current event #1

"Carlos Slim: Let Mexico's moguls battle" from The Economist (http://www.economist.com/node/21546028)

While the article detailed the financial implications of monopolies held by companies like Telmex and America Movil in Mexico's cellular telephone industry, it also more importantly adressed the impact financial control has on the power of certain individuals (e.g. Carlos Slim) and the Mexican government as a whole. The power of monopolies in the Mexico's telecommunications deparment reflects directly on the drain of power and therefore credibility that this lends to the government. Succinctly put, "The relentless use of injunctions, in particular by [América Móvil]…has replaced, to a large extent, the right and responsibility of government to implement economic policy and regulation". This imbalance costs the country a great deal of money (because of excessive pricing) and supresses the number of people in Mexico that can afford to have a cellular phone plan, which then negatively affects the country's economy as a whole. 
In addition, the market also has a great deal of interaction with the United States - "Every year Americans make more than 20,000 years of calls to Mexico, more than to all of western Europe" and a few US companies have challenged the Mexican monopolies in court for overcharging them to dial into Mexico - accusations which also take away from the credibility of the Mexican government. Finally, the cellular phone market is also closely linked with that of telephone and broadband connection - since President Felipe Calderon decreed a "digital switchover" for 2015, this interconnection and the power that monopolies could wield will only beome more important.
Personally, though, I think that with further interconnection with US companies in this area as well as the possibility for increased competition with the digital switchover, the power of the monopolies can be more easily broken, especially if divided over cell phone and television markets.