Antitrust Acts
Antitrust acts are Federal and state regulations to safeguard trade from unlawful price fixing, monopolies and other restraints. These acts such as the Sherman Act of 1890 and Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950 enforce the antitrust laws. These laws are in place to ensure fair competition and as mentioned before to prevent monopolies and attempts to form monopolies.
I found an article in the EBSCOhost database discussing a “Super Settlement” between the US and major banks. Visa, Mastercard and a dozen other large banks were investigated for allegedly fixing credit and debit card fees for retailers across the US. The article doesn’t exactly identify which act was violated but after reading our text it is obvious that the Sherman Act of 1890 was violated. The Sherman Act “outlawed restraints of trade (for example, collusive price-fixing and dividing up markets) as well as monopolization” (McConnell, Brue, Flynn, 2012). The Sherman Act allows for the retailers to be sued up to three times the monetary injury they endured. The settlement was a $7.25 billion deal. These banks had to pay “$6 billion of the settlement directly to the class of retailers” (Beck, 2012).
In my opinion monopolies and oligopolies are definitely not beneficial to society, if they are not regulated. A monopoly would not be good for consumers because if the firm is the only provider for a product they can utilize cheaper resources on their products and sell it to consumers and even raise the prices. In an instance like the example I gave you can see where the banks are heading into an Oligopoly if they are not already considered one. Also, you can see the adverse affects of that on retailers and consumers the like. If a retailer has more overhead they are more likely to raise their prices. However, Monopolies and Oligoploies don’t all have to be bad. Prices in Oligopolies tend to remain stable (Oligopoly Examples, 2012). As we learned in our text the price of one firm in contingent on another in oligopolies so firms are less likely to lower or raise their prices. Our utility companies are great examples of well-regulated, safe companies that form an oligopoly.

References
Beck, J. (2012). Super Settlement. In Inside Counsel, pg 14. http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.devry.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?si
=2586459e-d1fd-4e2d-ba79-cb44c256a153%40sessionmgr15&vid=4&hid=16.

McConnell, C., Brue, S., & Flynn, S. (2012). Economics: Principles, problems, and policies. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Oligopoly Examples. (2012). Oligopoly examples. In Your dictionary. Retrieved from http://examples.yourdictionary.com/oligopoly-examples.html.