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The World
Investors brace for the highest inflation reading in nearly 40 years: Wall Street expects the the consumer price index today to reflect a 0.7% gain for November, which would translate into a 6.7% increase from a year ago. If that is accurate, it will mark the highest year over year level since 1982. (CNBC)
First-time claims for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to 184,000 in the week ended Dec. 4, the lowest level since September 1969, the Labor Department said Thursday. The previous pre-pandemic low of 194,000 was recorded late last month. (Wall Street Journal)
Senate clears the way for Congress to raise the debt ceiling before Dec. 15 deadline. (CNBC)
Joe Biden reaffirmed America’s “unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” in a call with President Volodymyr Zelensky amid concerns the U.S. president is open to negotiating with Russia over its demands to curb NATO’s expansion. The outreach to Ukraine, and a separate call with nine eastern European Nato allies, came after Biden sparked worries the previous day when he said he planned to hold talks with Russia and at least four unnamed NATO allies over Moscow’s position on the alliance. White House officials rejected speculation that Biden would pressure Ukraine to cede territory to Russian-backed separatists in order to deter Russian President Putin from launching a large-scale invasion. (Financial Times, Axios)
‘An urgent matter’: Biden warns democracy is under threat at summit: President Biden urged an invited group of world leaders to “lock arms” against autocracies at an online democracy summit seen as a US-led counterweight to China’s growing global influence. He pledged $424 million to support investigative journalism, fight corruption and defend human rights. China, left off the guest list and infuriated by the participation of Taiwan, accused Biden of “weaponizing democracy.” Other nations that were snubbed included Russia, Hungary and Turkey. (The Guardian, The Times)
France’s President Emmanuel Macron wants "a powerful Europe in the world, fully sovereign,” calling for the EU to stand up for itself as a strategic and economic power in a crisis-ridden world by securing its external borders and controlling clandestine migration, deepening defense co-operation and investing in high-tech industries. Macron called for a reform of the 26-nation Schengen zone — within which people can circulate freely without border checks — and an improved emergency system to send security forces to guard external frontiers, such as those of Poland and Lithuania recently threatened with mass incursions by migrants at the instigation of Belarus. (Le Monde, Financial Times)
In the UK, the Conservatives have slumped to their worst poll rating in 11 months as the prime minister battles on several fronts. Tory MPs turned on Boris Johnson over plans for new Covid restrictions as a YouGov poll found that Labour had a four-point lead, its biggest since January when the country was in the middle of the winter lockdown. (The Times)
Middlebury College, in Vermont, announced it would move to remote instruction for the remainder of the semester as an outbreak grows. The college will hold final exams remotely. (New York Times)
American Airlines will discontinue service to several international destinations in 2022 amid the ongoing shortage of Boeing 787 aircraft. The airline plans to stop serving Edinburgh, Scotland and Shannon, Ireland, next summer and will discontinue service to Hong Kong – which has not been offered since July 2020 – due to soft demand. European destinations not returning summer 2022 include Berlin, Budapest, Dubrovnik, Prague, and Reykjavik. South American cities with fewer flights include Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Santiago. (USA Today)
Economy
Company founders and leaders are unloading their stock at historic levels, with some selling shares in their businesses for the first time in years, amid soaring market valuations and ahead of possible changes in U.S. and some state tax laws. So far this year, 48 top executives have collected more than $200 million each from stock sales, nearly four times the average number of insiders from 2016 through 2020. The wave has included super sellers such as cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Other high-profile insiders — including the Walton family and Mark Zuckerberg — have accelerated sales and are on track to break recent records for the number of shares they have sold. Across the S&P 500, insiders have sold a record $63.5 billion in shares through November, a 50% increase from all of 2020, driven both by stock-market gains and an increase in sales by some big holders. (Wall Street Journal)
In one of the biggest challenges yet to the labor practices at popular ride-hailing and food-delivery services, the European Commission took a major step toward requiring companies like Uber to consider their drivers and couriers as employees entitled to a minimum wage and legal protections. The commission proposed rules that, if enacted, would affect up to an estimated 4.1 million people and give the EU some of the world’s strictest rules for the so-called gig economy. The policy would remake the relationship that ride services, food delivery companies and other platforms have with workers in the 27-nation bloc. Labor unions and other supporters hailed the proposal, which has strong political support, as a breakthrough in the global effort to change the business practices of companies that they say depend on exploiting workers with low pay and weak labor protections. (New York Times)
