Jobs Report Friday! Here’s what analysts are looking for in the numbers, with the Delta variant’s impact on the recovery still looming large - MarketWatch and NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
Elon Musk & Co. are decamping from California in favor of Austin, Texas, where Tesla will establish its new global headquarters. That location will give the company easy access to its cybertruck manufacturing facility as well as a presence in the same state from where SpaceX launches its rockets - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and TechCrunch
China’s recent reassertion of power over its powerful tech industry has claimed another victim, with state regulators hitting food-delivery giant Meituan with a fine of “$530 million for antitrust violations,” including the alleged “use of exclusivity arrangements to block restaurants from offering takeout delivery on other platforms” - NYTimes and Bloomberg
A new report out from the Small Business Administration’s inspector general, Hannibal Ware, paints a damning picture of the fraud protections associated with the $20 billion Economic Injury Disaster Loan Advance that was “hastily rolled out in the early days of the pandemic.” How bad? Try $4.5 billion bad, with payments “doled out . . . to self-employed people who said they had additional workers—even those who made wildly implausible claims, like having one million employees” - NYTimes
It’s only for a few months, but Congress has once again whistled past the default graveyard with a deal that will raise the debt ceiling by $480 billion—“an amount the Treasury Department estimates would be enough to allow the government to continue borrowing through at least Dec. 3” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
In a huge win for Treasury Secretary Yellen and the Biden administration, Ireland—one of the few holdouts—has agreed to join a global agreement “to set a minimum 15% corporate tax rate” aimed at limiting tax avoidance and dividing tax revenue in a way meant to be fairer to all - WSJ
Comcast is launching a new smart TV in Europe that “will run on its own operating system, the company’s latest answer to the streaming wars.” The effort, called Sky Glass, will roll out to the U.K.’s Sky network customers in the coming weeks - WSJ
Investment powerhouse BlackRock has unveiled a new program that will give “institutional investors such as pensions and endowments the option to cast shareholder votes tied to their investments” - WSJ
Looks like Tether’s got a serious dollar problem. As in, the greenbacks allegedly “backing the stablecoin at the center of the global cryptocurrency trade” - Bloomberg
A look at what the U.S.’s mission to take Chinese telecom giant Huawei down a few pegs has meant for the company, which finds itself mired in a “deep slump” thanks largely to “U.S. pressure designed to halt the spread of Huawei’s 5G technology” - WSJ
The fascinating financial and political experiment playing out at the moment in El Salvador will be quite the test for both Bitcoin and for the country’s “increasingly authoritarian ruler.” At stake: “whether cryptocurrency delivers the freedom from regulation that its proponents envision—or whether it becomes another tool of control and enrichment for autocrats and corporations” - NYTimes
IMF director Kirstalina Georgieva’s reign is in jeopardy thanks to recent allegations that “she pressured staff to manipulate a report to placate China when she was a top World Bank official,” and the Fund’s exec board will meet later today to decide whether to show her the door - NYTimes
On the long-pursued promise of nuclear fusion, and what the technology could mean for power generation (and for—no pressure—saving the planet) if it ever moves from dream to reality - NewYorker
Stay safe, get vaxxed, and have a great weekend,
MDR
