The Obama Administration Reverses Corporatist BushCo Policy, Takes Tough Antitrust Line

[ClarkUSA]

The Obama administration is reversing a Bush administration policy shift that precluded antitrust actions against big corporations.

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s top antitrust official announced on Monday that the administration would restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share.

The new enforcement policy reverses the Bush administration’s approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It returns to a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s.

The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Christine A. Varney, announced the policy reversal in a speech on Monday before the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy research organization. She will deliver the same speech on Tuesday to the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Ms. Varney said that the Bush administration policy “lost sight of an ultimate goal of antitrust laws — the protection of consumer welfare.”

No wonder the corporate tool wing of the Republican Party hate/fear President Obama with a passion only matched by teabaggers. ;)