The Obama administration’s antitrust enforcement policy has been reminiscent of the marshaling of the local constabulary to engage Gilbert and Sullivan’s conflicted and flummoxed Pirates of Penzance. Urged on by Major-General Stanley’s bevy of daughters to “go to death and slaughter…go ye heroes all and die,” the police temporize their departure to battle in spite of Major-General Stanley’s continuing harangue “yes but they don’t go…oh damn it they don’t go.”
Similarly, the anticipated increase in antitrust enforcement during most of the first three years of the Obama presidency “didn’t go” to the lengths suggested by the candidate’s pre-election rhetoric. The first major antitrust initiative of the Obama Department of Justice was the announcement of a series of workshops addressing the application of the antitrust laws and regulations to the agricultural industry in August 2009.1
