Because too much of a good thing is always trouble (especially on Wall Street), market watchers are warning of a new tech bubble after Airbnb’s monster IPO on Thursday. The home-sharing app’s shares rose more than 112% to close at $144.71 after starting trading at $68—doing so just a day after DoorDash’s debut was similarly gangbusters and prompting questions about investors’ relationship with reality in this still-Covid-slammed economy - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and TechCrunch
For example, you ask? Well, for starters there’s the regression in hiring we’ve seen in recent weeks. Yesterday’s US jobless figures showed that “more than 947,000 workers filed new claims for state unemployment benefits last week,” up “sharply” from the week before adding to a dismal November for the American workforce - NYTimes and WSJ and Marketplace
Facing similar economic headwinds, the ECB’s not leaving much to chance. The central bank announced that it would scale-up its bond buying efforts and make “ultracheap loans” to banks as part of a “bold stimulus package aimed at backstopping the region’s governments and businesses as they navigate a stubborn resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic” - WSJ
Meanwhile, across the Channel, Brits are preparing for the very-real possibility that they crash out of the EU without a new trade agreement - WSJ and MarketWatch
MasterCard and Visa made it official on Thursday by banning use of their cards on the adult website Pornhub just days after the companies began “investigations . . . into their financial ties with MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub” linked to a damning Times report about child abuse and rape on the site - NYTimes
Weeks after launching devices with its own chips aimed at making the company’s reliance on Intel a thing of the past, Apple let it be known that it’s building its own cellular modem for coming devices in hopes of showing Qualcomm the door - Bloomberg
A bit of day-after analysis on the challenges ahead for antitrust regulators and federal courts alike in the recently launched effort to break up Facebook in the name of fair competition - WSJ and Marketplace and Law360
And while we’re talking Big Tech, France’s data privacy regulator has fined Amazon and Google $42.5 million and $121.4 million respectively “on charges they violated the French Data Protection Act by placing advertising cookies on people’s computers without their prior consent or knowledge” – Law360 and WSJ
MassMutual Life Insurance added to the growing mainstream acceptance of bitcoin this week with a $100 million purchase of the digital currency for its general investment account. Though the sum is a drop in the bucket for an account worth $235 billion, the move adds to the consensus that bitcoin’s recent rise is more grounded in reality than its 2017 surge (and subsequent fall from grace) - WSJ and Bloomberg
Google chief Sundar Pichai issued a rare apology in an email to employees over the departure of “prominent artificial intelligence researcher” Timnit Gebru last week. Pichai, however, “stopped short of saying the company was wrong in how it hastened the resignation” of Dr. Gebru, “one of [Google’s] best-known Black female employees” - NYTimes
It’s baking season anyway, and what with the lockdown and all . . . well, buckle up. Christmas cookies, here we come - NYTimes
Have a good weekend, and stay safe out there,
MDR
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