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  • FTC sues to block Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard | CNN Business

    FTC sues to block Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued to block Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, challenging one of the largest tech acquisitions in history.

    The administrative complaint filed Thursday by the FTC alleges that the blockbuster deal, which would make Microsoft the third-largest video game publisher in the world, would give Microsoft “both the means and motive to harm competition” — claiming it could negatively affect prices of video games as well as game quality and player experiences on consoles and gaming services, according to an agency release.

    “We continue to believe that this deal will expand competition and create more opportunities for gamers and game developers,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said in a statement Thursday. “We have been committed since Day One to addressing competition concerns, including by offering earlier this week proposed concessions to the FTC. While we believed in giving peace a chance, we have complete confidence in our case and welcome the opportunity to present our case in court.”

    In an email sent to employees and provided to CNN, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said the FTC suit may sound “alarming” but he remains confident the deal will close. “The allegation that this deal is anti-competitive doesn’t align with the facts, and we believe we’ll win this challenge,” he said.

    The US merger challenge reflects the biggest setback yet for Microsoft as it has aggressively courted regulators around the world in hopes of persuading them to bless the deal. It also marks the FTC’s most significant challenge to the tech industry since it sued to break up Facebook-owner Meta in 2020, underscoring US officials’ vocal promises of a tough antitrust enforcement agenda.

    “Today we seek to stop Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple dynamic and fast-growing gaming markets,” said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, in a statement.

    Microsoft’s proposed deal would give it control over key video game franchises, including “Call of Duty,” “World of Warcraft” and more.

    Officials in the United Kingdom and the European Union have also scrutinized the deal as potentially anticompetitive. But the FTC complaint marks the first attempt by an antitrust regulator to block the deal outright.

    Microsoft could use its ownership over Activision titles to raise prices, or to try to funnel players to gaming platforms it controls, such as Xbox or Windows, the FTC said. The deal could also affect the emerging market for cloud-based gaming services, the FTC said, which Microsoft is involved with through its subscription service, Xbox Game Pass.

    In recent days, Microsoft has announced a slew of partnerships apparently intended to head off claims that it would withhold gaming content from rivals. This week, Microsoft said it had reached a 10-year deal with Nintendo ensuring that it will have access to Call of Duty for the foreseeable future.

    In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday, Microsoft’s Smith said an FTC suit to block the Activision deal would be a “huge mistake” and added that the acquisition would allow Microsoft to innovate new features such as the ability for consumer to play the same game on multiple devices, just as they can with streaming TV shows or music.

    Months earlier, in February, Microsoft made an 11-point pledge related to all of its app marketplaces and its gaming business. The list included a promise, which would cover the proposed Activision deal, not to give preferential treatment to its own published games on digital marketplaces it runs.

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  • Why we think we’re in a recession when the data says otherwise | CNN Business

    Why we think we’re in a recession when the data says otherwise | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    It seems like you can’t go anywhere these days without colliding headfirst into another ominous prediction of imminent recession. CEOs, portfolio managers, politicians, news pundits, second cousins and even Cardi B are sounding the alarm: Hear ye! Hear ye! Economic downturn awaits all who dare enter 2023!

    But those predictions contradict the slew of positive economic data we’ve seen: The job market is healthy, wages are growing, Americans are spending and GDP is strong. Business is also good: Companies are largely beating revenue expectations and reporting positive earnings results.

    The Federal Reserve’s regimen of painful interest rate hikes meant to tame persistent inflation could certainly cool the economy — as could events in Eastern Europe and China — but the economy has been able to successfully endure nearly a year of hikes and war in Ukraine with barely a dent.

    It’s possible that recession chatter is just that. Chatter.

    What’s happening: No one would ever accuse investors of shying away from their emotions: Passions run high on trading floors where feelings are often as valid as facts and fear and greed can sometimes run the show. Economists, on the other hand, are a data-dependent, stoic bunch. The US economy is not Wall Street, and market downturns are not recessions — but sometimes they get jumbled together in the public eye and their borders become hazy.

    That appears to be the case: The Fed’s attempts to tamp down sky-high inflation are having an outsized impact on markets — the S&P 500 is down about 18% so far this year — but there has so far been little impact on the US economy as a whole.

    This week, a number of top executives warned of an economic slowdown in 2023. CEOs from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, General Motors, Walmart, United and Union Pacific all said they were making plans for less-profitable times ahead. But hidden behind those “CEO PREDICTS RECESSION” headlines lies a lot of uncertainty.

    Rising interest rates and geopolitical chaos are pointing towards storm clouds on the horizon, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC on Tuesday: “When you look out forward, those things may well derail the economy and cause this mild-to-hard recession that people are worried about.” When pressed to predict what was coming, he deflected. “It could be a hurricane. We simply don’t know,” he said. What was left unsaid was that sunny days are also a possibility.

    Feedback loop: United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby also told CNBC on Tuesday that “we’re probably going to have a mild recession induced by the Fed.” He then went on to say that demand in his industry is higher than ever and United entered the fourth quarter with profit margins near all-time highs. He doesn’t see any indication of a slowdown on the horizon, either.

    So why does he think a recession is coming? “If I didn’t watch CNBC in the morning, the word ‘recession’ wouldn’t be in my vocabulary,” he said. “You just can’t see it in our data.”

    It’s almost as though Kirby predicted recession was imminent because other prominent voices predicted that recession was imminent. And it’s possible that we’re all stuck in a feedback loop that amplifies unjustified fear.

    Prophecies are often self-fulfilling. If CEOs believe recession is coming, they preemptively batten down the hatches — and that means less spending and more layoffs, which in turn can trigger an economic downturn.

    Goldman CEO David Solomon said Tuesday that the bank may soon terminate staff and exercise caution with its financial resources due to the mounting economic uncertainty. Morgan Stanley will reportedly slash its workforce by about 1,600 people, roughly 2% of the total.

    The upside: Some parts of Wall Street seem to be avoiding the recession fervor. ​​A recent study by Goldman Sachs found that smart money is betting on a soft landing. Money managers have been favoring industrial and commodity stocks that are sensitive to economic downturns. Stocks that act as a buffer during economic downturns like consumer staples and utilities have fallen out of favor at investment funds with assets totaling almost $5 trillion, Goldman strategists found.

    “Current sector tilts are consistent with positioning for a soft landing,” they wrote.

    Oil prices have tumbled to their lowest level since Christmas as worries about the health of the economy weigh on crude, overshadowing concerns about new restrictions imposed on Russian energy, reports my colleague Matt Egan.

    Brent crude, the world benchmark, lost nearly 3% on Thursday to around $77.45 a barrel.

    The oil selloff comes after the West hit Russia with new restrictions that, so far at least, do not appear to be derailing global energy markets.

    The European Union on Monday imposed a ban on seaborne oil imports from Russia, while the West placed a $60 cap on Russian oil. Both moves are designed to hurt Russia’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine, without hurting consumers by causing Moscow to slash oil production.

    “Russia oil is still on the market. As of now, it appears Russia is willing to play ball,” said Robert Yawger, vice president of oil futures at Mizuho Securities.

    The tame reaction from energy markets is a welcome gift for Americans heading on long drives this holiday season, as prices at the gas pump are expected to continue their recent plunge.

    US oil this week hit its lowest level since December 23, 2021, before recovering a little on Thursday to trade up 2% at $73.60 a barrel. That leaves oil down by 43% since briefly topping $130 a barrel in March amid fears about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    The national average price for regular gasoline dipped by three cents to $3.33 a gallon on Thursday, according to AAA. Gas prices have dropped 14 cents in the past week and 47 cents in a month. The national average is a cent lower than a year ago when they averaged $3.34 a gallon.

    Britain is bracing for further disruption from strikes heading into the Christmas period, as ambulance drivers and nurses join rail operators and postal workers in the worst wave of walkouts the country has endured for at least a decade, reports my colleague Hanna Ziady.

    More than 20,000 ambulance workers, including paramedics and call handlers, are expected to strike on December 21 in a dispute over pay, according to statements from labor unions GMB, Unison and Unite.

    The strike will involve just under half of all ambulance drivers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, although unions have said they will cover life-threatening emergencies during the walkouts. More than 10,000 ambulance workers represented by the GMB Union will strike again on December 28.

    Strikes have swept the United Kingdom this year, as workers grapple with a cost-of-living crisis and stagnating wages. Consumer prices rose by 11.1% in the year to October, a 41-year high. Once inflation is taken into account, average wages fell by the biggest drop on record earlier this year, and were still declining in the June-September period.

    According to The Times newspaper, one million UK workers are set to strike in December and January. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows Britain has already lost at least 741,000 days to strike action this year, putting it on track for its worst year of labor disputes in at least a decade.

