It’s like piracy in reverse, or something. . .

From The Wallstreet Journal Online:

Tiny firms like NetEnforcers Inc. — with only 56 staffers jammed into a dim, spare cubicle farm here in Arizona — wield economic power far beyond their size. These companies scour hundreds of thousands of Web sites daily, looking for retailers offering bargains below the “minimum advertised price,” or MAP, set by manufacturers on an array of consumer goods.

This is technically ruled legal, especially in the case of “authorized dealers”, which are bound to honor MAP agreements as part of being “authorized”. Should it be legal? Here’s the brilliant, convincing defense:

Manufacturers say minimum-pricing requirements are good because they protect a brand’s image from being tarnished by discounting, while helping retailers make enough profit to pay for customer service. Consumer advocates argue that minimum-pricing deals hurt shoppers by keeping prices high and diminishing consumer choice.

I am quite sure that retailers need lots of help from manufacturers in figuring out what is best for them and their customers. Surely, without being bullied into it by manufacturers, retailers would never dream of offering customer service. And, though customers may not realize it, it is in their best interest to pay for image rather than product. And I do mean bullying. . .

If the seller isn’t an authorized dealer — for instance, a discounter that acquired the goods via a distributor — NetEnforcers says other tactics are used to try to force a lowball price off the Internet. In these cases, they can allege that the discounter’s use of the product’s name or image constitutes trademark or copyright infringement, in an effort to force the seller to stop listing the discount. . .They routinely use trademark-violation claims when asking eBay to take down sellers’ pages, “but it’s a bit unfairly enforced,” he says. “They take down the Web sites only of the unauthorized resellers that are selling at discounts,” but don’t bother other unauthorized sellers if they’re selling at MAP. This suggests manufacturers are mainly interested in keeping prices up, not preventing trademark violations. Mr. Cohen says.

Suggests? Really? Gee, d’ya think?

NetEnforcers swear they’re only rightfully concerned about the “intellectual copyright”:

NetEnforcers acknowledges that it uses the VERO program to remove violators of minimum-pricing terms, arguing that it’s an appropriate under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law designed to help copyright-holders control access to digital copies of their works.

Doling out punishment for the wickedness of the discounters. . .

AceToolonline also says it raised its prices to match MAP. The online retailer’s president, Maria Polidoro, said her company was punished by Black & Decker for the violations. She says AceTool must forfeit some advertising funds from Black & Decker. As another part of the penalty, Black & Decker will also stop routing customers from its own Web site to AceToolonline for 30 days, Ms. Polidoro says.

For some odd reason, some people don’t like this whole deal, and they’re pushing for a legal ban against manufacturers from setting up minimum advertised prices.

Next time you see some awkward phrasing on a website about how they can’t show you the real price since it so low, and you’ll have to add it into your cart in order to see the price, you’ll know why. Using this method, they aren’t technically advertising their low price. If someone whacks you over the head with big stick every time you conduct business, you learn to do it a little more quietly, so as not to attract notice of the head-whacker.

Call me jaded, but it seems to me that every time people attempt market regulation, it usually just means a blossoming black market. If you declare all alcohol illegal, you don’t rid the world of alcohol. You merely turn a lot of people into criminals, who learn to drink a little quieter, sneak a little quicker, and make a lot of money off of bootleg liquor.

If you have to go through a lot of work to prop up your business model, the solution isn’t to get more people out there enforcing the rules you want to play by. Change your business model. It’s the idiot who defies the wind and tells it to blow somewhere else, because this is your yard, and so the wind has to play by your rules. It’s the genius who figures out how to harness the power of the wind and make a kabazillion dollars off of what the wind was just going to do anyway.

From the New York Times…

Fresh evidence unearthed Thursday by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

Does this mean that the Lashkar-e-Taiba have lost legitimacy or do we need the UN to certify this?

From Bloomberg….

Russia weakened its defense of the ruble for a fourth time in a month, pushing the currency near a three-year low against the dollar, as the price of the nation’s crude oil fell by a record this week to less than $40 a barrel.

The currency slid as much as 1.2 percent to 28.1344 per dollar and dropped 1 percent to 31.5971 against the central bank’s target basket of euros and dollars. “The corridor has been widened,” a Bank Rossii official who declined to be identified said in a phone interview from Moscow today.

Russia, the world’s largest energy producer, raised interest rates twice last month and drained $143 billion from its foreign-currency reserves to arrest a 17 percent drop in the ruble since August as oil plunged. Urals crude, Russia’s main export blend, slumped 20 percent this week to the lowest in almost three years at $39.82 a barrel, below the $70 average needed for Russia to balance its budget next year.

They have problems.

From the Economist….

AMERICA’S recession is likely to be long and deep if the latest employment numbers are anything to go by. America shed more jobs in November than in any month in the past 34 years, according to figures released on Friday December 5th by the Bureau of Labour Statistics. The fall in employment of 533,000 is far worse even the most pessimistic of forecasters had counted on. Not only are the job losses deeper than expected, workers have been shed across almost the whole of the economy. Health care and government employment were the only remaining bright spots.

With news like that, the stock market’s reaction should be obvious. But just in case you are one of those thick people who have yet to figure out the stock market we point you to this report from Yahoo….

Despite some of the worst jobs data in decades, stocks managed to finish the session with impressive gains after reversing early losses.

From its session low to its session high, the stock market moved from a loss of 3.2% to a gain of 4.1%. It closed with a gain of 3.7%.

From CNN….

Oil prices continued falling on Tuesday, tumbling to 3-1/2 year low, as concern about the floundering global economy and falling demand again took center stage.

U.S. crude for January delivery fell $2.32 to settle at $46.96 a barrel. It was the lowest closing price since May 20, 2005, when oil settled at $46.80 a barrel.

Some people are worried.

From James Hamilton….

I was running out of vocabulary last month to describe just how bad October was for the domestic automakers. But whatever you want to say about October, November was significantly worse.

When I first saw the figure for November sales of cars manufactured in North America– 236,000 units– I thought maybe somebody had mistyped the first digit. Even 336,000 would have been a very bad month. But 236,000 is 17% below the dreadful October figure and 40% below the number sold in November of 2007.