President Biden and a bipartisan group of Senators announced a deal that would provide just shy of $600 billion in “new investments in roads, broadband internet, electric utilities and other projects” that form an important part of his infrastructure plan. The White House’s endorsement of the proposal “marked a breakthrough” but did not “guarantee that the package would be enacted” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch

The Dow cheered the prospect of the deal, and construction-related stocks in particular were beneficiaries of the announcement - WSJ

Google is pushing back the date for its much-balleyhooed cookie removal from its Chrome browser to 2023 “amid regulatory scrutiny and concerns from privacy advocates and the advertising industry over the search giant’s approach to replacing the tool” - WSJ and Law360 and NYTimes

Toshiba’s Board Chair is out in the aftermath of a recent scandal involving efforts to enlist government help to “inappropriately pressure investors who sought to shake up the company’s management” that led to the “resignation of the company’s chief executive and four board members.” Though Chair Osamu Nagayama was not tied to the scandal directly, Toshiba shareholders “scored a surprise victory” in their effort to remove him - NYTimes and WSJ

The U.S. has banned imports of “silica-based products made by Hoshine Silicon Industry Company as well as goods made using those products” in an effort to “crack down on forced labor in the supply chain for solar panels in the Chinese region of Xinjiang” - NYTimes

Antitrust officials in the U.K. are investigating Amazon and Google’s efforts to fight fake reviews on their sites, the latest front in a widening battle by governments against Big Tech and its dominance in web commerce - WSJ and Bloomberg and TechCrunch

Quite the inside look here from Bloomberg at the ill-fated ordeal of the Ever Given, the infamous “ship that broke global trade” after lodging itself in the Suez Canal earlier this year - Bloomberg

The Fed announced this week that Wall Street banks have universally passed the latest round of stress testing and were “most likely strong enough to fully resume shareholder payouts—the latest sign that the economy is returning to normal” - NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch

U.S. authorities, including the DOJ’s antitrust division, are probing “how global banks handled multi-billion dollar trades with Archegos Capital Management that sent stocks into a spiral and burned other shareholders” for evidence of potential “corporate collusion” - Bloomberg

As you head into the weekend that’s hopefully blissfully free of them, please enjoy one of my favorites, Caity Weaver, on the concept of meetings. Going way back. I mean, WAY back - NYTimes

Have a good weekend, stay safe, and get vaxxed,
MDR