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I'd add:
Subpoena CEOs of the credit card banks that jacked up rates after the pandemic and kept them high
Subpoena CEOs of @PayPal @Klarna and other fintechs seeking bank charters
Subpoena CEOs of the 40 companies that received corporate pardons from @russvought's CFPB
Subpoena CEOs of the credit card banks that jacked up rates after the pandemic and kept them high
Subpoena CEOs of @PayPal @Klarna and other fintechs seeking bank charters
Subpoena CEOs of the 40 companies that received corporate pardons from @russvought's CFPB
Dear dozens of new economic populist members of Congress,
You’ll face fast pressure to deliver economic results. How to do it? Subpoena CEOs. A shocking amount of time, they'll change what they are doing long before you pass a bill or actually cut off their federal funding. So:
- Subpoena Google for cramming AI down our kids throats. Threaten to amend the FAR to prohibit contracting across the U.S. government with any company forcing kids to use AI.
- Subpoena the private equity managers enshittifying hospitals, dialysis centers, your local vet, your local primary care provider. Name individuals, not just companies. Shame them. Show the public (and public pension funds) how they make their money.
- Subpoena health insurers who use AI to auto-deny valid claims, triage mental health emergencies, or upcode diagnoses. Make them stop that.
- Subpoena the airlines for systematically denying cash refunds to travelers. (“Here’s a voucher instead!”) Show your hand – threaten the subpoena now, before Thanksgiving.
- Subpoena Brazilian meatpacker JBS for literally anything. For child labor, for getting fat and rich off of cattlemen, for making their workers work so fast their hands curl into claws, for persistent hygiene allegations.
- Subpoena corporate landlords. Show the public how they get rich off of hidden fees and not fixing their apartments.
- Subpoena any company that has been slow to issue tariff refunds to small business owners. I bet they’ll get their checks a lot quicker!
Will it work? See what happened when Instacart was exposed as secretly marking up your grocery cart... Yes, it can work.
P.S. If anyone tells you “No, you can’t do that” or “No, there’s a process for that,” ignore them. You know what time it is.
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Mike Pierce retweeted
New York City is on the verge of banning surveillance pricing.
As a new Congress weighs how to tackle the affordability crisis, we’re showing what’s possible.
As a new Congress weighs how to tackle the affordability crisis, we’re showing what’s possible.
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Mike Pierce retweeted
You may think the precipitous decline in the company’s stock price reflects investor concerns about management’s poor judgment & undisclosed exposure. But if you had an Econ PhD from Harvard you’d know that it really means the CEO is an underpaid ubermensch.
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Mike Pierce retweeted
Today Western Union publicly announced it is abandoning its proposed merger with Intermex. The split follows a review by Secretary @ChopraUSA and @CaliforniaDFPI, who imposed conditions on the deal requiring the firms to prevent fraud and preserve competitive access. Rather than agree to these conditions, Western Union walked away.
It's a good reminder that many state laws give state regulators the responsibility to review, block, or condition mergers, especially in sectors like financial services, insurance, and utilities. In New York, for example, @NYDFS is charged with assessing whether certain proposed mergers are contrary to the public interest.
As newly elected state officials take the helm in coming months, they will have significant opportunity to use and activate all their tools to halt corporate abuse and make life better for working people.
dfpi.ca.gov/press_release/…
It's a good reminder that many state laws give state regulators the responsibility to review, block, or condition mergers, especially in sectors like financial services, insurance, and utilities. In New York, for example, @NYDFS is charged with assessing whether certain proposed mergers are contrary to the public interest.
As newly elected state officials take the helm in coming months, they will have significant opportunity to use and activate all their tools to halt corporate abuse and make life better for working people.
dfpi.ca.gov/press_release/…
Every month, thousands of working class New Yorkers use Western Union to send money to loved ones. Now Western Union wants to buy its top competitor, Intermex, so it can jack up remittance fees and squeeze families even more. Families shouldn’t pay the price for corporate monopolies.
nytimes.com/2026/05/13/bus…
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Mike Pierce retweeted
There's nothing more annoying than people acting like usury is some radical idea. There are lots of different usury rates in the US. I'm happy to debate 10% vs 15% or whatever, but this idea that you can't reduce rates even a little without the sky falling is absurd on its face.
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Mike Pierce retweeted
GREAT oversight question. When the Fed lowered its rates during COVID, why didn't banks lower credit card rates?
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Mike Pierce retweeted
Check out this version of the same general concept. Before the financial crisis, banks used to peg credit card rates at about 10% + FFR. They've let that creep up to 17% today. Credit card rates should be 14% right now!!
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Mike Pierce retweeted
Thrilled to hear the news that once @ChopraUSA required the company to adopt stronger consumer protections, Western Union has dropped its bid to acquire Intermex. This transaction would have hurt millions of people who could not afford it, and who have already been scapegoated for years. It would have made it even more expensive for them to support their moms, dads, and kids. This is the kind of blatantly anticompetitive transaction that the federal government keeps signing off on, and that keeps going forward unless if strong state enforcers like Chopra protect the public. This will not make many headlines today, but boy will it make a difference for people for years to come.
This is something else: Western Union is trying to buy one of its closest competitors in remittances to Latin America, Intermex. They're paying half a billion dollars. And they won approval for that merger from DOJ even though, on its face, the merger would seem to be This is a recipe for higher fees. It will only make it even harder to help your family living abroad.
