Les Moonves, former chairman and CEO of CBS, will not receive his $120 million severance package following his exit over allegations of sexual misconduct, the company's Board of Directors announced in a statement on Monday.
What they're saying: "With regard to Mr. Moonves, we have determined that there are grounds to terminate for cause, including his willful and material misfeasance, violation of Company policies and breach of his employment contract, as well as his willful failure to cooperate fully with the Company’s investigation," the statement reads.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has doled out its second, and last, round of financial assistance to farmers bogged down by retaliatory tariffs from President Trump's trade war with China.
Details: The second round of aid, which Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said "will help with short-term cash flow issues as we move into the new year" comes amid a90-day trade war truce between the U.S. and China. In October, Perdue announced that the administration will not be extending the package, which contains about $4.9 billion in direct payments for some commodity producers, into 2019.
U.S. stocks took a beating on on Monday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 507 points lower, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both dropped more than 2%.
Why it matters: The Dow and S&P, both down nearly 7% this month, are on pace for their worst December performance since the Great Depression, per CNBC.
There is roughly a 1.4 billion pound stockpile of U.S.-made cheese in cold-storage warehouses — the largest stockpile on record, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Why it matters: Trade tensions and tariffs from Mexico and China cut international demand for American cheese shortly after many producers upped production. Americans also don't want processed cheeses as much as they used to. Cheese doesn't last forever, and the growing stockpile along with falling prices as the cheese gets older could cause even more dairy farmers to go out of business, according to the WSJ. One good thing: America's pizza-lovers are keeping mozzarella sales strong.
Boeing has agreed to buy an 80% stake in the commercial aviation business of Brazil's Embraer at an enterprise value of $5.26 billion.
Why it's the BFD: This is nearly an 11% valuation bump from when a preliminary agreement was first announced this past summer, and means Boeing will become a challenger to Airbus and Bombardier in the smaller passenger jet market.
Malaysian prosecutors have filed criminal charges on Monday accusing Goldman Sachs subsidiaries and a former partner of the firm, Tim Leissner, of making false and misleading statements when facilitating the sale of international bonds for the country's state investment fund, 1MDB, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The big picture: Charges against the bank were considered possible for its connection to the multi-billion dollar scandal, though it's telling that Malaysia is charging Goldman Sachs itself. The bank denies any wrongdoing. Leissner already pleaded guilty to U.S. charges of bribery and money laundering related to the case earlier this year, and Malaysian authorities have detained another former Goldman executive, Roger Ng Chong Hwa.
It's certainly a striking headline: "Markets Conclude the U.S. Is Riskier Than China." And the author should know whereof he speaks: Matthew Winkler, the editor-in-chief emeritus of Bloomberg News, literally wrote the book on how to report on markets.
But Winkler is wrong. (And/or he has created "an unintentional Sokal Hoax for finance.") Contra Winkler's assertion, the U.S. Treasury does not have to "pay a premium over Chinese bonds to attract investors." To see that, just compare the two countries' bond yields. China sometimes borrows in dollars, so we can compare apples to apples. And the evidence is clear: At every maturity, China pays more than the U.S. does.
A growing number of journalists are being detained by Cameroonian authorities for their reporting on the country’s de facto civil war between the Francophone government and Anglophone separatists, reports the Washington Post.
Details: Seven journalists were reportedly in custody as of early December — four for reporting what officials deemed false news and three others facing an array of charges, including embezzlement and defamation, per the Committee to Protect Journalists. (Two were later released.) Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in Cameroon's Anglophone regions amid allegations of human rights abuses, which the government fears could disrupt its security relationship with the United States.
The amount of money fleeing into money-market mutual funds hit $81 billion last week, the largest such flow on record. Meanwhile, the flows out of equity mutual funds, at $46 billion, were almost double any other week on record.
The big picture: What you're seeing is a risk-off flight to boring safe assets — which means that now is the worst time in years to try to open up a new hedge fund. Just 450 new hedge funds were opened in the first three quarters of this year, the lowest number in a decade.
