Hard to imagine that any financial news could come close to making headlines on Thursday, and yet, the SEC and Elon Musk came close. Specifically, the SEC filed suit against Musk, accusing him of “making false public statements with the potential to hurt investors”—a reference to his early August tweets about taking Tesla private thanks to “funding secured” that the agency claims Musk “knew or was reckless in not knowing” were “false or misleading.” Beyond civil penalties, the agency is asking the court to bar Musk from being the officer or director of any public company – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and Marketplace and Law360

Good news for those power lunchers among you—the IRS is expected to release guidance interpreting the hastily passed 2017 tax bill that would allow businesses to continue to deduct 50% of food and entertainment expenses – WSJ

After missing out on the big tech day on the Hill a few weeks ago, Google CEO Sundar Pichai will be in DC today to meet with Republicans, just days after Google’s privacy chief faced Senate questioning over online data privacy concerns – NYTimes

Brazilian oil giant Petrobras will pay a staggering $853.2 million dollars to US and Brazilian authorities to resolve a lengthy investigation into “one of the biggest corruption schemes ever uncovered” that included overbilling and political bribery on an epic scale – WSJ and Law360

A bit of back-of-the-envelope math shows that Eddie Lampert’s plans to cut big-time debt at Sears would see his ESL Investments hedge fund reap a nearly $1 billion benefit – Bloomberg

Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court has reopened a consumer protection case against big-four-firm KPMG, overturning a lower court decision and ordering a state trial judge to reconsider whether the firm is liable for “failing to catch a $6 million fraudulent student-loan scheme during years of auditing finances at Merrimack College” – Law360

Japan’s recent embrace of bilateral talks with the White House is a major position change with still-uncertain results, but it has managed to save Japan from “looming auto tariffs as long as the talks continue” – NYTimes

Yet another former Deutsche Bank derivatives trader, Timothy Parietti, has testified in the Libor-rigging trial of former colleague Matthew Connolly. Parietti told the jury that he and others “gamed Libor to reap huge windfalls,” the second cooperating witness to say as much – Law360

Perhaps you’ve heard about the missing word in the Fed’s statements this week. That would be “accommodative,” and Streetwise helps us understand what all of the fuss was about – WSJ

With the SkyTV battle out of the way, Breakingviews suggests that video-streaming service Hulu (currently jointly—and awkwardly—controlled by Disney, Comcast, and Fox) is the likely next battleground between Disney and Comcast – NYTimes

They’ll have been at it in Paris for a good chunk of the day by the time you’re reading this.  Oh yeah.  It’s Ryder Cup time again. Here’s the latest on Day 1, as the US looks to retain the Cup against the Europeans after America’s huge win at Hazeltine 2 years ago – ESPN

Have a great weekend.