flinty

blessed, Sirach 2: 1-5

[flinty @flintyclint]

@GregAbbott_TX If the principle is that an accommodation for one religion is inherently favoring that religion over others, in the long run Christians won't like that principle.

[flinty @flintyclint]

@KanekoaTheGreat No Buttigieg fan here. But if you listen to him, his supreme court ideas aren't really about packing. He more wants an overhaul of how the court is chosen and functions. I don't agree with him. But it's not really typical court packing

[flinty @flintyclint]

@neoavatara @varadmehta @RandPaul threatened him w perjury if he lied today in testimony about eg 2020. not sure he can plead the 5th when testifying about conduct pre pardon. He can claim the fifth when testifying about conduct post pardon. But this may have to go to courts

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

they found the saddest Ross Douthat picture I've ever seen for this tweet

[flinty @flintyclint]

@MrBeast 4,000,564

[flinty @flintyclint]

@WadeMiller @mrddmia Serious question. There is strong historical evidence that native Americans, when not on reservation land, were not given citizenship? Would like to see sources for that. That seems like a very important data point.

[Jamey Newberg @NewbergReport]

Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and LAL’s 2029 first.

Still impossible to believe.

[flinty @flintyclint]

@MikeLevin @grok is this true, or is there missing context?

[flinty @flintyclint]

@AuronMacintyre If a case went to Scotus arguing that Muslims lack religious rights that Christians have (such as building places of worship), how do you think Thomas and alito would rule?

[flinty @flintyclint]

@iPaulCanada @grok are these good exercises?

[flinty @flintyclint]

@RichardHanania Honest question. Say a man and woman had prenatal testing done and it was negative for downs. But there was some problem with the test, and their baby was born with downs, should they be able to kill the born baby?

[HoopsHype @hoopshype]

Dirk Nowitzki won more games without star help than any other player in league history. He's even ahead of LeBron.

Now you know that.

[flinty @flintyclint]

@MavsHighlights If we get picks along with Randle, I'm interested. We're not competing for a championship the next two years anyway. Maybe Randle, donte, and picks.

[Michael Calabrese @EastBreese]

‘95 Nebraska at #16 is enough to shut down this X account.

The Cornhuskers TRAILED for 13 minutes and 47 seconds all season long.

Nine of their 22 starters received some kind of All-American recognition.

When you count their bowl game, they averaged over 400 yards per game on the ground.

[flinty @flintyclint]

@WallStreetApes Tax the rich by transitioning to consumption taxes instead of income

[flinty @flintyclint]

@HalToHell @grok what's the answer?

[flinty @flintyclint]

@davidharsanyi The court refused to hear about the issue of whether there was an emergency or not. So they limited themselves to the issue of what kind of regulating the statute allows. They basically assumed there was an emergency, for the sake of argument

[David L. Bahnsen @DavidBahnsen]

There is nothing more disingenuous than Stephen Miran saying on CNBC, "I told everyone after Liberation Day everything would be fine when markets were panicking about tariffs and look how it all went" without mentioning that THOSE ANNOUNCEMENTS LASTED FOUR DAYS BEFORE President Trump stopped them all, without mentioning that the largest companies in America have all been exempted, without mentioning that the tariffs applied are LESS THAN HALF of Liberation Day threats, and without mentioning that facing pressure from rising prices in coffee, sugar, bananas, and other household items, the White House admitted a course correction was needed and got rid of them. It is surreal to see someone say, "everyone said if we shot someone the person would die but we didn't shoot them and they didn't die so they were wrong."

Now, if he wants to address steel and aluminum prices, the collapse of manufacturing jobs, and the impact of tariffs on SMALL BUSINESS (the ones actually paying them), I am all ears. But if he wants to say, "What is good for Nvidia is good for the working man," I dare him to use those words out loud.

Policy disagreements are allowed. It is complete dishonesty that bothers me.

[flinty @flintyclint]

@jbarro @lymanstoneky No contradictions at all!

[Amanda Orson @amandaorson]

Your credit card rewards exist because someone else is paying 25% APR. Cap that at 10% and the points don’t survive.

I spent years working inside fintech and card programs. That interest margin is the invisible buffer that makes rewards, lounges, and credits pencil out.

Capping credit card APRs at 10% sounds like an obvious consumer win. Cards charge 20 to 30%, many consumers revolve balances, and the system feels punitive.

But credit card economics are not just about interest rates. They are a cross-subsidized system where revolvers subsidize transactors, rewards rely on behavioral inefficiency, and risk-based pricing subsidizes access.

Remove one leg of that stool and the system does not become fairer; it rebalances. And the costs show up where consumers notice most.