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  • DOJ antitrust regulators should look at Apple, Google’s handling of TikTok, says FCC commissioner | CNN Business

    DOJ antitrust regulators should look at Apple, Google’s handling of TikTok, says FCC commissioner | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    Apple and Google’s continued hosting of TikTok on their app stores, despite US national security concerns about the short-form video app, reflects the tech giants’ “gatekeeper” power and should be made part of any antitrust reviews the app stores may face, a member of the Federal Communications Commission wrote to the Justice Department last week.

    The previously unreported letter — sent on Dec. 2 to DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter and obtained by CNN — said that continuing to make TikTok available on the app stores risks harming consumers, whose personal information US officials have worried may be being fed to the Chinese government.

    Beyond possible consumer harm, TikTok’s continued presence on app stores also undercuts Apple and Google’s arguments that their dominance in app distribution leads to better user security and privacy, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote in the letter.

    It’s the latest attempt by Carr, a top Republican at the FCC, to pressure Apple and Google to remove TikTok. Last month, Carr called for the US government to ban TikTok over the bipartisan concerns that China could wield its influence over TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, to gain access to US user data or to disseminate propaganda and disinformation. Now, Carr is trying a new tack by framing the TikTok matter as an antitrust issue.

    “Apple and Google are not exercising their ironclad control over apps for the altruistic or procompetitive purposes that they put forward as defenses to existing antitrust or competition claims,” Carr wrote. “Instead, their conduct shows that those rationales are merely pretextual — talismanic references invoked to shield themselves from liability.”

    DOJ’s Antitrust Division should consider that “to the extent that it assesses the reasonableness of Apple’s and Google’s anticompetitive actions,” Carr added.

    Google declined to comment. Apple the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The FCC does not regulate app stores or social media, focusing instead on telecommunications and traditional media such as radio and television broadcasters and cable operators. But Carr has become the most vocal commissioner to speak out on TikTok, drawing what he’s said are lessons from the FCC’s own decisions to block Huawei, ZTE and other telecom companies with ties to China from the US market.

    His remarks also echo those by prominent lawmakers of both parties, including Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who together lead the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    Carr’s call comes as Apple and Google’s critics have increasingly sought to apply the nation’s antitrust laws against the tech giants. Third-party software developers have long alleged that Apple and Google’s app store fees and rules are monopolistic and anticompetitive. A high-profile 2020 lawsuit along those lines brought by Epic Games, the maker of video game “Fortnite,” has so far proven largely unsuccessful, though an appeal is pending.

    More recently, Apple’s conservative critics have accused the company of abusing “monopoly” power by allegedly threatening to remove Twitter from its app store — a claim that Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has made without evidence and that he says has since been resolved thanks to a conversation with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Apple has not commented on Musk’s allegation or purported exchange with Cook.

    For years, TikTok has been negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multi-agency US government panel charged with reviewing the national security implications of foreign investment deals, to arrive at an agreement to allow TikTok to operate in the US market despite the security concerns.

    TikTok has said Project Texas, its plan to migrate US user data exclusively to cloud servers hosted by Oracle, is a core part of the solution. Last week, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said at a conference hosted by the New York Times that “no foreign government has asked us for user data before, and if they did, we would say no.”

    In congressional testimony, TikTok has said it maintains robust data controls but has sought to sidestep questions about its parent company and declined to stop letting China-based employees access US users’ data.

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  • Astronauts will give the space station a power boost during Saturday spacewalk | CNN

    Astronauts will give the space station a power boost during Saturday spacewalk | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    The International Space Station will receive a power boost during a spacewalk on Saturday, as NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio install a solar array outside the floating laboratory.

    The spacewalk is on track to begin at 7:25 a.m. ET and will last for about seven hours, with live coverage streaming on NASA’s website.

    During the event, Cassada will serve as extravehicular crew member 1 and will wear a suit with red stripes, while Rubio will wear an unmarked white suit as extravehicular crew member 2. The duo conducted their first spacewalk together in November. Against the backdrop of spectacular views of Earth, the team assembled a mounting bracket on the starboard side of the space station’s truss.

    This hardware allows for the installation of more rollout solar arrays, called iROSAs, to increase electrical power on the space station.

    The first two rollout solar arrays were installed outside the station in June 2021. The plan is to add a total of six iROSAs, which will likely boost the space station’s power generation by more than 30% once all are operational.

    Two more arrays were delivered to the space station on November 27 aboard the 26th SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission, which also carried dwarf tomato seeds and other experiments to the orbiting laboratory.

    The arrays were rolled up like carpet and are 750 pounds (340 kilograms) and 10 feet (3 meters) wide.

    During Saturday’s spacewalk, Cassada and Rubio will install a solar array to increase capacity in one of the space station’s eight power channels, located on the station’s starboard truss.

    Once the array is unfurled and bolted into place by the astronauts, it will be about 63 feet (19 meters) long and 20 feet (6 meters) wide.

    The spacewalking duo will also disconnect a cable to reactivate another power channel that recently experienced “unexpected tripping” on November 26.

    “By isolating a section of the impacted array, which was one of several damaged strings, the goal is to restore 75% of the array’s functionality,” according to a release from NASA.

    Cassada and Rubio will go on another spacewalk on December 19 to install a second roll-out solar array on another power channel, located on the station’s port truss.

    The original solar arrays on the space station are still functioning, but they have been supplying power there for more than 20 years and are showing some signs of wear after long-term exposure to the space environment. The arrays were originally designed to last 15 years.

    Erosion can be caused by thruster plumes, which come from both the station’s thrusters and the crew and cargo vehicles that come and go from the station, as well as micrometeorite debris.

    The new solar arrays are being placed in front of the original ones. It’s a good test for the new solar arrays, because this same design will power parts of the planned Gateway lunar outpost, which will help humans return to the moon through NASA’s Artemis program.

    The new arrays will have a similar 15-year life expectancy. However, since the degradation on the original arrays was expected to be worse, the team will monitor the new arrays to test their true longevity, because they may last longer.

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  • NASA’s Orion spacecraft snaps a selfie on its journey beyond the far side of the moon | CNN

    NASA’s Orion spacecraft snaps a selfie on its journey beyond the far side of the moon | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    NASA released a selfie taken by the Orion capsule and close-up photos of the moon’s crater-marked landscape as the spacecraft continues on the Artemis 1 mission, a 25-and-a-half day journey that will take it more than 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon.

    Orion’s latest selfie — taken Wednesday, the eighth day of the mission, by a camera on one of the capsule’s solar arrays — reveals the spacecraft giving angles with a bit of moon visible in the background. The close-up photos were taken Monday as Orion made its closest approach to the moon, passing about 80 miles (129 kilometers) above the lunar surface.

    Should Orion complete its trek beyond the moon and back to Earth, it will be the furthest a spacecraft intended to carry humans has ever traveled. For now, the capsule is only carrying inanimate, scientific payloads.

    Orion is part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to eventually establish a lunar outpost that can permanently host astronauts for the first time in history, in the hopes of one day paving a route to Mars.

    The Artemis I mission launched November 16, when NASA’s beleaguered and long-delayed Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket vaulted the Orion capsule to space, cementing the rocket as the most powerful operational launch vehicle ever built.

    As of Thursday afternoon, the capsule was 222,993 miles (358,972 kilometers) from Earth and 55,819 miles (89,831 kilometers) from the Moon, zipping along at just over 2,600 miles per hour, according to NASA.

    Orion is now about a day from entering a “distant retrograde orbit” around our closest neighbor — distant, because it will be at a very high altitude above the lunar surface, and retrograde, because it will circle the moon in the opposite direction from which the moon travels around Earth.

    The path is meant to “stress test” the Orion capsule, as Michael Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis mission manager, put it last week.

    According to NASA’s Artemis blog, the agency’s television coverage of the distant retrograde orbit insertion burn is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. ET Friday and the burn is scheduled to take place at 4:52 p.m. ET.

    After lapping the moon, the Orion capsule is expected to turn back toward Earth and make a gentle splashdown landing in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.

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  • The federal government just took another big swipe at illegal robocalls | CNN Business

    The federal government just took another big swipe at illegal robocalls | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    The federal government took another big swipe at illegal robocalls on Tuesday, as it moved to block a voice provider from the entire US phone network for the very first time.

    The order by the Federal Communications Commission targets Global UC, a company that claims to serve more than 200 businesses globally with low-cost international calling services.

    According to the FCC, Global UC’s unprecedented termination comes after it failed to comply with US regulations aimed at countering illegal robocalls. The requirements include implementing caller ID verification technology and providing the agency with explanations about how it otherwise fights spam robocalls.

    While the FCC has previously issued threats to some providers warning they could be blocked from the US phone network over a repeated failure to comply, Tuesday’s action marks the first time the agency has followed through, reflecting the US government’s latest escalation against illegal robocalls.

