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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   24553 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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There was a twitter debate on Trumps plan to limit credit card interest rates to 10%.

In my view this is an interesting exchange between bad academia (fed paper), expert (Patrick Mckenzie), MBA logic, populists (Trump).

Trump proposed a policy of capping credit card interests rates at 10%. That set up a twitter folly of the high rate people are subsidizing low rate people with rewards backed by a fed paper.

https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2023/054/article-A001-en.xml

Ackman backing it: https://x.com/billackman/status/2009976076559077844?s=46

Personally being a dumb MBA I feel like I can perfectly segment pnl between subprime borrowers and rich people. If I make money on subprime and lose money on rich people I can just shutdown the rich people business and deploy more money to poor people. So the academia people are most likely wrong based on simple logic?

I can’t find it now but somewhere he did a longer post on how all cc are segmented https://x.com/patio11/status/2010185232159518904?s=46

I think for culture war attributes there are: Academia can do bad research. Ignore basic (or a price) and find a conclusion that seems smart but does not pass a logic text.

Honest experts can give full market breakdown.

MBA and idiots can give a logic that makes sense and is more correct than an academic trying to make a paper.

And then there is the Trump 10% interest rate cap. Maybe most borrowing above 10% interest is bad? I might compare this to online gambling where the people doing it and are profitable it’s bad for them. Or legalized weed.

If I didn’t make it clear above. Most of the rich people rewards are paid for by the high interchange fees of 3%. It’s not credit risks. It’s not subsidized by poor people.

Edit: as a high income high fico. I would prefer we limit credit card fees. And rewards go to zero. Then the store I go to doesn’t pay a processing fee. So they cut prices. And it probably saves me more money than getting 2% cash back.

Personally being a dumb MBA I feel like I can perfectly segment pnl between subprime borrowers and rich people. If I make money on subprime and lose money on rich people I can just shutdown the rich people business and deploy more money to poor people. So the academia people are most likely wrong based on simple logic?

In your imaginary scenario, would you be lending money to every single homeless person you see?

I would never lend money to homeless people even if I could charge 10k% yearly interest.

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