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After one of her favorite stores was taken over by a competitor, Bert Foer's Aunt Betty had a questions.
How many more mergers would it take, she asked her nephew -- the director of the American Antitrust Institute -- before all her shopping would be done at one store?
"There have got to be other people asking that question," says Foer. "There have got to be others looking at the oil mergers and saying, 'I thought they broke up Standard Oil.'
Foer Is right. More people are asking questions about how the merger between old Standard Oil stablemates Mobil and Exxon will affect competition, and how the Bankers Trust Deutsche Bank combination will add to the globalization of the financial industry.
The Justice Department's case against Microsoft is making headlines, but you don't have to go far to find populist anger against perceived monopolies. "In Des Moines, Iowa, people are looking at the airline industry," Foer says. "They're probably saying, 'I thought deregulation was supposed to increase competition. How come there's less competition?'"
Like most grassroots sentiments, the distrust of corporate power has a champion: Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Democrat from Minnesota. Weighing a run for the presidency, Wellstone has been making remarks recently that would probably be well received by Iowa farmers -- and likely caucus voters.
"Look at the pork producers in Minnesota and Iowa," Wellstone says. "I don't have all the answers, but the are four packers who control 60 percent of t market. What do you do?"
What you do if you're a liberal politician like Wellstone is muster popular venom against Big Business' monopolies and oligopolies. He and other antitrust advocates say we need someone like Teddy Roosevelt, a trustbuster who wasn't afraid to state down the likes of John D. Rockefeller nearly a century ago.
"I think people in office should call for limits against monopolistic activities," Wellstone says. "Whatever happened to free enterprise in the free enterprise system? Why isn't someone protecting consumers and small business people against big corporations?"
The Aunt Bettys of America would Like to know.
WHERE ARE THE TRUSTBUSTERS?
Back in the late 19th century and early 20th century, industrialists like Rockefeller were as notorious for their empire building as they were ruthless...