    Global UC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The FCC order effectively severs Global UC’s access to the US phone network by forcing other US voice providers to stop doing business with the target company, prohibiting the other providers from accepting phone traffic from Global UC.

    Previously, an FCC official has told CNN that depending on how a voice provider’s business may be configured, such an order could amount to an effective death sentence for the company, because a provider that cannot send or receive calls to others in the network may be unable to stay afloat.

    “This is a novel way to stop robocalls and it’s one we are going to keep using until we get this junk off the line,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement.

    According to its website, Global UC is a subsidiary of a global firm with six subsidiaries and millions of subscribers around the world.

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  • The Fed offers more clues about rate hikes | CNN Business

    The Fed offers more clues about rate hikes | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Americans are getting ready for food, family and football on Thursday, but investors were still holding off until Wednesday afternoon before starting to give thanks.

    That’s because the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its latest meeting at 2pm ET Wednesday, which provided more clues about the central bank’s thinking on inflation and interest rate hikes.

    At its November 2 meeting the Fed raised rates by three-quarters of a percentage point — its fourth straight hike of such a large magnitude. But Fed chair Jerome Powell suggested at a press conference that the Fed may soon begin to slow the pace of hikes.

    The minutes from that meeting showed that several other Fed policymakers agreed with Powell’s assessment.

    “A number of participants observed that, as monetary policy approached a stance that was sufficiently restrictive to achieve the Committee’s goals, it would become appropriate to slow the pace of increase in the target range for the federal funds rate,” the Fed said in the minutes.

    The Fed added that “a substantial majority of participants judged that a slowing in the pace of increase would likely soon be appropriate.”

    Stocks, which were relatively flat and meandering before the minutes came out, popped after their release. The Dow ended the day up more than 95 points, or 0.3%. The S&P 500 jumped 0.6% and the Nasdaq rose 1%.

    Other Fed members, most notably vice chair Lael Brainard, had also hinted n recent speeches at a slower pace of hikes. Yet there have been confusing signals from other Fed officials, who have continued to stress that inflation isn’t going away and must be brought under control.

    To that end, the Fed said in the minutes that inflation remains “stubbornly high” and “more persistent than anticipated.”

    With that in mind, traders are now pricing in a more than 75% chance that the Fed will raise rates by only a half-point at its December 14 meeting, according to futures contracts on the CME. That’s up from odds of 52% for a half-point hike a month ago, but lower than an 85% likelihood of a half-point increase that was priced in just last week.

    A recent batch of inflation reports seem to suggest that the pace of runaway price increases is finally starting to slow to more manageable levels. The job market remains relatively healthy as well, although the most recent jobless claims figures ticked up from a week ago.

    But as long as the labor market remains firm and inflation pressures continue to ebb, the Fed will likely pull back on the magnitude of its rate hikes.

    Some experts are growing concerned that if the Fed goes too far with rates, the increases could eventually slow the economy too much and potentially lead to much higher unemployment, job losses and even a recession.

    The Fed’s rate hikes have had a clear impact on the housing market, with surging mortgage rates helping to put a dent into home sales.

    Still, Wall Street is growing more confident that the Fed might be able to pull off a so-called soft landing. The Dow soared 14% in October, its best month since January 1976. The Dow is up another 4.5% in November and is now only down 6% this year.

    The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also have rebounded significantly since October, but both of those broader market indexes remain down more sharply for the year than the Dow.

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  • Consumers continue to lack confidence in the US economy ahead of holiday shopping season | CNN Business

    Consumers continue to lack confidence in the US economy ahead of holiday shopping season | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN Business
     — 

    Heading into the all-important holiday shopping season, American consumers still aren’t feeling very confident about the state of the US economy.

    The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index landed at 56.8 in November, up from the preliminary reading of 54.7 measured earlier this month but lower than the 59.9 recorded in October.

    Economists were expecting a reading of 55, according to consensus estimates on Refinitiv.

    The month-over-month decline in sentiment offset about one-third of the gains made since the index bottomed out in June, according to Joanne Hsu, director of the university’s Surveys of Consumers.

    “Headwinds to consumer strength have started to emerge. Strong incomes have thus far helped consumers, particularly lower-wage workers, cope with high inflation,” Hsu said in a statement. “However, their perceptions of weakening labor markets could make them pull back their spending in the future. Wealthier households are experiencing declining stock markets and home values, which would also produce drag on their willingness to spend.”

    Consumers surveyed also highlighted the effects of rising interest rates on their desire to buy homes, cars and other big-ticket items. The Federal Reserve, in efforts to combat decades-high inflation, has enacted a series of steep interest rate hikes.

    About 83% of respondents to the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers said that it was a bad time to buy a home. That’s the highest share ever recorded, according to the university.

    The survey also showed that consumers’ inflation expectations for this year and five years out remained relatively unchanged at 4.9% and 3%, respectively. This is a key data point for the Federal Reserve. If consumers believe prices will remain high, that could factor into increased wage demands, which could cause businesses to raise prices.

    Earlier this month, when the preliminary survey data was released, Hsu noted that very few consumers were front-loading purchases to avoid higher interest rates in the future. That was an indication that expectations aren’t worsening, she stated at the time.

    Still, Hsu noted Wednesday, uncertainty over these expectations remains at an elevated level, “indicating that the general stability of these expectations may not necessarily endure.”

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  • Fed officials crushed investors’ hopes this week | CNN Business

    Fed officials crushed investors’ hopes this week | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Investors sleuthing for clues about what the Federal Reserve will decide during its December policy meeting got quite a few this week. But those hints about the future of monetary policy point to an outcome they won’t be very happy about.

    What’s happening: Federal Reserve officials made a series of speeches this week indicating that aggressive interest rate hikes to fight inflation would continue, souring investors’ hopes for a forthcoming central bank policy shift. On Thursday, St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said the central bank still has a lot of work to do before it brings inflation under control, sending the S&P 500 down more than 1% in early trading. It later pared losses.

    Bullard, a voting member on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), said that the moves the Fed has made so far to fight inflation haven’t been sufficient. “To attain a sufficiently restrictive level, the policy rate will need to be increased further,” he said.

    Those comments come a day after Kansas City Fed President Esther George, a voting member of the FOMC, said to The Wall Street Journal that she’s “looking at a labor market that is so tight, I don’t know how you continue to bring this level of inflation down without having some real slowing, and maybe we even have contraction in the economy to get there.”

    San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly added on Wednesday that a pause in rate hikes was “off the table.”

    A numbers game: Fed officials should increase interest rates to somewhere between 5% and 7% to tamp inflation, Bullard said Thursday. Those numbers shocked investors, as they would require a series of significant and economically painful hikes which increase the chance of a hard landing.

    The current interest rate sits between 3.75% and 4% and the median FOMC participant projected a peak funds rate of 4.5-4.75% in September. If those numbers hold steady, Fed members would only raise rates by another three-quarters of a percentage point.

    But Fed Chair Powell said at the November meeting that the projections are likely to rise in December and if Bullard is correct, that means investors can expect another one to three percentage points in rate hikes.

    Dreams of a pivot: October’s softer-than-expected CPI and producer price reading bolstered investors’ hopes that the Fed might ease its aggressive rate hikes and sent markets soaring to their best day since 2020 last week.

    But messaging from Fed officials this week has brought Wall Street back down to earth.

    That’s because market rallies help to expand the economy, said Liz Ann Sonders, Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, which is the opposite of what the Fed is trying to do with its tightening policy. Fed officials could be attempting to do some “jawboning” via excessively hawkish speeches in order to bring markets down, she said.

    The bottom line: Investors listen closely to Bullard’s comments because he’s known for having looser lips than other Fed officials, Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Financial Group, wrote in a note Thursday. But his hawkish predictions may have been “overboard,” especially since he won’t be a voting member of the FOMC next year.

    Still, Wall Street analysts are listening. Goldman Sachs raised its peak fed funds rate forecast on Thursday to 5-5.25%, up from 4.75-5%.

    A series of high-profile layoffs have rattled Big Tech this month.

    Amazon confirmed that layoffs had begun at the company and would continue into next year, just days after multiple outlets reported the e-commerce giant planned to cut around 10,000 employees. Facebook-parent Meta recently announced 11,000 job cuts, the largest in the company’s history. Twitter also announced widespread job cuts after Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion.

    The series of high-profile layoff announcements prompted fears that the labor market was weakening and that a recession could be around the corner.

    Those fears aren’t unwarranted: The Federal Reserve is actively working to slow economic growth and tighten financial conditions to rebalance the white-hot labor market. Further layoffs in both tech and other industries are likely inevitable as the Fed continues to raise interest rates.

    But this wave of layoffs isn’t as significant as headlines might lead Americans to believe. Thursday’s weekly jobless claims actually fell by 4,000 to 222,000 in spite of the surge in tech job cuts.

