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Jail Time For Price-Fixing Car Parts
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Dept. of Justice has announced that Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have been fined $56.5 million for their roles in price fixing conspiracies involving battery cells and car parts. The fines are part of a larger investigation into the prices of auto parts. Interestingly, 12 people at various companies have been sentenced to jail time, and three more are going to prison. Since the charges are felonies, none of the sentences are shorter than a year and a day. Criminal fines targeting these companies has totaled over $874 million. 'The conduct of Panasonic, SANYO, and LG Chem resulted in inflated production costs for notebook computers and cars purchased by U.S. consumers. These investigations illustrate our efforts to ensure market fairness for U.S. businesses by bringing corporations to justice when their commercial activity violates antitrust laws.'"
And the banksters go free.
Now if they could so similar for the Studios we may be onto a winner.
(Note: I realise the studios haven't been found to be doing this but why should we let something like that stop us? Little things like facts don't seem to stop the studios pulling similar stunts.)
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
How about using it against someone besides some poor schmuck found with a roach in the ashtray? Beats the hell out of giving the bastard free room and board...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The Fed caught the crooks, fined them, and threw some of them into the slammer.
But what about the consumers who had been cheated ?
Don't we deserve some refunds?
I mean, we paid overpriced batteries for our notebooks, overpriced car parts for our vehicles, and so on.
Don't we deserve to get our money back ?
Any attorney here ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The current topic is price fixing.
Internet providers pay the politicians for a government enforced monopoly so they can set prices without effective competition in a market.
Movie studios use 90s Microsoft style tactics to exploit and maintain artificially high prices.
At bankrate.com, I see dozens of banks competing on price. Certainly some in the scumbags are in the financial sector, and many offer services that aren't easy to understand, but where's the price fixing by banks? Not to say there isn't any, but where? The big issue I've seen with banks is that they loaned a lot of money to people who couldn't afford to repay the loans. In the beginning they were forced to by the government, but when they figured out how to resell the bad loans at a profit, they continued doing so voluntarily.
Hi, I'm a sacrificial lamb.
Sanyo doesnt make a half bad AA rechargable either.
Interesting to compare the US action to those of Australia where US companies have been involved in price fixing and anti-competitive behavior.
So the govt it self is the receiver of proceeds of crime.
Collecting extra taxes and all the fines, good one.
The real criminals are the govt, give us less taxes, because you have collected too many dodgy ones.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Thank you for saving us from those evil auto parts people! They are so important. Unlike banks who are totally optional and not needed by everyone. You can totally do without money. Unlike car parts. And i'm sure those bankers didn't make one extra cent from all the dirty evil price fixing that happened.
Oh.... ... fuck...
I could use some reimbursement on the countless batteries and misc crap i've apparently been f*cked on
After all, "copyright is theft, it is a crime", but the RIAA companies are getting billions in statutory fines (no restitution of losses, no loss has been proven, let alone proven of this magnitude), hence making money off criminal actions.
And did you notice who were profiting from criminal actions? That's right: the corporations.
Do you know what will be done if ALL criminal proceeds went to the government? You'd pay less tax. Therefore you're profiting from the proceeds of criminal profit.
BAD BOY.
Mobile phone charges should be on the list. Try getting a fair deal without a "sponsored" phone or getting support for a phone you haven't purchased with your plan. This can only be price fixing. Maybe there's no direct proof (yet) of phone companies negotiating about these, but it's sure odd that none of the big companies offer competitive no-sponsored-handset deals.
The same applies to roaming charges. The companies bill each other for those and only the difference actually gets paid. In reality, this means that most cell phone companies charge a lot for roaming charges but they never get to pay those to others than themselves. They are only needed to pay for interlinking to other providers, but the cost of these interlinks is way lower than the cost of the on-the-air part of mobile networks.
