Alan C. Posted March 5, 2014 Posted March 5, 2014 US Government Will Continue Interfering With Apple Pricing Decisions A federal court has ruled that a US Department of Justice “monitor” will remain inside Apple Computer to supervise all the company's pricing decisions. The “monitor,” Michael Bromwich, was appointed when Apple lost an anti-trust case involving E-books. He bills for his time at $1,100 an hour and charged $138,432 for his first two weeks of “work.” Apple has filed an appeal which labels Bromwich's appointment “unprecedented and unconstitutional.” This “monitor” is a particularly dangerous precedent because court appointed. But by now “monitors” established through “settlements” are common. Joseph Covington, who headed the Justice Department's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Division in the 1980's, told Forbes, in reference to monitors appointed to enforce settlements under that act: “This is good business for Justice Department lawyers who create the marketplace [for monitors] and then get…a job there [after they leave government].” Nor is it limited to the Justice department. If a company gets into the sights of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or even the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the terms of settlement increasingly include “monitoring” by highly paid lawyers, who are typically former FTC or FDA employees.
dsayers Posted March 5, 2014 Posted March 5, 2014 I would've done it for $1,099 an hour. Clearly they didn't shop around.
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