Thursday delivered some welcome good news in the slow push for a labor market recovery. The Labor Department reported that new jobless benefits claims “fell to their lowest weekly level in the last year, a sign that the faster rollout of vaccines and the passage of a $1.9 trillion relief package are having an effect.” Indeed, claims fell by 100k from just a week earlier - NYTimes and WSJ
2 years after its last attempt to go public led to the eventual ouster of co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann, SoftBank-backed WeWork has reportedly “agreed to merge with a special-purpose acquisition company” as part of a deal that will take WeWork public with hopes raising $1.3 billion and achieving a $9 billion valuation - WSJ and MarketWatch
Which means it’s a good time to let you know that we’re keeping an eye on the SEC keeping an eye on SPACs, after reports this week that the Commission is “inquiring deeper into the explosion in blank-check offerings” that is seen as a potential prelude to “further investigation to assure that investor protection concerns are being met” – Law360 and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
The CEOs of Google, Facebook, and Twitter faced sometimes-intense questioning from lawmakers yesterday in the first hearing—a five-hour affair—since the January 6th Capitol riot. Their platforms’ role in that event (and a spate of other issues—including “how their companies helped spread falsehoods around Covid-19 vaccines, enable racism and hurt children’s mental health”) was front and center - NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch and TechCrunch and Mashable
Our now-daily Suez Canal update: the Ever Given’s still stuck, and unsticking it could take “weeks” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
A unanimous Supreme Court has decided that Ford must “face product-liability claims stemming from serious auto accidents in Montana and Minnesota, a setback for corporations seeking to limit their exposure to lawsuits in state courts” - WSJ and NYTimes and Law360
The NLRB this week “upheld a 2019 ruling that Tesla had illegally fired a worker involved in union organizing and that the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, had illegally threatened workers with the loss of stock options if they organized.” The ruling ordered Tesla to reinstate the fired worker with back pay, instructed Musk to delete the threatening tweet, and also requires Tesla to alter its stringent employee confidentiality agreement prohibiting media contact - NYTimes and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and Law360
As noted here previously, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has made the media rounds to ensure that his warnings about inflation are well documented. The Fed noticed. And it hasn’t been shy about pushing back - NYTimes
The man who somehow managed to gamify a pandemic has his sights set on another uplifting theme: the rapidly changing global climate. What’s not crazy-fun about that? - NYTimes
We’re heading into a spring hiatus and hoping you all can catch a breather, too. We’ll see you back here after Easter.
Stay safe.