Lastly, paying by the second or by the amount of calls/texts you make is bogus. It's a data network and either you pay a flat fee, or you pay for the data you push over it. Charging differently because it's a voice or SMS protocol should be forbidden, it's 2013 now. Net Neutrality should be stretched to non-IP services as well. Especially if mobile providers want to block other services that are competing with their own voice or messaging platform. Any ISP, mobile or not should have responsible people that block these kinds of services spend some time with Bubba.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Unfair prices for consumers of laptops... as long as you blatantly raise prices just because you can, like certain Adobe and Apple products costing 50% more outside of the U.S f.ex, then it's all fine apparently!
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... but if I were to rob a bank or steal expensive objects worth millions I wold be in prison for 20 years.
These are FOREIGN companies.
Indeed, a US company was convicted of price fixing tungsten carbide for machine tools with the Nazis both before AND DURING WW2 and only got a $20,000 fine and told not to do it again, in 1947.
Not a single Wall Street banker has been thrown in jail, despite dealings that nearly bankrupt the country and destabilized the global economy.
I'd think that's a bit more egregious behavior than price fixing car batteries. But clearly the US Government knows best how to protect us from unscrupulous business behavior.
Corporations own everything and run the government. There are no fines, no jail sentences, this can't happen. Obviously.
Editors, please check your sources in the future because you've been tricked by a fake story.
After the manufactures of the cars and laptops designed cars that needed these parts, the only suppliers who could make them in quantity COLLUDED to set high prices. The buyer's choice was
a) be overcharged
b) stop making cars
That's not a real choice. The buyer gets ripped off, paying twice as much as they would with competition instead of conspiracy. In the US, that's illegal. You go to jail for that. Unless of course you donate much of the ill-gotten gain to the Democrats, in which case its illegal for buyers to try break the conspiracy. In some states, sellers are REQUIRED to be part of the price-fixing conspiracy, aka union.
I really think prison is being misused by most of the world, especially the United States.
I believe it should only ever be used to separate the most extremely, immediately, physically and irremediably dangerous from the rest of us to keep society safe. I'm talking about murderers, rapists, violent assailants, the kind of people who commit extreme acts and intend to keep doing them. Putting the drug dealers and possessors, scammers, petty thieves, civil disputers, drunks, the negligent and so on costs us more than benefits.
This euphemism of "paying your debt to society" by spending time in a cement box always elicits uproarious laughter from me ... how is someone paying their debt when we're the ones footing the bill for their room and board??
Prison should never be about "paying your debt", not that it's even possible in that manner. If we want people to "pay their debt", garnish their wages and have them pay back the *exact people against whom they committed the acts*. If that's not enough, put them in community service or other work programs, where they'll actually be performing work that will repay society, not cost it.
Of course, there are underlying societal problems (poverty, increasing class inequality, antagonistic political attitudes, inadequate healthcare for the mentally ill) that are deeply rooted in reasons we send people to prison. It's just so much easier to throw them in a box than it is to address the real problems at their core. Law, it seems, has grown into this trolling monster that exists only to perpetuate itself while falsely purporting to serve the public.
Phones, tablets, game consoles... they all do it.
There's been a bunch of web sites that have torn down these products and priced the parts. They all come close to the retail price of the product. But no one takes into consideration that these companies order parts by the millions (If they don't make some themselves).
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
How do they put a corporation in jail?
Obviously, they haven't mastered the fine American art of purchasing politicans and judges.
Now, what about Oil companies, Telcos and similar crooks.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Look up "price fixing". It's an entirely unrelated concept.
Of course that is the first thing on everyones' minds. There probably isn't even a mention made that addresses that obvious point. 12 people are going to jail for high autoparts prices and pricefixing conspiracies? That is definitely the smaller tip of the iceberg, right?
For price fixing e-books...
These investigations illustrate our efforts to ensure market fairness for U.S. businesses by bringing corporations to justice when their commercial activity violates antitrust laws
Give me a break, they probably just didn't pay a big enough bribe to the investigators.
I worked for a tier 1 supplier for the big three for six years. During that time in 2001 we did a study of how much our parts were being sold for at the stealerships. The stealerships were selling out parts for 7-12 times what we sold the parts to the OEM for. I think the standard 1.4x is a fair markup, not 10x.
Oh, Thanks be to Dog! I thought it might have been computer batteries