There’s been legal theory movement over the past 15 years or so to revisit this shift. All you’re seeing now is some of the peaks of an undersea mountain range. This movement has been gaining in different agencies for years. I think it’s a secular shift rather than something administration-specific.

Of course the rentiers can still squash things, and will. But I think the tide is against them.

Matt Stoller has done great work both documenting this and contributing.

Do you have good references that provide broad coverage on the changing tastes of anti-competitive enforcement? The Reagan-era comment intrigued me.

The best would be to read Stoller's massive book on antitrust from the days of the standard oil trust to today, "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy". I suppose you could just skip ahead to Reagan and Bork, but the whole book is fascinating.

Failing that, you could read his blog. He's the most succinct and thoughtful writer on the topic today.

This is not some "hidden history" -- they were quite proud of it. I watched it unfold in real time.

I find it fascinating that the Reagan administration (and the bevy of organizations around it) moved taxonomy and models such that the democrats (in particular Clinton) discussed economics and antitrust using the republicans' framework, just as the republicans still think of the economy from a Victorian/Marxist framework (Labor Theory of Value, capital expressed only in smokestack industries and finance, etc etc).