YouSaid · the spoken record

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter

lines on the record: 157
first: 2019-09-30
most recent: 2019-09-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The same day in May 2018, and the fifth started a couple months later, it's the first time in the history of the agency since it started that all five turned over at once. And that's a big change for the agency.”
2019-09-30 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But for good or bad, the two agencies that are focused on the internet would be, since there's hardly any regulation, in fact, there's almost none. I think there is none, except in Europe and some possibly California when it has the Privacy Act that passes, would be you, the FCC, a little bit around net neutrality, and then the Justice Department, which under Macon Del Rahim right now, but the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. So there's a lot of things you all have tackled. Why don't you talk a little bit about your history and how you look at sort of the landscape of the FTC right now? Because you're all looking at a lot of companies. Sure. And we have a really interesting moment in FTC history right now because there are five commissioners on the FTC, as you mentioned, by law three, no more than three can come from the party of the president. So we have three Republicans and two Democrats right now. And all of us started at basically the same time. Four of us were sworn in.”
2019-09-30 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“306 million dollars a year. The reason why I pointed out is the Federal Election Commission is $70 million. It's very small. It's a super small group of people that are monitoring enormous swaths of everything and then also are dealing with technological challenges that come in.”
2019-09-30 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But really cut across huge swaths of the economy. And then, depending if it's the FDA or the FCC, a lot of the different agencies intersect with tech as a tech industry. Now, how many people work for the FTC right now? I want to get people a sense of how small it is. It's small. So we currently have about 1,100 full-time employees. And for comparison at the beginning of the Reagan administration, we had about 1,800. So we have gone down in size as our mandate has increased. In my opinion, and the budget. The budget has been roughly flat or nominally flat in actual numbers, which means really it's getting smaller. We're having fewer and fewer employees every year. Which is what? It's about”
2019-09-30 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have a lot of concentration in a lot of industries right now. So, for example, last month or earlier this month, we sued to block a merger between two title insurance companies. That's what makes buying your house more expensive. We brought a case earlier this year against the middleman in e-prescribing on a monopolization claim. So lots of industries that are not directly tech related, although many of them have tech implications.”
2019-09-30 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Railroads, but there were not internet problems. Right. The technological universe looked very different. So that's been a really evolving part of the FTC's mission. I think we have intentionally broad mission that is intended to allow us to adapt to that, but it also is work for the agency to keep up and make sure that we're not just catching up with yesterday's problems, but staying ahead of tomorrow's. And talked about the broad amount of things that you do. When I interviewed Marguerite Vestager, she's also doing like furniture makers. There's lots of things, or electric wire makers, or things like that. Talk about the broad range of things. Most people right now are focused, the FDC, on the internet companies, because there's nowhere else that they're even slightly regulated anywhere else. Sure. And on the consumer protection side, we do a huge amount of work in prohibiting fraud and student loan scams and debt relief scams and all kinds of bad scammy behavior like that. On the competition side, we review mergers and acquisitions. We pursue cases against anti-competitive conduct. And I think it's really important to remember that antitrust problems in the United States are not limited to the tech universe.”
2019-09-30 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tech stuff, but I know you guys have a huge purview. So why don't we begin by explaining what the FTC does, but it's been lately the regulatory agency for the internet because there isn't one except for the Justice Department and maybe the FCC. Sure. So the Federal Trade Commission was set up in 1914, so we're 105 years old now, and it has a mission that has two sides. Competition and consumer protection. And we enforce primarily the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair and deceptive acts and practices and unfair methods of competition. So anti-dress. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's vague and broad, and that's a good thing about our statute. It allows us to adapt to harms that are real in 2019, not just what was real in 1914, but it also was real in 1914. It had to. Well, there were some real antitrust problems in 1914 that needed to be dealt with. There were not internet problems. Banks, right? Banks. Oil.”
2019-09-30 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT