The daily business briefing: November 30, 2018

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Capitol Hill

(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

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1. Facebook COO reportedly told staff to research Soros after critical speech
2. Deutsche Bank raid continues for second day
3. Fed minutes confirm likelihood of December rate hike
4. Dow snaps three-day winning streak ahead of Trump-Xi trade talks
5. Lawmakers drop new food-stamp work requirements in farm-bill deal

published 30 November 2018

1. Facebook COO reportedly told staff to research Soros after critical speech

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg asked communications staffers to investigate billionaire liberal activist George Soros after he criticized Facebook in a January speech, The New York Times reported Thursday, citing three people with knowledge of the request. Soros called Facebook and Google a "menace" to society and said they needed to be regulated. Sandberg reportedly asked her staff to look into why Soros had lambasted the company and whether doing so benefited him financially. At the time, Facebook was under scrutiny for its role in spreading Russian propaganda during the 2016 election. Not long after Sandberg made her request, Facebook was accused of helping push anti-Semitic attacks against Soros.

Deutsche Bank shares fell by as much as 4.9 percent on Thursday after police raided the German bank's offices in a money laundering investigation. German prosecutors said the raid was linked to revelations in the Panama Papers, a massive leak of legal papers that shed light on how some of the world's rich and powerful hide their fortunes. Prosecutors said the investigation had nothing to do with one of Europe's worst dirty money cases involving Denmark's Danske Bank. Frankfurt prosecutors said Friday the raid was continuing for a second day.

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Nearly every Federal Reserve policymaker agreed that another interest rate hike was "likely to be warranted fairly soon," according to minutes from the Fed's November meeting released Thursday. The broad consensus increased expectations of a quarter-point rate increase in December. Fed officials, however, discussed the likelihood that mounting corporate debt and trade tensions, particularly with China, soon would make it necessary to revise their plans for slow and steady rate increases through 2019. Analysts have been expecting the Fed to continue with its roughly quarterly rate increases with three more next year, but Fed officials said the timing would become increasingly dependent on the latest economic data.

U.S. stock futures fell early Friday, extending losses after the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 0.1 percent Thursday and snapped a three-day winning streak. The broader S&P 500 closed down Thursday by 0.2 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite fell by 0.25 percent. The declines showed investor caution ahead of President Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires. Stocks had turned higher in reaction to the release of Federal minutes that bolstered hope of slowing interest rate hikes, then fell again on the news that White House adviser Peter Navarro would be attending Trump's Saturday dinner with Xi. The presence of Navarro tamped down hope of progress on easing trade tensions. Earlier this month, he said any deal with China would have to be on Trump's terms.

House and Senate negotiators on Thursday reached a deal on a compromise farm bill that drops plans pushed by House Republicans and President Trump that would have added new work requirements on food stamp beneficiaries. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, confirmed that the deal ditched the new work requirements, which would have applied to older food stamp recipients and parents of children age 6 and up. Roberts said he hoped for a vote next week on the compromise $400 billion farm bill, which allocates federal money for farm subsidies, food stamps, and conservation programs.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.