    In a note on Thursday Goldman Sachs analysts outlined three reasons why the layoffs may not point to a looming recession in the US.

    First off, the tech industry accounts for a small share of aggregate employment in the US. While information technology companies account for 26% of the S&P 500 market cap, it accounts for less than 0.3% of total employment.

    Second, tech job openings remain well above their pre-pandemic level, so laid-off tech workers should have good chances of finding new jobs.

    Finally, tech worker layoffs have frequently spiked in the past without a corresponding increase in total layoffs and have not historically been a leading indicator of broader labor market deterioration, Goldman analysts found.

    “The main problem in the labor market is still that labor demand is too strong, not too weak,” they concluded.

    Mortgage rates dropped sharply last week following a series of economic reports that indicated inflation may finally be easing, reports my colleague Anna Bahney

    The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.61% in the week ending November 17, down from 7.08% the week before, according to Freddie Mac, the largest weekly drop since 1981.

    But that’s still significantly higher than a year ago when the 30-year fixed rate stood at 3.10%.

    “While the decline in mortgage rates is welcome news, there is still a long road ahead for the housing market,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Inflation remains elevated, the Federal Reserve is likely to keep interest rates high and consumers will continue to feel the impact.”

    Affording a home remains a challenge for many home buyers. Mortgage rates are expected to remain volatile for the rest of the year. And prices remain elevated in many areas, especially where there is a very limited inventory of available homes for sale.

    Meanwhile, inflation and rising interest rates mean many would-be buyers are also facing tightened budgets.

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  • Yet another key economic report is showing inflation pressures are easing | CNN Business

    Yet another key economic report is showing inflation pressures are easing | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN Business
     — 

    A key measure of inflation, wholesale prices, rose by 8% in October from a year before, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    While still historically high, it was the smallest increase since July of last year and significantly better than forecasts. It’s the second inflation report this month to show signs of cooling in the rising prices that have plagued the economy.

    Economists expected the Producer Price Index, which measures prices paid for goods and services before they reach consumers, to show an annual increase of 8.3%, down from September’s revised 8.4%.

    On a monthly basis, producer prices rose 0.2%, below expectations and even with the revised 0.2% increase seen in September.

    Year-over-year, core PPI — which excludes food and energy, components whose pricing is more prone to market volatility — measured 6.7%, down from September’s revised annual increase of 7.1%.

    Month-over-month, core PPI prices were flat, the lowest monthly reading since November 2020. In September, core PPI increased by a revised 0.2% from the month before.

    Economists had expected annual and monthly core PPI to measure 7.2% and 0.3%, respectively, according to estimates on Refinitiv.

    President Joe Biden heralded October’s PPI report Tuesday calling it “more good news for our economy this morning, and more indications that we are starting to see inflation moderate.”

    “Today’s news – that prices paid by businesses moderated last month – comes a week after news that prices paid by consumers have also moderated,” Biden wrote Tuesday. “And, today’s report also showed that food inflation slowed – a welcome sign for family’s grocery bills as we head into the holidays.”

    For much of this year, the Federal Reserve has sought to tamp down decades-high inflation by tightening monetary policy, including issuing an unprecedented four consecutive rate hikes of 75 basis points, or three-quarters of a percentage point.

    The better-than-expected PPI data reflects an economy that has slowed, with supply moving more into balance, said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial.

    Costs associated with transportation and warehousing, for example, declined for the fourth consecutive month, a likely result of the improved global shipping climate, he said. Producer costs for new cars fell the most since May 2017, he added.

    “Barring geopolitical or financial crises, inflation should continue its deceleration into 2023,” he said in a statement.

    Since PPI captures price changes happening further upstream, the report is considered by some to be a leading indicator for broader inflationary trends and a predictor of what consumers will eventually see at the store level.

    “The PPI read certainly adds more fuel to the fire for those who feel we may finally be on a downward inflation trend,” Mike Loewengart, Morgan Stanley’s head of model portfolio construction, said in a statement.

    Last week’s Consumer Price Index showed inflation slowed to 7.7% from 8.2% year-over-year for consumer goods, surprising investors and giving Wall Street its biggest boost since 2020.

    The CPI data was “reassuring,” Fed vice chair Lael Brainard said on Monday, signaling that the rate hikes appear to be taking hold, and if the economic data continues to show inflation on the decline, then the central bank could scale back the extent of its future rate hikes.

    “When you look at the inflation numbers, there’s some evidence that we’ve peaked, but are we coming down quickly?” Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist for Mizuho Americas told CNN Business.

    Ricchiuto noted that the October figures are only a couple steps lower than what was seen in September.

    “These aren’t the types of things that tell the Fed to stop tightening rates,” he said. However, “they may tell you [that] you don’t need 75 basis points.”

    CNN’s DJ Judd and Matt Egan contributed to this report.

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  • First-time NASA spacewalkers venture outside the space station | CNN

    First-time NASA spacewalkers venture outside the space station | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    Things are about to get busy on the International Space Station as the first in a series of end-of-the-year spacewalks kicked off Tuesday morning.

    First-time spacewalkers and NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio began their excursion outside the space station at 9:14 a.m. ET, with live coverage on NASA’s website. The event is expected to last for about seven hours.

    Cassada is wearing the spacesuit with red stripes as extravehicular crew member 1, while Rubio is in the unmarked suit as extravehicular crew member 2.

    The astronauts will assemble a mounting bracket on the starboard side of the space station’s truss. The hardware that will be installed during the spacewalk was delivered to the space station on November 9 aboard a Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, which safely delivered its cargo despite only one of its two solar arrays deploying after launch.

    This hardware will allow for the installation of more rollout solar arrays, called iROSAs, to give the space station a power boost. The first two rollout solar arrays were installed outside the station in June 2021. Six iROSAs total have been planned and will likely boost the space station’s power generation by more than 30% once all are operational.

    During two more spacewalks on November 28 and December 1, a two-astronaut crew will unroll and install another pair of solar arrays once the mounting hardware is in place. The solar arrays will be delivered on the next SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission, currently slated for launch on November 21.

    Spacewalks are part of the space station crew’s routine as they maintain and upgrade the aging orbital laboratory, but Tuesday’s spacewalk is NASA’s first since March. The agency’s spacewalks came to a halt after European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer ended his first spacewalk with water in his helmet.

    A thin layer of moisture that exceeded the normal, expected amount was discovered in Maurer’s helmet once he returned to the airlock after a nearly seven-hour spacewalk. Maurer quickly shed the helmet, in an event deemed “a close-call” by NASA, and water samples, suit hardware and the spacesuit itself were returned to Earth for investigation. Officials at NASA determined the suit didn’t experience any hardware failures.

    “The cause for the water in the helmet was likely due to integrated system performance where several variables such as crew exertion and crew cooling settings led to the generation of comparatively larger than normal amounts of condensation within the system,” according to NASA in a blog post update.

    “Based on the findings, the team has updated operational procedures and developed new mitigation hardware to minimize scenarios where integrated performance results in water accumulation, while absorbing any water that does appear. These measures will help contain any liquid in the helmet to continue to keep crew safe.”

    Officials at NASA gave the “go” for spacewalks to resume after concluding the review in October.

    The investigation team has developed techniques to manage temperatures in the suit and added new absorption bands to the helmet, said Dina Contella, operations integration manager for the International Space Station Program.

    The thin orange pieces have been placed in different parts of the helmet, which has already been tested on orbit by the astronauts inside the space station.

    “We’ve taken several different models of this up and the crew on board sloshed water around, essentially tried to inject water into the helmet at the same rate that would be kind of a worst, worst case. And we found that these pads were very, very effective,” Contella said.

    Tuesday’s spacewalk will allow the crew to test the new pads as they work outside of the space station before the more complex solar array installation spacewalks within the next couple of weeks.

    Meanwhile, a Russian spacewalk is scheduled to take place on Thursday. Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will begin their walk at 9 a.m. ET to work on the outside of the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. The duo will prepare a radiator for transfer from the Rassvet module to Nauka during their seven-hour spacewalk, which will also stream live on NASA’s website.

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  • A day of chaos brings Twitter closer to the brink | CNN Business

    A day of chaos brings Twitter closer to the brink | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    Two weeks after Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter, the future of the company has never looked less certain.

    In the past week alone, one of the world’s most influential social networks has laid off half its workforce; alienated powerful advertisers; blown up key aspects of its product, then repeatedly launched and un-launched other features aimed at compensating for it; and witnessed an exodus of senior executives.

    The wild swings at Twitter only seemed to accelerate on Thursday with more executive departures, growing chaos over fake, verified accounts and an unusual public rebuke from the US government. Twitter now appears to be on the brink, a point Musk himself seemed to concede on Thursday by reportedly telling employees that bankruptcy could be on the horizon (though it’s far from the first time he’s warned about bankruptcy at one of his companies).