Lets look at how this would impact 3 programs

1. AMEX Platinum

A 10% credit card APR cap would not make your card cheaper or better. You would still have access, but you would almost certainly get less value for the same or higher price.

The Platinum brand survives because its customers are affluent, pay in full, and tolerate high annual fees. What quietly supports that ecosystem is portfolio-level profitability, which allows AMEX to tolerate loss, overuse, and inefficiency in premium benefits.

When that margin shrinks, the cost shows up directly in your (lesser) benefits.

In a world where:
- Rewards economics tighten
- Devaluations become more likely
- Flexibility is reduced

Points become a liability to the issuer, and liabilities get repriced.

So what this likely means for you as a Platinum cardholder:
- Lounges do not expand to fix crowding. Instead, access tightens or amenities are reduced.
- Statement credits become harder to use, more fragmented, or less generous.
- Annual fees go up
- New approvals become more selective, even for high earners.

Your card still works, but the value proposition shifts. Platinum becomes more explicitly pay-to-play, with fewer hidden subsidies propping up premium perks.

You pay the same or more, and you get a little less in return.

Which is why some people are already warning that points devaluations become more likely in this environment (like @BowTiedBull this morning saying "Dump ALL your credit card points. All of them.")

2. Bilt Card

This program is the canary in the coal mine for what to expect.

Bilt’s super popular rent rewards worked because Wells Fargo was willing to subsidize them. The card offered 1 point per dollar on rent with no fees because Wells Fargo paid Bilt roughly 0.8 percent (80 bps) of each rent payment to fund rewards... despite earning little or no interchange on those transactions.

But that is some actuarial level math with a number of variables at risk that proved wrong/ unsustainable.

Wells Fargo was getting hosed $10 million a month on the program, so they exited the partnership years before the original end date and forced Bilt to restructure its rewards with a different bank

What does that teach us?

- When interest and interchange margins shrink, banks stop tolerating loss-leading reward programs.
- Interest income does not fund every reward directly, but it provides the buffer that allows experiments like Bilt to exist at all.
- Remove that buffer and rewards must be paid for explicitly.

Bilt’s shift to a three-tier lineup with annual fees is not an anomaly. It is the direction rewards go when credit stops quietly absorbing losses.

Pay-to-play rewards.

What feels like consumer protection will shows up as fewer perks, pay-to-play rewards, and less room for innovation.

3. Credit One & other Subprime Cards

Now the least glamorous corner.

Subprime cards get criticized for high APRs, annual fees, low limits, minimal rewards. But they exist for a reason.

They serve thin-file borrowers, damaged credit, people shut out of conventional loans, households using cards for liquidity not perks... but they charge high APRs because charge-offs exceed 8-10%, fraud and servicing costs are higher, and credit limits are small while fixed costs remain significant.

A 10% cap makes these products mathematically impossible.

These cards don't become cheaper. They cease to exist.

As @sytaylor noted this morning - "You realize this will push many more customers towards loan sharks?"

The demand for credit doesn't disappear... it migrates to BNPL with opaque effective APRs, chronic overdraft usage, fee-heavy installment loans, and less regulated lenders like loan sharks/ payday loans.

So who WOULD win? Debit-First Fintechs

One of the least discussed consequences: where would reward customers migrate?

I think 1% cashback programs are an obvious winner. Chime, Varo, Current and niche cards like Greenlight and Privacy.

(If you have not worked in a fintech or a bank you probably don't know what the Durbin Amedment is - but the TL;DR is that very large banks (BoA, Wells, JPMC) have capped interchange rates of around 27 bps on debit swipes.

Small banks with < $10B AUM, however, do not - they can earn 1-2% on interchange (avg was 160 bps or so last I checked).

Which is why all of the debit card fintech companies you've heard of are partnered with these smaller banks - they can offer rewards like 1% cashback programs and still have margin sufficient to build a business around.)

In a world where credit rewards shrink, access tightens, and annual fees rise, debit-based fintechs look better by comparison.

But consumers lose: credit protections, payment float, stronger dispute rights, credit-building opportunities.

TL;DR

An APR cap feels like consumer protection.

In practice it reshapes the market in ways that are easy to miss:
- It will shrink access to credit
- Eliminate rewards programs that aren't tied to high annual fees
- Force risk into less regulated channels
- Unintentionally advantages debit over credit
- Help affluent transactors more than vulnerable borrowers

Credit doesn't become cheaper. It becomes scarcer, less flexible, less transparent.

But banks will adapt.
Fintechs will adapt.

Consumers caught in the middle do not get protected.
They get fewer choices, worse products, and priced out.