Patrick Brenner
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financial inclusivity, consumer credit, personal finance, government transparency
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social issues, election "fraud", conspiracy theories
Writer. Thinker. Advocate.
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Articles by Patrick Brenner
COLUMN: Diesel drives affordability; rail merger could help
For months, Americans have been telling pollsters the same thing: Prices are too high. Diesel is a big part of that. As the conflict involving Iran has dragged on, diesel topped $6 a gallon for the first time, according to AAA, up from about $3.71 a year earlier. By early September, Brown University researchers estimated the additional economic burden from higher gasoline and diesel prices since the fighting began at more than $760 per U.S. household.
Incremental Cost Has Multiple Meanings
21¢ Base of the 2011 debit fee cap the Eighth Circuit set aside 59.5¢ Cost per transaction at low-volume issuers, 2021 (high-volume: 3.5¢) 90%+ Lost interchange income covered banks recouped through deposit fees On October 26, 2026, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the judgment vacating the Federal Reserve Board’s cap on debit card interchange fees, 21 cents plus 0.05% of each transaction since 2011.
Diesel Is Driving the Affordability Debate. A Rail Merger Could Help.
With Election Day a week out, voters keep telling pollsters the same thing: Prices are too high. Eighty-four percent of registered voters in a new AP-NORC poll called the cost of living one of the most important issues when considering their vote. Nearly half of registered voters in a Reuters/Ipsos survey said it was the top factor in their vote, and KFF found gas and transportation costs now tie health care as voters’ biggest economic worry. Diesel is a big part of that.
Diesel Is Driving the Affordability Debate. A Rail Merger Could Help.
With Election Day a week out, voters keep telling pollsters the same thing: Prices are too high. Eighty-four percent of registered voters in a new AP-NORC poll called the cost of living one of the most important issues when considering their vote. Nearly half of registered voters in a Reuters/Ipsos survey said it was the top factor in their vote, and KFF found gas and transportation costs now tie health care as voters’ biggest economic worry. Diesel is a big part of that.
Transmission Without Representation
0 Lines built under the federal siting power Congress created in 2005 1 year Most time the bill gives a state on a line before FERC may act 5.3× MISO’s lowest benefit estimate as a multiple of five states’ highest On September 30, Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Lee, Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich introduced the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (S. 5653). The White House supports it, and Senator Capito wants it to be the Senate’s first vote after the November 3 election.
The Debit Card Cap Goes Back to the Fed
21¢ Base of the debit fee cap the Eighth Circuit set aside 100.7B Debit and prepaid card payments in 2023, covered and exempt 45 days Time the Board has to seek rehearing On October 26, 2026, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the judgment vacating the Federal Reserve Board’s cap on debit card interchange fees, the charge a merchant’s bank pays the cardholder’s bank on each purchase. Interchange is one part of what a merchant pays to accept a card; network and processing fees are separate.
Rent-Pricing Bans Won’t Build Homes
$25 Monthly markup per apartment from coordination, 2019 $359.9M Class settlements with 41 landlords, October 2026 22% Austin rents below their 2023 peak after supply rose 14% Rent-pricing software recommends a rent for each apartment a landlord manages. The risk is coordination: when competing landlords give one vendor their nonpublic rents and occupancy, its advice can work like an agreement on price.
Who Paid for the Debit Card Cap
24¢ Large banks’ fee cap on a $40 debit sale, about half the prior average 1.2% Share of merchants surveyed that cut prices after the cap took effect 30% Large banks offering free basic checking after the cap; an estimated 65.2% without it Fifteen years ago, on October 1, 2011, the Federal Reserve Board’s Regulation II began capping debit card fees under the Durbin Amendment.
Banning rent algorithms will not build apartments
OPINION: Every campaign season needs a villain. In 2026, it is the corporate landlord. The Financial Times recently analyzed a decade of campaign language in competitive congressional races and found a surge of attacks on private equity and corporate landlords in 2026. More than two dozen battleground candidates have pledged to curb institutional investors’ home purchases. Big banks used to absorb this kind of rhetoric.
Markets Are Sending a Message on Energy; Texas Should Listen
Natural gas prices across the Southwest tell a story no courtroom can dispute. Gas futures have remained below $3 per million BTU through August, settling at $2.69 in the day-ahead market as of early October. In Nevada and Arizona, prices slumped through much of the spring amid stout supply before summer heat pushed them back up, not because of any policy intervention but because demand rose and the market responded. Cycles like this are basic economics, learned in classrooms nationwide.
