The Fed’s Open Markets Committee meeting wrapped on Wednesday, and in remarks following the meeting, Fed Chair Powell called the case for fiscal policy right now “very, very strong,”—a not-so-subtle nudge to Congress to act on another round of Covid relief. Powell also downplayed deficit and debt concerns cited by some as a reason to avoid more stimulus, suggesting that “now was not the time to be worried about spending borrowed money” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
With that message (and some serious political calculations) in mind, Congressional leaders appear to be closing in on a new Covid relief measure that “could infuse the economy with as much as $900 billion” and that is likely to include “another round of direct stimulus payments to Americans and additional unemployment benefits” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
As promised, a coalition of 10 states have filed an action in federal district court in Texas against Google, accusing the search giant of “abusing its monopoly over the technology that delivers ads online, adding to the company’s legal troubles with a case that strikes at the heart of its business” - NYTimes and WSJ and HuffPost and Law360
Meanwhile, Facebook and Apple are officially done playing nice, with Apple’s coming changes that will require iPhone owners “to explicitly choose to allow companies to track them across different apps”—a practice that Facebook “relies on to target ads and charge advertisers ore”—the apparent camel’s-back-breaking straw for Zuck & Co., who have pulled out the print-ad big guns - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and Mashable and Law360
Troubled Chinese coffee powerhouse Luckin Coffee will pay the SEC $180 million to resolve accounting fraud claims related to its book-cooking that “faked more than $300 million in retail sales.” Luckin neither “admitted nor denied the SEC’s fraud claims, which were filed in Manhattan federal court” - WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and Law360 and TechCrunch
Roku has reached a deal with AT&T/WarnerMedia, ending the standoff that had kept HBO Max off of the streaming devices since May - WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and TechCrunch
Bitcoin officially crossed the $20k rubicon for the first time on Wednesday as “part of a furious rally that has seen the digital currency nearly triple this year” - WSJ and Mashable and Bloomberg
Controversy in the heartland surrounding a Soviet-style mural of Cookie Monster? Oh, absolutely - NYTimes
Stay safe.