    “Quite the day!” Musk tweeted.

    It’s a stunning reversal of fortunes not just for Musk, who bought the company for $44 billion, but also for a platform used by some of the most powerful people on the planet, including world leaders, CEOs, and the Pope.

    An end to the disruption seemed nowhere in sight on Friday. In its latest reversal on the matter, Twitter said it would re-introduce a gray “Official” badge for select accounts to help confirm their identities. The decision came after Twitter was forced to fend off a wave of verified-account impostors this week, including some posing as former President Donald Trump, Nintendo, and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, among others. These accounts were the result of Musk’s decision to rush ahead with offering a blue check mark to any account holder willing to pay $8 a month, no questions asked, as he races to find new ways to make money from the platform.

    That paid subscription service, too, was also suspended on Friday with little warning, just two days after its official launch, with the menu option to sign up for Twitter Blue suddenly disappearing from Twitter’s iOS app — the only place the add-on had been offered. It was not immediately clear when the company might restore the offering.

    The gray “Official” badge has become an illustration of the whiplash users, employees, and advertisers have experienced in recent days.

    Hours after the gray badges launched on Wednesday as a way to help users differentiate legitimate celebrity and branded accounts from accounts that had merely paid for a blue check mark, Musk abruptly tweeted that he had “killed” the feature, forcing subordinates to explain the reversal.

    “We’re not currently putting an ‘Official’ label on accounts but we are aggressively going after impersonation and deception,” Twitter’s verified support account tweeted on Wednesday evening.

    The account’s very next tweet, a day and nine hours later, said exactly the opposite: “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts.”

    Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the changes to the rollout of Twitter Blue or “Official” badges.

    The paid verification feature’s rocky rollout attracted widespread criticism from misinformation experts who had warned it would make identifying trustworthy information much more difficult, particularly in the critical period following the US midterm elections. Even some of Musk’s fellow high-powered users of the platform had tough feedback.

    “@elonmusk, from one entrepreneur to another, for when you have your customer service hat on. I just spent too much time muting all the newly purchased checkmark accts in an attempt to make my verified mentions useful again,” tweeted billionaire Mark Cuban.

    “Bottom line is that you have a decision to make,” Cuban added. “Stick with the new Twitter that democratizes every tweet by paid accounts and puts the onus on all users to curate for themselves. Or bring back Twitter curation. One makes Twitter time and information efficient. The other is awful.”

    In a Twitter Spaces event held for advertisers this week, Musk pleaded with brands to keep using the platform, after a growing number of companies paused ads, causing what Musk previously described as a “massive drop in revenue.” In the event, Musk sought to appear magnanimous in accepting responsibility for the company’s performance.

    “If things go wrong, it’s my fault, because the buck stops with me,” he told an audience of over 100,000 listeners.

    But privately, Musk’s critics have described the billionaire as dismissive of accountability, even in the face of scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission, which publicly warned on Thursday, in a rare forward-looking statement, that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

    According to an internal Slack message posted by a Twitter employee and viewed by CNN, Musk has shown little fear of the FTC regulators overseeing the company’s multiple, legally binding consent agreements committing it to maintaining a robust cybersecurity program and producing written privacy impact reports before launching any new products or services, a requirement that could cover Twitter Blue.

    The company is already facing billions in potential fines from the FTC over alleged privacy missteps dating to before Musk’s ownership. But, the Twitter employee warned colleagues, Twitter could find itself even more legally exposed after the sudden resignation of multiple top Twitter executives charged with fulfilling the company’s FTC obligations, including its chief information security officer and chief privacy officer.

    Forced to address the looming risk of FTC oversight, Musk reportedly struck a conciliatory tone.

    “Twitter will do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and spirit of the FTC consent decree,” Musk reportedly wrote in an email to employees Thursday evening.

    The one thing Musk claims is going in his favor at Twitter is user growth, as more people tune in to watch him fumble his way through owning the company.

    “Twitter usage is at an all-time high,” Musk tweeted earlier this week, before adding in a follow-up tweet: “I just hope the servers don’t melt!”

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  • 6 dead after a pair of vintage military aircraft collided at a Texas air show | CNN

    6 dead after a pair of vintage military aircraft collided at a Texas air show | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Six people are dead after two World War II-era military planes collided in midair and crashed at Dallas Executive Airport during an airshow Saturday afternoon, killing all on board, the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s office said Sunday.

    “We can confirm that there are six (fatalities),” a spokesperson for the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s office told CNN in a phone call.

    More than 40 fire rescue units responded to the scene after the two vintage planes – a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra – went down during the Wings Over Dallas airshow.

    In video footage of the crash that was described by Dallas’ mayor as “heartbreaking,” the planes are seen breaking apart in midair after the collision, then hitting the ground within seconds, before bursting into flames.

    Here are the latest developments as investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board are due to arrive at the scene Sunday.

    The Federal Aviation Administration said the crash took place at around 1:20 p.m. Saturday.

    The Allied Pilots Association – the labor union representing American Airlines pilots – has identified two pilot retirees and former union members among those killed in the collision.

    Former members Terry Barker and Len Root were crew on the B-17 Flying Fortress during the airshow, the APA said on social media.

    “Our hearts go out to their families, friends, and colleagues past and present,” the union said. The APA is offering professional counseling services at their headquarters in Fort Worth following the incident.

    Terry Barker killed in the Dallas Saturday plane crash

    The death of Barker, a former city council member for Keller, Texas, was also announced by Keller Mayor Armin Mizani on Sunday morning in a Facebook post.

    “Keller is grieving as we have come to learn that husband, father, Army veteran, and former Keller City Councilman Terry Barker was one of the victims of the tragic crash at the Dallas Air Show,” Mizani wrote.

    “Terry Barker was beloved by many. He was a friend and someone whose guidance I often sought. Even after retiring from serving on the City Council and flying for American Airlines, his love for community was unmistakable.”

    A 30-year plus veteran of the Civil Air Patrol’s Ohio Wing, Maj. Curtis J. Rowe, was also among those killed in the collision, Col. Pete Bowden, the agency’s commander, said on Sunday.

    Rowe served in several positions throughout his tenure with the Civil Air Patrol, from safety officer to operations officer, and most recently, he was the Ohio Wing maintenance officer, Bowden said. Rowe’s family was notified of his death Saturday evening, the commander added.

    “I reach to find solace in that when great aviators like Curt perish, they do so doing what they loved. Curt touched the lives of thousands of his fellow CAP members, especially the cadets who he flew during orientation flights or taught at Flight Academies and for that, we should be forever grateful,” Bowden wrote in a Facebook post.

    “To a great aviator, colleague, and Auxiliary Airman, farewell,” he said.

    In a Saturday news conference, Hank Coates, president and CEO of the Commemorative Air Force, an organization which preserves and maintains vintage military aircraft, told reporters that the B-17 “normally has a crew of four to five. That was what was on the aircraft,” while the P-63 is a “single-piloted fighter type aircraft.”

    Debris from two planes that crashed during the airshow. The B-17 was one of about 45 complete surviving examples of the model, which was produced by Boeing and other airplane manufacturers during World War II.

    The Commemorative Air Force identified both aircraft as based in Houston.

    No spectators or others on the ground were reported injured, although the debris field from the collision includes the Dallas Executive Airport grounds, Highway 67 and a nearby strip mall.

    The B-17 was part of the collection of the Commemorative Air Force, nicknamed “Texas Raiders,” and had been kept in a hanger in Conroe, Texas, near Houston.

    It was one of about 45 complete surviving examples of the model, only nine of which were airworthy.

    The P-63 was even rarer. Some 14 examples are known to survive, four of which in the US were airworthy, including one owned by the Commemorative Air Force.

    More than 12,000 B-17s were produced by Boeing, Douglas Aircraft and Lockheed between 1936 and 1945, with nearly 5,000 lost during the war, and most of the rest scrapped by the early 1960s. About 3,300 P-63’s were produced by Bell Aircraft between 1943 and 1945, and were principally used by the Soviet Air Force in World War II.

    A frame from a video taken at the airshow shows smoke rising after the crash.

    The FAA was leading the investigation into the air show crash on Saturday, but the NTSB took over the investigation once its team reached the scene, the agency said at a news conference Sunday. The team dispatched by the NTSB consists of technical experts who are regularly sent to plane crash sites to investigate the collision, according to the NTSB.

    “Our team methodically and systematically reviews all evidence and considers all potential factors to determine the probable cause, NTSB member Michael Graham said.

    Investigators have started securing the audio recordings from the air traffic control tower and conducting interviews of the other formation crews and air show operations, according to Graham.

    Neither aircraft was equipped with a flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder, often known as the “black box,” he added.

