Federal Trade Commission

Examples of Federal Trade Commission in the following topics:

• Anti-Trust Laws

  • Wilson sought to encourage competition and curb trusts by using the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the Clayton Antitrust Act.
  • For instance, the 1916 Federal Farm Loan Act provided for issuance of low-cost, long term mortgages to farmers, and the Adamson Act imposed an eight-hour workday in the railroad industry (prompted by the 1916 summer strike by railroad employees).
  • In addition to the Underwood tariff, which seemed to finally resolve the political debate over tariff rates, and the creation of the Federal Reserve, Wilson also supported anti-trust legislation.
  • Wilson deviated from his presidential predecessors, who relied on lawsuits to break trusts and monopolies, by founding a new trustbusting approach through encouraging competition through the Federal Trade Commission.
  • The Federal Trade Commission effectively restricted unfair trade practices and enforced the 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act.

• The bottom line

  • Recently, the American Federal Trade Commission called for a special meeting dedicated to the update of environmental guidelines, which will make greenwashing even more of a bad idea.

• Social and Legal Considerations

  • Advertising is regulated by the authority of the Federal Trade Commission, a United States administrative agency, to prohibit "unfair and deceptive acts or practices in commerce. " While it makes laymen's sense to assume that being deceptive is being unfair, deceptiveness in practice has been treated separately by the FTC, leaving unfairness to refer only to other types.
  • In addition to federal laws, each state has its own unfair competition law to prohibit false and misleading advertising.
  • The UCL "borrows heavily from section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act" but has developed its own body of case law.
  • In 1976, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that these claims were misleading, and that Listerine had "no efficacy" at either preventing or alleviating the symptoms of sore throats and colds.

• Federal Efforts to Control Monopoly

  • The Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890, declared that no person or business could monopolize trade or could combine or conspire with someone else to restrict trade.
  • In 1914, Congress passed two more laws designed to bolster the Sherman Antitrust Act: the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act.
  • The Federal Trade Commission Act established a government commission aimed at preventing unfair and anti-competitive business practices.
  • Steel was not a monopoly because it did not engage in "unreasonable" restraint of trade.
  • The Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department watch for potential monopolies or act to prevent mergers that threaten to reduce competition so severely that consumers could suffer.

• Wilsonian Progressivism

  • Included among these were the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Federal Farm Loan Act.
  • Congress rejected proposals for a tariff board to scientifically fix rates, but did set up a study commission to monitor them.
  • Wilson deviated from his presidential predecessors, who relied on lawsuits to break trusts and monopolies, by founding a new trustbusting approach through encouraging competition through the Federal Trade Commission.
  • The Federal Trade Commission effectively restricted unfair trade practices and enforced the 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act.
  • Despite this, Wilson did much to extend the power of the federal government in social and economic affairs, and paved the way for future federal reform programs such as the New Deal.

• Maintaining a Strong Economy

  • Organizations within the Department of Commerce include the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the International Trade Administration.
  • The Department also collects all federal taxes through the Internal Revenue Service and manages U.S. government debt instruments.
  • The Federal Reserve is the central banking system of the United States, which conducts the nation's monetary policy, supervises and regulates banking institutions, maintains the stability of the financial system, and provides financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions.
  • The Office of the United States Trade Representative is the government agency responsible for developing and recommending U.S. trade policy to the President, conducting trade negotiations at bilateral and multilateral levels, and coordinating trade policy within the government through the interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC) and Trade Policy Review Group (TPRG).
  • The Federal Trade Commission promotes consumer protection and the elimination and prevention of anti-competitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly.The Small Business Administration provides support to entrepreneurs and small businesses by providing loans, contracts, and counseling.

• Government Regulation

  • It "safeguards human health and the environment by providing several major incentives for regulated entities to voluntarily come into compliance with federal environmental Laws & Regulations. " Affected entities must voluntarily discover and act to correct any violations that occur.
  • At the federal level, one the earliest institutions was the Interstate Commerce Commission which had its roots in earlier state-based regulatory commissions and agencies.
  • Later agencies include the Federal Trade Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission , Civil Aeronautics Board, and various other institutions.
  • These institutions vary from industry to industry and at the federal and state level.
  • The Securities and Exchange Commission is an example of a government regulatory agency.

• The Regulators

  • The Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 consequently gave the federal government a preeminent role in protecting small investors from fraud and making it easier for them to understand companies' financial reports.
  • The commission enforces a web of rules to achieve that goal.
  • In addition, the commission requires companies to tell the public when their own officers buy or sell shares of their stock; the commission believes that these "insiders" possess intimate information about their companies and that their trades can indicate to other investors their degree of confidence in their companies' future.
  • The agency also seeks to prevent insiders from trading in stock based on information that has not yet become public.
  • The Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversees the futures markets.

• "Black Monday" and the Long Bull Market

  • The Brady Commission (a presidential commission set up to investigate the fall) the SEC, and others blamed various factors for the 1987 debacle -- including a negative turn in investor psychology, investors' concerns about the federal government budget deficit and foreign trade deficit, a failure of specialists on the New York Stock Exchange to discharge their duty as buyers of last resort, and "program trading" in which computers are programmed to launch buying or selling of large volumes of stock when certain market triggers occur.
  • It said it would restrict program trading whenever the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose or fell 50 points in a single day, and it created a "circuit-breaker" mechanism to halt all trading temporarily any time the DJIA dropped 250 points.
  • Unlike its performance in 1929, the Federal Reserve made it clear it would ease credit conditions to ensure that investors could meet their margin calls and could continue operating.
  • What's more, the volume of trading rose enormously.
  • These traders were among the growing legions of persons using the Internet to do their trading.

• The Coal Strike of 1902

  • The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 is significant as the first labor episode in which the federal government intervened as a mediator.
  • This forced President Roosevelt to intervene with an arbitration commission that suspended the strike.
  • The strike never resumed, as the miners received more pay for fewer hours, however, the mine owners refused to recognize the trade union as a bargaining agent.
  • In the end, however, the rhetoric of both sides made little difference to the Commission.
  • Organized labor celebrated the outcome as a victory for the UMWA and American Federation of Labor unions generally.