Pretty much all experts agree that there are now more cartels than when the drug war started.
Mr. Fox said he rejected "forcefully" the statements by the Bush administration and governors of border states, contending that they had unfairly depicted Mexico as a safe haven for organized crime, though his government has arrested more leading drug traffickers and dismantled more cartels than any of its predecessors.
In order to relieve the downward pressure on prices, OPEC members attempted to transform the organization into a more formal cartel, with production quotas for each member.
During his term as chairman, the British banking industry, which has traditionally been dominated by a handful of giants, became even more of cartel.
The agents could follow them and their associates, wiretap conversations, and possibly charge more senior cartel members with serious crimes such as conspiracy, drug trafficking and money laundering.
Manuel, a businessman in his early 40s who lives in Tijuana, avoids restaurants in the city, particularly those that serve food from Sinaloa, which has produced more top cartel leaders than any other state.
A big supply disruption or prolonged high prices could plunge consuming economies into turmoil and history has shown that oil shocks hurt oil producers as much as oil consumers.What is more, the cartel is worried about a threat even bigger than Iraq's belligerence: global economic downturn.
But so much did the threat of central-bank selling weigh on the gold price that 15 European central banks organised a "selling agreement" (more properly, cartel) to limit sales until next September.But central banks have long been adept at buying their gold high and selling it low.
"Some of these [companies] do act more like cartels, basically as an IT cartel," Newsom, who served as San Francisco's mayor for years before taking on the state Lieutenant Governor role, said.
