Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit claiming that Zuck & Co.’s use of facial recognition technology violated Illinois’ biometric privacy law. Though the settlement is little more than “a rounding error for Facebook, which reported that revenue rose 25 percent to $21 billion in the fourth quarter,” it’s still a substantial win for consumer privacy groups – NYTimes and Bloomberg and Law360
As expected, the Fed stood pat on interest rates in the Open Market Committee’s first meeting of 2020 – NYTimes and MarketWatch and WSJ and Bloomberg
Tesla delivered another quarter of profits ($105 million this time) and closed 2019 on a high note, despite net income actually dropping $38 million from Q3. The news and reports of Model Y deliveries beating delivery timeline forecasts help boost Tesla’s stock in after-hours trading – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Meanwhile, Boeing put a price tag on its annus horribilis: $19 billion in 737 Max-related fallout, a full-year loss of $636 million (its first annual loss since 1997), and a sales drop of 24% – WSJ and Bloomberg
A damning new Transportation Department report puts both the FAA and Southwest Airlines’ maintenance monitoring in the crosshairs – WSJ
The European Parliament voted Wednesday to approve the withdrawal agreement governing Britain’s departure from the EU by an overwhelming margin, bringing “to an end three and a half years of confusion, political division and missed deadlines.” A ridiculous amount of hard work remains to actually effectuate the split – NYTimes
A California jury found late Wednesday that Apple and Broadcom infringed three Cal Tech patents on data transmission on WiFi chips used in hundreds and millions of iPhones and other devices and awarded the university more than $1 billion in damages – Law360
The Nxivm self-help group [read cult] made headlines last year with reports of sexual servitude and ritual branding of followers, but a new lawsuit alleges that Nxivm leader Keith Raniere was also running a massive pyramid scheme that lured victims with “false scientific claims into paying thousands of dollars for classes” – NYTimes
Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting put the world on notice yesterday that he’s not going to let any reservations from the Fed standing in the way of the OCC and FDIC moving forward with controversial changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, “which requires banks to lend in lower-income and underserved areas where they take deposits.” Critics have argued that the proposed overhaul “would make it too easy for banks to pass their CRA compliance exams and would encourage them to shift away from making the kinds of home and small-business loans that benefit communities most” – Law360
All the deets—and some still-open questions—on the USMCA (aka, the new Nafta) now that’s officially the law of the land – NYTimes and WSJ
A bit of Daily Dose (and Marketplace) extra credit for you econ & financial industries overachievers out there – Marketplace
