New law tries to wake up sleepy commission

摘要

When is a regulatory agency not a regulatory agency?rnOne answer is, when, for example, it is armed with powers it never uses. Another is, when it lacks powers to use in the first place.rnToday, we will look at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. It's an example of a regulatory agency that has powers it doesn't much use, that doesn't have all the powers one might expect, and, according to Congress and other critics, has lost its way, protecting businesses instead of consumers.rnCertainly, a regulatory agency that overdoes the power trip, or has too much power, is its own kind of problem, bad for business and bad for America. And sometimes it might be best not to have any regulatory agency at all. But those are subjects for another day.