    Investigators surveyed the accident site using both an NTSB drone and a photograph of the scene from the ground to document the area before the wreckage is moved to a secure location, Graham said. A preliminary accident report is expected four to six weeks, but a full investigation may last 12 to 18 months before a final report is released.

    Graham appealed to witnesses saying if anyone has any photos or videos of the incident, they should share them with the NTSB.

    “They’ll actually be very critical since we don’t have any flight data recorder data or cockpit voice recorders or anything like [those devices],” Graham said. “They’ll be very critical to analyze the collision and also tie that in with the aircraft control recordings to determine why the two aircraft collided and to determine, basically, the how and why this accident happened and then eventually, hopefully, maybe make some safety recommendations to prevent it from happening in the future.”

    According to Coates, the individuals flying the aircraft in CAF airshows are volunteers and follow a strict training process. Many of them are airline pilots, retired airline pilots or retired military pilots.

    “The maneuvers that they (the aircraft) were going through were not dynamic at all,” Coates noted. “It was what we call ‘Bombers on Parade.”

    “This is not about the aircraft. It’s just not,” Coates said. “I can tell you the aircraft are great aircraft, they’re safe. They’re very well-maintained. The pilots are very well-trained. So it’s difficult for me to talk about it, because I know all these people, these are family, and they’re good friends.”

    Mayor Johnson said in a tweet after the crash, “As many of you have now seen, we have had a terrible tragedy in our city today during an airshow. Many details remain unknown or unconfirmed at this time.”

    “The videos are heartbreaking. Please, say a prayer for the souls who took to the sky to entertain and educate our families today,” Johnson said in a separate tweet.

    The Wings Over Dallas event, which was scheduled to run through Sunday, has been canceled, according to the organizer’s website.

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  • Vintage military aircraft collide mid-air at Dallas air show | CNN

    Vintage military aircraft collide mid-air at Dallas air show | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra collided and crashed at the Wings Over Dallas airshow around 1:20 p.m. on Saturday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

    “At this time, it is unknown how many people were on both aircraft,” the FAA said in a statement.

    Authorities responded to the incident at Dallas Executive Airport, Jason Evans with Dallas Fire-Rescue told CNN on Saturday.

    There are currently more than 40 fire rescue units on scene, the agency’s active incidents page shows.

    The Commemorative Air Force identified both aircraft as being out of Houston.

    “Currently we do not have information on the status of the flight crews as emergency responders are working the accident,” a statement from the group said, adding it is working with local authorities and the FAA.

    The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the collision. The NTSB will be in charge and is expected to provide additional updates.

    The event, which was scheduled to run through Sunday, has been canceled, according to the organizer’s website.

    Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said in a tweet after the crash, “As many of you have now seen, we have had a terrible tragedy in our city today during an airshow. Many details remain unknown or unconfirmed at this time.”

    “The videos are heartbreaking. Please, say a prayer for the souls who took to the sky to entertain and educate our families today,” Johnson said in a separate tweet.

    Debris from the collision fell onto southbound Highway 67, according to a report from CNN affiliate WFAA. Southbound and northbound lanes of the highway were shut down after the incident, the Dallas Police Department said.

    The B-17 was part of the collection of the Commemorative Air Force, nicknamed “Texas Raiders,” and had been hangered in Conroe, Texas near Houston. It was one of about 45 complete surviving examples of the model, only nine of which were airworthy.

    The P-63 was even rarer. Some 14 examples are known to survive, four of which in the United States were airworthy, including one owned by the Commemorative Air Force.

    More than 12,000 B-17s were produced by Boeing, Douglas Aircraft and Lockheed between 1936 and 1945, with nearly 5,000 lost during the war, and most of the rest scrapped by the early 1960s. About 3,300 P-63’s were produced by Bell Aircraft between 1943 and 1945, and were principally used by the Soviet Air Force in World War II.

    This is a developing story.

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  • Musk’s Twitter may have already violated its latest FTC consent order, legal experts say | CNN Business

    Musk’s Twitter may have already violated its latest FTC consent order, legal experts say | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Just two weeks into Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, the company may have already violated its consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, legal experts said.

    If proven, a violation could ultimately lead to significant personal liability for Musk, escalating the risks he faces as he stumbles through a morass of business and content moderation headaches, most of which have been self-inflicted.

    The potential violation stems from a reporting obligation Twitter must fulfill whenever the company experiences a change in structure, including mergers and sales.

    Under Twitter’s latest FTC consent order, which was implemented this year, Twitter must submit a sworn compliance notice to the regulator within 14 days of any such change. The compliance notice is intended both to advise the FTC of major changes at the company as well as a commitment that it will continue to comply with the order, according to David Vladeck, a former senior FTC official and a law professor at Georgetown University.

    Musk’s Twitter deal closed on Thursday, Oct. 27, prompting some legal experts to question Thursday whether Twitter had made the proper filings in light of the company’s mass layoffs and an exodus of senior executives. Among those resigning were its chief privacy officer and chief information security officer, who would be expected to be involved in the company’s compliance reporting.

    “Godspeed to the poor b***ards dealing with that,” tweeted Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

    The FTC declined to comment on whether Twitter has submitted any compliance notices since Musk took over the company. Twitter, which laid off a substantial amount of its public relations team, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, told CNN on Thursday that “we are in a continuing dialogue with the FTC and will work closely with the agency to ensure we are in compliance.”

    There are other, more substantive regulatory obligations that have come into question, too. They include requirements that Twitter produce written privacy assessments of any new “product, service or practice” — or when Twitter updates those things — that could affect user data or put it at risk.

    The dizzying pace of product changes at Twitter since Musk’s takeover, combined with the company’s greatly reduced headcount, have raised doubts about whether Twitter is following the rules it agreed to — or if it even can.

    “The chaos there is something the FTC is going to be worried about,” said Vladeck, “because there were serious deficiencies which led to the consent order in the first place, and the FTC is going to want to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.”

    Internal concerns about Twitter’s compliance obligations were reflected in a Slack message viewed by CNN earlier this week, in which an employee warned colleagues that Musk could try to put responsibility for certifying FTC compliance onto individual engineers at the company.

    “This will put a huge amount of personal, professional and legal risk onto engineers,” the employee wrote, adding that the new risks created by Musk could be “extremely detrimental to Twitter’s longevity as a platform.”

    Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University, urged Twitter employees to seek professional legal counsel “before signing anything or making any statement to regulators.”

    “This is a bus you do NOT want to be thrown under,” Blaze tweeted.

    FTC consent orders carry the force of law and any violations, if proven, could involve significant penalties including fines, restrictions on how Twitter can run its business and even potential sanctions on individual executives.

    The company’s latest consent agreement was announced this spring after FTC allegations that Twitter misused user account security information, such as phone numbers and email addresses, for advertising purposes. The resulting consent order expanded on a 2011 consent agreement Twitter signed with the FTC committing the company to maintaining a robust cybersecurity program.

    This summer, Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, claimed Twitter was not meeting those obligations in an explosive whistleblower disclosure first reported by CNN and The Washington Post. (Twitter has previously pushed back on Zatko’s allegations, saying that security and privacy have “long been top company-wide priorities.”)

    Those claims, which predate Musk’s ownership, may already have put Twitter on the hook for billions of dollars in potential FTC fines, legal experts have said.

    Now, the latest claims of Twitter’s violations could mean even more money is at stake, as well as possible individual liability for Musk himself. Any alleged violations would first have to be proven, and the FTC would need to decide whether to enforce, said Vladeck. But under those circumstances, he said, “I think it’s likely Musk would be named” in a future consent order. “After all, he has made clear that he and he alone is making key decisions.”

    The FTC has increasingly signaled it could seek to hold individual executives personally accountable if they’re found to have been responsible for a company’s violations, naming them in future orders and imposing binding requirements on their future conduct, even if they leave the company. (Last month, the FTC showed its willingness to follow through, imposing sanctions on the CEO of alcohol delivery service Drizly.)

    Foreshadowing such a move, FTC Chair Lina Khan told US lawmakers that Twitter’s former CEO Parag Agrawal could “absolutely” be held personally liable in connection with Zatko’s allegations, if they are proven accurate. The FTC has not confirmed whether it is investigating Zatko’s allegations, but on Thursday, it issued a rare statement saying the agency is watching the current situation closely. As news about the executive departures unfolded, the agency said it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

    “No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” the FTC said. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

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  • What midterm elections could mean for the US economy | CNN Business

    What midterm elections could mean for the US economy | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Tuesday’s midterm elections come at a time of economic vulnerability for the United States. Recession predictions have largely turned to “when” not “if” and inflation remains stubbornly elevated. Americans are feeling the pain of rising interest rates and are facing a winter filled with geopolitical tension.

