Axios

Dozens of rich and influential men surrounded Jeffrey Epstein. They knew that what they were doing was wrong. That's why they were so secretive about it.

Driving the news: In the aftermath of a blockbuster report from The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow — which details that MIT Media Lab's director Joi Ito flew to Epstein's private island twice and accepted more than $8 million of donations from him — Ito resigned on Saturday from MIT Media Lab, left his board seat with the New York Times Company, and resigned from the MacArthur Foundation.

You may be under closest watch when you're on the clock.

What's happening: New technologies have made it easy and cheap to surveil workers, checking for everything from intellectual property theft to good old Facebook slacking. And the list of behavior being watched is growing.

Speaking on a panel in Zurich on Friday, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell remained optimistic about the state of the U.S. economy — including the labor market, despite the morning's softer-than-expected jobs numbers. Still, he hinted that another interest rate cut could be coming later this month.

Why it matters: Powell said the Fed is not "forecasting or expecting a recession," but noted there are significant risks, including slowing global growth and uncertainty around trade policy which is "causing companies to hold back on business investment decisions." Powell also said that lowering "the expected path of interest rates" has also supported the U.S. economic outlook.

GM CEO Mary Barra paid a visit to the Oval Office Thursday, no doubt an awkward meeting after the pounding the automaker has taken from President Trump on Twitter lately.

The big picture: GM is facing intense pressure from the White House to bring jobs back from China and Mexico after announcing plans to idle 4 U.S. factories in important swing states.

There is lots of WeWork IPO buzz after the WSJ reported that the company may go public at a valuation at less than half its most recent private mark of $47 billion.

Driving the news: It also revealed that CEO Adam Neumann recently met in Tokyo with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to discuss either a cornerstone IPO investment or a private capital infusion that would allow WeWork to delay its IPO until next year.

Brendan Kennedy, the head of one of the world's largest cannabis investment firms, says he's mostly seeing recycled business plans but believes the industry's next phase of startup innovation will be around everyday products sold by mainstream retailers.

Thesis: Kennedy says that Cannabis 1.0 related directly to the flower, while Cannabis 2.0 was about beverages. He believes Cannabis 3.0, which is just beginning, will be in all sorts of consumables (shampoos, lotions, cookies, etc.) that will sit alongside more "traditional" versions at places like Walgreens and Target.

The U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs in August — less than the 150,000 economists expected — while the unemployment rate held at 3.7%, the Labor Department said on Friday.

Why it matters: The slowdown could be the first sign that companies may be beginning to pull back on hiring, after the economic uncertainty from the U.S.-China trade war that's put a dent in business spending.

U.S. companies issued $74 billion of investment-grade bonds this week, between Tuesday and Thursday, the most for any comparable period since records began in 1972, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. That nearly doubled the previous record of $40 billion set in 2013.

What happened: Issuers were able to sell into a historically thirsty market, with 30-year bonds from companies like Disney, Deere and Apple carrying record low coupons, and investment-grade bond yields dropping to a 3-year low of 2.77%.

Big tech companies like Google and Facebook, as well as newer direct-to-consumer (DTC) tech upstarts like Away and Peloton, are driving advertising growth for legacy industries, like traditional television and out-of-home (billboard) companies.

Why it matters: The very industry that's upending legacy media companies is also the one that's keeping their ad businesses afloat.