Word: icc
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Tough Watchdog. The most influential, and consequently the most controversial, of Washington's alphabet soup of agencies are the Big Seven independents-the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Power Commission (FPC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In addition, the Food and Drug Administration must clear all prescription drugs and the Federal Aviation Agency, whose annual budget of $775 million is the largest of the agencies, sets safety standards and regulates the design and production of aircraft. The agencies spend about...
...agencies can shake and reshape industries. The SEC in particular has recently been a tough watchdog on Wall Street. FTC's summary order to cigarette makers to put health warnings on packages and in their advertising has raised a storm that is headed for the courts. The ICC has so far held up the badly wanted merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads, and the CAB has turned thumbs down on the plans of American and Eastern airlines to merge...
Molasses-Slow. Starting with the ICC, established in 1887 to regulate railroads, the agencies were called into being to correct abuses that industries and institutions could not or would not correct themselves. But as the agencies have grown in number and power, they have also grown their own faults. Molasses-slow bureaucracy is the chief of them: it can take three years to settle an ICC case, five years for the FPC to act on a gas pipeline rate change and 70 days for the SEC to process a new stock issue. One FTC case cost a company...
...ICC's Abe Goff, an Idaho Republican and former Congressman, holds the chairmanship this year under the commission's annual rotation system. In the unwieldy 2,500-man agency, the turnover of cases is much less rapid: a decision in the Pennsylvania-New York Central merger is not expected until well into...
Since the Pennsy wants nothing more these days than to merge with the New York Central, it will probably go along with the ICC and dispose of its stock to help sway the ICC to approve its own merger. Once the Pennsy agrees to sell the stock, the way would be cleared for the Norfolk & Western-Nickel Plate merger to take its place alongside the already approved linkage of the Chesapeake & Ohio-Baltimore & Ohio roads. If the ICC then approved the Pennsy and Central linkup, the Eastern U.S. would have three superroads that would carry 90% of its traffic...