Obama antitrust enforcement looking like more of the same

When President Obama took office, he promised to undo eight years of what he called the weakest antitrust enforcement in half a century. Consumer advocates held their breath for a dramatic shift that would hark back to the 1990s, when the last Democratic administration pursued a landmark case against Microsoft. A year and a half later, they're still waiting.

The Justice Department's antitrust division has yet to exercise its signature power: to bring a case against a corporate titan suspected of abusing its dominance. In its other central role, as a merger cop, the division challenged in court fewer than half as many deals in 2009 as the Bush administration did in its last year in office, though the number of mergers also declined by about half. Instead, federal antitrust lawyers have eschewed aggressive litigation against big business in favor of a less-risky approach that works with companies to resolve anti-competitive concerns. The antitrust division has shown itself more likely to use a scalpel than a blunt instrument when a merger has crossed its desk. When faced with mergers it worries will hurt competition, the Justice Department has forced companies to make some changes, such as spinning off a business line. But with one exception involving dairy processors, it has not gone to court to block deals, including the controversial marriage of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the recent United-Continental airline merger and the union of the two biggest makers of voting machines in the nation.

Now, all eyes are on the proposed merger of NBC and Comcast, a case with echoes of the Ticketmaster deal because the two companies will combine businesses - in this instance, cable and media properties - that typically sit on opposite sites of the negotiating table but that if combined could help each other.