Editorials: Game Of Monopoly

IBDeditorials.com:

Antitrust: It's a pretty sad state of affairs when American corporations, our economic champions, get cuffed around by bureaucrats overseas and no one stands up for them. But that's just what's happening now.

Following in the well-trod steps of Microsoft Corp. earlier this decade, Intel has run afoul of European regulators, who this week slapped the chipmaker with a $1.45 billion antitrust fine.

This has nothing to do, mind you, with monopoly or price-gouging. It has everything to do with Europe's ongoing efforts to tear down U.S. companies that outcompete their own state-aided firms.

But the same economically destructive urge to attack successful industries with antitrust now seems to have reinfected the U.S.

On Monday, FTC antitrust chief Christine Varney unveiled a sweeping return to aggressive U.S. antitrust enforcement. As the Associated Press aptly noted, this might lead "some of technology's biggest companies . . . to rethink their business strategies or expansion plans." That is, they'll stop innovating and expanding.