With a high-level White House meeting on Friday, the US and China have extended trade talks, even as a “final deal remains elusive” (aka, nothing at all is in writing yet). It also appears that the purported progress is enough to keep the US from upping its tariffs by 15% on a wide range of Chinese goods, a jump that was set to take effect March 1- NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
The Journal broke an incredible story on Friday once again exposing serious privacy flaws at Facebook by revealing how the company collects an enormous range of private (and often incredibly personal) data from smartphone apps, “even if the user has no connection to Facebook.” More troubling, the “apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure” – WSJ and Law360
The death of Vanguard’s Jack Bogle last month prompted a series of retrospectives on the index-fund evangelist’s life. A deeper dive into the broader effects of his life’s work suggests that his vision of investing (and its massive current popularity) is actually “having a measurable impact on inflation much as prices for groceries or gasoline do” – NYTimes
Kraft Heinz’s brutal Friday turns out to have been a symptom of a much bigger problem in 2018—one that also meant trouble for major investor Warren Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway empire – WSJ and Bloomberg
Warren aside, Kraft’s performance has also been part of a devastating trend for 3G Capital—the Brazilian investment firm that snapped up Kraft, Heinz, and Burger King (among others) in the past few years—which is seeing an underinvestment “in its brands at the expense of future growth” coming home to roost – WSJ
Xerox is out of luck in its early bid to dismiss Fujifilm’s billion-dollar lawsuit for termination and other damages after Xerox “backed out of their merger under pressure from activist investors” – Law360
State Street Corp. appears destined for SEC charges quite soon for “allegedly overcharging clients” and has, to this point, refused overtures from the agency to resolve the matter short of litigation – Law360
Enron mastermind Jeffrey Skilling has been released from federal prison after serving 12+ years for fraud, insider trading, and conspiracy. Bloomberg looks back at the rise and fall of the energy company chief exec – Bloomberg
The OCC has delivered a “fresh warning” to Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group—Japan’s largest bank—that it was failing in its duty to “detect money laundering and sanctions violations at its branches.” The bank, branded as MUFG in the US, is already the subject of a US criminal probe for what one former employee dubbed a “dumpster fire” of an AML program – NYTimes and Law360
Rumors of the dollar’s demise as go-to world currency have been greatly exaggerated. The Times looks at why that is, after all of this time – NYTimes
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is leaving the company’s Board of Directors – WSJ
We made it through the hostless Oscars just fine, thank you very much, though if I had it my way (and I wasn’t alone), Maya, Tina, and Amy would’ve stuck around all night – ABC
