What a Price-Fixing Cartel Can Look Like
If your prices increase five-fold or ten-fold and so do your revenues/income, what does that tell us?
"The TFT-LCD (Flat Panel) Antitrust Litigation was a United States class-action lawsuit regarding the worldwide conspiracy to coordinate the prices of Thin-Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) panels, which are used to make laptop computers, computer monitors and televisions, between 1999 and 2006. In March 2010, Judge Susan Illston certified two nationwide classes of persons and entities that directly and indirectly purchased TFT-LCDs – for panel purchasers and purchasers of TFT-LCD integrated products; the litigation was followed by multiple suits." -Wikipedia (implicating Korean companies LG and Samsung)
There's a new shop or new name for a shop near us. It sells decent 22-inch monitors for 19 or 29 pounds (new monitors of that kind typically cost about 100 pounds, a lot less than in the cartel days), but when it comes to storage, prices are steep. We discussed this in IRC earlier today. We're being told that sharp increases in storage prices are something to do with "hey hi" (the go-to, catch-all excuse for almost everything), but under-production helps keep prices high. They've had over a year already to ramp up production and keep up with demand, not just debt-backed fake "demand" from 'white elephant' pyramid schemes.
Is this really about price-fixing? Does anyone even investigate this??? █