* NYT (Saturday): Donald Trump declared a national emergency to access billions of dollars to build a wall on the Mexican border that Congress refused to provide in its recent spending bill, transforming a highly charged policy dispute into a confrontation over the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution; related story says none of the times emergency powers have been invoked since 1976, the year Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act, involved a president bypassing lawmakers to spend money on a project they had decided not to fund; A former warehouse employee who had recently lost his job stormed through his old workplace in Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, killing five workers and injuring five police officers before he was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police; Former Massachusetts governor William Weld announced he would form an exploratory committee to challenge Trump for the Republican Party’s 2020 nomination, presenting himself as a dissident voice in a party that has abandoned its mainstream roots; The increasing possibility that Britain will leave the European Union on March 29 without an agreement has rallied moderates and extremists in the united-Ireland camp behind renewed talk of a single Irish state; Michael Calvey, the American founder of Baring Vostok, one of the oldest and largest Russia-focused private equity firms, was detained on fraud charges in Moscow on Friday in a case that jolted the country’s business community; Since the recession of the late 2000s, the middle class has shrunk in over two-thirds of the European Union, echoing a similar decline in the United States and reversing two decades of expansion, with Spain feeling the brunt of the change; (Sunday): The political opposition that prompted AMZN to abandon plans to build a headquarters in New York City featured a key element of progressives’ economic agenda: ending tax policies that unfairly reward and pamper the wealthy—but it also exposed a political vulnerability, because it’s unclear what alternative strategy opponents are offering to encourage growth; Facing prolonged waits in dangerous and squalid conditions in parts of Northern Mexico, thousands of caravan members waiting to seek asylum in the U.S. appear to have given up and will return home, dealing President Trump an apparent win; Trump’s plan to declare a national emergency to get border wall funding left Senate Republicans sharply divided, and it remains to be seen how far into uncharted territory they are willing to follow a headstrong president operating with no road map beyond his own demands; Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany delivered a strong rejoinder on Saturday to American demands that European allies pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, and defended multilateral institutions in a world increasingly marked by great-power rivalry; Sunday Business: Story profiles the Patriotic Millionaires, founded in 2010 by a former BLK executive to advocate higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy, and which in recent years has met with legislators in Washington and state capitals, and testified before Congress, to endorse its agenda; Magazine: Climeworks, a company in Switzerland, is building a technology it thinks can help stop climate change by removing carbon from the air at prices cheap enough to scale.
* WSJ (Weekend): “Economic data are usually noisy, but this week included an onslaught of negative and often contradictory signals that made even seasoned economists scratch their heads,” though its tricky to read economic data now because the government shutdown delayed some reports, and economic growth appears to be slowing; The Supreme Court said it would move quickly to decide whether the Trump administration can ask U.S. residents on the 2020 census whether they are citizens, a case infused with time pressures and immigration politics; Trump’s proposal to move billions of dollars from military spending and drug interdiction to fund a Mexican border wall sets up two new conflicts: one over where the money is coming from, and one over where it might go; Republican senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced legislation calling for a broad assessment of the Indian Health Service, after an investigation by the WSJ and the PBS series Frontline revealed mishandled allegations of sexual assault by a pediatrician it employed for decades; China and the U.S. inched toward a broad agreement aimed ending their trade war, with top negotiators agreeing to further talks next week in Washington after a weeklong session that laid the foundations for a memorandum of understanding; Inflation in China last month was moderate during last month in another sign of lethargic domestic demand—one that economists said gives the central bank more room to stimulate economic growth; The Commerce Department is ending a probe into whether imported cars and parts pose a national-security threat under U.S. trade law, which could spur levies on cars made in Japan, Germany, making the vehicles more expensive; Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman will visit five Asian countries to improve ties with the East as the murder of a Saudi dissident and the Saudi-led war in Yemen continue to disrupt relations with Washington and other Western powers; +/- MA, V: Beginning in April, the card companies will raise a range of fees that U.S. merchants will pay to process transactions starting, a move likely to inflame already fractious relations between many businesses and card networks; Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson is back on the investment scene with a new fund, more than a year after he was hit with allegations that he mistreated women and left Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the firm he co-founded; H.O.T.S.: Videogame giants EA, ATVI, and TTWO “are learning that their blockbuster titles need staying power to capitalize on the games-as-a-service trend”; Economic forecasters are having trouble trying to determine how much of the economy’s recent spate of weakness should be ascribed to temporary causes and how much comes from longer-lasting factors; If central banks around the world resort to stimulus measures, it could further depress their currencies, and thus the earnings of U.S. multinationals such as KO, PEP, PG, and KMB.
* FT (Weekend): Investors are closely watching the growth trajectory at Uber as the ride-hailing startup lays the ground for an initial public offering that could value it at $100B, with chief Dara Khosrowshahi prioritizing investment in growth areas rather than focusing only on driver profitability; Researchers are applying artificial intelligence with too much haste to analyze data in some areas of biomedical research, leading to inaccurate findings, according to U.S. academics speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting; Big Read piece says that “Flushed with youthful energy, the Democrats are embracing progressive policies on tax, health, and climate—but some in the party worry about alienating the voters they need to defeat Donald Trump”; Lex Column: Supporters and opponents of AMZN’s move to drop plans for a New York headquarters “are fooling themselves in claiming to know precisely how much was lost or won through its cancellation”; RBS, “once emblematic of financial excess, is healthy and paying fat dividends to taxpayers who bailed it out”; NFLX has had no trouble raising debt so far, but finds itself in a delicate position as it plans for more international growth; Comment: European banks were once larger than their American peers, but the situation has reversed—in the U.S., margins are higher and there is greater opportunity, says John Gapper.
* NY POST (Saturday): Ken Griffin, the billionaire head of Chicago-based trading firm Citadel, earned $870M in 2018 and has gone on a home-buying binge in New York, Miami Beach, and London; + Lyft: Startup will pitch investors on its fast growth in the U.S. as it seeks to beat rival Uber to the punch and become the first publicly listed ride-hailing company; (Sunday): + NFLX: Company is one of the biggest spenders this Academy Award season, ponying up about $25M to promote its film “Roma” for an Oscar, far more than the $15M the movie cost to make; A new study by LendEDU found that automated teller machines in the New York City region harbor more bacteria than public toilets and subway poles, with card readers the dirtiest part of the machines.