Johnson & Johnson has reached a deal with NY AG Letitia James to settle the state’s opioid case against the company for a reported $230 million. The deal comes “as negotiations intensify with the company and three drug distributors to clinch a $26 billion settlement of thousands of other lawsuits blaming the pharmaceutical industry for the opioid crisis” - WSJ and Bloomberg and Law360
A recall of nearly 300,000 vehicles in China over software issues related to the cars’ active cruise control feature is being seen as a “black eye for Tesla in a key China region” which will pose lingering problems for Elon & friends in a market he’s tried so hard to develop - Bloomberg and WSJ and MarketWatch
Southwest Airlines is raising minimum wages to $15/hour for some 7,000 workers in an effort to “retain and attract employees as the economy and aviation industry rebound” - NYTimes
Meanwhile, over on the stick side of things, early data from Missouri and other states that cut federal unemployment benefits after alleging that they “incentivized people to stay out of the work force” have seen “virtually no uptick” in job applicants since the moves - NYTimes
On the staying power of controversial former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ hold on D.C.’s econ discussions - NYTimes
Checking in on the Personal Consumption Expenditures index—the Fed’s “favorite” inflation gauge—that showed prices increasing 3.9% in the year through May (“in line with what economists . . . had anticipated”) but, as importantly, “moderating somewhat” in recent months - NYTimes
Payments app Venmo, a PayPal Holdings entity, will soon roll out a feature that will “allow users to sell products and services on their personal accounts, for a fee” - WSJ
A rough couple of weeks has some seeing bitcoin heading toward another “crypto winter”—a pattern that’s marked bitcoin’s emergence in the past 10 years that sees deep selloffs followed by “long periods of flat trading” - WSJ and Bloomberg
The Times magazine this past weekend with a fascinating look at the nascent “carbontech revolution,” a push by companies to capture and embed carbon dioxide in a wide range of products in an effort to manufacture them without adding emissions “to the environment through their fabrication” - NYTimes
Stay safe and get vaxxed,
MDR
