The news at a glance

Tech: Facebook reaches privacy settlement

Facebook “is on the verge of going public, so it’s getting serious about privacy,” said Jessica Guynn in the Los Angeles Times. The world’s largest social-networking site has reached an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that privacy changes it enacted in 2009 made its users’ information public without their permission. Privacy watchdogs say the settings changes “duped users into sharing more personal information with the public than they intended,” and gave users’ information to third-party app companies and advertisers. Under the settlement, Facebook has agreed to privacy audits every two years for the next two decades, with fines of $16,000 per day per violation, but did not admit wrongdoing.

The settlement is Facebook’s attempt to “build bridges in Washington and appease Wall Street ahead of an initial public offering,” said Shayndi Raice and Julia Angwin in The Wall Street Journal. Facebook could be valued at a staggering $100 billion, so there’s a lot at stake. “I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post. But “I’m committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy.”

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Euro crisis: Central banks act to boost lending

Markets in the U.S. and Europe soared after six central banks, including the Federal Reserve, acted jointly last week to make it cheaper for foreign banks to borrow dollars, said Robin Harding and Ralph Atkins in the Financial Times. European banks are having trouble getting loans from other financial institutions because of fears about the European sovereign debt crisis. By making dollars cheaper to borrow, the central banks aim to head off a credit crunch like the one that occurred in 2008. While markets cheered the move, analysts warned that it “did not address the fundamental issues” affecting the euro zone.

Housing: Massachusetts sues over foreclosures

Massachusetts is suing the country’s five biggest mortgage lenders over what its attorney general called deceptive foreclosure practices, said Jenifer B. McKim in The Boston Globe. The suit accuses lenders of using fraudulent documents to illegally seize homes and of unfairly denying mortgage modifications to troubled homeowners. Massachusetts is the first state to sue since settlement talks began over a year ago between major banks and state attorneys general from around the country. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said she was breaking ranks because those negotiations had stalled.

Wall Street: Regulator adopts ‘MF Global’ rule

Brokerage firms will be barred from using customer money to buy foreign sovereign debt under a new rule named after MF Global, said Ben Protess in The New York Times. MF Global collapsed in October after making massive, risky bets on European debt, and as much as $1.2 billion in customer money remains missing. Under the new rule, a firm must get special permission from regulators to invest in riskier securities and will be barred from using customer funds to make loans to itself. Regulators had planned to adopt the rule earlier this year, but faced stiff opposition from Jon Corzine, then CEO of MF Global.

Autos: GM to buy back Volts over battery concerns

General Motors has offered to buy back Chevrolet Volts from customers and to loan drivers replacement models during a federal safety probe, said Chrissie Thompson in the Detroit Free Press. The battery-powered electric car is under investigation by federal safety inspectors for fire safety. The government has received no reports of fires after real-world crashes, but four crash tests of the Volt resulted in two post-crash fires and one incident of smoking and sparking from the battery.