Browse regulations

Establishes a publicly available database for consumer product safety information, allowing consumers and others to report product-related harms and enabling manufacturers to respond, with provisions for confidentiality, verification, and correction of inaccurate information.

This regulation provides essential transparency for consumer safety by creating a centralized database where harm reports can be verified and manufacturers can respond. It balances public safety needs with privacy protections and due process rights for manufacturers through correction mechanisms and confidentiality provisions.

This regulation implements the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, establishing comprehensive rules for telemarketing practices including mandatory disclosures, prohibitions on deceptive practices, requirements for express verifiable authorization, and restrictions on abusive conduct like threats and advance fees.

This regulation creates a massive compliance burden on legitimate businesses while being easily circumvented by sophisticated fraudsters. The 185,000+ pages of federal regulations already create an unknowable legal labyrinth - adding more complexity doesn't protect consumers, it just creates rent-seeking opportunities and barriers to entry for small businesses. The original Act's goals could be achieved through state-level enforcement and common law fraud remedies without federal overreach.

Mandates monthly reporting of excessive tarmac delays by large airlines to the DOT, with detailed timing, airport, and aircraft data to monitor delays over 3/4 hours.

Compliance imposes millions in hidden taxes on airlines, passed to consumers; enables regulatory mission creep into airline operations; market forces and existing safety rules already address tarmac delays without federal surveillance.

This regulation implements the Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contracting Program, establishing certification requirements and procurement mechanisms to ensure women-owned businesses have equal opportunity in federal contracting. It creates two categories: WOSBs (51% owned/controlled by women) and EDWOSBs (economically disadvantaged women-owned businesses), with contracting officers able to restrict competition or award sole source contracts in industries where SBA determines women are underrepresented or substantially underrepresented in federal procurement.

This regulation mandates gender-based contracting preferences that violate equal protection principles and create artificial barriers to competition. It forces contracting officers to consider gender rather than merit, imposes costly certification requirements on businesses, and distorts the federal procurement market. The unseen costs include reduced competition, higher prices for taxpayers, and the creation of a bureaucratic certification industry. These discriminatory contracting preferences should be eliminated in favor of merit-based competition regardless of gender.

This regulation establishes detailed definitions and housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, requiring them to meet specific targets for lending to low-income, very low-income, and minority families, as well as multifamily housing goals. It creates complex measurement systems for compliance with housing goals across single-family purchase, refinance, and multifamily lending.

This regulation represents regulatory capture and market distortion. It forces government-sponsored enterprises to prioritize social goals over financial soundness, contributing to housing bubbles and market instability. The complex compliance requirements create barriers to entry, protect incumbent players, and impose hidden costs on all Americans through distorted housing markets.

This regulation establishes housing goals for Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) requiring them to purchase mortgages for low-income families and community-based institutions, with detailed definitions, measurement criteria, and enforcement mechanisms.

This represents federal regulatory overreach into credit allocation decisions that should be determined by market forces. It creates hidden costs for all mortgage borrowers while distorting lending decisions away from creditworthiness toward demographic quotas. The regulation violates constitutional principles of limited federal government by forcing private institutions to serve politically-favored groups rather than customers.

Requires annual independent external audits for Federal Home Loan Bank System entities (Banks, OF, FICO) and combined financial statements, conducted per GAAS and GAGAS standards, with mandatory bi-annual auditor meetings and unrestricted FHFA examiner access to work papers.

Americans would be worse off without this regulation because federally-backed housing finance entities would lack transparent, independent verification of their financial condition, increasing risk of undetected problems leading to taxpayer bailouts and systemic instability. The mandate ensures standardized, credible audits that voluntary measures cannot replicate due to inherent incentives to conceal financial weakness, providing essential oversight for institutions with implicit government guarantees.

This regulation governs the internal governance and operations of the Office of Finance (OF), a shared-service entity within the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) system. It establishes board composition rules (including ex officio Bank presidents and five Independent Directors), committee structures (Audit Committee), financial reporting requirements with SEC exceptions, funding mechanisms where member banks reimburse OF costs, and detailed oversight by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). The OF acts as agent for Banks in issuing consolidated obligations and preparing combined financial reports.

