power

Rani Molla11/21/24

The many ways the DOJ wants to break up Google’s search monopoly

The Department of Justice has now officially asked a federal court to make Google sell its Chrome browser as a way to remedy the tech behemoth's search monopoly. And that’s just the beginning. The government is also asking for a number of other solutions. Here are the big ones:

Sell the Chrome browser — if it can
Sell Android, or at least stop giving preference to Google’s search product on Android phones
Stop exclusionary agreements with companies like Apple and Samsung, where Google pays those companies billions to be the default search engine
Give rivals the ability to access Google’s search index in order to help build their own AI and to opt out of having their data used to train AI
Prohibit acquisitions of any “search rivals, potential entrants, and rival search or search ad-related AI products, and it must immediately divest any such interests it owns.”

But as we’ve explained before, these demands are a bit of theater. The DOJ is likely asking for more extreme remedies than it thinks the court will ultimately grant, in order to force Google to some sort of middle ground.

As Cornell University law professor and antitrust expert George Hay told us, when the remedy was just to divest Chrome, “The chances of getting a judge to agree to something this dramatic aren’t great.”

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Traders are getting more and more pessimistic about the government shutdown ending any time soon

The market expects the shutdown to last well into November.

The Capitol Building in Washington DC

OpenAI’s internal Slack messages could cost it billions in copyright suit

Authors and publishers suing OpenAI over copyright infringement were granted access to internal OpenAI communications about the deletion of a pirated books dataset, and now want to review attorney communications.

Frightened Man

US corporate spending on private flights for executives has ballooned in recent years

The median expense spent by America’s largest companies on air travel jumped 66% from 2020 to 2024.

1990s Business man private jet

power

Claire Yubin Oh10/1/25

OK, so when was the longest shutdown in US history?

The US government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday after senators failed to agree on a last-minute funding bill. Though initially shrugging off the threat of a shutdown during yesterday’s session, stocks were mildly in the red on Wednesday as investors reacted to what is now the 11th shutdown in the government’s history.

Until this latest shutdown, there had been 20 government funding gaps experienced since 1976 — though not all ended in a full shutdown, with full closure averted in half of those cases.

Indeed, prior to the 1980s, funding gaps didn’t typically have major effects on government operations, with agencies continuing to operate on the basis that the funding would come eventually. However, a more stringent interpretation of the rules led to a stricter appropriations process from the early 1980s onward, with many subsequent funding gaps resulting in a shutdown of affected agencies (unless the gaps were quickly fixed or occurred over a weekend).

Obviously, the duration of the latest shutdown is still unclear, but it will continue until Congress passes a funding bill — most likely via a “continuing resolution,” which has ended every shutdown since 1990. Data analyzed by USAFacts suggest that it might not be a one- or two-day affair, as funding gaps have lengthened in recent years.

Government shutdown patterns — Sherwood News

Indeed, the last shutdown, which began in December 2018, ended up becoming the longest in history, at a whopping 34 days. By the time the government reopened in January 2019, about $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) had been wiped from the GDP in Q4, per data from the Congressional Budget Office, with approximately $18 billion in “federal discretionary spending” delayed over the roughly five-week stretch.

power

Max Knoblauch9/24/25

GM climbs following upgrade, report that Trump administration seeks stake in its lithium mine partner

Shares of General Motors rose more than 2% in premarket trading Wednesday following an upgrade of the stock by UBS from “neutral” to “buy.” The firm also hiked its price target for GM by 45% to $81.

Also likely elevating GM was a Reuters report that the Trump administration is exploring taking a 10% stake in Lithium Americas, the automaker’s partner in a yet to open Thacker Pass lithium mine. Shares of Lithium Americas surged 68% in the premarket.

GM, which invested $625 million into the lithium mine last year, holds a 38% stake in the joint venture. The mine is expected to become the Western Hemisphere’s primary lithium source in 2028, when it’s slated to open, producing enough of the metal to make 800,000 electric vehicle batteries.

Prior to its plans for Lithium Americas, the Trump administration last month said it would take a 10% stake in Intel. In July, it announced a 15% stake in rare earths miner MP Materials.

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