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Neil Turkewitz @neilturkewitz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“We must embrace the antimonopoly spirit that has animated American debates about finance for more than 250 years.” This article lays out how Dodd-Frank failed, and why antimonopoly thinking can animate a response the next time Wall Street crashes the economy. 1/17

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A fantastic 🧵 from Carter. I don’t know a lot about the world of finance, but I have spent my career thinking about good governance, & am acutely aware of the importance of systemic incentives. Trying to regulate an industry rooted in incentives misaligned with the public interest will always fail.

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

'Twas fun ... A tale of corporate power and an antimonopoly fight!

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This will be a big dilemma in 2027:

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But “egregious concentrations of market power in finance” now vex the American economy and progressives have spent too much time defending Dodd-Frank. Read the kicker here: 17/end

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Yes, Dodd-Frank will leave some good things behind. A key one is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose employees, former and current, “count among the most talented and tenacious in government.” 16/17

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Finance & real economy ... We need a Financial Monopolies Control Act: “This project will demand new thinking that considers traditional antitrust law, deregulation over the past 40 years, and new developments in finance to update laws separating banking from commerce.” 15/17

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We’re going to need new ideas for how to de-monopolize the payment system. Happily, there are smart thinkers and lawmakers already on the case. I’ve got a list, here’s a selection: 14/17

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And we’re back to the problem of financial control of industry mainly, though by no means entirely, via the private equity business: “They control or heavily influence vast swaths of the American economy, a problem that would be familiar to reformers of yore.” 13/17

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Today, monopolization is a problem across finance: payments, bank size, the rise of the non-bank sector, asset managers, municipal bonds, investment banking services, credit scoring and so on. 12/17

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In the 1930s, they also grappled with the serious problem that “Finance, when consolidated into large entities, tended to assert increasingly direct and malign control over the rest of the economy.” (That's why Congress later passed the Bank Holding Company Act.) 11/17

New Dealers ❤️ antimonopoly: “They saw that the financial collapse that had led to the Great Depression did not stem from the actions of a few bad apples but rather from systemically perverse incentives. Regulating a failed apparatus could hardly lead to better outcomes.” 10/17

That's exactly what happened. Now the banks are bigger, the business strategies more predatory, and all the tools Dodd-Frank created went unused, including by Obama & Biden administration regulators. 9/17

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Sen. Ted Kaufman warned us: “Chastened regulators may try in the coming years to be harder on the megabanks. But even if they do, history has shown us that the tango will reach the end of the dance floor, and the big banks will execute the turn and lead again.” 8/17

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Why did Dodd-Frank fail? “Its breadth obscured a fatal weakness … the law fortified the bureaucratic discretion to regulate rather than creating an industry obligation to restructure, which immediately tilted the playing field in Wall Street’s favor.” 7/17

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Antimonopoly politics are promising: “If you fancy yourself a realist and scoff at the successes of the antimonopoly movement so far, try facing reality: It might not be bearing a ton of fruit right now, but this tree is growing and nurturing future champions.” 6/17

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Warning: Various Project 2029s risk retreading Dodd-Frank, an approach that has already failed. Beware of new prescriptions that call for using technical fixes to our structural problems. Obama and Biden showed us even Dem administrations won’t use them. 5/17

Recall that the New Deal of the 1930s, coming after a similar financial crisis, succeeded where Dodd-Frank failed. “The New Dealers, by contrast, adopted a strategy that stood the test of time precisely because it embraced the antimonopoly spirit.” 4/17

“Dodd-Frank failed to bend the curve away from our steady march toward financialization." The economy "responds to the imperatives of Wall Street...rather than people’s desire to lead dignified lives with reasonable material comfort in a meaningfully democratic society.” 3/17

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I can think of a few Hollywood unions that would run point on this effort.

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Not just 2028, but the next two years and - especially - the three months between the 2028 election and 2029 inauguration, if a Dem is elected president. Fraught times.

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Let's also credit a progressively worse level of Trump corruption that all but forced the Dems to make tougher demands on ethics.