The Moral Hierarchy of Debt
The loan Americans are taught to call good debt carries the largest finance charge in consumer finance, and the loan they are taught to call predatory carries one of the smallest. The instrument that sorts them, the annual percentage rate, cannot tell the difference. This paper explains why the ranking persists anyway, who built it, and whom it serves. On April 28, 2025, one of this paper’s authors signed a 30-year FHA mortgage for $414,346 at a 5.625% note rate.
When the Horseshoe Isn’t Just a Theory | National Review
Trump, Warren, Sanders, Hawley, and AOC have converged on interest-rate controls-but price caps would leave risky borrowers without credit.
Start spending opioid settlement — and show where and how
Asked late last year what Santa Fe intended to do with its share of New Mexico’s opioid settlement, a spokesperson for then-Mayor Alan Webber told The New Mexican there was “not a plan in which to discuss.” That wasn’t a gaffe. In July, the Office of the State Auditor reported the city had spent $605 of its settlement money. Santa Fe now has $9.7 million on hand. The reflex is to go looking for a heist that never happened. Nobody pocketed anything.
How Did a Nonprofit Become America’s Insurance Regulator?
States have surrendered much of their power to a private organization with almost no transparency. New Mexico’s Insurance Superintendent Alice Kane recently told state lawmakers that insurers declined to renew more than 6,200 homeowner policies in 2025, the highest number ever. The reflex is to blame greedy insurers and actuaries in Hartford, Conn., pricing wildfire risk in counties they couldn’t find on a map.
The dangerous politicization of bank charters
The U.S. has a financial inclusion crisis. Some special interest groups want to solve it by making it harder to start a bank. That makes no sense. Millions of Americans remain underserved by traditional banks. According to the 2023 FDIC National Survey, 19 million households are underbanked, and another 5.6 million are entirely outside the banking system.
Opinion - The dangerous politicization of bank charters
Today's target happens to be Enova. Tomorrow it could be another fintech, a payments company, a specialty lender, or a future institution. Once charter approvals become political contests rather than regulatory reviews, the consequences extend far beyond any individual application. This should concern anyone who cares about the future of American banking.
Opinion - The dangerous politicization of bank charters
The U.S. has a financial inclusion crisis. Some special interest groups want to solve it by making it harder to start a bank. That makes no sense. Millions of Americans remain underserved by traditional banks. According to the 2023 FDIC National Survey, 19 million households are underbanked, and another 5.6 million are entirely outside the banking system.
N.M. should not ban or tax its way back to cigarettes
New Mexico lawmakers are once again weighing new taxes and restrictions on nicotine products, particularly nicotine pouches. The stated goal is public health. The likely result, however, is the opposite: more cigarette smoking, more black-market activity and more preventable disease. Cigarettes remain the single most dangerous consumer nicotine product on the market. Combustion, not nicotine, is what causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and most smoking-related deaths.
Financial Data: Banks and Software Companies Should Negotiate Prices Freely
There is no reason for Washington to decide that the price of financial data must be zero.
Zillow traps buyers into overpriced mortgages, and it's costing Americans $65 billion annually
Americans who bought homes since 2022 now collectively pay an estimated $65 billion annually in avoidable mortgage costs. That figure, published in new Bankrate research based on 3.2 million mortgage originations tracked in federal housing data and highlighted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal online, represents money homebuyers are losing for one simple reason: they don't shop around for the best mortgage rate.
OPINION: 'Competition' Act threatens New Mexico’s economy
Main Street small businesses in New Mexico are legacy pillars of our economy, and they are undeniably facing a brutal financial squeeze from persistent inflation, rising labor costs and shrinking margins.
California’s Crackdown on Consumer Credit Just Hit a Wall
Regulators and special-interest groups have spent years trying to rebrand bank-fintech partnerships as “rent-a-bank” schemes. The phrase is designed to do all the work: the partnership must be a ruse, the lender a fraud, the borrowers victims, and the state the rescuer. Last month, that movement received a rebuke from Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Gary D. Roberts.
