In one of those “you just can’t predict everything that comes up in a government investigation” moments, this David Kesmodel and John R. Wilke/WSJ ($) article (free NY Times article here and free WSJ Deal Journal post here) reports that Whole Foods Markets CEO John Mackey has been a longtime pseudonymous contributor to a Yahoo stock-market forum on both Whole Foods and its proposed merger partner, Wild Oats Markets, Inc (prior posts here):

For about eight years until last August, the company confirms, Mr. Mackey posted numerous messages on Yahoo Finance stock forums as Rahodeb. It’s an anagram of Deborah, Mr. Mackey’s wife’s name. Rahodeb cheered Whole Foods’ financial results, trumpeted his gains on the stock and bashed Wild Oats. Rahodeb even defended Mr. Mackey’s haircut when another user poked fun at a photo in the annual report. “I like Mackey’s haircut,” Rahodeb said. “I think he looks cute!”
Mr. Mackey’s online alter ego came to light in a document made public late Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission in its lawsuit seeking to block the Wild Oats takeover on antitrust grounds. Submitted under seal when the suit was filed in June, the filing included a quotation from the Yahoo site. An FTC footnote said, “As here, Mr. Mackey often posted to Internet sites pseudonymously, often using the name Rahodeb.”

Whole Foods is certainly a different type of place. Somehow, I just can’t envision Jack Welch or Hank Greenberg in their heyday trolling the internet message boards debating the relative merits of their companies. But beyond the public embarrassment to Mackey, the FTC achieves little by “outing” his message board persona. Has the FTC’s case against the Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger really devolved into a personality conflict?

It all started with this Holman Jenkins/WSJ column in which he blasted the Federal Trade Commission’s vacuous campaign against the proposed Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger.
That prompted this WSJ letter-to-the-editor from Arnie Celnicker, a former attorney for the FTC and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, in which he contends, among other things, that the complexities of markets is such that “[t]he fact that I can now buy organic milk at Wal-Mart tells us something, but very little, about the realistic nature of competition between Whole Foods and Wal-Mart, or about the effect of Whole Foods’ acquisition of Wild Oats.”
Which prompted Don Boudreaux to throw up his hands in exasperation:

How in the name of free-range chicken do these facts justify government blocking this merger? Precisely because consumers now want more and more organic products, financial markets have every incentive to invest in firms catering to this growing market if these firms are well-managed. Wild Oats’ inability to get adequate private financing in this growing market is strong evidence that its assets now are poorly managed. It’s only natural that Whole Foods spots and seizes this opportunity to use these assets more effectively at meeting consumer demands. The FTC’s interference – an unwholesome additive to the market – jeopardizes consumer well-being.

Not to speak of the jeopardy in which the FTC’s interference places the investment of Wild Oats shareholders.

The Dallas Morning News’ Eric Torbenson examines a potential growth area for business plaintiffs’ lawyers and another burgeoning risk for business — lawsuits asserting responsibility for damagres caused by climate change. And guess who’s right in the middle of it? None other than Houston’s longtime business plaintiff’s lawyer, Steve Susman:

Steve Susman of Susman Godfrey in Houston has been a pioneer in such litigation. He led the charge this year to force TXU Energy into building fewer coal-fired plants in Texas than it had planned.
Now he’s among several lawyers talking with a group of Inuits in northern Canada who have seen an entire island sink under rising seas from global warming. The tribe is weighing its options, including suing carbon-emitting corporations such as power companies for heating the planet, he said.
“Melting glaciers isn’t going to get that much going, but wait until the first big ski area closes because it has no snow,” said Mr. Susman, who teaches a climate-change litigation course at the University of Houston Law School. “Or wait until portions of lower Manhattan and San Francisco are under water.”
Some lawyers are trying to tie the damage from Hurricane Katrina to global warming ñ and the energy companies who may have contributed to that warming.
Mr. Susman predicts large insurance companies, which have paid out billions of dollars in claims in the past two decades because of powerful hurricanes, eventually will become plaintiffs in broad greenhouse-effect litigation against energy companies. [. . .]
“You’re going to see some really serious exposure on the part of companies that are emitting CO-2,” Mr. Susman predicted. “I can’t say for sure it’s going to be as big as the tobacco settlements, but then again it may even be bigger. . .”

Oh, my.

Best crack yet on the Federal Trade Commission’s remarkably misdirected lawsuit to enjoin the proposed Whole Foods-Wild Oats Markets merger comes from Mr. Juggles over at Long and Short Capital. Commenting on the FTC’s novel theory that the merger will reduce competition in the market catering to those of us who seek a “superior grocery store experience,” tongue firmly planted in cheek, Mr. Juggles observes as follows:

Frankly, I agree [with the FTC’s theory]. I spent 20 minutes waiting in the deli line at Food Lion last week, only to be sold ground beef that looked like it had been dropped on the floor and then put back in the deli case. I love superior quality and superior service and abhor the idea that Whole Foods could acquire the only other superior provider, Wild Oats. At that point, given their monopoly on quality service, what would happen next? Iíll tell you what: weíd probably all end up paying a huge premium for our smoked gouda and wild Alaskan salmon.