    The results of Tuesday’s election will determine the makeup of a Congressional body that holds the potential to enact policies that will fundamentally change the fiscal landscape.

    Here’s a look at what policy issues investors will pay particular attention to as they digest election results.

    Tax changes: Last week, President Joe Biden suggested he may impose a windfall tax on Big Oil companies after they recorded record profits on high gas prices. Republicans would be less likely to approve that windfall tax on oil company profits and also are generally not in favor of tax hikes on the wealthy, reports my colleague Paul R. La Monica.

    “What do midterms mean for the markets? If Republicans get the House, tax hikes are dead in the water,” said David Wagner, a portfolio manager with Aptus Capital Advisors.

    What about tax cuts? If Republicans do take control of Congress, it would be difficult to enact any major tax reductions without some backing from Democrats or President Biden, meaning there could be grandstanding without much action.

    Debt limit: The federal debt ceiling was last lifted in December 2021 and will likely be hit by the Treasury at some point next year. That means it will need to be raised again in order to ensure that America can borrow the money it needs to run its government and ensure the smooth operation of the market for US Treasuries, totaling roughly $24 trillion.

    A fight seems to be brewing between Democrats and Republicans. House Republicans indicate that they may ask for steep spending cuts in exchange for boosting the ceiling.

    If the government ends up divided and brinkmanship continues, there could be bad news for markets. The last time such gridlock occurred, under the Obama administration in 2011, the United States lost its perfect AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor and stocks dropped more than 5%.

    Spending: Democrats have indicated that they intend to focus on parts of the fiscal agenda proposed by President Biden in 2021 that have not yet become law, including expanding health coverage and child care tax credits. A Republican win or gridlock could table that. Goldman Sachs economists also note that a Democratic victory could likely increase the federal fiscal response in the event of recession, while Republicans would be more likely to avoid costly relief packages.

    Social Security: Popular programs like Social Security and Medicare face solvency issues long-term and the topic has become a hot-button issue on both sides of the aisle. The topic is so closely watched that even debating changes could impact consumer confidence, say analysts.

    Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said last week that spending changes must be made to shore up Social Security and other programs which he said were “going bankrupt.” He said at a Fortune CEO conference that he was in favor of bipartisan legislation within the next two years to confront entitlement programs that are facing “tremendous problems.” Republican Senator Rick Scott has proposed subjecting almost all federal spending programs to a renewal vote every five years. Analysts say that could make Social Security and Medicare more vulnerable to cuts.

    The Federal Reserve: Lawmakers have been increasingly speaking out against the pace of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes meant to fight inflation. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren, alongside Banking Chair Sherrod Brown, John Hickenlooper and others have called on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to slow the pace of hikes.

    Now, Republicans are getting involved. Senator Pat Toomey, the top Republican on the Banking Committee, asked Powell last week to resist buying government debt if market conditions remain subdued. Expect more scrutiny from both parties after the elections.

    The stock market under President Biden started with a boom, but as we head into midterm elections, markets are going bust, reports my colleague Matt Egan.

    As of Monday, the S&P 500 has fallen by 1.2% since Biden took office in January 2021. That marks the second-worst performance during a president’s first 656 calendar days in office since former President Jimmy Carter, according to CFRA Research.

    Out of the 13 presidents since 1953, Biden ranks ninth in terms of stock market performance through this point in office, besting only former Presidents George W. Bush (-32.8%), Carter (-8.9%), Richard Nixon (-17.2%) and John F. Kennedy (-2.1%), according to CFRA.

    By contrast, Biden’s two immediate predecessors headed into their first midterm election with stock markets surging. The S&P 500 climbed 52.2% during the first 656 calendar days in office for former President Barack Obama and 23.9% under former President Donald Trump, according to CFRA.

    American consumers borrowed another $25 billion in September, according to newly released Federal Reserve data, as higher costs led to further dependence on credit cards and other loans, reports my colleague Alicia Wallace.

    In normal economic times, that would be a concerningly large jump, said Matthew Schulz, chief credit analyst for LendingTree, wrote in a tweet. “However, it is actually the second-smallest increase in the past year.” Economists were anticipating monthly growth of $30 billion, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates.

    The data is not adjusted for inflation, which is at decade highs and weighing heavily on Americans, outpacing wage gains and forcing consumers to rely more heavily on credit cards and their savings.

    In the second quarter of this year, credit card balances saw their largest year-over-year increases in more than two decades, according to separate data from the New York Federal Reserve. The third-quarter household debt and credit report is set to be released Nov. 15.

    Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the number of calendar days in the analysis as well as the stock market performance under various US presidents during that period.

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  • Interest rates will keep rising. How high will they go? | CNN Business

    Interest rates will keep rising. How high will they go? | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    What will the Federal Reserve do at its meeting in December? Analysts can speculate all they want, but Fed officials say they will be using hard economic data to make their next decision.

    That means key housing, labor, and inflation reports will likely have outsized effects on the market as investors speculate about what they might mean for the future of interest rates.

    What’s happening: No one can move markets like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell — with just a few words on Wednesday he crushed investors’ hopes of an interest rate pivot and sent stocks plunging. “We have a ways to go,” said Powell of the Fed’s current hiking regime meant to fight persistent inflation. “It’s very premature, in my view, to think about or be talking about pausing.”

    But Powell did add an important caveat. The Fed could start to slow the pace of those painful hikes as soon as December. “Our decisions will depend on the totality of incoming data and their implications for the outlook for economic activity and inflation,” Powell said on Wednesday.

    So what will the Fed be looking at between today and its next policy decision on December 14?

    The labor market: The Fed’s biggest worry is the super-tight US labor market, and Friday’s jobs report isn’t likely to soothe any nerves.

    The government report is expected to show the economy added another 200,000 positions in October — down from last month, but still a very solid number as demand for employment continues to outpace the supply of labor.

    That means more inflation. Businesses have to pay higher wages to attract employees and are able to charge more for their goods and services. The Fed will be looking closely at hourly wage growth in the report. In September, wages rose by 5% from a year ago.

    There is a possible upside: Another jobs report in December is expected ahead of the Fed meeting. If both reports show a downward trajectory in employment, that could be enough to placate Fed officials, even if the unemployment rate remains historically low.

    Inflation data: Expect new data from two major indexes that measure the pace of inflation ahead of the next Federal Reserve meeting.

    The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October, which tracks changes in the prices of a fixed set of goods and services, is out on November 10.

    Core CPI prices, which exclude oil and food, rose 0.6% in September month-over-month, matching August’s pace and coming in well above expectations of a 0.4% increase, not a great sign for the Fed. And analysts expect to see another large 0.5% increase in October.

    The Fed will also get to see October data from its favored measure of inflation, Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), on December 1.

    PCE reflects changes in the prices of goods and services purchased by consumers in the United States. The Fed believes the measure is more accurate than CPI because it accounts for a wider range of purchases from a broader range of buyers.

    Core PCE climbed by 5.1% on an annual basis in September, higher than the August rate of 4.9% but below the consensus estimate of 5.2%, per Refinitiv.

    Housing: The housing market has been deeply impacted by the Fed’s efforts to fight inflation, and is one of the first areas of the economy to show signs of cooling.

    The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.95% last week, up from 3.09% just a year ago, and elevated borrowing costs are leading to a decline in demand.

    “The housing market was very overheated for the couple of years after the pandemic as demand increased and rates were low,” said Powell on Wednesday. “We do understand that that’s really where a very big effect of our policies is.”

    October’s new and existing home sales numbers, due on November 18 and 23, will show the continued impact of that policy ahead of the next meeting.

    The US economy is still standing strong in the face of rising interest rates, but things are softening much more quickly across the pond.

    The United Kingdom will face hard economic times and elevated interest rates well into next year, officials warned this week.

    The Bank of England raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point on Thursday, the biggest hike in 33 years, as it attempts to fight soaring inflation.

    But the bank also issued a stark warning. It said that economic output is already contracting and that it expects a recession to continue through the first half of 2024 “as high energy prices and materially tighter financial conditions weigh on spending.”

    A two-year recession would be longer than the one that followed the 2008 global financial crisis, though the Bank of England said that any declines in GDP heading into 2024 would likely be relatively small.

    The central bank also doesn’t think inflation will start to fall back until next year. That will require more interest rate hikes in the coming months, warned policymakers.

    Elon Musk has been busy over at Twitter HQ. Aside from tweeting and deleting a conspiracy theory, he’s talked about implementing some big changes at his $44 billion acquisition. Here’s what’s happened so far:

    Layoffs begin: Elon Musk began laying off Twitter employees on Friday morning, according to a memo sent to staff. The email sent Thursday evening notified employees that they will receive a notice by 12 p.m. ET Friday that informs them of their employment status.

    The email added that “to help ensure the safety” of employees and Twitter’s systems, the company’s offices “will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended.”

