Question

Do you favor more Federal Government regulation over publically owned business and corporations OR less regulation and more free-market trade?

Answer 1

I favor more  Federal Government regulation over publically owned business and corporations ​​​

Since the Sherman Act, the federal government has steadily extended its role in controlling companies. The 1970s proved to be a transitional period for federal regulation after ninety years of nearly uninterrupted growth. Three new federal regulatory bodies were created at the beginning of the decade: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Agency for Consumer Protection.

More privatization happened in the 1980s and 1990s. This trend has benefited both consumers and business, but there have been notable failures. Savings and loan deregulation led to a series of bank failures in the late 1980s that cost more than $1 trillion to the federal government. In 2001, California's power industry deregulation created energy shortages, increased wholesale and retail rates, and forced two of the largest utility companies in California to declare bankruptcy. Enron, the energy trading firm and other energy traders, all created as a result of deregulation, are accused of conspiring to control California's power supply

Enron became the focus of another controversy in December 2001 when its bankruptcy, the largest in the nation's history to date, announced that the corporation had used misleading accounting practices to inflate its profit and stock price statements. This was the first to involve fraudulent bookkeeping in a string of corporate bankruptcies that rocked an already depressed stock market in 2002. To restore investor confidence, the federal government has exercised its regulatory authority to promote more securities, accounting, and power utility industries scrutiny.

The accounting scandals of the early twenty-first century are reminiscent of the business scandals of the late 1800s and early 1900s when antagonism between corporate and government regulators arose. The two sides have actually benefited from each other despite this antipathy. Government regulations ensuring contract enforceability and property rights are such fundamentals that without them business in the United States could not function properly.

Likewise, the U.S. government could not sustain itself without the economic growth created by private enterprise. While the current system of federal and state regulations may sometimes be self-contradictory and, therefore, confounding to the business community, it is fairly flexible, leaving the United States as one of the nations whose economic prosperity most depends on private entrepreneurs ' decisions.