Obama vs. Monopolies

Obama the trust buster? According to the New York Times, the president's top antitrust official, Christine A. Varney, is preparing to crack down on monopolies much harder than her predecessors in the Bush administration. In a series of scheduled speeches, Varney is expected to announce a return to 1990s-era efforts to break up dominant corporations, which yielded lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel during that period. These types of cases declined under Bush, whose appointees favored a more laissez faire approach to monopolies.