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Majoras and Jeffries

Deborah Platt Majoras with Dean Jeffries at
the alumni reception held in Washington,
DC, this June.

FTC Chairman Majoras ’89 Describes World Competitive Climate

A frequent speaker on competition policy to national and international audiences, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras ’89 addressed DC-area alumni at their annual lunch program in June. She described how the FTC has emerged over its 90-year existence as one of the government’s most effective agencies for safeguarding the mechanics of an effective free market system.

Praising the benefits of free markets, Majoras said “winds of economic change [are] blowing across the globe.” She described how capitalism and free markets are replacing government-controlled economies around the world, comparing the 20 jurisdictions that had competition laws in 1990 to the 100 that have them today.

Majoras said that capitalism “has the potential to serve and protect consumers better than government autocracies and bureaucracies,” but cautioned that the United States alone does not set the rules for the global marketplace. “To exercise leadership in a world of great jurisdictional complexity and dynamism, we must undertake a continuing process of self-assessment and improvement. Our opinions about the superiority of markets will continue to be influential only to the extent that foreign observers perceive our implementation and experience to be worthy of emulation.”

Formerly an editor of the Virginia Law Review, Majoras practiced antitrust law with Jones Day in Washington, DC before being appointed in 2001 deputy assistant attorney general in the antitrust division. Majoras was sworn in as Chairman of the FTC on August 16, 2004.

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