The US is considered as the most competitive market in the world. However in reality most of the major industries are a form of monopoly or oligopoly. When industries are dominated by one company or a handful of companies customer suffer as prices inevitably increase due to pricing shower and lack of competition. But investors and management in these firms benefit as profits rise.

I written about the scourge of  monopolies and oligopolies in the airline, railroad, cable tv, ratings industries before. Other industries such as auto manufacturing, bus transportation, passenger rail transportation, food, healthcare, entertainment, media, etc. are also plagued by this phenomenon. But somehow this setup is accepted by the state and the public. And then the same public wonders why customer service is awful in most companies, why wages are stagnant, why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, why bills keep going up and up every year, why politics is corrupted by big money, etc.

Yesterday news broke that the telecom giant AT&T(T) is going to acquire cable TV giant Time Warner(TWX). If this deal goes thru it will be another nail in the coffin for competition. Already most cable companies including Comcast(CMCSA) are notorious for price gouging and bad customer service. This merger, if approved by regulators, would further hurt American consumers.

The following chart shows the evolution of AT&T and Time Warner:

Click to enlarge

Source: AT&T Is in Advanced Talks to Acquire Time Warner, WSJ, Oct 21, 2016

Disclosure: No Positions

Social spending includes various benefits offered by a country to its residents such as healthcare, pensions, social security,  food stamps, relocation money provided to refugees, funding for community activities for illegals, etc. This expenditure varies widely across OECD member countries.

Click to enlarge

Source: OECD

France tops the list with social spending amounting to over 31% of the GDP and Mexico spends the least at 7.5%. The US spends slightly less than the OECD average of 21%.

China is creditor country while the US is the largest debtor country in the world. China has also one of the low debt to savings ratio in the world as shown in the chart below:

Click to enlarge

Source: 5 Big Risks Posed by China (And Why They Shouldn’t Crash Global Markets in 2017) by Michelle Gibley, Charles Schwab

China’s debt to savings ratio(as a % of GDP) is especially low when compared to developed countries.