Beer Monopoly

When is an oligopoly not an oligopoly? When it becomes a Monopoly

Molson-Coors and Miller to combine U.S. operations

LONDON (Reuters) - Brewers SABMiller and Molson Coors Brewing have agreed to combine their U.S. operations to create a venture with annual sales of $6.6 billion that will be a strong No. 2 player to Anheuser-Busch.

The venture, MillerCoors, will generate around $500 million of annual cost savings by year three after completion and is subject to obtaining clearance from U.S. competition authorities, the two groups said in a statement today.

"We expect this approval to be forthcoming ... The combination will create a strong number-two player in the U.S. beer market with 30 per cent market share," said analyst Matthew Webb at Cazenove.

The deal brings together the second-largest U.S. brewer with beer brands such as Miller Lite and Miller Genuine Draft and the third-largest, Molson Coors, which brews Coors Light, Molson Canadian and Molson Dry beers.

The companies said final agreement for the deal is expected by the end of 2007, while analysts added that regulatory approval is expected about six to nine months after that date.

SABMiller shares were up 2.6 per cent at 15.04 pounds by 1225 GMT.

Molson Coors Vice Chairman Pete Coors will become chairman of MillerCoors while SABMiller Chief Executive Graham Mackay will be vice chairman. Molson Coors CEO Leo Kiely will be chief executive and Miller Chief Executive Tom Long will become president and chief commercial officer of MillerCoors.

Analysts see a high likelihood of the deal going through as the Molson and Coors families, which control Molson Coors, support the deal, and a precedent was set from a regulatory standpoint by the creation of Reynolds American.

In this strange, semi-regulated world of monopoly capital, there is no longer a life-or-death competition threatening the survival of the mature capitalist enterprise (though mergers in search of greater monopoly power are a common occurrence). Rather, the giant corporations that dominate the contemporary economy engage primarily in struggles over relative market share. Although conventional economics textbooks still tell us that the existence of a perfectly competitive economy guarantees that economic profits are short-lived or nonexistent, in the real world of late capitalism, large firms not only obtain persistent profits, but there is a hierarchy of profit rates between firms. It remains a competitive world for corporations in many respects, but the goal is always the creation or perpetuation of monopoly power—that is, the power to generate persistent, high, economic profits through a mark-up on prime production costs.

The underpinnings of the current massive merger wave can be understood much more fully by examining the way they are financed. Although it is still frequently claimed in textbook economics that the main purpose of both the issue of new stock and borrowing by nonfinancial corporations is to finance investment in productive capacity, this is far from the case. In the 1980s, U.S. corporations borrowed heavily, not in order to finance real investment (which they continued to pay for out of gross profits), but for the purpose of stock buybacks (to boost the value of their shares) and takeovers. This borrowing was thus geared to the speculative purchase of existing assets with the expectation of expanding capital gains, and, in the case of takeovers, the creation of new monopolistic positions through "synergy." In the 1990s, the diversion of corporate funds to Wall Street has intensified, but firms have relied on their own profits increasingly for this purpose rather than debt (though also continued to borrow as a defensive strategy against hostile takeovers).

See:

$63.90 Per Hour

Molsons Strike

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I Am Canadian

And I got screwed by Molson's.

Molson Coors profits rise on Canada business

Molson to close profitable Edmonton brewery, throwing more than 100 out of work

See:

$63.90 Per Hour

Molsons Strike

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Bush Beer

There was a very funny video, unintentionally funny, on BBC of G8 leaders relaxing, having a beer. At the table are Prodi, Merkel, Blair and George Bush.



Having not had a beer in a long time, and forgetting that real beer, that is any beer other than American brands, actually has head and foams, George pours himself a glass and it overflows all over the table and onto his lap much to his surprise. The following day he absented himself in the AM with the traditional morning sickness of a heavy night of carousing.

REFORMED boozer George W Bush knocks back a large glass of lager at the G8 summit - sparking fears that he has fallen off the wagon.

Now-teetotal Dubya, who admitted during his first presidential campaign that he used to drink far too much, downed the beer while taking a break with Tony Blair, German president Angela Merkel and the Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.

And he seemed to be getting quite jolly during their get together - throwing back his head and roaring with laughter during their chat.

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President Bush is "unwell".

White House staff say they're not sure whether it's something he ate or a stomach virus.

As to suspicions that the was doing a "Boris Yeltsin" - US officials insist that was a non alcoholic beer he was seen drinking last night.

I wonder if he was drinking a Bush Beer?

Bush

Brewery: Dubuisson

Category: An amber beer/barley wine

Taste: perfume like flavour with a strong whisky like after glow..

Strength: 12.0%.

Serve: cooled

My first encounter with this beer was at the beautiful Ciro bar in the centre of Brussels, I was discussing the merits of Belgium beer with a local and explained how I disliked the strong tasting trappist beers. The local said he understood so he would order something special for me, along came a beer called Bush! Beware this little beer is a wolf in sheeps clothing, it may taste only mildly alcoholic but it packs the punch of a sledgehammer.

