Fed Set to Deliver Third-Straight Interest Rate Cut [Bloomberg]
The US economy has proved more resilient than what officials expected just a few months ago. Recent data shows inflation is coming down more slowly than officials anticipated, and the labor market is not weakening as much as feared…. Stronger-than-expected data has also raised questions about whether the neutral rate, a point at which the Fed is neither boosting nor slowing the economy, is now higher. That uncertainty could give officials more reason to move slowly with rate cuts….
U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear challenge to TikTok ban [CNBC]
The Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments in the case for Jan. 10. That is nine days before the law targeting the app, which is used by an estimated 170 million Americans, is set to take effect…. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the law on Dec. 6, ruling that the DOJ had “offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that” the divestment law “is narrowly tailored to protect national security.”
The Last-Ditch Efforts to Win Over Critics of the Nippon-U.S. Steel Deal [WSJ]
[Nippon Steel Vice Chairman Takahiro] Mori continues to doggedly campaign for support from mayors, governors and especially members of the steelworkers union. He has promised job security, $5,000 bonuses if the deal is completed and nearly $3 billion of investments in the company’s older plants to blunt the entrenched opposition to the deal from the union’s president, Dave McCall.
‘One of the dumbest ideas’: Abolishing the FDIC could backfire on Trump and his allies [CNN]
“This idea would pose an enormous risk of terrifying Americans about the safety of their deposits and triggering bank runs,” said Patricia McCoy, a law professor at Boston College and former federal regulator…. “This has as much logic as asking if Trump can abolish Wednesday, and split it between Tuesday and Thursday,” said [Brookings Institution senior fellow Aaron] Klein, a former Treasury Department official who helped craft the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. “The FDIC’s brand value to consumers is immense. Millions of Americans trust the FDIC insures their nest egg.”
‘It’s dumb to IPO this year’: Databricks CEO explains why he’s waiting to go public [TechCrunch]
Databricks just closed one of the largest funding rounds ever, raising a staggering $10 billion in fresh capital…. “The earliest theoretical possibility of an IPO would be next year, and then there’s lock-up periods, so it would just be too long of a period for employees to get liquidity.”/Databricks is using this “Series J” to let early employees cash out and continue growing.
Giving Pledge Group, Led by Gates and Buffett, Removes Billionaire Accused of Fraud [DealBook]
[Arif Naqvi] only the third person to be forcibly removed from the group of philanthropists, which has been one of the most venerated collections of wealth holders across the globe….
The Abraaj Group made international headlines in 2018 with its collapse…. Mr. Naqvi, the firm’s public face, resigned in 2018 after allegations that he had misused investors’ funds. He was arrested in London in April 2019 and has been fighting extradition to the United States, where New York prosecutors indicted him in early 2019.
