was self-deleted by its author salvorhardin Jul 2012 #6

salvorhardin

(9,995 posts)
3. And more incontrovertible evidence that Chesapeake is thoroughly corrupt
Thu Jul 5, 2012, 10:52 AM
Jul 2012

This is the company whose hydrofracking operations have been called a Ponzi scheme in the NYT.

 

alcibiades_mystery

(36,437 posts)
2. Colluding to lower bids on municipal bond management, colluding to lower LIBOR
Thu Jul 5, 2012, 10:27 AM
Jul 2012

colluding to lower bids on drilling rights, and etc.

This is contemporary capitalism, a monumental joke. And these corrupt assholes lecture the rest of us on the value of "competition," on moral hazard, on the rational function of the market. Meanwhile, at every turn they seek to avoid competition through monopoly or outright collusion; they engage in robbery, deception, theft; they make good and sure that there is no market, that they control the price function through fraud.

Oh, they'll come back with the "bad apples" defense. But the truth is that there is no free market, and never has been. Just criminals and fraudsters gaming anyone they can, whether by exploiting their labor power or through brazen corruption - and this for as long as capitalism has been called that. There has been no late-breaking devolution into criminality. Capitalism is criminality in its essence.

salvorhardin

(9,995 posts)
4. I don't see it as black and white as that
Thu Jul 5, 2012, 10:55 AM
Jul 2012

After all, here we have one company -- Reuters -- doing masterful reporting exposing the corruption at the heart of Chesapeake Energy. Is Reuters a criminal organization? I don't think so. Not everything about capitalism stinks, just the way corporations have become enshrined and gained de facto control over the system in the U.S. and elsewhere.

And mind you, I say this as a socialist.

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