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Demand Progress @demandprogress.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Demand Progress, @econliberties.bsky.social, @consumerreports.org & @smallbizmajority.bsky.social asked the courts to stop the Visa-Mastercard duopoly that works with megabanks to keep the costs of credit cards high. Judges are not allowed to rewrite the Sherman Act!

demandprogresseducationfund.org

Demand Progress Education Fund

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

TFW you direct the Federal Reserve to, you know, stand up to Wall Street and the Fed says: "Nah." prospect.org/2026/09/03/f...

prospect.org

The Lawless Fed - The American Prospect

The central bank specializes in not following laws meant to restrain Wall Street.

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

TFW you direct the Federal Reserve to, you know, stand up to Wall Street and the Fed says: "Nah." prospect.org/2026/09/03/f...

prospect.org

The Lawless Fed - The American Prospect

The central bank specializes in not following laws meant to restrain Wall Street.

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This one is just too good ... Labor Sec nominee pitches lower cost labor to come to America and go on welfare ...

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I guess even ICE can make one right decision.

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

This column is really weird. Author can't seem to get her arms around the problem that so-called moderates have little compelling to offer because they won't criticize corporate power. So they try to hijack age as their issue. And it don't fly. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | What Ever Happened to the Young, Exciting Moderate Democrats?

Seth Moulton is trying to lead the next generation of Democratic leaders — and has been for a while.

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Having been born in Dayton, Ohio, where the Wright Brothers did their real design work, I've always found it irritating that North Carolina claims them. The brains and creativity came from Ohio; NC had wind and sand

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Brian Beutler @brianbeutler.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

What does it say about how opinion gatekeepers have gone about their work if a prized colleague can take his wares from the most coveted real-estate in opinion journalism to the Weiss-Ellison project, and slot in perfectly? www.offmessage.net/p/60-minutes...

offmessage.net

Propaganda With Better Manners Is Still Propaganda

The new 60 Minutes will tip the scales for conservatives; ironically, many mainstream news outlets already do the same thing, less intentionally.

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

It's gone almost entirely under the radar but the Trump administration is readying a bailout of landlords. They want to settle a challenge to the 2020 eviction moratorium by handing over billions of dollars, disproportionately to real estate investment groups. Zachary Groz reports.

prospect.org

Trump’s Planned Landlord Bailout Would Funnel Billions to Private Equity - The American Prospect

A Justice Department settlement for the COVID eviction moratorium won’t just go to mom-and-pop owners.

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

PIK stands for Payment in Kind. It's really just forbearance. Yikes.

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Carter Dougherty @carterd.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Definitely a random assortment of change, probably including corroded pennies

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Think of Trump as a boil — an infected pustule on the giant ass of the American system. The boil would have become infected eventually because of deeper flaws in how the system has evolved. Let me introduce you to the first piece of why our system is failing: Jamie Dimon.

robertreich.substack.com

A Realist's Guide to the American System

Part 1: Dimon and the enshittification of everything

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Reposted by Carter Dougherty

$1,200 a year. That's what card swipe fees cost the average household — baked into the price of nearly everything, even if you pay cash. A bipartisan bill would fix it. Wall Street spent ~$200M to stop it, per new @demandprogress.bsky.social report. Who's paying & who's protecting it? 🧵

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Read the @demandprogress.bsky.social report yourself: 6/END www.demandprogress.org/api/media/fi...

demandprogress.org

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Big banks and Visa/Mastercard may have $200 million to spend in DC, but they can't pay to change the truth: small businesses and consumers are fed up. It's time to bring more competition to the credit card market and bring down prices for all of us. 5/6

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Credit Card Competition Act: Why Industry Is Spending Millions To Preserve Swipe Fees

So who's fighting a bill with that much agreement behind it? The card industry's lobby has spent ~$200M since 2023 to block it — using front groups, fearmongering to maintain their billions in revenue. Forbes followed the money: 4/6 www.forbes.com/sites/alison...

forbes.com

Opponents of the legislation argue it could impact Americans’ credit card rewards, while proponents argue otherwise.

A bipartisan bill — the Credit Card Competition Act — would let merchants route payments through networks other than Visa and Mastercard. More competition, lower fees. Sens. Durbin (D) and Marshall (R) are leading it. Trump endorsed it in January. 3/6

Here's how it works: every credit card purchase, card networks like Visa and banks skim 2–3% off the top before the store gets paid. Those fees hit a record $198 billion last year — and merchants have to build them into the shelf price for everyone. 2/6