Lessons For Competition Law From the Economic Crisis: Can Too Big To Fail Trigger Useful Antitrust Intervention?

This article examines whether, and the extent to which, antitrust law could contribute to a broader regulatory effort to control the too-big-to-fail problem. The article begins by exploring the nature of the problem. Against this backdrop, antitrust policy and rules are considered to evaluate whether antitrust might play a meaningful role. The article concludes that antitrust law, if vigorously enforced with attention paid to the need to avoid too-big-to-fail problems can be a useful public policy tool to address the problem, although it can come nowhere near solving it or preventing recurrences of recent systemic failures