My Retirement Accounts Fail in the World I Actually Live In
I remember the first time I logged into my retirement account as a young professional. It felt like a milestone: proof that I had entered the world of adulthood, of long-term thinking, of ownership. I work in the nonprofit sector, so technically it’s a 403(b), not a 401(k). The distinction is academic; the promise is the same: contribute consistently, invest wisely, and over time, build financial independence. We had a problem loading this article. Please enable javascript or use a different browser.
Illinois and Colorado are coming for your airline miles
Opinion>Opinions - Finance The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill by Patrick M. Brenner, opinion contributor - 05/27/26 1:00 PM ET Link copied by Patrick M. Brenner, opinion contributor - 05/27/26 1:00 PM ET Link copied FILE – In this Thursday, Nov. 28, 2013, file photo, a woman pays by credit card while checking out at a retail store in Colma, Calif.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) Spirit Airlines is gone. The airline business is fragile. Fuel prices move.
Opinion - Illinois and Colorado are coming for your airline miles
Spirit Airlines is gone. The airline business is fragile. Fuel prices move. Labor costs rise. Consumers chase low fares. Regulators block mergers. Politicians threaten bailouts. Then, when the math no longer works, planes stop flying. That is what happened to Spirit. Now, just as travelers are watching one low-cost carrier disappear from the sky, politicians in Illinois and Colorado are threatening another piece of the aviation economy: the credit-card rewards system that increasingly powers airlines.
To Interchange or Not to Interchange…
For millions of Americans, the credit cards in their wallets are a financial engine. Whether it’s racking up points for family summer vacations, earning cash back on groceries or managing monthly cash flow, these instruments have become a staple in the symphony of modern household budgeting. Summer is right around the corner, and that financial engine is under attack. Legislatures nationwide have been pushing bills to cap interchange fees.
Global carbon accounting lets unelected foreign-led NGOs pick winners and losers
TWO CORPORATIONS AND ONE WORKER INDICTED OVER KEY BRIDGE COLLAPSE From the diameter of a screw to laboratory safety protocols, the ISO has been the invisible hand ensuring that global trade speaks a common language. However, a recent and quiet pivot has seen this body step out of the machine shop and into the halls of global governance. By partnering with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to “harmonize global emissions accounting”, the ISO is now deciding who gets to stay in the race.
National opinion: New open banking rule can help Arizonans in remote areas
The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer: Washington is revisiting rules governing open banking and the outcome matters deeply for Arizona families. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) reconsideration of its Section 1033 data-sharing mandate gives policymakers a chance to protect the Arizonans most vulnerable to financial instability: those in rural banking deserts and tribal communities where access to affordable financial services remains limited.
Mortgage Bankers Association’s tri-merge credit reporting reform pushes risky overhaul
OPINION: Housing affordability has become a top priority in Washington. Policymakers across administrations now recognize that homeownership is slipping further out of reach for first-time buyers, younger households and working families whose incomes have failed to keep pace with housing costs. Headline inflation has moderated to roughly 3% year over year, but the costs that matter most to households continue to rise faster than wages.
Rolling the dice with our children's futures
The New Mexico Lottery Authority has a single, sacred mandate: to generate the maximum possible revenue for the Legislative Lottery Scholarship program. This is not a playground for bureaucratic experimentation or a laboratory for low-bid procurement fantasies. Yet with the botched rollout of its new gaming system, the agency has traded institutional stability for a cheap spreadsheet win, and our students will pay the price.
COLUMN: America’s Housing Crisis and the Politics of Blame
America’s housing affordability crisis has increasingly become a political drama in search of a convenient antagonist.
America's housing crisis and the politics of blame
America’s housing affordability crisis has increasingly become a political drama in search of a convenient antagonist.
Mortgage rates just fell below a crucial psychological threshold
Patrick M. Brenner is president and CEO of the Southwest Public Policy Institute. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage now sits near 5.98 percent, the first time it has been below 6 percent since 2022 and bringing it below a crucial psychological threshold. Many in the housing industry, including Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, expect the change in the mortgage rate to draw buyers back into the market simply because the first number had shifted from 6 to 5 percent.
Patrick M. Brenner: America’s housing crisis and the politics of blame
America’s housing affordability crisis has increasingly become a political drama in search of a convenient antagonist.
Opinion: America’s housing crisis and the politics of blame - The River Reporter
America’s housing affordability crisis has increasingly become a political drama in search of a convenient antagonist.
