Is Bremer a Price Fixer?

[JewelDigger]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2088602/

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"...Chatterbox is gratified to see the Iraqi Governing Council win recognition from some of Iraq's neighbors, but its acceptance by OPEC should not be equated with acceptance by the Arab League (as occurred last week) or the United Nations (where Ahmed Chalabi, who currently holds the Governing Council's rotating presidency, will address the General Assembly Oct. 2). Those are diplomatic organizations. OPEC, by contrast, is a price-fixing cartel. Cartels are illegal in many countries, including the United States.

This last fact complicates Iraq's planned participation in next week's OPEC meeting. That's because Iraq is, at the moment, occupied by the U.S. military. To the extent anybody's running things in
Iraq, that person is L. Paul Bremer III, whom President Bush in May appointed civil administrator. When asked on June 12 whether Iraq would rejoin OPEC—a question Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had wisely ducked two months earlier—Bremer said:

The question of whether Iraq will remain a member of OPEC is a decision that we will leave to the Iraqi government. And it will be, certainly, a matter that I will discuss with the interim administration when we establish it next month. But this is a matter, I think, that is best left to the Iraqi people.

Given the likelihood that this discussion took place and the outcome that Iraq now plans to attend the Sept. 23 OPEC meeting, Bremer may have placed himself in serious peril of prosecution under the Sherman Antitrust Act, which says:

Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both.

Might not Bremer, through discussions he no doubt deemed perfectly innocent, have participated in just such a conspiracy? Surely his opinion about whether Iraq should rejoin OPEC weighed heavily with the Governing Council. For guidance on this legal question, Chatterbox queried Michael Straus, one of the plaintiff's attorneys in Prewitt Enterprises v. OPEC, a case in which two Birmingham, Ala., gas station owners sued OPEC for violating U.S. antitrust law. (For more details on the case, which is currently on appeal, click here, here, and here.) "To the extent Iraq's re-engagement in OPEC's price-fixing activities is seen as an implicit U.S. endorsement of those activities," Straus answered, "it would run counter to the strong legal prohibitions contained in the Sherman Act..."

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[TacticalPeek]

1. Follow the money.

It doesn't talk, it swears.