In the internal battle between keeping China off balance and keeping Wall Street happy, the White House has decided once again to focus on the latter, walking back the latest tariff escalation by postponing promised enforcement until mid-December, a move that Wall Street considered “Christmas-saving” and rewarded with a surge in trading – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Law360
CBS and Viacom made it official yesterday, reuniting after more than a decade apart, much to the delight of Shari Redstone – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Marketplace
Fannie & Freddie are reportedly kicking around plans to accept non-FICO scores when assessing mortgage applicants’ creditworthiness, an apparent win for VantageScore, the credit-score system owned by the three large credit-reporting firms – WSJ
No one’s talking much about housing bubbles these days, but it feels worth noting that US mortgage debt hit a new record this week, moving past a mark last set in 2008. Tighter lending standards and less delinquency are the current reasons we’re not totally stressing about this figure – WSJ
Bana and a host of other big banks had a solid day in NY court this week, with Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald agreeing to cut “dozens of claims” from the MDL in which they’re facing allegations of Libor rigging – Law360
In Big Zucker news today, Facebook insiders revealed that the ‘book has been paying “hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services,” a move that the social media giant argued was justified because of their use in “checking whether Facebook’s artificial intelligence correctly interpreted the messages” – Bloomberg
These newfangled Insta and emoji-spired resumes haven’t hit OCI yet [thank goodness], but best that we all have them on our radar as we welcome Gen Z to the workplace – WSJ
Chrisley may know best, but that doesn’t appear to extend to tax law – Law360
Much to the delight of the 7-year-old in [nearly] all of us, secret rooms (and secret passages and sneaky entrances) are back en vogue, and they’re even popping up in the workplace – NYTimes