America’s Housing Crisis and the Politics of Blame – DC Journal - InsideSources
America’s housing affordability crisis has increasingly become a political drama in search of a convenient antagonist.
The dangers of credit card populism
Add us as a preferred source on Google - OPINION: Washington has a long history of mistaking resentment for a desire for reform. That impulse is now on full display in the growing populist push to “do something” about credit cards. Proposals to slash interchange fees, dismantle rewards programs or impose an arbitrary 10% interest rate cap may feel satisfying, yet they are simultaneously economically reckless. Last week’s exchange in the House Financial Services Committee between Rep.
Fiduciary Standards Start With Transparency
The loudest voices demanding “fiduciary purity” in America’s retirement debate are often the least willing to submit themselves to basic public scrutiny. That contradiction is now impossible to ignore. This week, the Pinpoint Policy Institute filed a formal complaint with the Internal Revenue Service alleging that the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard (IFS) has failed to make required IRS Form 990 filings publicly available, despite repeated requests.
Trump’s CFPB reset is welcome, but there’s a risk
President Donald Trump’s nomination of Stuart Levenbach to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already drawn the predictable outrage from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her allies. But for millions of Americans who rely on accessible, affordable financial products, the move represents something far more important: the beginning of the end of a decade-long regulatory experiment that punished consumers in the name of protecting them. And it couldn’t come soon enough.
Opinion - Trump’s CFPB reset is welcome, but there’s a risk
President Donald Trump’s nomination of Stuart Levenbach to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already drawn the predictable outrage from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her allies. But for millions of Americans who rely on accessible, affordable financial products, the move represents something far more important: the beginning of the end of a decade-long regulatory experiment that punished consumers in the name of protecting them. And it couldn’t come soon enough.
Opinion - Trump’s CFPB reset is welcome, but there’s a risk
President Donald Trump’s nomination of Stuart Levenbach to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already drawn the predictable outrage from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her allies. But for millions of Americans who rely on accessible, affordable financial products, the move represents something far more important: the beginning of the end of a decade-long regulatory experiment that punished consumers in the name of protecting them. And it couldn’t come soon enough.
Trump's bureau of land mismanagement
There was a time when Republicans prided themselves on being the party that can actually run things. In the West, this was reflected in sound GOP stewardship of public lands that blended enterprise with environmental respect, a tradition exemplified by Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation ethic and Ronald Reagan’s pragmatic federalism.
Trump nominee Pearce opposite of what Bureau of Land Management needs - The Washington Post
Patrick M. Brenner is the president and chief executive of the Southwest Public Policy Institute. There was a time when Republicans prided themselves on being the party that can actually run things. In the West, this was reflected in sound GOP stewardship of public lands that blended enterprise with environmental respect, a tradition exemplified by Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation ethic and Ronald Reagan’s pragmatic federalism.
50-year mortgage plan won't solve housing affordability crisis Original
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! The montage of the American Dream begins with a front door and a mortgage. President Donald Trump is correct to say that the dream is slipping out of reach for too many families. Home prices have skyrocketed, mortgage rates have doubled since 2021, and young Americans are finding it more challenging than ever to buy a home and put down roots.
The Case Against 50-Year Mortgages
Thirty days after Patrick M. Brenner, President of the Southwest Public Policy Institute, made the case against 30-year mortgages in The Wall Street Journal, President Donald Trump has floated a proposal to introduce a 50-year fixed-rate mortgage as a way to “make housing affordable again.” Proponents argue that extending loan terms will lower monthly payments and help more Americans qualify for homeownership amid high interest rates and persistent inflation.
OPINION: The first of its kind? A tribally owned professional sports team
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Opinion | The Case Against 30-Year Mortgages
Subsidized debt drives up prices, sucks up wealth, and makes it hard for millennials to buy homes. Journal Editorial Report: But what can the federal government do to bring home prices down? Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images I usually roll my eyes at millennials’ complaints about how much harder they have it than their parents. But when it comes to homeownership, they have a point.
Why senators’ efforts to kill overdraft fees is overkill
Overdraft protection has become Washington’s latest punching bag. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are again criticizing banks, credit unions and financial service providers for charging what they call “predatory” overdraft and non-sufficient funds fees. In their telling, these fees are little more than “junk,” a cynical profit scheme designed to trap the poor in a cycle of debt.
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