    Twitter had around 7,500 employees prior to Musk’s takeover.

    Several Twitter employees have already filed a class action lawsuit claiming that the layoffs violate the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

    The WARN Act requires any company with over 100 employees to give 60 days’ written notice if it intends to cut 50 jobs or more at a “single site of employment.”

    Consolidating strength: In less than a week since Musk acquired Twitter, the company’s C-suite appears to have almost entirely cleared out, through a mix of firings and resignations.

    Twitter’s board of directors was also dissolved last week, according to a securities filing.

    The company filing states that all previous members of Twitter’s board, including recently ousted CEO Parag Agrawal and chairman Bret Taylor, are no longer directors “in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.” That makes Musk, according to the filing, “the sole director of Twitter.”

    Cashing blue checks’ checks: Musk on Tuesday said he planned to charge $8 a month for Twitter’s subscription service, called “Twitter Blue,” with the promise to let anyone pay to receive a coveted blue check mark to verify their account. That’s a steep haircut from his original plan to charge users $19.99 a month to get or keep a verified account.

    In a tweet, the world’s richest man used an expletive to describe his assessment of “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark.” He added: “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”

    Advertisers hit pause: Elon Musk wrote an open letter to advertisers just hours before cementing his acquisition of Twitter, explaining that he didn’t want the platform to become a “free-for-all hellscape.” But that attempt at reassuring the advertising industry, which makes up the vast majority of Twitter’s business, doesn’t appear to be working.

    General Mills

    (GIS)    , Mondelez International

    (MDLZ)    , Pfizer

    (PFE)     and Audi

    (AUDVF)     have reportedly joined a growing list of companies hitting pause on their Twitter advertising in the wake of Musk’s acquisition.

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  • FCC commissioner calls for TikTok ban | CNN Business

    FCC commissioner calls for TikTok ban | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    The US government should ban TikTok rather than come to a national security agreement with the social media app that might allow it to continue operating in the United States, according to Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission.

    A string of news reports this year about TikTok’s handling of US user data has left Carr with “little confidence there’s a path forward,” he told CNN in a phone interview Tuesday. “Perhaps the deal CFIUS ends up cutting is an amazing, airtight deal, but at this point I have a very, very difficult time looking at TikTok’s conduct thinking we’re going to cut a technical construct that they’re not going to find a way around.”

    The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multi-agency government body charged with reviewing business deals involving foreign ownership, has spent months negotiating with TikTok on a proposal to resolve concerns that Chinese government authorities could seek to gain access to the data TikTok holds on US citizens. This year the company said it had migrated its US user data to servers run by Oracle, but concerns have persisted over whether China-based employees of TikTok or its parent, ByteDance, will still be able to access that information. Those bipartisan fears were again raised in September, when under pressure from US lawmakers, TikTok declined to commit to cutting off data flows to China.

    “Commissioner Carr has no role in or direct knowledge of the confidential discussions with the US government related to TikTok and is not in a position to discuss what those negotiations entail” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the US government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns.”

    Carr, who spoke to CNN from Taiwan during a first-ever visit by an FCC official to that country, said he has not met with CFIUS member agencies or the White House to specifically raise the issue, though he added the topic could have arisen incidentally amid other routine discussions.

    Carr’s call for a TikTok ban was first reported by Axios, and the remarks expand on his earlier calls for Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their respective app stores.

    Carr acknowledged that as an FCC official, his own capacity to regulate TikTok is limited; CFIUS, the Commerce Department or the Federal Trade Commission may have greater legal authority over the company, he said.

    Still, Carr said his call for a TikTok ban reflects a “natural progression in my thinking” and is informed by his own agency’s work to limit China’s influence in US telecommunications networks. The FCC has taken numerous steps to block or ban Chinese-affiliated telecom companies from selling equipment or services in the United States, over allegations that those companies could also be compelled to give up the data they hold on US communications to the Chinese government.

    “For me, this is taking what I’ve learned in the Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile context, where we’re looking at possibly nefarious data flows, and bringing it to bear in terms of this issue,” Carr said.

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  • International Space Station swerves to avoid Russian space debris, NASA says | CNN

    International Space Station swerves to avoid Russian space debris, NASA says | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    The International Space Station fired its thrusters to maneuver out of the way of a piece of oncoming Russian space junk, NASA said late Monday.

    The space agency said in a news release that the ISS conducted a five minute, five second burn to avoid a fragment of Russia’s Cosmos 1408 satellite, which the country destroyed in a weapons test in November last year.

    Officials at NASA have previously warned about the risks of the proliferation of debris in space, caused by a dramatic increase in the number of satellites in orbit and several instances of governments intentionally destroying satellites and creating new plumes of junk.

    The space station conducted a “Pre-Determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver,” or PDAM, to give the ISS “an extra measure of distance away from the predicted track of a fragment of Russian Cosmos 1408 debris,” the space agency said.

    “The thruster firing occurred at 8:25 p.m. EDT and the maneuver had no impact on station operations. Without the maneuver, it was predicted that the fragment could have passed within about three miles from the station.”

    The burn raised the space station’s altitude by 2/10 of a mile, according to the space agency.

    On November 15, 2021, Cosmos 1408, a no longer operational satellite, was destroyed, generating a cloud of debris including some 1,500 pieces of trackable space debris.

    US Space Command said Russia tested a direct-ascent anti-satellite, or DA-ASAT missile and strongly condemned the anti-satellite test, calling it “a reckless and dangerous act” and saying that it “won’t tolerate” behavior that puts international interests at risk.

    The ISS was forced to make a similar maneuver in June to avoid debris created by the anti-satellite test. In January, a piece of debris created by that test came within striking distance of a Chinese satellite, in an encounter the Chinese government called “extremely dangerous.”

    The ISS typically has to shift its orbit to avoid space junk around once a year, maneuvering away from the object if the chance of a collision exceeds one in 10,000, according to NASA.

    Invisible in the night sky, there are hundreds of millions of debris objects orbiting our planet. This debris is composed of parts of old satellites as well as entire defunct satellites and rocket bodies.

    According to a 2021 report by NASA, at least 26,000 of the pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth are the size of a softball or larger – big enough to wreck a satellite; more than 500,000 pieces of debris are marble-sized – capable of damaging spacecraft; while “over 100 million pieces are the size of a grain of salt that could puncture a spacesuit.”

    As these fragments knock into each other, they can create yet more pieces of smaller orbital debris.

    Russia said earlier this year it is planning to pull out of the International Space Station and end its decades-long partnership with NASA at the orbiting outpost, which is due to be retired by 2031.

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  • FTC seeks to clamp down on alcohol delivery service Drizly and its CEO after data breach | CNN Business

    FTC seeks to clamp down on alcohol delivery service Drizly and its CEO after data breach | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    The Federal Trade Commission is seeking tough new restrictions against Drizly, the alcoholic beverage delivery platform, after what US regulators allege were repeated security failures that compromised the data of 2.5 million people.

    The proposed order against Drizly, if finalized, would force the company to beef up its cybersecurity and limit its data collection practices, a common requirement in FTC privacy orders. But in a significant step, the FTC also specifically named the company’s CEO, James Cory Rellas, imposing what would be binding obligations on him and all of his future business activities, at Drizly or otherwise. Drizly would also be required to delete any data it holds on consumers that isn’t strictly necessary for it to run its service, the FTC said in a release.

    “We take consumer privacy and security very seriously at Drizly, and are happy to put this 2020 event behind us,” a Drizly spokesperson told CNN Business.

    The Drizly order reflects recent promises by top FTC officials to use novel remedies — such as forcing businesses to destroy “ill-gotten data” — in the agency’s increasingly tech-focused work, as well as vows to hold individual executives personally accountable if they’re found to be responsible for illegal conduct that harms consumers.

    According to the FTC, Drizly — which Uber acquired last year — had been aware of its cybersecurity problems since 2018, after hackers gained access to Drizly employee credentials that then allowed them to use Drizly’s cloud computing accounts to mine cryptocurrency. In another incident in 2020, a hacker compromised Drizly’s corporate network and stole customer data. At least some of that personal data was then offered for sale on underground hacker forums, the FTC said.

    FTC orders have come under mounting scrutiny in recent years, particularly after Twitter’s former head of security came forward with a whistleblower report alleging that the company had never been on track to comply with its FTC obligations.

    Since then, FTC Chair Lina Khan has told lawmakers the agency is increasingly interested in naming executives in consent orders as a way to ensure businesses are held accountable.

    As part of the Drizly order, Rellas will have to implement cybersecurity programs at any future business he works for where he is CEO or majority owner and where the business collects personal data from more than 25,000 people.

    The FTC will determine whether to finalize the order after a 30-day public comment period that’s expected to begin when a summary of its provisions is published in the Federal Register.

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