The Fed is really more a macroeconomic topic (I mean you could talk about it's microfoundations but I guess that's a little bit too deep).
The most important foundation of microeconomics is how the rational self-interest of all actors in an economy, through the channels of supply and demand, generate an equilibrium, a market clearing price with a market clearing quantity. You won't be able to improve on that by using force. You could explain why price controls are a bad thing, because setting the price lower than the equilibrium will discourage suppliers to sell that good, while giving costumers an additional incentive to buy - thus creating a shortage. If you want to shock your teacher praise "price gouging", like Ron Paul (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...6pLMmrs#t=107s,
http://www.examiner.com/article/ron-...-gas-shortages)
They probably want you to talk about how in a free market monopolies and oligopolies are going to cause inefficiencies. That's obviously nonsense and in practice almost all monopolies are creatures of government.
In environmental issues they probably want you to explain negative externalities. For instance a paper manufacturer who pollutes a river and downstream is a fisherman. So he is imposing a cost the fisherman but doesn't have to pay for it himself and has thus no incentive not to pollute. According to what I suspect your teacher to believe that should be resolved by governmental regulation. Be sure to mention that the best solution for those cases would be to asign property rights of the river. If the paper manufacturer owns the right to pollute the fisherman has to offer him money to stop polluting until he can make a living fishing again. If the fisherman owns the river, he can make the polluter stop unless he is willing to pay compensation per unit of pollutant. In the end they once again reach a "socially optimal" level of pollution. (That's "Coase theorem" if you want to sound smart.)
In regards to international trade you should mention how every two countries
always benefit from free trade with eachother by increasing specialization, because every country has its own "comperative advantage" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage).
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