With Wednesday’s passage in the House, the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill is heading to President Biden’s desk for an anticipated Friday signature, “cementing one of the largest injections of federal aid since the Great Depression” that will “provide another round of direct payments for Americans, an extension of federal jobless benefits and billions of dollars to distribute coronavirus vaccines and provide relief for schools, states, tribal governments and small businesses struggling during the pandemic” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Law360
Which means it’s an especially good time to remind everyone that Fed officials are imploring markets, investors, and politicians alike not to pay much mind to inflation fears, with Chair Powell noting the difference “between a one-time surge in prices and ongoing inflation,” making it clear “that he expected [any] coming increase to be transitory” - NYTimes
Children-centered gaming platform Roblox capitalized on a year of families largely confined to their houses with a banner first day of public trading, closing up more than $35/share above its reference price and valuing the company at $45 billion, “up from $4 billion just over a year ago” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Today, it’s “South Korean e-commerce giant” Coupang’s turn, and founder Bom Kim and major backer SoftBank are looking for big things from the debut - Bloomberg and NYTimes
Meanwhile, fresh off substantial HuffPost layoffs, BuzzFeed is reportedly in discussions to go public through a merger with the 890 5th Avenue Partners SPAC - Bloomberg
The Dow overperformed on Wednesday, closing above 32k for the first time based in part on better-than-expected inflation data [see above]- WSJ and MarketWatch
The Senate Banking Committee voted this week to advance SEC Chair nominee Gary Gensler to the full Senate for final confirmation vote - WSJ and Law360
A day after finalizing the merger of its Gercas jet-leasing unit with AerCap in a $30 billion deal, General Electric announced that it is winding down GE Capital, its troubled “once-sprawling lender,” and will “use the proceeds from the AerCap deal to pay down debts and fold the rest of GE Capital into the company’s corporate operations” - WSJ
Facebook has moved to dismiss the FTC and state AG antitrust suits it’s facing in D.C. district court, “arguing that government enforcers have no valid basis for alleging the social media giant is suppressing competition” - WSJ and TechCrunch and Law360
Great stuff from the Times, which digs into a reassessment of a Dead Sea manuscript discovered and declared a forgery in 1883 by University of Potsdam scholar Idan Dershowitz, who asserts that it is real and thus “the oldest known biblical manuscript by far” - NYTimes
Stay safe.