Millions of people send money to help their family in Latin America. I've been sending money more or less monthly since I graduated law school almost 20 years ago. It's really important to have a range of companies competing for that business. When you're sending $35 or $50 to just get someone to their next paycheck (which is a pretty common thing), the fee for that can really eat at what you're sending.
So I'm pretty shocked to learn that Western Union is buying a company that *already* holds >30% market shares in U.S. to Ecuador and U.S. to Nicaragua remittances, and a 29% share in remittances to Guatemala. Intermex also claims to hold a 20% share in remittances to Mexico, and public reporting suggests that Western Union is #1 -- in other words, *above* Intermex -- in that corridor.
Why do those percentages matter? Because a merger that gives a combined company >30% market share can presumed to be illegal according to longstanding precedent. So if Western Union has even a 1-2% share in U.S.-Ecuador/Nicaragua/Guatemala, this would be illegal. Western Union is almost surely way over that.
The craziest thing is that Western Union is paying a 50% premium over the market value of those shares: How exactly do they plan to get that money back?
This might hit different (even though it would still be seemingly illegal) if remittance fees were dropping and lots of firms were entering the market. But remittance costs are *increasing* and firms are *exiting* the market and getting bought up. Don't take my word for it, take it from the Western Union CEO, who on an earnings call last year said: "we have seen multiple players exit the remittance space. We have also seen others raise prices as they strive for greater profitability..."
I am unaware of a private or state AG challenge to this transaction. If anyone is aware of one, please share.
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Mike Pierce retweeted
Democrats must deliver popular, meaningful legislation to Trump's desk and dare him to veto it.
Dare him to veto a minimum-wage increase.
Dare him to veto a ban on price gouging.
Dare him to veto a ban on AI surveillance pricing.
You can't win what you don't fight for.
Dare him to veto a minimum-wage increase.
Dare him to veto a ban on price gouging.
Dare him to veto a ban on AI surveillance pricing.
You can't win what you don't fight for.
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Mike Pierce retweeted
You might be thinking, why isn't competition keeping profits down? The credit card industry is very concentrated. It's especially bad if you look at concentration in a sophisticated way, like these researchers did, by segmenting by FICO score, acquisition channel, etc. Subprime credit cards are the most concentrated.
libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/11/how-ma…
libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/11/how-ma…
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Mike Pierce retweeted
There was a lot of misinformation on X today about credit card interest caps. The bottom line is this -- the conventional wisdom, that interest caps necessarily always lead to denied credit, doesn't apply to credit cards. I've done a lot of research on this topic.
cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-URL/wp-cont…
cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-URL/wp-cont…
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Mike Pierce retweeted
Mike is right. Competition among credit card issuers has not driven interest rates down because they compete on other dimensions (rewards and annual fees, for instance), but not rates on balances. Lawrence Ausubel wrote a seminal paper on the topic.
Rate caps are necessary
Rate caps are necessary
In what world has market competition driven *down* credit card rates?
Rates are nearly double what they were a decade+ ago and APR margin is the widest its ever been.
This is v clearly a market failure, otherwise competition *would* be driving down credit card rates.
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Mike Pierce retweeted
HAPPENING NOW: Our Director @nhegde is moderating Taking on Health Care Costs, featuring @HamawyForNJ and @DonavanMI13!
Tune in here: popularmandate.org/#stream
Tune in here: popularmandate.org/#stream
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Mike Pierce retweeted
.@BeccaBalintVT during panel on "Taking on Big Tech" also calls for Congress to ban stock trading: We need to pass a stock trading ban right out of the gate, first 100 days, so that Americans understand that we are with men and not with corporations.
.@bradlander opening the second half of Popular Mandate, calls for banning stock trading in Congress!
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Mike Pierce retweeted
Look, if you cap credit card interest rates it means you don't know economics. And those economics are... *checks notes* higher margins for credit card issuers.
consumerfinance.gov/archive/blog/c…
consumerfinance.gov/archive/blog/c…
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Ban bad stuff
.@bradlander opening the second half of Popular Mandate, calls for banning stock trading in Congress!
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Ban prediction markets. Ban congressional stock trading. Ban high-rate credit cards.
Let this next Congress be the Congress that bans bad stuff.
Let this next Congress be the Congress that bans bad stuff.
Sports prediction markets are sports betting disguised as financial trading. They flout state and tribal gambling laws, siphon state tax revenues, fuel addiction, and expose young Americans to public health risks while evading state consumer safeguards.
Congress must ban them.
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In today's FRBNY debt data, we see a different flavor of the K Shaped Economy-- homeowners and everyone else.
@talmonsmith does a great job breaking this down.
@talmonsmith does a great job breaking this down.
back in action at work, and right on along with CPI, we get fresh Fed data on household debt:
--the 30yr fixed remains the 🐐GOAT for the middle class
--lower-income families are getting slammed by credit card debt
-HELOCs saw the largest jump since 2005, the eve of the GFC
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Mike Pierce retweeted
Popular Mandate is on its way! Right now, @SenWarren is kicking things off with opening remarks.
Watch here: popularmandate.org/#stream
Watch here: popularmandate.org/#stream
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