Ford has stopped taking reservations for the all-electric F-150 Lightning as it prepares to start making and shipping the new pickup truck in the first half of 2022. The company says it has collected 200,000 refundable $100 deposits for the Lightning since it debuted in May. That means that anyone not already in line may have to wait a while to buy Ford’s first mass-market electric pickup truck off a dealer lot (or order one from the company’s website). Ford hasn’t said how many it plans to build in 2022, but Automotive News reports that the automaker is looking to build as many as 80,000 in 2023. (The Verge)
SEC chief Gary Gensler’s speech laying out the need to tighten securities rules for SPACs is likely to reverberate across the financial markets—and shake up tech firms that see SPACs as a great way to go public. Gensler spotlighted one of the biggest loopholes in the rules: the fact that companies can go public via a SPAC merger with financial projections that are verboten for companies going public via a regular IPO. (The Information)
Coinbase launched a DeFi yield product for non-US customers in over 70 countries, after US regulators effectively killed plans for its Lend program in September. (Bloomberg)
Return-to-Office Chaos Is the Best Thing to Happen to Consultants Since Y2K: For the past few months I've been covering Corporate America's return-to-office movement, now known in business circles as "RTO," a complex conundrum that's bedeviled organizations of all sizes (including yours I'm sure). The pandemic has forced companies to continually delay their expected return dates — Ford just pushed theirs back again, from January to March — and has further eroded trust between bosses and workers. But the confusion has also created a burgeoning cottage industry for RTO advice, cheerfully doled out by everyone from HR consultants to office-furniture makers and etiquette experts. Seemingly overnight, human resources people needed to become experts in office design, airflow, information technology, ZWCR (Zooming while child rearing), and infectious disease protocols. Navigating the ever-shifting federal, state, and local Covid-19 policies and transmission rates made reopening offices a game of chance, and the disconnect between most workers’ desire for flexibility and most executives’ demand that workers return to their desks put HR in a no-win situation. “HR folks didn’t sign up for this,” laments Andrea Mullens, vice president for human resources at Ingram Micro Inc.’s cloud computing division, which employs about 2,000 workers. “Every six weeks the conversations I have change completely. It’s exhausting.” But do these so-called ‘experts’ really know anything? (Bloomberg Businessweek)
After Covid Closures, a New Quest to Make Offices Less Awful: To lure workers back, companies are renovating spaces, using software so staff can coordinate visits and dangling upgraded food to make offices more appealing. ‘You want to create a pull, not a push.’ (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
Italy's competition authority slapped a €1.13 billion fine on Amazon for abusing its dominant position in the market and harming competitors in the e-commerce logistics service. The Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) said that Amazon was giving sellers using its logistics service, called “Fulfillment by Amazon,” advantages in terms of visibility and sales, including access to its “Prime” label. Amazon said it "strongly" disagrees with the AGCM's decision and will appeal. The European Commission has opened an investigation similar to the Italian one that focuses on the rest of the EU. (Politico EU)
Google executives told employees they won’t raise pay companywide to match inflation. But Google will give an additional bonus of $1,600 to its employees globally this year, including the company's extended workforce and interns, as the tech giant pushes back its return-to-office plan. (CNBC, Reuters)
The metaverse medical student: Medical schools are experimenting with virtual and augmented reality technologies to help doctors-in-training practice their skills. Replacing actors pretending to be patients with holographic videos that can be generated anywhere can make the hands-on part of medical education cheaper and more flexible. GigXR, a Los Angeles-based startup that provides extended reality technologies for teaching and instruction, is partnering with the University of Michigan. (Axios)
The municipal government of Beijing is rolling out a centralized ed-tech platform for middle schoolers. It aims to meet the still-high demand for academic tutoring after China’s July ban on private tutoring. The platform has been tested in nine school districts in Beijing but will expand to nine more — covering more than 330,000 students across the entire city — by Jan. 1, 2022. It allows middle school students to access the platform through laptops or smartphones and connect with public school teachers every weekday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Protocol)
Smart Links
FT European Business Schools Ranking 2021: France dominates. (Financial Times)
Zuckerberg And Chan pledge $500 million to create an AI institute at Harvard. (Forbes)
Simone Biles named Time's 2021 Athlete of the Year. (Time)
Andreessen and Horowitz step back at A16Z. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Fall on walk from bed to desk is workplace accident, German court rules. (The Guardian)
States expanding child tax credit as federal program set to expire Jan. 1. (Axios)