The Tech-Monopolies Choking America Out

The American stock market is not lying to us.

We are reading it backward.

Competition was the engine. Charge too much and somebody undercuts you. Make a bad product and somebody makes a better one. Competition doesn’t require corporations to be generous. It forces them to be useful.

Now look at the market. The ten largest companies represent roughly 38 percent of the S&P 500, and 33 companies account for 100 percent of all of the gains.

Those companies control the gates through which the rest of the economy must pass: AI infrastructure, search, cloud computing, operating systems, app stores, digital advertising, and commerce.

These technology monopolies provide enormous value……so does electricity. That is precisely why we regulate electric utilities. America understood that something could be indispensable and thus require limits on the company controlling it to prevent brutal exploitation.

The electric company could make money, but we didn’t allow it to use control of the wires to financially choke out every factory, restaurant and family connected to them.

The pipes became digital and we forgot the lesson, or more accurately our government was sold to the very people it is intended to control. Monopoly doesn’t eliminate competition, it reverses its pressure. Under competition, a company must give you more, better, faster for less or lose you.

Under monopoly, there is almost no price you won’t pay, accept the terms and pass through the gate because there is nowhere else to go.

Wall Street loves that.

The stronger the gate, the more dependable the profits. The more dependable the profits, the more valuable the company. That is why record stock prices and economic distress are not contradictory. The stock market can rise precisely because the economic hammerlock becomes more valuable.

Meanwhile, the ten-year Treasury yield has crossed 5 percent, reaching levels not seen since 2007. The bond market is demanding substantially more compensation to finance the country being extracted by those companies.

The bond market prices the stress. The stock market prices the chokehold. A Burmese python kills in much the same way. It wraps itself around its prey. Each time the animal exhales, the python tightens. The next breath gets smaller. Another exhale. Another turn of the coil.

The python grows stronger as its prey grows weaker.

Watching the stock market and declaring the economy healthy is like watching the growing python and declare that everything inside its coils must be thriving.

We have it backward. The stock market isn’t hiding what’s happening to America. It’s pricing the squeeze.