Collateral damage of the financial crisis: US antitrust law?

George L. Priest, professor of law & economics at Yale Law School and antitrust specialist, sees the Obama administration throwing "... a bomb at modern antitrust law". This is the punchline of his article The Justice Department's Antitrust Bomb in the Wall Street Journal. From the article:

Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Christine Varney claims that the Justice Department can aid economic recovery by prosecuting businesses that have been successful in gaining large market shares. In her announcement last month she argued that "many observers agree" that our current recession reflects "a failure of antitrust" and "inadequate antitrust oversight." ...

What does Ms. Varney propose as an alternative approach? [...] Her basic proposal is to transform American antitrust law to more closely resemble that of Europe. She states that American antitrust policies have "diverged too frequently" from those of the Europe, and that "[w]e will focus our efforts on working through our previously divergent policies regarding single-firm conduct and pursuing vigorous enforcement on the [monopolization] front." more...

Professor Priest disagrees:

This is a huge mistake. The principal reasons American and European approaches to antitrust diverge are that the operative legal standards are different and that the Europeans have not adopted a tradition of rigorous economic analysis. [...] In the U.S. -- Ms. Varney's views aside -- success in competition is rewarded. In Europe it is suspect [...] more...

Strong stuff!