Cartel-busting
商業組織聯合體機制正被打破
Boring can still be bad
無趣之勢依舊呈現糟糕狀態
Market-rigging in unsexy industries costs consumersa lot. More can be done to detect and deter it.
無聊行業在操縱市場方面使得消費者耗資巨大。對此，政府可以施行更多的措施檢測和阻止這一現象的發生。
MENTION price cartels and many people will think of big, overt ones like the one OPEC runs for oil and the now-extinct one for diamonds. But at least as damaging are the many secret cartelsin such unglamorous areas as ball-bearings and cargo rates, which go on unnoticed for years,quietly bumping up the end cost to consumers of all manner of goods and services.
提到價格壟斷，很多人會想到一些大型和公開明顯的壟斷企業，如歐佩克石油輸出國家組織以及現今已經退出市場的鉆石壟斷公司。然而，至少在單調乏味的領域，有很多秘密運營的壟斷企業，諸如軸承和貨運費率領域里也同樣具有損害性，這些企業數年未被關注，最近在各大產品和服務方面，迅速增長其對客戶的所需產品和服務的首尾成本。
Collusion among producers to rig prices and carve up markets is thriving, with the cartels growing ever more intricate and global in scope. Competition authorities have uncovered several whopping conspiracies in recent years, including one in which more than 20 airlines worldwide had fixed prices on perhaps 20 billion of freight shipments. They were fined a total of3 billion; and so far the compensation claims from ripped-off customers comfortably exceed 1billion. One academic study found that the typical cartel raised the price of the goods or services in question by 20%. Another suggested that cartels were robbing poorcountries' consumers of tens of billions of dollars a year: if so, negating all the aid that richcountries' governments send them.
隨著卡特爾壟斷更為復雜地增長并且呈全球范圍擴展的趨勢，生產者共同謀求操縱以及劃分市場的現象正逐漸興盛起來。競爭當局發現近年來存在一些巨大的陰謀，包括超過二十多條的國際航線之一的一家公司，私定200億元的貨物裝運價格。他們因此被處以30億元的罰款;并且到目前為止那些確定為敲消費者竹杠的公司被處以的賠償金超出了10億元。一個學術研究表明典型的卡特爾壟斷使得有疑問的商品和服務增長了20%。另一個研究表明卡特爾壟斷是從貧困國家的消費者中剝奪了他們平均一年上百億美元的錢財：如果正如這樣所說，否定所有富有國家政府對他們施行的援助是有道理的。
Investigators are still unravelling a huge global network of cartels among suppliers of a wide range of car parts. Makers of seat belts, radiators and foam seat-stuffing have had hefty finesslapped on them. Earlier this month the European Commission fined five makers of automotive bearings a total of 953m (1.32 billion). This week its investigators raided a bunch of makers of car exhausts. Also in recent days, Brazilian prosecutors have charged executives from a dozen foreign train-makers accused of rigging bids for rail and subway contracts in the country's maincities. Price-fixing has infected high finance, too. Some of banking's biggest names stand accused of fiddling interest-rate and foreign-exchange benchmarks.
研究調查者仍然在試圖解決一項關于大量汽車零部件供應商的巨大國際壟斷網絡問題。汽車座位安全帶、散熱器和泡沫座位填充物的生產者，已經被處以了巨額的罰款。這個月早些時候，歐洲委員會對汽車軸承的制造商處以了總計13.2億元的罰款。這個星期，調查者們突襲了一群汽車尾氣的制造商。并且在最近幾天，巴西的告發者起訴了十幾個國外火車制造商的高管，緣由是他們在國家主要的城市壟斷鐵軌和地鐵合同的競標。操縱價格也已經同樣影響到了巨額的投資。銀行的大腕們也面臨著人們對其擺弄利率和銀行基準的指責。
The good news is that enforcement has got tougher, smarter and more co-ordinated. Gone are the days when price-fixers got a slap on the wrist. Firms can expect swingeing fines, and bosses can go to jail. Since many cartels now operate across borders, so do investigators:American and Japanese trustbusters joined forces to flush out the car-parts cartels. And incentives for whistle blowers have also increased: around 50 countries now offer immunity or reduced penalties for snitches.
好消息是，執法方面變得更為嚴格，更加智能，也更為協調。價格固定器被撞到腰的日子一去不復返了。企業可以預期被處以巨額的罰款，老板可能會進監獄。由于許多卡特爾壟斷組織從事跨國經營，調查者們也同樣是跨國合作的：美國和日本的反托拉斯者聯手改變汽車零部件壟斷現象。并使舉報人的獎勵也得以增加：約 50個國家現在規定提供豁免權或對打小報告減少處罰。
That is all for the better, but the penalties for price-fixing remain too mild. The best study of the issue so far concluded that, given the still-low risk of detection, collusion pays. Yet beyond a certain point—which the fines now imposed by American and European regulator shave probably reached—fines inflict so much damage on guilty companies that they undermine competition instead of enhancing it. The answer is stiffer prison sentences,particularly for senior executives. American courts, only too ready to lock up other types of miscreants for a long time, have rarely jailed egregious price-fixers for anything like the maximum of ten years that the law allows. Other countries have even more scope to increase sentences.