This regulation imposes costly bureaucratic overhead on member banks that flows through as higher housing finance costs, while entrenching a government-subsidized GSE system that creates moral hazard and distorts capital allocation away from truly free markets. The detailed governance requirements raise barriers to entry, protect incumbent institutions from competition, and perpetuate a system where government backing undermines market discipline—consistent with Mises' warning that interventions create unintended consequences and reduce economic welfare. The regulation's existence assumes the OF's legitimacy as a government entity, yet such centralized coordination is precisely what free markets accomplish privately without regulatory compulsion.

This regulation establishes the legal framework for book-entry securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, defining terms and governing rights, obligations, and transfers within the Federal Reserve's book-entry system for Enterprise Securities.

This regulation creates a complex, specialized legal framework that entrenches government-sponsored enterprise securities in the Federal Reserve system, creating regulatory capture and reducing market competition. The rules favor large institutional investors while creating barriers for smaller participants, and the Federal Reserve's role as fiscal agent for these enterprises represents an inappropriate expansion of central bank functions beyond monetary policy into private securities markets.

Requires FHFA-regulated entities to report fraudulent or suspected fraudulent loan/instrument transactions to FHFA, maintain internal controls and training for fraud detection, and prohibits disclosure of such reports without FHFA approval. Good faith reporters are immune from liability.

Creates significant compliance costs for internal controls, training, reporting formats, and record-keeping. The nondisclosure provision prevents entities from publicly disclosing fraud, hindering market transparency and accountability. Centralized fraud reporting duplicates existing criminal and civil fraud enforcement mechanisms, adding bureaucratic overhead without improving deterrence. The 'possible fraud' standard based on 'reasonable belief' is vague and invites over-reporting and unnecessary investigations, wasting resources.

This FHFA regulation mandates that regulated entities (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Federal Home Loan Banks) establish comprehensive diversity and inclusion programs, including Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion, D&I strategic plans, outreach requirements for contracting with minority-, women-, and disabled-owned businesses, and extensive demographic data collection and reporting on employment, promotions, contracting, and board composition.

This regulation imposes massive compliance costs requiring entities to track employees and contractors by race, gender, and disability, creating a bureaucratic burden inconsistent with limited government. It compels preferential treatment based on immutable characteristics, violating the principle of equal protection and undermining merit-based decision making. The data collection is intrusive, and the contracting requirements distort market competition by forcing consideration of business ownership demographics over qualification and price. The regulation represents unconstitutional federal overreach into private entity operations through the administrative state.

Federal Housing Finance Agency regulations governing debt collection from employees and others through salary offset, administrative wage garnishment, and tax refund offset, with procedures for hearings, appeals, and reporting to credit agencies

Creates bureaucratic maze for debt collection that imposes significant compliance costs on businesses and individuals, distorts employment relationships, and enables aggressive government collection practices that can trap debtors in cycles of garnishment without adequate due process protections

Implements Equal Access to Justice Act procedures for FHFA adversary adjudications, allowing eligible parties to recover fees/expenses when FHFA's position was not substantially justified or demands were unreasonable

Creates bureaucratic compliance costs and regulatory overhead for a narrow procedural mechanism that benefits only parties who already won their cases, adding complexity to an already cumbersome administrative process without providing meaningful public benefit

Federal Reserve Board's implementation of the Privacy Act of 1974, establishing procedures for individuals to access, amend, and obtain accounting of their records in Board systems; includes identity verification requirements, fee structure, appeal processes, and exemptions for law enforcement and confidential source systems.

Deletion would eliminate statutory privacy protections and accountability mechanisms for Fed record-keeping, enabling unregulated collection and use of personal information by a powerful financial regulator. The Privacy Act provides essential checks on government power that cannot be achieved through market forces or alternative oversight, as individuals cannot contractually negotiate with or sue the Fed absent these clear procedural rights.

Implements debt collection procedures for FEC employee and vendor debts, including interest assessment, 180-day Treasury referral, and waivers, following the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 and Treasury/DOJ standards.

Redundant procedural layer; FEC could follow Treasury's general debt collection regulations without a separate part, reducing administrative burden and CFR complexity. No unique election-law justification for separate treatment of routine employee/contractor debts.