Of course being amongst his equals, it is easier to converse and imbibe in mutual conviviality than if one has to actually meet the common folks, the salt of the earth, the American voter.

Long-Awaited Beer With Bush Really Awkward, Voter Reports

Although respondents to a Pew poll taken prior to the 2004 presidential election characterized Bush as "the candidate they'd most like to sit down and have a beer with," Chris Reinard lived the hypothetical scenario Sunday afternoon, and characterized it as "really uncomfortable and awkward."

Chris Reinard and President Bush try to think of something to talk about.

Reinard, a father of four who supported Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections, said sharing a beer with the president at the Switchyard Tap gave him "an uneasy feeling."

"I thought he'd be great," Reinard said. "But when I actually met him, I felt real put off."

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Molsons Strike

Excuse me but this is 2007 and the economy is booming. So why the claw back mentality of the past? Because Alberta has the weakest labour laws in Canada encouraging employers to be assholes.

Claw backs began in Alberta a decade ago when King Ralph pushed privatization and used the debt and deficit hysteria to punish public sector workers with claw backs in wages and benefits, which had been prompted by Safeway's claw back bargaining with UFCW across North America.

Class war was declared by Safeways and other employers beginning in the eighties prompted by the anti-union attacks of the neo-conservative regimes of Reagan, Thatcher, and Mulroney. It continued for over a decade across North America, as Kim Moody documented in his book an Injury to All.

Today with a provincial labour shortage, low interest rates, increased stock prices and productivity, Molsons Coors wants to go back to the past.

Todd Romanow, national representative for the Canadian Auto Workers union, accused Molson of stubbornly insisting on rolling back wages and pensions to 1980 levels for new employees.

"Beer is supposed to be for happy times, right now it is not," said Dave Wilton, picket captain with the Local 284 Canadian Auto Workers.

Employees, like Wilton, are ticked off that wages of future hires are rolled back from $29 to $22 an hour.

And while company spokesman Ferg Devins said the rollback is still competitive within the Alberta market, Wilton doesn't agree because he said the company is making a lot of profit.

The contract would also pass on some of the pension costs in a "defined contribution" of 3% of annual salary by new workers, and cut sick days of all employees from nine to six.

With the current hot Alberta economy, anyone getting paid at the proposed new rate won't be able to afford decent housing in Edmonton, he said.

Meanwhile in Calgary the climate change denying CEO of controversial Talisman Energy retires with a golden parachute.

Mr. Buckee retires with fantastic wealth, having cashed in stock options worth $24-million in 2005 and 2006. The rest of his options were valued at $52-million, as of Dec. 31, along with a $1.4-million annual pension whose total value is pegged at $23-million.

So who says class war is a thing of the past.

With the onset of the crisis, Moody's narrative becomes largely the bleak account of an even bleaker reality. He describes all the strategies devised by capital to impose the new rules on American workers: the dispersion of production to smaller units around the U.S., direct investment in production abroad, the "outsourcing" of work overseas, concentration (forcing small, isolated plants to confront big conglomerates with many sources of revenue), and the breakup of "pattern bargaining" on an industry-wide scale. By the late 1970's, business was also engaged in a new political activism capable of defeating pro-labor legislation in a Democratic congress and which, by pressure on the future "Reagan Democrats", helped to set the Reagan agenda even before Reagan. Because the UAW was the very model of postwar business unionism, Moody rightly underscores the Chrysler bailout of 1979-80 as a major turning point. To save Chrysler fom bankrupcty, the UAW made a series of concessions in exchange for such dubious benefits as a seat for union president Doug Fraser on Chrysler's board of directors. Whereas Fraser had, in 1978, denounced the "one-sided class war" being waged by business on working people, he and other labor leaders hailed this contract as a "breakthrough". It WAS a breakthrough-- for management. By the early 1980's, the precedent of the Chrysler contract had opened the floodgates for a "tidal wave of concessions" everywhere. Even companies with no apparent squeeze on their profits sensed the new balance of forces and demanded, usually successfully, the renegotiation of unexpired contracts, obtaining major concessions on wages, benefits and work rules. It was the biggest rollback for U.S. labor since the post-1929 Depression years, and it is not over. As Moody points out, the "realism" of business unionism faced with demands for concessions does not even achieve its minimum stated goal of saving jobs.

Business was way ahead of both the "business unionists" and the rank- and- file in taking advantage of the new situation. Even today, when the depth of the crisis has impressed itself on nearly everyone in both camps of capital and labor, the business unionists cling to the discredited practice of a bygone era. They have shown aggressiveness and imagination only in combating rank-and-file attempts, such as the P-9 strike in Austin, Minnesota, to break out of the suicidical "business as usual" mentality of mainstream organized labor. They have responded to the weakening of unions by complaceny, by organizing the limited constituency of middle-class service workers, by intimidation of rank-and-file insurgents, or by formless mergers of unions with little in common as a bargaining unit. Confronted with the challenge to organize the vast new proletariat in dead-end and low-paying service jobs, business unionists react wth the same condescension and lethargy that the bureaucrats of the AFL showed toward tthe unorganized mass of production workers in the 1930's, prior to the rise of the CIO.

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