On Monday, D.C. District Judge James Boasberg granted Facebook’s motion to dismiss the antitrust lawsuits filed by the Federal Trade Commission and 40+ states in “a stunning setback to regulators’ efforts to break up Facebook.” Judge Boasberg found that “too much time had elapsed since the alleged offenses took place” in the states’ suits and that the FTC “failed to provide enough facts to back its claims that Facebook had monopoly over personal social networking.” The FTC now has 30 days in which to refile its complaint - NYTimes and WSJ and Law360 and Bloomberg and Marketplace and HuffPost and TechCrunch and MarketWatch and Mashable
Vaping company Juul will pay $40 million to resolve allegations by North Carolina that the “e-cigarette company’s marketing practices fueled widespread addiction to nicotine among young people and created a new public health problem.” The deal is the first addressing lawsuits by a “spate of states and localities” - NYTimes and WSJ
United Airlines has ordered up a record 270 “single-aisle planes from Boeing and Airbus, the biggest aircraft purchase in United’s history and the largest in the United States in a decade.” 200 of these will be Boeing 737 Max models, which United is suspected of acquiring at a healthy discount - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
We’ve covered lumber a whole lot more than I would’ve guessed just a year ago, so why not keep it rolling. This time, it’s to consider how a decades-old trade dispute over Canadian lumber is once again rearing its ugly head and may, with still-high lumber prices in mind, actually force a resolution in an effort to address shortages of materials desperately needed for building projects - NYTimes
CFPB officials are putting the finishing touches on a rule “intended to slow down what they fear will be a looming wave of pandemic-related foreclosures by making it easier for lenders to modify borrowers’ loan terms and by adding additional hurdles before lenders can seize homes” - NYTimes and Law360 and WSJ
Digital currency as the “equivalent of parachute pants”? You have Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles to thank for that 80s-era reference [though he missed a real Midwest-love opportunity by failing to mention Zubaz]. Now stablecoins, on the other hand . . . - NYTimes and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
The Journal pulls back the curtain at the PCAOB via a January report from former SEC Chair Harvey Pitt that details a “botched overhaul at the government’s auditing regulator” that led to an increased “environment of fear and distrust” among staff and eventually resulted in the removal of the board’s chair. Pitt’s report was the product of a whistleblower complaint in 2019 that accused ousted chair William Duhnke of “pushing out longstanding executives, in some cases out of retaliation, and engag[ing] in a politicized attempt to run down the watchdog” - WSJ
Fed officials are kicking around an earlier-than-anticipated slowing of mortgage-bond purchases by the central bank in an effort to “avoid adding more fuel to the housing boom” - WSJ and Marketplace
You don’t have to profess a #PurdonNation-level love of European football to have been moved by yesterday’s rollercoaster of a tilt between defending UEFO Euro champion France and a scrappy Switzerland team that had all the makings of an instant classic. Your highlights - ESPN
Stay safe and get vaxxed,
MDR
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